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Stories & Studies - |
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This is one of my earliest stories. It's not very
polished, the plot is a bit obvious, and, at 8,500 words,
it's the wrong length. But I have put it here because
I have an affection for it. I hope you enjoy it too.
- David |
Professor Marlin Leever stared down at his food and delicately speared a single artichoke heart. After a pause he said, 'How would you like a field trip?'
'But I've just come back…'
'…from Africa,' he completed. 'I know that darling.' His voice was unnaturally neutral and he wasn't looking at her. 'You say you want to study patterns of violence in primitive races,' he glanced quickly at his young wife, 'the so-called Demonic Male. Well, you're the anthropologist darling, I'm giving you a chance.'
His lips pursed and turned down while his eyebrows raised. The sub-text, Gwen knew, is that anthropology is as nothing to a professor of theoretical physics with an international reputation. Despite herself she could feel a flush rising to her cheeks.
Gwen looked down at her lunch - a prettily arranged salad with ham and cheese and a glass of chilled dry Chardonnay. I mustn't be angry, she thought, it's just how he is. The soft English spring sunlight filtered through the young leaves of the tree over their table, throwing a dappled pattern onto the tablecloth. She could hear the quiet whisper and chuckle of the river.
That's why he brought me here for lunch, he's going to ask me to do something.
This is one of the nicest pubs in Cambridge. We've got it almost to ourselves and this should have been a pleasant romantic interlude. We've only been married a year. What happened to us?
'I'm not saying that all males are violent, Marlin' she protested at last, 'you aren't violent I know that. I'm just saying that extreme violence is much more common in primate males than females. And that's a fact. It is. I want to know if it's inherited.'
'No, I meant something quite different,' he interrupted her. 'How about a field trip to Anglo-Saxon England, for example? You studied British history circa 400 AD didn't you? But you can choose whenever date you like. Take your pick. It's all virgin territory. Never been seen by an anthropologist before.'
Her attention sharpened with a pulse of apprehension.
'You mean - your machine? It's working?'
'It's working, Gwen. The rebuilt frequency moderator was delivered to the lab this morning, to my new design, and this time it works. I did some test blocks and they worked, so I tried a laboratory rat. It came back beautifully - never even interrupted its eating.'
'That's wonderful Marlin.' She hesitated, fumbling for what she should say. It made her feel confused. 'That's wonderful,' she repeated lamely, 'you must be so pleased.'
He glanced up from his food, one eyebrow raised. 'Pleased? That's one way of putting it, yes. It's only the first conclusive experimental confirmation of string theory, the fundamental structure of the universe. Yes, I'm certainly very - pleased.' He went on eating.
'Oh darling… I am delighted for you, really I am. I think you are a wonderful man - so clever and brilliant. The man I married.' She reached out and touched his hand with her fingers.
I do truly admire him, she thought, even if I don't quite love him as I did. Maybe that's all it ever was - the hero worship of a young researcher for an older, famous academic. I was so flattered and excited when he paid attention to me. He was a powerful and successful man.
'But darling, a field trip through time? It sounds mad. Why me?'
'No - it's ideal, don't you see. I could go on exchanging bits of earth and small animals through time forever, but what I need is to send a trained human observer. That's been bugging me. If I send another scientist I'll have to share the credit. It's my idea, nobody else's. But if I send you, then it's like you're just a part of me. Anyway, you're not a scientist so everyone will know you couldn't have contributed.'
She felt a pang at this cavalier treatment of her status.
'Well OK, I can understand it's great for your scientific reputation. Why don't you go yourself?'
'It's technically tricky to do that - I have to remain here to control the machinery. Anyway, do I have the right to risk one of the most brilliant creative brains in this country? Who would carry on my work? I know, darling, that sounds conceited,' he smiled unashamed 'but it is a consideration all the same.'
'I see,' she responded tartly, 'but it's OK to risk your wife, I take it?' But despite herself she could feel the lure of the idea. The very first definitive investigation into the roots of British cultural development, she thought. No competitors and no restrictions, and it's a period I already know. In a way it's the chance of a lifetime.
'How risky is it do you think? Are you really sure it's safe?'
'It's absolutely safe darling, I promise you.' Marlin put on his sincere look. 'We'll do it from the old Meson Detection Lab in Cornwall. That's empty and nobody ever goes there now. I will have swapped round various animals and things first so we'll make sure they're all fit and healthy after they come back. The only risk I can see is if it does something to your mind. Can't tell that from a gerbil or a dog of course but there's no reason why it should.'
'I don't feel very reassured,' she commented dryly. 'I agree it would be an interesting project, but it feels like I'm risking my life and reason just to feather your reputation.'
The sun passed behind a cloud for a moment and she shivered.
Gwen gazed at the sky above her, watching the racing clouds driven by a strong wind. 'Storm coming,' she murmured. 'Going to be wet later.'
She became aware of voices and movement beside her. Turning her head stiffly she looked at the crowd of people, there must be at least a dozen of them, gazing at her with fear and a sort of fascinated greed. They weren't crowding close, she noticed. They were afraid of her.
Painfully she pushed herself upwards so that she was half sitting, half lying, resting on her elbows in the shallow coffin-shaped hole in the earth.
She saw two men in leather jerkins with weapons. Behind them other men in rough agricultural clothes of wool or something that looked like calico, women in heavy woolen kirtles, and children in rags. She was in a sort of village green, surrounded by round houses of wattle and daub with thatched roofs. Two goats were grazing nonchalantly nearby and geese were foraging in the distance.
It worked then she thought, Marlin's machine. Nervously she fingered the small plastic box with a button in the center, hanging by a thin strong chain round her neck - her recall button.
On the white surgical table that they had manhandled so laboriously into the laboratory, and where she had been lying nervously until a moment ago, she knew there was now a roughly body-shaped pile of earth and grass that weighed exactly what she and her clothes and equipment weighed - to the nearest microgram. As Marlin had explained, the mass balance was always preserved. In fact, none of the flesh of her body had traveled at all - only the information that tied one subatomic particle to another - the information about how to arrange her body from the earth here, and how to arrange the loose earth from the materials of her body back at home.
In the laboratory it would have looked as if her body had spontaneously decomposed into a pile of damp earth with the 4th century worms still in it, whereas here the good people of the village would have seen part of the greensward metamorphose instantly into an attractive and strangely dressed young woman. No wonder they were scared.
Rolling onto one elbow she got stiffly to her feet, and stepped out of the shallow grave-shaped depression in the ground. The people backed away from her hastily crossing themselves. One of the soldiers presented a trembling pike towards her, a strong shaft of ash with an iron head ground sharp.
Hastily she smiled at them and held her hands up with palms open, showing that she held no weapon. Then, taking her cue from the crowd, she crossed herself to prove she wasn't diabolic. This must be one of the Christian settlements, she realized. The Gaelic Christians that came before the Roman church.
'My name is Gwen,' she said clearly. Pointing to herself she repeated 'Gwen Leever.'
The dangerous time had been at the beginning, when they were afraid of her.
Of course they were still afraid of her but at least she had become familiar to them and now, after two months here, her studies of early English language were paying off and she could talk to them reasonably well.
The priest, who lived two days walk away, had been summoned and had inspected her, muttering charms and incantations that appeared to her to be as much pagan as Christian. "Are you Angel or Devil, woman?" he growled, watching her from under craggy brows. "Nay, but a High Princess of those who live in the rocks and under the water. Unchancy to cross." He made the sign against the evil eye.
In propitiation, she offered him two of her small store of trinkets brought for this purpose. He accepted the gifts and departed. She was on probation.
A month after the priest's visit she was inspected again, this time by the representative of earthly rather than heavenly authority.
Late one afternoon as the light was fading, she was recording into her solar-charged palm-top computer the detailed history and lineage of one of the oldest of the old ladies - a wrinkled crone of perhaps 50 years - she heard a clatter and commotion outside the hut. By then she was so used to all the sounds of the village, and of the bird-lit silence of the rocky downs that surrounded it, that she leapt to her feet and ran to the door.
Three armed men on horses had just clattered into the green followed by a troop of mounted soldiers. One of the men was gorgeously dressed and wore a deep green cloak trimmed with some kind of fur, now muddied at the edges. Calling something, he swung himself out of the saddle. Following the shouted directions of the bowing villagers, he strode powerfully towards her hut. Quickly, smoothing her clothes and hair and patting the bulge of the black canvas holster that contained her emergency revolver, she stepped out to meet him. Better to face him standing.
He stopped abruptly when he saw her, one hand on the hilt of his sword, but as though it was a habit rather than an intention to use it. He gazed at her severely from under heavy brows. His hair and jutting beard were a dark gold - almost bronze, and his eyes were a bright fierce blue.
She held up one hand, palm open.
'Greeting My Lord,' she called, and bowed as one equal to another. 'I bring you good wishes from the people of my realm.'
'My Lady,' he said, returning the bow exactly, 'I have come to greet you, for I have heard strange things about you, and also to measure you whether you are a danger to my people.'
'I am no danger to your people, my Lord. I come amongst you a weak woman unarmed. Will you be seated that we may talk?'
He nodded briefly and turned on his heel.
In the village was one house they called the moot hall, greater than the rest. She had mentally labeled it as 'taboo', a sacred place where nobody might enter, for though it was the greatest and most decorated of all the buildings it seemed never to be used. She was therefore surprised, almost shocked, when the man led them towards it. His two guards ran ahead and swung the doors wide.
Inside it was grandly decorated and she gazed at rich hangings and furs and the mounted heads of a wolf and some kind of large cat. It would seem less than a gaudily decorated provincial village hall to her back home, but in the context of this poor village it seemed princely.
He saw her looking and smiled. 'Our clan is rich in land, animals, slaves and peasants. I can hunt, as I was today, four days from my great hall and still be on our own land. This is but one of our meeting halls.'
'You are a great Lord indeed, Sir.'
'I am Lord of a great clan,' he said as though he were correcting her. 'I was chosen to be Eorl from amongst my brothers because I am more experienced in battle - and the people know that war is coming.
'A weak woman, you say - but it seems you have strange powers. They say you appeared out of the very earth, fully formed - in a twinkling as my people watched, as though rising from the grave.
'They say that you speak strangely, and you give them health in sickness.' Gwen remembered the red festering cut she had healed on the thigh of the miller's daughter with a little ointment and some soothing words. 'And they say you gave my priest strange jewels like this.' Abruptly he opened his gloved hand and showed her one of the trinkets she had given the priest - a glittering gold and red glass bauble for a Christmas tree.
'My Lord, I come only to learn the ways of your people. In my country such learning is greatly esteemed. If I can give health while I am here I will do so, for I wish always to do good rather than evil, but that is not my reason. I shall be here for a short while and then I shall be gone.'
He turned from her and strode up to the high carved chair like a throne and flung himself into it. He grasped the arms, which were in the shape of serpents' heads, his fingers sliding naturally into the carved mouths. The mouth of the serpent, she thought, knowing their myths, he is searching for falsehood in me. All of his movements were impetuous and powerful, but she sensed wisdom and experience. She supposed he was only about 23 but he seemed like a man in his thirties.
She walked - sedately, for there was something about this meeting that engendered ceremony, to one of the benches set out below the throne each side of a central aisle, and seated herself to wait for his reply.
'I too esteem learning,' he answered at last 'in its place, which is in the school or the monastery - or the battlefield, but have a care my Lady. When you have learned our ways will you tell them to our enemies? Are you a spy? And this?' He tossed the glass bauble in his hand, 'is this a bribe?'
'My Lord, I am here before you. You may have me killed if you doubt me.' Her hand wandered lightly to the button at her throat.
His lips compressed into an amused smile. 'Maybe I could,' he said, 'but then - maybe I couldn't. I know not what powers you have, but you at least do not think I could kill you. You are not enough afraid.'
Without meaning to she smiled back, her green eyes sparkling as her lips curved. 'Maybe you couldn't my Lord. I do have some small powers, though in truth I mean you no harm. Let us be friends.'
'Hah,' he barked, his smile broadening. 'Let us be friends, that would be a fine thing,' and then in a great shout, 'Ho - Eadric, food and wine for I am parched'. The two guards had been standing by the door, too far away to hear their conversation but close enough to intervene in case of need. One of them ducked them a hasty bow and ran.
The man on the throne stood up and stretched his shoulders. He was tall, she realized, at least six feet, and strong. No wonder he was good at fighting. She didn't know what it took to make a good fighting man, many mental qualities she was sure, but certainly it must include physical strength.
He saw her watching him and flashed a different smile that inexplicably made her blush. 'Well now my Lady, what think you of Eorl Artor, also named Goodrede, Lord of this clan's land?'
'I think Eorl Goodrede is a strong lord to his people and a fair man.' Too late she realized that the word fair would mean beautiful to him, rather than even-handed. Indeed, she had been thinking how vividly alive and handsome he was. Somehow the word just slipped out. 'A man of good judgment,' she corrected hastily.
'Yes, good rede they have named me and so let it be, for careful judgment will be needed these months. But Lady Gwenheevar, for I know your name, is fair of face and body and dainty to see. Now I have seen her, I judge also that she speaks truth and is of good intent whatever else she may be.'
Four of the villagers entered and set a table at the top of the hall below the throne. They pulled two benches towards it and put out food and wine. Briefly she remembered a shady table for two by a river in Cambridge.
As they ate he talked. 'We have need of strong allies,' he said. 'The threat from the Saxon invaders grows, over land and over sea, and I am sworn to protect my people and my clan. That is my allotted task that I have accepted. And yet by protecting my own clan I also protect neighboring clans against the pagan hordes. Thus all Christian peoples should join their strengths together in this fight.'
Then he began to speak more intimately of his family, brothers and sisters and cousins and second cousins in a great, extended network, naming and valuing each to measure their worth. Eagerly she took it all in, wishing she had her tiny palm top with her, but half-glad she hadn't as it would have felt discourteous.
Suddenly he broke off and said, 'My soldiers, see, they think it strange that I should talk to you a woman at this high table as though you were an envoy or a lord of a neighboring clan.' He glanced at her quickly from under his brows. 'They think I mean to bed you, strange though you are.'
Gwen felt a treacherous warm pulse within her. 'I am under your protection Lord Goodrede. Your own honor must protect my chastity - and there are those certain powers that I am said to have.'
He held her gaze for a moment. 'Just so,' he said seriously, laying that thought aside. 'But now Lady, you must decide. Will you be my ally in the wars that are coming?'
She drew a breath, startled.
She had been listening as an anthropologist - interested but neutral, uninvolved. Suddenly she realized that he'd arranged this meeting and this conversation for a purpose. He'd been leading up to this question all the time.
'That is why I came to seek you out fair Lady Gwenheevar,' he said watching her face attentively, 'Princess of the people who live in the rocks and under the water, for I know well what you are, Lady. War is coming. We have need of your strength.'
It was two hours before she was able to return to her hut, her body feeling uplifted and dream-like from much food and the unaccustomed thick sweet wine. She hadn't answered his question.
Never get involved, she muttered to herself, as she lay curled up on her low bed of woven laths and straw, pulling the woolen blankets more closely over her shoulders. Never take sides. An anthropologist must be merely an observer, an eye and a shadow, and never disturb that which she observes.
Oh, but what an opportunity it would be to observe, another part of her said. I've almost finished with this small village and I'm ready to move on or go home. Now this, an offer to go with the Eorl to his great hall and see these people from the top, having studied them from the bottom. And I'll learn more about him too, a secret part of her mind added. He is so beautiful and powerful and alive. She ignored that voice. I must just be rational and careful, she thought. No harm can come of it, no harm.
With that she smiled softly and slept.
Later that night she woke. Moonlight was pouring in through a chink between the walls and the thatch and by its light she could see the great central pole holding up the roof and the closed door of skins. She could hear the even breathing of the other unmarried women who shared her hut. Eadgyd, who was twelve and soon to be married, turned and muttered something in her sleep.
Suddenly Gwen was afraid. This isn't my world, she murmured. I've done what I set out to do and it's time to go home. She felt a pang that the Eorl might think she had betrayed him. But I'd be mad to stay. I know just what would happen. Her hand strayed to the button at her neck.
Marlin had explained it to her. When she'd been switched into this world, the system had kept a record of exactly what had been exchanged. When she pressed the button, then her body here would be transformed back into the earth from which it had been made, and at the same time the mound of earth in her world would be changed back into her. Closing her mind to what might happen if the earth had been moved, she clutched the plastic box - paused - and pressed.
Her eyes were squeezed tightly closed and her fists clenched. She didn't feel anything. Cautiously she opened her eyes. There in the splinter of moonlight she could see the central pole and the woven wattles of the walls, and in her ears was the quiet breathing of the women. She pressed the button again and again. Nothing happened. One of the dogs outside the hut sat up to scratch then threw himself down again with a soft yawning whine.
She was still here. It hadn't worked.
Everything changed when I found I couldn't go back home.
She was brushing her pale gold hair in the firelight, watched by her maid. It's getting long now, she though absently. Not the neat little cap of modern hair it used to be. I have thought so hard about every word that Marlin said to me about the recall button. Why doesn't it work? How many nights have I tried and tried again?
Did he mean it she wondered? Did he want to get rid of me? Such a neat murder, it's not really a murder at all, and no inconvenient body to get rid of. But why would he? He thought of me as property, I know that now, but he did seem to value me. I was an asset, a young pretty wife and proof of his prowess as a sexual man. She sighed. Who can tell with Marlin? He's so indirect and convoluted.
Not like Artor. Artor is simple, innocent even by modern standards, and very direct. She swallowed. He would take me if I let him, and yet I know I'm safe because his honor holds him back. That's what he's like.
From the day she arrived at his court, Artor had been sending her gifts of grand dresses in silk or fine wool trimmed with fur, and brooches of enameled copper or silver inset with purple amethyst or peat-brown cairngorm. At first she had refused to wear them, fearing too much commitment, but after she had been at the Eorl's court for a month she was forced to change her mind. The magic strangeness of her modern trousers and bush jacket began to loose their ability to impress as they began to look worn and soiled.
It seems churlish and possibly dangerous, she decided at last, to come to his hall dressed like a ragamuffin. I shall accept his gifts and wear the clothes and jewels of a woman of fashion, the Princess that they think I am. As for underclothes she smiled, the women here wear none. I'll keep my comfortable bra, but I guess everything else will have to be optional.
What wasn't ever optional was her small black canvas holster, the recall button at her neck, and her solar-powered palm-top computer in a small matching holster made of soft leather by the Eorl's craftsmen, at her request. These she kept always by her.
She was also changing as she became more involved, less objective. The Eorl treated her as a trusted and valuable ally at his side. Every evening she sat with him and his brothers and uncles at his invitation, the only woman present, while they discussed war, and trade with the other clans and overseas, and then war again. Ever it seemed to be coming closer.
She had studied the history of this period for her graduate degree before specializing in anthropology, and she'd studied it again in preparation for this trip. Despite gaps in her understanding, sometimes her knowledge seemed to the men like uncanny prescience. The brothers eyed her askance, not sure if she was a royal Princess, a witch of power, or the Eorl's chosen plaything.
She wasn't even sure herself. Artor's wife had died two years ago in childbed, taking the child with her. It was not to be expected that so important a prince slept alone, but at times, when his fierce grip on the preparations for war could relax, he would send the men away and sit by the great fire with her talking. Nothing disturbed them but the servants quietly moving in the shadowed back of the hall, or his two great hunting dogs when they sat by the fire at their feet and gnawed bones or snored.
Sometimes he talked about his family, his mother who was dead these many years, his plans for his unmarried sister, with her consent, even his dead wife and his longing for a son. More often they talked about the coming war. She knew he valued her knowledge as she set her university-trained mind to consider contingencies and counter-plans and drew swift diagrams, seeming to know the shape of the land far away, where he had never been. 'See,' she would say sketching swiftly, 'if the raiders come inland they cannot cross the river except just here. That point must be defended.'
'But they have boats.'
'No, not unless they portage them over these rapids lower down, and they won't have time. I wish we had as good defenses here.'
So they planned the complex detailed framework for the war that was to come.
She knew she could have raised one eyebrow or touched his hand so close beside hers, and he would have taken her, even there by the fire. The thought made her breath deepen as she imagined his strong arms round her nakedness, but she held still. How could she love this man who was so innocent, though wise in the ways of his world. Besides, she was married.
Often he asked about her life, but there was little that she could tell, so little that he could understand except that she had a husband in her own country called Marlin, a wise man of great knowledge.
'Marlin,' he said strangely. 'What if he comes to claim you?'
'I think he will not,' she answered, 'or he would have come by now.'
It was the next day that the raiders came. The ship must have crept up the river from the sea at night as she had feared they might, for they attacked at dawn.
She awoke with a start seeing flickering shadows in her room and her maidservant shaking her shoulder and crying 'My Lady Gwenheevar, come quickly. Raiders are coming. We shall be taken as slaves.'
She snatched at her clothes, rolling them into a bundle under one arm, and grabbed her precious holster containing her revolver in her other hand. Already she could hear men shouting and a hammering against the great wooden door.
Blowing out her candle the maid called out, 'This way, quickly my Lady.'
Blindly she followed the maid, out through a small door into the cooler darkness of the night and on up the hill. The great hall was built on a rising bluff beside the river. Running through the trees of the orchard the girl led her to a cave amongst the rocks. It was so small that only one of them could go in at a time, but inside there was room for both of them and it was hidden.
Struggling in the darkness Gwen dressed herself.
Beside her she could feel the girl trembling. 'What is it, Megr? We're safe here,' she whispered.
Megr clung to her. 'This is the sacred cave,' she moaned. 'We shouldn't be here. We'll be accursed. But my Lord told me, if ever there was trouble, to take you here and hide you. He said he would take the curse on himself, my Lady, but I don't want that he should take the curse. He's too important to the family, so I mun do it and still take the curse to mysen.' She whimpered.
Gwen's first reaction was anger. How dare he organize her safety without a by-your-leave? And how dare he scare this child.
'Hah,' she said robustly, 'you have lived beside me so long you have forgotten who I am. I come from the people who live in the rocks and under the water, and there is no curse here - for me, or for thee, or for thy Lord - only welcome, and blessing on thee for a faithful servant.
'Now be still, for I must see and listen.' She pushed her way to the front of the cave and settled herself to watch, leaving Megr much comforted lying in the cool darkness deeper in the cave.
Below her lay the great hall surrounded by the round thatched huts.
Already two of the huts were on fire, providing a lurid flickering light for a scene from hell. As the details registered on her consciousness her lips drew back into an involuntary grimace and her eyes widened. Her eyes flickered as she watched and she started to sweat. In all her experience as an anthropologist she had never been near real warfare. More than anything else it reminded her of the chimps of Kibale she had seen hunting down and killing a smaller chimp - the uncontrolled animal screaming of mortal fear and aggression.
The pitch was different but the screaming was the same, men screaming in rage and fear and killing exultation. Behind that the higher pitched women's screams of fear and pain, and behind that the thinner shriller screams of the children. She heard the clash of iron on iron, the thud of iron on wood and the soggier thump of iron into human flesh. As a background she could hear the roar and crackle of the flames, and once a great whoomph as another hut was engulfed.
The raiders seemed to be having it all their own way. She could see only a handful of the Eorl's followers fighting an army of forty raiders. She saw an elderly man who had sat near her at table last night discussing numbers, an old and faithful retainer, a clerk she would have called him. He raised his arm and shield to protect his head. She watched the sweep of the great axe that severed his arm from his body at the shoulder, so that it fell into the bloody dust and flapped as if it had a life of its own. The man, defenseless now and gushing blood turned and ran only to be cut down by another blow from the axe that split his skull diagonally from above one ear to the opposite jawbone. Gwen stifled a scream in her throat. The men were so near and they were running and turning so fast, faster than she had ever seen men move before.
She could smell it now - the smoke gushing, acrid and bitter, and the sickly sweet smell of blood and vomit.
Her eye was captured by another defender, he looked just a boy of twelve or thirteen, smashed with a blow that cut in at the shoulder, slicing though the leather and flesh and bone almost to the backbone.
The women were being rounded up and herded back towards the river, followed by their crying children. The expression 'sexual resource' slipped into her mind from her cool anthropological vocabulary and she was filled with a burning shame at her previous lack of involvement, so cool, so clinical, so scientific. This was the reality - she tasted the sickness in her throat.
Then came the horses. She hadn't considered why there were so few defenders. Now she remembered. On horseback they were more than a match for raiders on foot, and the old men and boys had defended the hall until the horses could come. It had even been her suggestion - a cool calculation of the odds.
With a searing scream the horses and riders swept up on the raiders. Swords rose and hacked and the horses leaped back to avoid the slower axes. She noticed that the horsemen had come from the direction of the river, even though the horses were housed above the hall. They were cutting off the raiders from their boat and retreat. They intended to kill them all.
Some raiders fought back bravely and some tried to flee but none escaped.
She saw a raider running up the hill towards her cave, his heavy axe abandoned. His breath was laboring and he had a dagger in his hand. He looked about seventeen and he was scared, running for his life. Suddenly the earth seemed to shake and a horse was heaving itself up the steepening slope towards the running boy. The boy turned at bay, the dagger ready in his hand. The horse swerved and a blade flashed. Something thumped into the grass just inches it seemed from her face. It was the boy's hand - fingers slowly uncurling so that the dagger slipped out onto the grass. Looking up she saw the boy standing defenseless before he was cut down with an almost contemptuous slash to his throat. His body crumpled and fell.
There was a pause, almost silence. The attack was over. Every raider was dead. She could hear the people calling out to their wives and children, brothers and sons.
The rider of the horse dismounted and leapt at the mouth of the cave.
'Gwenheevar, are you there? Are you safe?' He kicked the dismembered hand aside and bent to put his face near her. 'Are you all right?'
'Artor,' she whispered, creeping out of the cave mouth and straightening herself like an old woman. He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close with his left arm, sheathing his sword expertly with his right. 'It worked,' he whispered, 'the plan worked. They were totally surprised and we got every one of them.' She could feel the fierce joyous exultation in his trembling body and smell the sweat and blood and smoke on him.
'Artor,' she screamed, 'Artor, you killed him.' She ripped open his shirt, tearing at the ties, and pressed herself against his bare chest. 'Artor,' she whispered against his skin, 'that boy's hand…'
Picking her up he stepped towards the cave just as Megr crawled free. 'Go Megr, faithful servant' he said. 'And you my Princess Gwenheevar who lives in the rocks, we go now to your chamber.'
Together they slid into the small dry cave and her hands reached for him in the darkness, and his for her. Lifting her skirt for him she was glad it was a day when underclothes had been considered optional.
In the end the people accepted her better than she had expected. Maybe, with the storms of war on the horizon, her supposed magical powers were an advantage to offset her strangeness.
They had walked down the slope in the quickening dawn light, he leading his horse and she walking beside him - close, almost touching. They were not the only ones to be possessed by the same fierce counterpoise to death. Twice she saw couples entwined on the ground in the shadows under the bushes, loosing their mortal fear into each other and reaffirming their personal immortality.
Twelve days later they were married by the priest in front of the people.
She had been faced with a decision, and she decided on the basis of her new determination, burned into her soul while she watched the fighting, to live reality in the moment instead of trying to live theoretically and by proxy as she had done before.
'My husband is dead,' she told Artor, 'for he lives two thousand years away in time and I cannot return. If you wish it, my Lord, I will marry you.'
'I do wish this, my Lady, for I have longed to possess you since first that evening when we ate together at high table,' he smiled down at her face, so close to his, and brushed back a damp tendril of her hair, 'when my soldiers expected me to bed you - and I too, in truth, expected it.'
She chuckled. 'As to that gentle Artor, you cannot say that you long to possess me while you lie with me thus, as closely as man and woman may lie.
'But I would have welcomed you to my bed before had duty and policy allowed. What will the people say? If they would not approve this marriage, I will share your bed without marriage - if you wish this.'
'They will approve. They like settled things, especially in these times of war, and mostly they see you as adding strength to the clan. And they would wish children and a legitimate heir to provide stability into the future.'
'You have an heir. Mordriy, your son is nine.'
'He is my son, and in the absence of a son born in wedlock he is my heir, but the succession will be contested. If you, as my wife, could bear me a son this would please the people - and it would please me.' He smiled and kissed her.
The raids from the Saxon shore increased - and with them Artor's reputation for making plans that worked. The raiders came in larger groups and Artor had to coerce or bully a score of minor chiefs and clans to react in a united front according to his prearranged plans. When an attack began, the clan under attack must send out fast messengers so that other clans could come from either side and enclose the raiders in a pincers movement, either to beat them off or to avenge the dead if they came too late. The clans paid Artor tribute and granted him overlordship in matters of battle - and the title of King.
When Artor traveled Gwen traveled with him.
To the wonder of his people she rode astride a great horse like a man, not in a covered litter like a lady of fashion or a concubine. She rode always beside and behind her Lord in battle, matching his standard bearer on the other side. When she or her Lord were threatened she fought, striking at those that assailed them, casting very lightning from her hand that she drew from the small black holster at her side. Even the raiders feared her magic, so that Artor could ride un-assailed through an enemy force harrying them as he willed.
During battle Artor was transformed with a wild exultant joy, and an anger that neither offered nor asked for quarter. She rode beside him as he screamed his battle song cutting down running boys in their terror and seasoned warriors in their prime, and later she made love with him while the blood of those he'd killed was still wet on his clothes. After battle Artor and his Lady would visit the doctors tending the wounded, eat and drink with his generals, issue the orders for the night and then retire to his great tent. Always after battle their desire ran high and despite hurts or dirt or blood, they coupled like young wolves until they were spent.
But Lady Gwenheevar bore no child.
'Mordriy is thirteen now, and a man,' she urged Artor at last. 'You must promote him to be your second in command. The men will refuse to follow him unless he has your countenance.'
'Aye love,' Artor answered. 'I have known this too. Out of courtesy I wished not to put another woman's child before yours unborn. Now you make my way clear.'
Mordriy was a dark sour youth, born of a Welsh slave woman Artor had briefly favored and he had a following - young men who aped his fashions and wore his colors. As Artor got older the power of the youth faction grew.
Lady Gwenheevar also acquired a faction, though she did not wish it. Artor had granted her a troop of soldiers to be her honor guard, young men from noble families of other clans that he deemed politic to grant some special honor. They wore her colors, boasted about her magical powers and professed themselves in love with her.
At that time Artor had instigated competitive mock battles, clan against clan, as a sport and a method of training the soldiers in a way that was at least slightly less lethal than pitching raw youths straight into a real battle. One clan would challenge another to meet them at an appointed place and day. The King would act as referee. There would be prizes for warriors who excelled, a warhorse or a beautiful slave girl, which the King would provide out of his tributes or booty from his battles.
One of my Lady's followers was a tall handsome slow-witted youth called Lancel who had gone further than most in his expressions of love for his mistress. One day, one of Mordriy's faction called out across the hall that Lancel might know more about his lady's bedchamber than was seemly.
There was a hush in the hall. Lancel blushed fiery red and, rising clumsily to his feet, began to deny the charge in a stumbling stammer, as indeed he might since it could cost him his life if true. Seeing his confusion, others of Mordriy's group started calling out and taunting him.
Artor glared down the table at his son and waited for him to control his followers, but Mordriy, full of wine, simply smirked at the noise and confusion, feeling that his faction had the advantage. Eventually Artor rose.
'Who makes this unseemly noise?' he called, and silence fell.
'Does anyone here dare to challenge the honor of my Queen?'
Nobody was willing to make an accusation, for indeed none doubted that she was his true and faithful wife. All could have been well. Artor was just preparing to sit down and let it fade into the realms of other forgotten drunken indiscretions when Mordriy said from his place lower down the table, 'My Lord King, my father, perhaps it is that none dare accuse where none dare fight their King.'
There was a shocked silence.
The King was momentarily at a loss and glanced at his wife.
Without hesitation she spoke from her seat beside him. 'None would seriously countenance the suggestion that has been hinted at here, but I see that a smirch of honor has been foolishly placed on my guard by your people, Mordriy.
'Therefore, with all good will towards you, I now challenge your followers to a mock battle to be held at Badon Hill at noon tomorrow sennight. If any feel they have been slighted by what has passed tonight, let that suffice for the settlement of honor.'
There, she thought, a few bruises and possibly a little blood will serve to lance this boil before it festers. The King smiled at her wisdom and nodded his permission.
The pale sunlight stuck under lowering storm clouds, but no rain came.
The Queen's fifteen guards were formed up behind their Lady at the top of Badon Hill, for traditionally the challenger claimed the high ground. Below them were Mordriy and his troop of seventeen men. Her pistol was holstered, for today she would strike no lethal blow but she would ride with them into the thick of the battle, as was her practice.
The King sat his great horse to the side of the field, as referee and judge, with his standard bearer beside him.
With a cry Mordriy's troop began to move, changing from a wheeling knot to a purposeful trot and then to a canter as they began to mount the steepening slope.
'Stay,' she called to her troops as she felt their restive movement around her. She watched the opposing group getting closer. Then raising her hand she cried in her clear voice, 'Forward, let honor be satisfied.' Using the advantage of the slope, her troop leapt from standing directly into the gallop. The two groups clashed together with the shattering sound of iron on iron, screams of horses and men and the hammering of hooves. As the horses mingled into the melee she saw riders fall and herself repulsed a flat-sworded buffet with a blow from her shield.
The King moved closer to watch the action, as was his duty.
Steadily Gwenheevar's men pressed forward, driving the flagging Mordians back down the slope before them. More men fell. The initial charge had failed and the advantage of the higher ground was beginning to tell.
Suddenly, in the thick of the melee, came a sound like the tearing of a gigantic sheet of canvas and a pulse of brilliant light that Gwen knew she had experienced before. Every rider froze where he was and the horses of both sides fell back in fear. In the gap thus formed a tall man dressed in black stepped out of the very womb of the earth and stood before them, holding in his arms a strangely worked staff.
The melee resolved itself and Mordriy rode towards the man, sword hand high in greeting rather than threat.
'No Mordriy,' screamed Gwenheevar. 'Stop.'
There was a tearing rattle of lighting-fire from the man's device. Mordriy, still many sword's lengths away, lurched back on his horse gouting blood from his chest, and slid to the ground with a look of utmost surprise on his face. His horse, confused by the noise and his master's fall turned and cantered loosely away up the slope trailing his master's body caught by one foot in the ornate stirrup.
The other horses wheeled as one to face the enemy and the King spurred his horse forward, 'Hold. By what right do you slaughter my noble knight,' he shouted, unsheathing his sword.
'Artor, stop. Marlin, don't shoot.' She tried to spur her horse between them, but it was too late. Again the device spoke, and Artor fell forward against his pommel. With a deep gasp he managed to push himself upright. He walked his horse forward and came to a halt beside his wife. 'These are your people,' he forced out. 'They betray me at last.' Then blood welled into his mouth and he could not speak. He sat gazing at her and then, as she watched, his eyes glazed and he fell.
'Betrayed,' shouted one of Mordriy's knights. 'The witch has betrayed us at last.' With that he turned his horse and spurred away. Soon she and the strange man were alone under the lowering sky. Only one other remained, unseen by them. The King's standard bearer had turned his horse at the top of the hill and stood watching them.
'You'd better dismount Gwen,' Marlin called up to her, 'or you'll have a tumble when I translate you back again. I had the devil of a job finding you - I had to track you in space as well as time. It took me a whole day.'
'A day…'
'Yes. I know you've been here quite a time, but I'll take you back to just 24 hours after you left.' He smiled. 'Don't worry. The system has you recorded at the state when you left, and that's how you'll be reconstructed when you get back - young again.'
'But Marlin,' she cried, outraged, 'you've just killed these people.' She pointed to the body of Artor, her King and her husband. 'I loved him.'
'Really? Oh, sorry - looked rather a rough lot to me. In fact I thought I was saving you.' He smiled his little-boy smile that she had once found so enchanting.
Rage shook her and involuntarily her hand reached towards her holster. 'You stupid, ignorant bully,' she screamed. 'I know you were scared witless, you coward, but did you have to bring that?' She pointed with her revolver at his strange staff. 'Did you have to use a Kaleshnikov on my friends?'
She was pointing the revolver at his chest, taking the first pressure of the trigger as he stared back, white-faced.
Then she stopped. What good would it do? She couldn't even use Marlin's machine to come back again and stop this happening - she'd already occupied this time and couldn't do so again.
Stiffly she dismounted and went to the body of her husband. With shaking hands and tear-blinded eyes she straightened his limbs, closed his staring eyes and crossed his hands upon his chest. Then she leaned forward and kissed his lips. 'Goodbye my dear Lord,' she whispered. 'Sleep in peace my darling.'
At last she stood. 'I'm ready now Marlin,' she said coldly, the tears still running unchecked down her cheeks.
From his viewpoint at the top of the hill the King's standard bearer saw the two figures stand up straight for a moment, gazing mutely at each other along the length of the king's body. He saw a flash and they seemed change, turning in an instant to dark pillars of clay that held for a moment and then split, spilling themselves into two heaps of rich tumbled earth, dark on the green sward - a headstone and a footstone for Arthur the King.
'Demonic Male' - Copyright
© David Caldo 2004
All Rights Reserved
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