King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court Read online

  Later chroniclers have vaunted Camelot as possessing perfect weather; believe them not. Silver-footed unicorns did live there, I warrant, but the climate claim was a ruse invented by Arthur to lure in the families of the Round Table knights, that their presence in Camelot might encourage more seemly behavior among the men. A bachelor knight, even one so called because his wife resides in a faraway land, is a knight vulnerable to temptation. This I know for a personal fact; in the early days I kept a tally, but the list grew so long that it ceased to be a point of interest to me.

  Nay; ’tis Gore, through the exercise of my weather magic, that stands—stood—most blessed of all the blessed lands of all the blessed British Isles.

  This day I resolved to summon a thunderhead from a cloudless sky, creating an illusion of darkness perhaps not as deep as a total eclipse, but near enough for my purposes, and watch the social downpour caused by my magical display fall where it might.

  As King Henry and his knights remained distracted by their swooning ladies, and with the Lady Jane Seymour—who, to her credit, did not swoon—and the not-an-ogre stranger watching me intently, each wearing an expression of unabashed curiosity, I stood, closed my eyes, and began marshaling my power.

  Chapter VI:

  The Eclipse

  IN THE STILLNESS and the darkness of my meditative state prior to casting the thunderhead spell, a realization hit me with the force of a lightning bolt.

  If the present day resided within the year of Our Lord 1534 as the good Queen Anne had claimed, then how could these people know about The Boss’s exploits? When I left my century, he was still alive, still sojourning in France with his wife and daughter. I presumed that he had died in my century; surely he would not willingly have left the family over whom he had demonstrated such fondness.

  What had happened? Had he left his own chronicle, which had by some miracle survived the ravages of a millennium to be discovered by these people? ’Twas possible with the application of strong magic, but it did not seem likely. I have seen bones crumble to dust within my own lifetime; even parchments carefully sealed away suffer from the ravages of heat and air and time. The Boss’s sorcery would have had to be powerful indeed.

  For all the pains The Boss had taken to alienate the servants of the Church, resulting in the Interdict ordered upon Britain by the Archbishop of Canterbury, ’tis a certain wager that no monk ever would have deigned to preserve his chronicle through the copying of it.

  I opened my eyes and whispered my query to Lady Jane.

  With my leave she leaned close in to whisper, “For sooth, my lady queen, this be the twenty-third day of September, the very day of the Autumnal Equinox.” I greeted this announcement with interest, for such auspicious days are well known to possess a special breed of magic that serves to enhance invocations and, to the unprepared, cast the spells awry. “The Boss did leave a chronicle for future generations to study. In fact, it has been studied by many scholars, and I can procure a copy for your perusal, if it pleases your Majesty.”

  I said, “Did he use sorcery to preserve it? Or did there remain any monks—difficult as this is to believe—sympathetic to his cause who toiled to preserve it for him?”

  “Neither, your Majesty.” Lady Jane’s expression became thoughtful. “Or rather, sorcery was involved, but it was none of The Boss’s doing, or even his choice in the doing of it.”

  There comes a moment while hearing a truth being uttered when, even though not all of the truth has yet been revealed, the heart begins to suspect. If the heart believes the truth shall effect a joyous outcome, the spirit begins to rise, if only a little to guard against the risk of the heart being wrong; otherwise, the spirit’s descent begins.

  My heart felt as if someone had clenched it in a vise and begun to squeeze. The heart does not bother to mediate the speed of flagging spirits when expecting an unfavorable report.

  “Out with it, woman,” I commanded, as if increased speed of the revelation could in any way mitigate its damage upon my emotional state.

  Lady Jane drew a long breath. “Merlin’s spell caused The Boss to sleep for thirteen centuries. The Boss’s young men, before they died, hid his ensorcelled body deep within the recesses of Merlin’s cave, along with the chronicle, so that The Boss and his writings would remain undisturbed. He died soon after he woke from his enchanted sleep, and the chronicle was made known to many after his death.”

  “He truly is dead, you say?”

  “Aye, Queen Morgan.”

  To say that confirmation struck me as unfortunate is a gross understatement. I had held to the slender hope that if Queen Anne’s reported year of 1534 proved inaccurate, then mayhap my time-traveling spell had worked as I had intended and the real Boss remained alive for me to confront.

  And yet this was the future, whatever year it might be, and I could still exact retribution upon these denizens if I so chose, even if I was fated to be denied the satisfaction of watching The Boss’s reaction to my efforts. If my spell had not miscarried by three hundred years, then it stood to reason that I might not have missed The Boss by even a full year. A man is nothing if not a product of the era into which he is born, so if The Boss had invaded my century bearing the magic bred in his, then these people stood as guilty of wielding it as he did.

  “So,” said I, confident of my conclusion, “in spite of Queen Anne’s claim to the contrary, this year must in fact be eighteen hundred seventy-nine. Why would she lie to me?”

  “Queen Anne and King Henry and the rest of the court are players, too, carrying no royal authority in this realm,” Lady Jane said, her whisper growing softer. “Queen Anne did not lie to you. She was pretending to be the real Queen Anne Boleyn, who did live in 1534, and who did have a daughter named Elizabeth who turned one year old on the seventh day of September in the year 1534.”

  “You are not the real Lady Jane Seymour.” Some of the denizens of my century are not the knuckle-dragging fools The Boss believed us to be.

  “Nay, my lady. I hight Clarice Centralia. And this year is, in truth, the year twenty seventy-nine.”

  By now the ladies had regained their wits and stances, and everyone’s attention returned to the prisoner. After the king again, upon the insistence of the faux Merlin, denied the stranger’s release, he (the stranger) started waving his hands and spouting a string of meaningless syllables like, “Walla Walla, Washington!”, “Saskatoon, Sas-kat-chewan—”, “Noo Yawk, Noo Hay-ven, and Haht-fahd leavin’ on track…”, and a lilting, “Perth Amm-boyyyy!”; presumably, his faux-eclipse-summoning spell. A man dressed in parti-colored fools’ garb complete with bells sewn to the four points of his hat and the toes of his long and pointy shoes, minced and pranced toward the crowd. Giving funny little hops and skips as he spoke, his bells tinkling and twinkling under the bright autumn sun, he began to describe the progress of the “eclipse,” prevailing upon the people to imagine that such a thing was taking place. The court reacted as if it were, with the ladies again dropping like flies in a fall frost.

  All of this to say, nobody was paying the slightest attention to me and Lady Jane—that is, Clarice Centralia—which I counted as a blessing.

  A miscarriage of my spell by two hundred years made a mote more sense, but it remained a miscarriage nonetheless, and its cause and the correction thereof remained as mystifying and therefore disconcerting to me as before.

  I felt lost. Lost of confidence, lost of purpose, lost in time. If all of that wasn’t loss enough, had I lost my powers, too? Mayhap not entirely so, as proven by my earlier dealings with the rude varlet, though the art of influencing people, men most especially, has ever been the skill that has come easiest to my bidding. A severe weakening, then?

  I needed to conduct a test, and my idea of summoning a thunderhead—given the inherent difficulties in manipulating the weather—was as good a test as any.

  I closed my eyes, blocked out the sounds and smells and the very thought of my existence in the twenty-first century, and co
ncentrated as I had never before concentrated in my life.

  After the passage of some several moments, the crowd began emitting a low murmuring that intruded upon my concentration. I also realized the sun had ceased its merciless roasting of my skin. The players continued with their given speeches as if nothing untoward was happening, but the murmuring grew louder; a hopeful sign, to be sure, but I redoubled my focus.

  ’Twas only after I felt the stiffening breeze carry the first raindrops to my face that I judged the enchantment finished and opened my eyes.

  People—players and onlookers alike—stood staring agape at the sky, still as statues even as the wind and rain began to strengthen, although I swear by my blameless mother’s bones, their stupefaction was none of my doing; at least, not directly so. I permitted my lips to curve into a slight smile.

  The faux Merlin and king were the first to recover.

  “Apply the torch!” ordered Merlin.

  “I forbid it!”

  In spite of the king’s command, Merlin stepped toward the executioner as if he might set the pyre alight himself.

  After glancing skyward, the stranger said:

  “Stay where you are. If any man moves—even the king—before I give him leave, I will blast him with thunder, I will consume him with lightnings!”

  On the day that I had witnessed the real Boss’s threatening utterances, it shames me to admit that I had stood as frightened as the rest of my peers and near-peers, all enchantments forgotten. If only I had known then what I know now…but, alas, a long life is a long string of “if onlys.” What matters is what one does after being confronted with the knowledge.

  Mentally I urged the thunderhead to flash and not be just the glow seen overhead on a dry, drowsy summer evening, so harmless even the frogs and insects pay it no heed; nay, this flash sliced the sky like a jagged dagger. The quick, loud clap made everyone jump.

  Everyone except me, of course.

  As the deluge scattered noble and peasant alike for what shelter might be found, I stood under the downpour and laughed.

  Clarice, the one person eyeing me rather than the sky, the one person who did not scuttle froglike for cover in spite of the risk to her sumptuous shrimp-colored gown, said, “Queen Morgan, by your leave, I would very much like to conduct you into the presence of someone who will appreciate your—gifts; someone who, in fact, wields the highest powers of government in this land.”

  I could not grant my consent fast enough.

  Words cannot describe the shock I felt upon leaving the faux world of the faux King Henry, his faux queen, and their faux court. Even had I attempted to write this account that selfsame day rather than now, several years removed, I could not have captured the depth of gut-churning terror that gripped me time and again, with each new device and marvel and sight I encountered.

  The first such device, which Clarice called a “limo,” appeared in function to be a fanciful carriage, though much longer and sleeker, and armored with a metal so shiny and midnight dark, the Black Knight himself would have worn it proudly. With nary a horse in sight—for this or any of the other sundry conveyances parked without the gates of Revel Grove—I wondered how such a vehicle could move; by magic, certainly; and, since I was expecting magic, I felt a little more at ease, if still a trifle apprehensive.

  A black-liveried footman, holding over my head a thin, curved shield on a rod—too little, too late for the storm I had summoned—assisted me to be seated inside the limo. With my permission, the rain-drenched Clarice fastened an array of straps about the rain-drenched me, “for safety,” she claimed as she cinched them as tightly as saddling a horse. I could scarcely breathe! That should have been my first clue. The carriages of my era require no straps for to guard their occupants.

  My second clue occurred as the limo rolled forward, gained more and yet more speed, and leaped into the air. My entrails felt as if they had been left behind, grew horrified at their mistake, and clawed their way to catch up to the rest of me.

  The first and most important guideline for being queen is to never give the appearance of leaking moisture, even when too startled to invoke a drying spell. Keeping a cool head and dry body is as crucial when negotiating a truce between warring armies as it is when your hated brother has sidestepped another of your plans to show the world how unfit he is to wear the crown. I believed I had performed admirably in hiding my confusion to the misfiring of my time-traveling enchantment, the difference in reported dates to which I had traveled, the drama within a drama enacted for my benefit, the strangeness of the peasants’ clothing, the insubstantiality of the village of Revel Grove within the district of Crownsville, and the rest of the sundry surprises to which I had been subjected.

  No one cautioned me that my adventures in disorientation and dismay were just commencing.

  Chapter VII:

  The Tower

  INSIDE THE LIMO flashed several devices that, at the time, I could only liken to moving tapestries, woven of a fabric so light and yet so strong that I wished never to meet the moth whose teeth were sharp enough to feast upon it. The pictures changed on these tapestries at dizzying speed and in endless combinations of form, color, light, and shadow; and at the bottom right corner of each tapestry blazed, in bright red, a set of three letters: SNN. In my mind I pronounced it “sin,” which proved closer to the truth than I ever could have imagined.

  I craved to understand what I was viewing—instinct warned me this was important sorcery that demanded to be mastered—and yet despite all my efforts, I could not. Again soliciting my permission, Clarice affixed another device, smaller than the size of my smallest toe, to my right ear, which enchanted me to hear words being spoken; thus immersed in the dialect of this era, I began at last to comprehend it, though I confess it took much longer for some of the words’ meanings to become clear.

  As my wits adapted to this new form of magic, I heard snippets of phrases, like “Seattle serial killer remains at large,” “escalating violence in the Middle East,” “China saber-rattling at Russia; the pope is en route to Peking to mediate,” “American Independent Party candidate Douglas Blacklance widens his popularity margin over the President,” and an entire series of images featuring baseball games.

  Now, baseball, I knew. The Boss had introduced this game to my era as one of his more benign improvements; and, while I do enjoy cheering for my favored champion during a good, bloody tournament melee, I had found baseball to be an amusing enough diversion on a fine summer’s day, watching the noble players scramble about in their armor after a tiny, white, and ever-elusive ball like so many silly fools on parade.

  A baseball game as a rule does not require as many participants as are needful to stage a grand melee. In fact, baseball games during my century were most often played after tournaments because too many knights had become maimed to have another go at each other in the next scheduled melee; thus, baseball ranked a distant second in terms of sixth-century entertainment value, but it served its purpose well enough: that purpose being to divert the masses’ minds from their pitiful yet rightful lot in life long enough to wring another solid six days of productive work out of them.

  ’Twas a sad day when baseball became another casualty of the Interdict, but I was heartened to see that it had revived and was thriving.

  However, I noted some vital differences. Firstly, the one piece of armor the players wore with consistency was a helmet, and not even that through an entire game. I later learned they also wear an armored codpiece concealed under their trousers, which has guarded many a line of succession; but the helmet was the only armor I saw that day—aside from the padded greaves and breastplate worn by the catcher and umpire, which called to my mind the padding knights wore beneath their steel, and therefore didn’t count as armor in the traditional sense.

  Less armor meant these baseball games proceeded at lightning speed, if less entertainingly compared to the games to which I was accustomed; and less armor meant more agility in pursuit of th
e ball, and therefore more opportunities to appreciate the players’ hard bodies. I could well understand why that change had been wrought.

  Secondly, if there was a king, duke, or even a mere baronet among any of the players, I would have gladly feasted upon my royal crown of state, all eight pounds of its jewel-encrusted golden magnificence, had it traveled to this century with me. I would even have eaten the modest circlet I was wearing, so certain was I of the wager. These men comported themselves no better than peasants: chewing, spitting, swearing, picking, and scratching within clear public view, with no regard to propriety or courtesy, or even so much as a by-thy-leave. And The Boss had dared to deride us as being indecent barbarians.

  Mayhap, in the brace of centuries since The Boss’s native era, the human race had slipped a notch or ten.

  Still, for all their innocent vulgarities, these men were in the main a comely lot, and I could not dispute their prowess with glove, ball, and bat.

  While sitting thus engrossed by these images and with Clarice seated nearby, her fingers working busily across a glassy plank as if she were playing a tiny hydraulis—sans pipes, water, or the resultant music—I began to feel a warm, steady breeze envelop me quite pleasantly. It recalled me that I had yet to invoke a drying spell, which I did for myself and for Clarice, too, since she had been kind to me, if somewhat less than truthful at the commencement of our acquaintance.

  “Thank you, Queen Morgan,” she said, with a deep nod of her head, the limited space inside the limo not being conducive to offering a curtsey, which I forgave of her. “Now, with your leave, I would like to leave.” I must have appeared somewhat less than serene at her announcement, for she added, “Just for a few moments, I assure you.”