Every Never After (22 page)

“Even if the Celts didn’t want you there?”

Ashbourne sighed. “Perhaps so. Yes. At the time I didn’t see it that way. None of us did.” He ran a hand over his face again, his expression betraying a bone-deep weariness, and Clare felt her righteous indignation faltering somewhat. “At any rate,” he continued,
“I had no wish to put my own men in the middle of such a ruinous clash. And so I manufactured a viable excuse for avoiding the conflict. A
golden
excuse, one might say.”

“What was that?” Milo asked.

“Emperor Nero was a man thirsty for the riches of his provinces. And Britain was nothing if not rich. In gold. Druid gold. After Paulinus left to go fight Boudicca, my men and I discovered masses of the stuff, hidden in caves on Mona. Magnificent workmanship, torcs and brooches and bracelets … all manner of jewellery fit for kings and queens …”

Clare thought back to the treasure hoard buried along with the body of the queen in Boudicca’s grave barrow, and she knew that Ashbourne wasn’t exaggerating.

“I sent a missive to Paulinus describing the treasure caches and telling him that, as per the emperor’s mandate, my men and I would escort the captured booty to ships sailing for Rome. I thought I was being clever. But in trying to save my men from unnecessary slaughter and destruction, I succeeded only in damning them more thoroughly than I ever could have imagined.”

“What happened?” Clare leaned forward, fascinated in spite of herself.

“After we left Mona, we travelled south with a caravan of wagons to deliver the gold to one of the supply ships that anchored at a place called Parwydydd, on the south shore of the River Severn where it empties into the Bristol Channel. But the gold weighed us down. Slowed our progress. And, I suppose, fuelled an even greater anger in the Britons—who attacked us for having stolen their Druids’ sacred treasure. Eventually they laid a trap for us. We were ambushed in the Mendip Hills, not very far north of here. A lot of my men were killed in what became a long-running battle …”

His eyes went glassy with the memory and Clare felt a chill crawling across her scalp. She’d been caught in the middle of a Celt versus Roman battle once. She still had nightmares about it.

“Eventually we had to abandon all but one of the wagons, giving up the gold to be recaptured. Then, under cover of darkness one night, I sent my best men out with the remaining booty in sacks upon their backs. They were to hide the gold somewhere in the Mendips while the rest of us provided a distraction and then meet us again at the foot of Ynys Wyddryn—what you now know as Glastonbury Tor—and that’s what we did. Unfortunately, we never made it back to retrieve the gold and we never made it any further. Instead, we set up camp in order to regroup. But when I tried to lead a patrol out, I was captured. Briefly.” Ashbourne’s expression darkened as he spoke. “I don’t remember much of what happened … only jumbled images of a shadowy place and a woman in a cloak of raven feathers standing over me, her eyes red and terrible …” He shook his head. “And then, the next morning, some of my men found me just outside the camp gate, unconscious. With a heavy gold torc wrapped around my neck that I could not remove no matter how hard I tried.”

Clare shuddered, remembering the dream she’d had—the one with Morholt and the scary chick in the feathered cloak. Obviously, it
hadn’t
been only a dream. Clare was still mystically tied to the torc, just as, it was now apparent, Ashbourne was tied to it. And she was tied to Al. And Al had found Ashbourne’s skull … She remembered watching as the woman took the Snettisham Great Torc from Morholt … and now she knew what had happened to it.

“The Great Torc,” Milo said, grasping the significance only a moment after Clare had. “Somehow it wound up on Mona instead of buried in a hole in the ground in Norfolk.”

“That’s correct,” Ashbourne said. “And Mallora—Boudicca’s Druidess sister—took what power the torc already had and … amplified it. Augmented it with her own magics and the magics of this place.” He waved a hand in the vague direction of the Tor. “From that moment on, we were doomed. Regular Celtic warriors we could fight our way through—with casualties, certainly, but our superior numbers and techniques would eventually win the day.
But after they found me outside the gate, we were besieged—not by Celtic warriors, but by demons. The scathach. They appeared out of nowhere—literally
no
where, right out of thin air—and they kept us pinned down in that place.

“You see, Glastonbury itself is a mystical doorway that can be opened—or closed—with a key made of blood. After my capture, I had unwittingly become that key. And Mallora called forth those monsters with it. They were like … primeval berserkers. Wild-eyed and tattooed, they seemed almost from an earlier time. Perhaps they were—Celtic lore and legends are stuffed with accounts of mystically empowered women warriors from a shadowy time when the magic of the island was rife. Perhaps Mallora used me to bring them forward into her world. Used them to exact her revenge for the Roman predations upon her people. Revenge for our theft of their treasure … At any rate, I found myself the instrument through which the curse worked its will.”

“Welcome to the club,” Clare murmured.

“Yes.” Ashbourne leaned back in his chair and regarded Clare as if she were some kind of scientific curiosity. And then, even more annoyingly, he started
talking
about her that way. “Now, insofar as I understand Miss Reid’s abilities,” he said with a meaningful look at Piper, “she is temporally linked to certain objects that have been forged using minute amounts of her blood. Although I will admit that I am somewhat foggy on which came first: the time
travel
or the time-travel
curse
…”

“Don’t ask.” Milo put up a weary hand. “Because, frankly? I have a bank of microprocessors sitting in my apartment back in London that have been trying to sort out that conundrum for the last few weeks, and I think one of them is about to start singing ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do’ any day now.”

“You do?” Clare blinked, not entirely certain he was joking.

“Heh,” Piper snickered. “
2001.
Gotta love a movie with a homicidal computer—”

Clare glared her into silence.

“The upshot of the whole thing,” Milo went on, “is that—chicken/ egg conundrum notwithstanding—Clare wound up flipping back and forth between the present and the Boudiccan rebellion for a few days. And Boudicca’s spirit wound up following her back to modern-day London, briefly, where she proceeded to possess a museum curator, raise a bunch of bog-zombie warriors from the dead, and wreak a little havoc. Until Clare forcibly evicted her and everything went back to normal. Relatively.”

“Don’t forget,
you
got to share your brain with a Druid warrior prince who showed us a magical pathway between dimensions,” Clare chimed in. “Don’t forget that.”

“I’m unlikely to,” Milo said.

He shot Clare a look so intense it startled her. She wasn’t quite sure how to interpret it. But just then Ashbourne snapped his fingers.

“And
that
, my dear fellow,” he said, “is the very crux of the whole matter.”

Milo and Clare turned to him.

“You see,
you
, Mr. McAllister, are also a kind of key,” the archaeologist said. “The key to bringing your cousin home.”

Clare didn’t know quite what to think of that. In some ways, she’d wholly expected Dr. Ashbourne to throw the “Here is what you must do to save the day” curveball into the conversation. But she’d also assumed he would throw it at
her
. And she was feeling vaguely guilty for thinking she was kind of … irrelevant, all of a sudden.

“You mean … I’m the key.
Me.
Girl Time traveller over here.”

“No, Clare.” Milo shook his head. “Not this time.”

He’d said it quietly. And yet the
way
he’d said it was enough to make Clare spin around and stare at him, her mouth drifting open in astonishment at something she’d just figured out. Something that should have been apparent to her for weeks. Ever since the Shenanigans. Something she’d been actively ignoring, hoping it wasn’t true.

“What did I
do
to you?” she whispered.

It was just loud enough for Milo to hear and he half-turned, gazing at her over the rim of his glasses, a strange, haunted look in his eyes.

“God …” Clare put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. “What have I done? He’s still in your head, isn’t he? Connal?”

“No!” Milo protested. “No … It’s nothing. Just … he left behind some of his knowledge.”

“Knowledge? You mean magic?”

“I mean knowledge, Clare. Information. I
like
that stuff, remember?”

Milo stared down at the cup made by his laced fingers as if he held secrets there that only he could see. Maybe he did. The tiny gold hoop in Milo’s ear reflected off the work light on Piper’s table and winked at her. She still couldn’t remember if he’d always worn it. But she knew that Connal had worn one just like it. Two thousand years ago.

Clare had no idea what to say to Milo. It was she who had pleaded with him to host the disembodied spirit of Connal the Druid, and so it was her fault that Connal had left Milo changed. Altered in ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Milo had done it for
her
.

And now?

She turned to Ashbourne, almost grabbing him by the front of his jacket. “What does Morholt say? About Milo. What did he write?”

“Miss Gimble,” Dr. Ashbourne said, “would you be so kind as to fetch the book? I’d like to show Miss Reid and Mr. McAllister what we’re talking about.”

Clare turned to see the other girl’s expression of concern for Milo. She almost lost it. If
anyone
was going to feel bad for Milo it was going to be her. Clare turned her Piper-glare up to withering.

“Oh yes,” she said. “
Do
indulge us, Miss Gimble. Fulfill your meddlesome evil-henchgirl stereotypical duties and fetch.”

Piper blinked in surprise and then frostied up a glare of her own. “Oh, please. Talk about meddlesome. I wouldn’t even exist if
it wasn’t for you. And as for stereotypes? You’re a
time
traveller. If that isn’t a hackneyed B-movie stock-character role, I don’t know what is—”

“Ladies …” Milo sighed wearily, finally looking up. “Not helping.”

Piper’s mouth snapped shut. Then she tossed her pale ponytails and huffed over to the cabinet where she’d put the tin box earlier in the day. A moment passed while she opened the cabinet doors and rummaged around a bit. Another moment passed, and the rummaging increased in intensity. And then random articles began flying out of the cabinet as Piper started chucking stuff over her shoulders in a seeming panic. Now she was making high-pitched chirping noises like some kind of baby animal in distress. Clare glanced over at Ashbourne, whose brow creased in a worried frown. He started to rise up off his stool just as Piper’s head poked around the cabinet door. She was deathly pale and her eyes were almost as big as when Clare had first seen them peering out of her magni-goggles.

“It’s gone!” she blurted.

Ashbourne finished his rise off his stool so fast the thing toppled over behind him with a loud crash.

“What in the name of all the gods do you mean
‘It’s gone’
?” The ferocity of his snarl brought a sudden flush to Piper’s ashen complexion. Clare was starting to see the man behind the moustache very clearly now. The whole “marvellous,” genial, slightly bumbling, overdressed professor of archaeology act was just that. An act. Nicholas Ashbourne was an elaborately constructed persona. The reality behind that facade—the real man behind the facial-hair curtain—was a commander of men. A soldier. And capable of ruthlessness and cold calculation. Clare suddenly felt a bit—a
tiny
bit—sorry for Piper, who swallowed nervously and pointed to the cabinet.

“Gone,” she said again in a dry whisper. “I put it in there. Right there! For safekeeping. I hid it behind Nigel.”

“Nigel?” Clare asked.

“The badger!”

Piper threw the cabinet door wide and Clare realized she was talking about a moth-eaten stuffed badger mounted on a driftwood stand. Just another oddity in Piper’s emporium, the thing grinned hideously at her from an otherwise mostly empty cabinet. Clare stared at the other girl, speechless. When she glanced back at Milo, his expression was unreadable. She wanted to say something to him. Comfort him and utter all sorts of reassurances that Al would be fine. That they’d find his cousin and bring her home. But the hollow pit opening in the bottom of Clare’s stomach seemed to have swallowed up all her words. They’d been counting on the diary to give them some kind of answer. Clues as to how to get Al back. But now that possibility was slipping further and further from Clare’s grasp. Just as Milo seemed to be drifting beyond her reach.

This can’t be happening. How on earth has everything gotten so screwed up?

Piper suddenly hauled off and violently kicked the cabinet.

“I’m doomed!” she exclaimed, a sheen of tears unexpectedly glimmering on the lashes of her dark brown eyes.

“
You’re
doomed?” Clare was aghast. “What about Al?”

“What about her?” Piper rounded on Clare fiercely. “At least she bloody still exists! Without the diary, we have no way of sending you back. And if you don’t go back who knows if I’ll even ever be born? This is my
fate
we’re talking about here! I expect I’ll start disappearing soon, like the people in Marty McFly’s family snapshot in
Back to the Future
!”

Okay. Maybe she had a valid point. Still, there had to be a way forward. A way out of this mess.

“But … you guys have read it, right?” Clare glanced back and forth between Piper and Ashbourne. “The diary? You know what it says. You can just tell us and we can take it from there. Right?”

“Not … well, not exactly.” Ashbourne shrugged helplessly.

Clare felt her fists clenching in frustration.

“There are … things. Symbols and such.” The archaeologist struggled to explain. He looked at Milo. “Things Morholt wrote that only a Druid would understand.”