End of the Century (7 page)

She'd gone all the way through Paddington, and crossed Bayswater Road into Hyde Park. The
Frommer's
said she had to stop and check out the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, which as near as Alice could tell was the other half of the same park, but the walk was already taking longer than she'd expected, and she was eager to get to the London Eye and get on with her destiny, whatever it was. Maybe when she got through with her mission from God or whatever she could work in a bit of sightseeing, but in the meantime it was strictly business.

Alice continued through Hyde Park, past people walking dogs and couples on bicycles and little kids with balloons. She crossed the street near a big memorial of some kind, an arch with a statue of a woman with wings riding a chariot pulled by four horses. Or maybe it was a man. It definitely had wings, though, which led Alice to wonder why it was riding the chariot in the first place, if it could fly. Either way, she couldn't find it on the
Frommer's
map, so it didn't seem to be all that important.

She was passing Buckingham Palace and still hadn't seen a trash can anywhere. Not a single one since she'd left the store with her Pepsi and chips. Looking at the map, she realized she'd walked the better part of a mile and was still carrying the empty bottle.

For a normal person, this would have been a minor annoyance, at worst. And even Alice, on her better days, would likely have shrugged it off as no big deal. But she was tired, hungry, hadn't bathed in two days, and was on a mission from God, and was damned if she was going to haul an empty Pepsi bottle all over creation, just because the damned British couldn't seem to put trash cans in convenient places for people who needed them.

By the time Alice finally stopped and asked someone where the nearest trash can was, she'd worked herself into a searing white hot rage. There was a crowd around Buckingham Palace, the sort that only gathers in the States to see the president, or maybe Michael Jackson, so Alice figured one of the royal family must be at home. Or maybe Michael Jackson was visiting, instead.

Alice went up to a guy who looked like a local. For all she knew, he could have been from Texas.

“Hey, where can I find a goddamned trash can?” Alice voice hissed through her clenched teeth, and she brandished the empty Pepsi bottle like a club.

“A what, now?” The guy's accent put him somewhere closer to home than Texas, which was a step in the right direction.

“A trash can.” Alice waved the bottle in front of his nose. “You know, for trash?”

“Ah, a rubbish bin?” The guy brightened. Then he shook his head. “Not many of those around, I'm afraid.”

Alice seethed, and wondered how much damage she could do to the guy with an empty plastic bottle. Probably not much, she decided, but it might be satisfying to try. “Why. Not.”

“Good question,” the guy said, blinking. “IRA, I expect. Used to put bombs in them, you see. I suppose the authorities figured it was easier just to clear the bins out altogether instead of checking them for explosives at all hours.”

“That…that's
crazy
!” Alice was full on yelling now. “And believe me, I
know
crazy!”

The guy seemed less than amused to find himself getting yelled at by a strange American girl in the street. “Now, see here…”

“No,
you
see here!” Alice reached out and shoved the guy in the shoulder, causing him to step back to keep his balance. Alice was shorter, just a hair over five foot two, but she packed a punch. “I'm tired of carrying this damned thing around, and
you
people aren't doing anything to help. Don't you get that I've got
things
to do?”

The guy's eyes narrowed for a moment, and Alice was sure he was about to start swinging at her, never mind the fact that she was a foot shorter, about a hundred pounds lighter, and a girl. Then his eyes widened, and his mouth opened in an “o” of surprise.

“What's all this, then?” came a voice from behind her.

Here's what Alice knew about the police in England: they wore funny hats, they didn't carry guns, and they were called “bobbies.”

Here's what Alice noticed about the policeman in front of her: he wasn't
wearing a funny hat, he was as big as a brick wall, and he didn't need a gun to get his point across. Whether he would answer to the name “bobby” or not, she wasn't sure, but she wasn't about to ask.

“Nothing, officer,” Alice answered automatically, in her innocent-little-cute-girl voice. It was her reflex when dealing with cops, whatever the situation, after years of experience. “We were just talking, is all.”

“She assaulted me!” The guy, who was about to throw a punch at a hundred pound girl a few seconds before, was now all of the sudden the aggrieved party. That he actually
was
did little to improve Alice's view of him.

“This little thing?” The policeman treated Alice to a toothy smile. “American, are you?”

Alice nodded. “From Texas.”

“Texas?” The policeman got a strange look in his eyes for a moment, like he was seeing the lonesome prairie out there, somewhere in the middle distance. “Well, you run along, miss, and mind yourself.” Then, he pushed the brim of his hat up with a fingertip, and in an atrocious imitation of a Texan accent, said, “Y'all be careful now, y'hear?”

Alice smiled sweetly, and failed to point out that “y'all” was a plural, only to be used when addressing a group, not when talking to a single person. “I sure will, sir. And thank you.” Then she flounced away, holding tight to the empty Pepsi bottle and hoping to put as much distance between her and potential arrest as possible. For all she knew, her mother had put out some sort of international APB on her, and the last thing she needed was to get picked up taking a swing at a local before she had a chance to see what her destiny was all about.

Behind her, she could hear the guy talking to the policeman.

“But
she
hit
me
!”

“Shut it. One more word out of you and I'll run you in, you understand?”

Alice couldn't help but smile. She felt a little bad, having taken out her frustrations on a total stranger and then left him to deal with the mess. But she'd learned long before that batting her eyelashes, smiling sweetly, and trotting out the Disney Princess voice was enough to get her out of most problems, and if that meant that someone else was inconvenienced as a consequence, that was merely an unfortunate side effect.

Finally, overcoming the ingrained prohibition against littering that her mother had drilled into her since birth, she ditched the Pepsi bottle in the middle of the street when crossing in front of the houses of Parliament. If she'd just given herself up to littering before, she'd have saved everyone a load of trouble.

THE FAIR-HAIRED CAPTAIN
gave his name as Caius, and though he styled himself an
eques
, a member of the horsemen elite, he insisted that Galaad not stand on ceremony.

“I was on my way to my daily bath anyway,” Caius explained, as they walked out the palace doors and headed across the Gallus to the northwest. “So it really isn't any trouble.”

Caius, whose Italian accent sounded to Galaad's ears as something of an affectation, seemed perpetually to be smiling. Towering over Galaad, he was gregarious and welcoming, not at all like the Gael Lugh who had escorted Galaad through the city's streets. But for all of that, Galaad could not help but feel that there was a more sinister edge to some of the eques's words of which he should be wary. Galaad was reminded of something his late mother used to say, about not trusting the ready smile, and looking instead for the one hard won.

A short distance from the Gallus, in the lengthening shadow of the riverside wall, they came to a fired-brick building constructed along familiar lines. Even before they passed the threshold and into the warm air within, Galaad had recognized it as a
therma
public bath.

“Ohhh.” Galaad sighed, shoulders slumping. “I've not had a proper bath in too long a time.”

Caius grinned at him, and pinched his nose shut with thumb and forefinger. “I hadn't noticed,” he said, his voice nasal and piping.

Galaad looked down at the filthy state of his clothes, the crescents of dirt packed into each fingernail, his hair hanging lank and matted, and could do nothing but shrug. “It is a long way from Glevum.”

“Which is in Powys, I'm given to understand,” Caius chided. “Come along, then. Let's get to it.”

The baths were in reasonable repair, but not all of the rooms remained in use. They passed through the disused tepidarium and went straight to the caldarium.

The air within was steamy and warm, heated in the hypocaust beneath the floor and then fed through earthenware pipes in the wall, and the floor was so hot they had to wear wooden clogs to keep the soles of their feet from blistering. Galaad gratefully shucked off his breeches, boots, tunic, and undergarments and slid into the bath of hot water sunk into the floor. He breathed deeply as the dirt, sweat, and grime of his long days of travel streamed away from him into the steaming water, and closed his eyes, just luxuriating in the heat. Caius floated in the waters across from him, regarding him with amusement.

Once they'd rinsed off and wrapped clean linen towels around their waists, they moved onto the laconicum. The air was sweltering, even hotter than in the caldarium, and the sweat poured from their bodies as they lounged on benches.

“Your feet seem in a sorry state, friend,” Caius said languidly.

Galaad looked down at his own bruised, bloodied, and blistered feet, and suppressed a shiver. Released from the confinement of his marching boots for the first time in nearly a dozen days, his feet seemed to throb and pulsate with a generalized pain, punctuated here and there by the more localized agony of individual blisters and abrasions.

“What did you do,
walk
from Powys?” Caius laughed.

Galaad answered with only a blank stare.

“What?” Caius's eyes widened. “Could you not arrange the loan of a wagon, or even just a horse?”

Galaad shook his head. “I prefer to walk,” he said, struggling to keep his tone even.

Caius blew air through his lips. “Not me, friend. If I could stable my horses within the palace itself, I'd not even walk as far as the bath but ride
everywhere instead. I'd take my meals in the saddle, at that, and roam from room to room on horseback. And when they came to inter me in the ground, when my hour comes around at last, they'd need to bury my horse first, that they'd have some place to rest me.”

Galaad forced a smile on his lips, but the expression didn't reach his eyes, in which cold fires burned.

Later, after scraping the dead skin from their bodies with a strigil, they had a quick scrub and then a cool dip in the pool of the frigidarium. They dressed, Galaad having managed to get his clothing into a more respectable state by knocking the dirt loose against a pillar, and then, with Caius in the lead, returned to Artor's palace.

To Galaad's sincere relief, the subject did not turn again to horses, and he managed to go a short while without dwelling on the memories of that spring day.

A place had been made for Galaad at the palace. Formerly the room of a high-ranking slave or household servant, it had evidently stood unused for some time, if the dust lining the mantle and eaves was any indication. But it was dry and warmer than the outdoors, and for that Galaad was thankful.

When it came time for the evening meal, Galaad was made welcome in the kitchen while the High King and his captains dined in the audience hall. The meal was meaner than he might have expected in the home of the Count of Britannia, the stew more like a watery broth, but there was hard-crusted bread and watered-down wine, and the cook, maid, and scullions were pleasant company. One of the servants had skin the color of honey and a kink in her hair, suggesting something of Africa in her ancestry, and another had the olive complexion of a Scythian. Galaad was surprised to find that another had the coloration and accent of a Sais, though she insisted that she was not one of the Saeson but was from a place she called Geatland. Galaad was soothed by this, until the cook pointed out with a wry smile that the Saeson leader Bödvar Bee Hunter had himself been a Geat. After that, Galaad ate a bit more warily, keeping watch on his tablemates.

After dining, Galaad repaired to his chamber and prepared himself to sleep. By the light of an oil lamp he unpacked his bundle and arranged his effects on the mantel. He laid his leaf-bladed sword next to the simple tin cross that had once belonged to his father, and to his father's father before him. As a Pelagian, the tiny cross was merely symbolic, only a moral example instead of the atonement it represented for the followers of Augustine, but it comforted Galaad all the same.

Galaad sat down on the hard wooden sleeping pallet, his only bedding a thin woolen blanket, worked his way out of his tunic, and pulled off his boots. Then, just as he was about to douse the light and turn in, he heard footsteps on the far side of the door and the sound of someone knocking.

“Come in?” Galaad stood, the floor tiles cold beneath his bare feet. He thought perhaps one of the household servants had come on some errand. He even entertained the brief fantasy that one of the women had found him attractive enough to seek out the company of his bed. Then it occurred to him that the Geatish woman might be a hidden assassin after all, though even with his thoughts addled by lack of sleep he realized that he could hardly present much of a target for villainy.

When the High King himself stepped into the room, his purple-red cloak wrapped around him against the night's cold, Galaad wasn't sure whether to be relieved or even more worried.

“Do I disturb your slumbers?” the Count of Britannia asked, glancing around the small room.

“No, sir,” Galaad said feebly, conscious of the fact that he stood dressed only in breeches and undergarments. “That is, I was about to sleep, but…” Galaad gestured to the still-lit lamp, his voice trailing off.

“Good.” Artor nodded, satisfied. “I know the hour is late and that you have traveled far, but I would hear more about these visions of yours, if you will allow it.”

“Of…of course!” Galaad stammered. Self-consciously he picked his tunic up off the pallet and pulled it on over his head. “What is it you wish to know?” he said, his voice muffled by the fabric as he struggled to work his head through the neck.

Artor crossed the room and sat on a stool set along the far wall. He was still
dressed as he'd been earlier in the day, though had disposed of his sheathed spatha somewhere along the way. It seemed as though Artor's hands hungered for the sword, though, and they gripped his knees through the fabric of his cloak, unable to lie still at his sides. Galaad realized with a start that the High King seemed agitated in some way. Not nervous, precisely, but anxious like someone eager to begin a journey and forced to endure long delays.

“This woman you speak of?”

“The White Lady?” Galaad answered.

“Yes, the White Lady. Tell me about her. What does she say to you?”

Galaad blinked slowly, and when his eyes were closed it was as if he could see her standing before him, even now.

“She doesn't speak,” Galaad replied. “Not in words, at any rate. But she conveys her intentions to me as pure emotion, as sensation. I
feel
her thoughts, rather than hearing them as utterances.”

“What does she look like, this White Lady?” Artor regarded Galaad thoughtfully.

“I call her thus for her appearance. She wears clothing of the purest, blinding white, and her hair is the color of bleached bone. Lights seem to shine in her eyes, her teeth are straight and white, and her feet never touch the ground.”

“Is she winged?” Artor said, skeptically. “Like some cherubim? Or part animal or bird, like the myths of the pagans?”

“No, no.” Galaad shook his head. “In all particulars she has the likeness of a mortal woman, though of a flawless perfection that one could rarely find on earth.”

“Hmm.” Artor nodded, thoughtfully, then hummed again. “Hmm.”

Galaad shuffled his feet, cold on the tiles, but then stopped. His nostrils caught a subtle tang on the air, and he breathed deeply, trying to identify it. Something floral?

“Majesty,” he began, looking around the room, “do you smell…flowers?”

Even as he said the words, he realized what they portended, and in the following moment he was startled by a bright, flashing light. He squeezed his eyes shut, though it did nothing to diminish the glare, and then could hear a distant, high-pitched whine.

When he opened his eyes again, the room, and the pallet, and the High King upon the stool were all gone. In there place was the White Lady and the high hill, and upon it the tower of glass.

Galaad felt an overwhelming sense of bliss and comfort, as he always did in these visitations, such as he had rarely felt outside the throes of coitus. And though he could not name the reason for it, he always felt as though he were about to be entrusted some great secret, some special meaning. More frustrating, then, that this irrational certitude should always be followed by inevitable confusion at the vision's end, when he realized so little of what he had seen, felt, and heard made any sense.

Galaad wanted to speak, wanted to ask questions of the White Lady, wanted to pledge his devotion to whatever cause she held, to promise his undying affection if only this sense of well-being could continue into his waking life. But he could not speak. He could not ever speak, but only stood as mute witness, observer to the scenes the White Lady put before his eyes. He was there to receive and nothing more.

With a queasy sensation of movement in the pit of his stomach Galaad watched the perspective change, shifting until his attentions were on the tower of glass atop the smooth-sided mound.

Within
.

Galaad felt the thought burning in his mind.

Trapped within
.

Through what agency Galaad didn't know, the woman was placing feelings and concepts directly into his mind, without passing by route of his hearing.

Aid. Rescue. Release
.

Galaad struggled to indicate some response, to communicate his confusion, but as always his attempts were in vain.

Here. Within. Trapped. Release.

The tower of glass and the smooth-sided mound fell away, and now Galaad's vision was dominated by the White Lady, and her alone. Her eyes seemed to glow with an inner light, like the full moon on a clear night, and her mouth moved soundlessly, wordlessly.

Aid me. Rescue me. Release me
.

Galaad would have reached out to her, if he could, but wherever his limbs were, out of sight, he could not move them.