Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (30 page)

“What made you choose a shield so small?” Lamorak clapped Gawain on the shoulder.

“The Norse use them.”

“The blond men beyond the north sea? Have you been there?”

“No.” Gawain smiled at Diana. How she loved that smile. It made her feel right and true. “But I have met some of their fighters in my day.”

Or their descendants.

“Then you are a man I would like to know.” Lamorak
turned to one of Gareth’s men. “Agravain, your brother needs a bucket of water over his head, or he’ll lie in the mud all night.”

Glowering, the man headed for a watering trough round the far side of the hall. From here Diana could see several huge, heavy-boned horses tethered there. Turning back to the group surrounding Gawain, Diana saw another of Gareth’s men peering at Gawain, eyes narrowed.

But then Lamorak swept Diana and Gawain back into the hall, calling for meat and mead for the guests at his expense. Lamorak and Gawain settled into a comfortable relationship, almost as if they had always known each other. Soon Gawain was eating and laughing with them. Gareth’s party had decamped. No doubt their leader had a very big headache. And they would not enjoy hearing his defeat relived in so many tellings.

The young pregnant woman came in bearing a great wooden tray loaded down with a haunch of venison. Diana leaped up to help her. “You shouldn’t be carrying heavy trays. Let me.”

“A lady like you can’t be serving drunken men,” she said. “It is good for me to be active.” She held the plank away from Diana and set it on the table. Something about her seemed familiar. Maybe all pregnant women looked alike. She certainly had a glow about her lovely, translucent skin. She was really quite pretty.

The men stood to carve meat from the great haunch. Gawain sliced some very thinly with his great gleaming knife and put it on a smaller wooden plate for Diana. He scooped her vegetables into a bowl and handed her a wooden spoon. It looked like potatoes and maybe carrots and parsnips, and it smelled wonderful. Excitement rose inside her. She was living and eating in the fifth century! This was how it really was: a little dirty (no restaurant
ratings here) and a hard life, but . . . real. Maybe more real than the twenty-first century.

She gestured to the little pregnant woman. “What is your name, so I can thank you?”

“Lambeth, my lady. Mostly I am called Beth.”

“Well, join us, Beth. You look hungry.”

“Oh no, my lady,” she said, bobbing a curtsey. “That’s not allowed. Meat is only for the soldiers, or the castle. We villagers don’t get meat.”

Gawain stopped eating in midbite. “What’s this?” he asked, and looked to Lamorak.

“The lass is right,” Lamorak said, sobering. “Our king takes the milk, the animals, the stags in the forest. All belong to him. The only reason there is meat for supper tonight is because we’re here. Gareth brought venison with him. He comes down with some of his men to graze among the local herd.” Lamorak gave a glance to the two pretty young women who were helping Beth.

“What happened to defending the weak? There was a time when we understood that the health and welfare  of those who till the land and make what we need are our responsibility.” Gawain spoke quietly, but he had the attention of the men around him. Some looked abashed.

“All that is gone,” Lamorak said, his voice husky. He downed his tankard of mead. “Mordred rules here now.”

“And you serve him?” Gawain’s voice was so low it was almost a baritone whisper.

“He is all that holds the land against the Saxons.”

“Surely not all. You are his might. Could not another lead you?”

“We cannot hold against them divided. We need Mordred’s contingent, and they will not fight without him.
Agravain, Gareth, they hold sway with others, and they are Mordred’s kin.”

“And yet they need you, too. They cannot prevail alone,” Gawain pressed. “You could stand against them. . . .” He glanced around to the servants in the hall. “At least in certain things.”

Lamorak took a breath. His chest heaved with it. As if it was all he could do to speak, he said, “Merlin has given him new power and tells him where the Saxons will attack. Without Mordred, and Merlin’s sight that serves him, we would fall.”

“Merlin supports him?” Gawain looked stricken. As well he might. His own father was supporting a man who was capable of any atrocity. Gawain looked away from Lamorak and the other men. “Maybe falling to the Saxons would not be so bad. The alternative seems to be that
we
are our people’s worst enemy.” Gawain looked defeated. In a way, Merlin was her father, too, at least in nurture, if not in biological fact. She should share Gawain’s shame. But she couldn’t remember anything of Merlin, and therefore she didn’t feel it as Gawain did. She wanted to help him, to comfort him. But what comfort could she give?

“Do you know the Saxons?” Lamorak asked, snorting. “Foreign swine. We may not keep to Arthur’s principles, but at least we will save the land from foreign devils.”

Things had not changed in fifteen hundred years. People still feared the strange more than they feared what they knew, even if what they knew was evil.

The men drifted back to eating. There was nothing more to be said on their dilemma, and they had made their choice. Lamorak talked of the hunt for the stag they were eating. Gawain roused himself from silence to praise the flavor of its meat. It was the courteous thing to do, no matter what you felt inside. Diana had to admit
that eating felt good. The mead was sweet but nonetheless alcoholic. Soon she was nodding at the table. As she jerked her head up, hoping no one had noticed her lapse, she heard Lamorak saying, “Lad, do I know you from somewhere? You look a bit familiar.”

Uh-oh.

“I have a common face,” Gawain said brusquely, downing his mead.

The laugh went round the table. Lamorak guffawed loudly. “I’ll bet the women do not think so. Tell us your name, Sir Knight.”

“I am called Gawain,” he said briefly.

“Gawain. . . . ,” Lamorak mused.

“Well, I think my lady needs her rest,” Gawain changed the subject abruptly. “Mistress, does your offer still stand?”

The pregnant server called Beth nodded as she made her way among the men, filling horns and tankards. “Yes, my lord.”

“I would not let her rest unguarded,” Lamorak said, almost under his breath.

“She shall not.” Gawain rose.

“You’ll need some rest yourself, if you’re going up to the castle tomorrow,” Lamorak said flatly. No other explanation was asked for or given. But Diana knew that one of Lamorak’s men would spell Gawain so he could get some sleep, too. It was a strange feeling, being protected as though you were a precious object. She shouldn’t like it. She was an independent modern woman. But knowing Gareth and Agravain were out there somewhere still probably looking avaricious, she didn’t mind having someone outside her door.

“You, urchin!” Gawain called to the boy who had been putting a log on the nearest fire. He was a ragged creature, perhaps ten or twelve, about the age that Gawain
was in this time. The boy turned around, casting frightened eyes across the crowd of men to see who called.

Gawain beckoned. The lad hurried forward, pulling his forelock in the age-old gesture of deference. “My lord?” he asked breathlessly.

“Take this home to your family,” Gawain said gruffly, pointing to a piece of meat.

The boy looked up, his eyes wide. “My lord?”

Gawain hauled the haunch up by the bone. “Have one of the women wrap it for you.”

The boy hesitated, then grabbed the haunch in his arms, careless of the staining juices, and hurried away with his prize.

Gawain looked around at the other men pointedly. “I’m sure there will be other leftovers which will need good homes.” A couple of the men looked abashed.

“Aye, Gawain. We can handle that,” Lamorak said.

Gawain set another hefty piece of meat on his shield. “Come, my lady. Mistress, will you lead us to your abode?” He handed the woman the shield to carry and lifted Diana from her stool. They followed the little pregnant servant into the night.

“It’s just a few steps!” she called back over her shoulder.

“I hope your man will not mind the intrusion,” Gawain said graciously.

They saw her hesitate. Then her shoulders straightened. “I have no man,” she said, striding forward. “That’s why they call me whore.”

Diana looked at Gawain and he looked back. Could it be? Gawain pulled her forward and they hurried to catch up with the pregnant serving maid. “I thought she looked familiar,” Gawain whispered in Diana’s ear. “It was the weight of pregnancy that put me off.”

But Beth was pretty—Diana’s mind protested. Perfect skin. Big eyes. But it had to be.

This was her mother.

Tears filled her eyes. All those years longing to know where she came from. The mortification of realizing she was Mordred’s daughter. The fear that she was tainted somehow . . . but Mordred was only half her answer. She was this woman’s daughter, too. And this woman was brave, and kind. She offered them a bed when it took courage to stand against the likes of Gareth and Agravain, who called her whore. And she would die giving birth to Diana. Diana’s heart clenched. This was her chance to know her mother. Whether that chance was God given or given by Mordred and Gawain who could know? But Diana would take it.

“But your babe has a father,” Gawain said as he caught up with Beth. “I think it was Mordred.” Diana held her breath.

Beth stopped in her tracks and turned. “How know you that? I have never told a soul.”

What was there to say?
Because we are time travelers and I am your daughter grown
? There was only one thing this woman would believe. “I am a witch,” Diana said calmly. “And this is Merlin’s son. Will you keep our secret from Mordred?”

“I never see Mordred. He raped me the night our Arthur died, eight months ago and more. He has a dozen swelling with his brats besides me, and no use for any of us. Only a queen will do to bear a child he acknowledges. They say he will bring back Guinevere. So your secret is safe.” But all the while she talked her eyes strayed to Gawain.

Diana looked to Gawain as well. Mordred wanted to wed Guinevere, Gawain’s true love. Diana expected to see his face contract in rage or pain, but he was covering his emotion well.

Beth spoke again, hesitant. “I . . . I know Merlin’s
son. He is but a boy. . . . and yet he has the look of you. . . .”

Gawain looked around, searching the shadows of the muddy street at night. “We should hurry to your house, Mistress Lambeth. . . .”

Beth shook herself out of her contemplation. “Of course.” She picked up her skirts to stride across the muck.

Gawain lifted Diana over a muddy section of the road. He didn’t ask. He just swept her up and set her down again, as if it were a normal part of walking beside her. They found their way onto a tiny winding path that led to a small hut back off the road in a stand of trees.

Beth pushed open the door. “Let me just poke up the fire. I’ll set your meat over here.”

“It’s not our meat. It’s yours,” Gawain said. “And I’ll take care of the fire.”

He knelt and stirred the coals. They sparked up and sent forth a tentative flame. Gawain took a small log from the pile of three set on the little hearth and stripped some bark. He laid the bark across the coals in a crisscross pattern, and when it had caught he laid two of the logs across it. “Where is your woodpile?”

“Around the side.” The pregnant woman headed for the door.

“You sit and rest your back,” Gawain said, waylaying her and guiding her to a stool.

Beth looked almost frightened by his acts of kindness. Gawain didn’t seem to notice but headed for the door. Diana went and sat beside Beth, who glanced occasionally at the slab of meat on the shield she had set on the crude wooden table.

“You should eat,” Diana said. “The meat would be good for your babe.”
For me,
she thought.
How strange.
And indeed, the woman’s skin looked so translucent as
to be almost unhealthy in this light. “Don’t bother about me; I ate until I can’t eat any more.” She felt ashamed knowing that Beth was hungry all the time she served the others.

Beth turned big eyes on her. “You are both kind, my lady.”

“Nonsense,” Diana said brusquely. “Now will you get a plate for yourself or shall I?”

“You’re low on wood, Mistress Lambeth,” Gawain said as he pushed in through the door with an armload. “But I see you have an axe. I’ll cut some for you before we go up to the castle in the morning.” He laid his load by the fire. “I’ll be right outside the door. Call if you need me.”

He turned to go. “It’s cold outside,” Beth said, leaping up and getting a worn patchwork quilt from the bed.

Gawain looked around, saw how poor the hut was, took in the fact that the bed had only two quilts. “I’ll not be sleeping, Mistress Lambeth. I’m on watch. You keep your quilt.” Then he softened his rejection with a smile.

In that moment, Diana knew just how much she loved him. She might have thought she loved him before, but seeing his generosity toward the ragged boy, his care for Beth, made her proud and sad, all at once. Here was a man
so
worth loving, and he would never love her back. And Mordred was bringing Guinevere to Camelot. She had a vivid premonition. Gawain would stay here, in this time, after he had killed Mordred. This was where he belonged. This was where his one true love resided. And if Arthur was dead and Mordred was dead and Gawain was a man grown, there was nothing standing between him and his love. Of course, he’d have to take her away from where his self of ten was living. But if she was queen, what was to stop him from being king and sending his boyhood self away to Orkney, where he and Diana
would never meet? He would be a great king. Would that change history?

And why was it that when she thought about that, history was the least of her concerns?

It took all her courage, but she smiled at him. His eyes smiled back. Then he pushed out the door into the night.

“He is a fine man,” Beth said in a low voice.

“Yes, he is. Sit and eat.”