The Night Dance (7 page)

“Stop right now!” Sir Ethan’s authoritative voice boomed in the kitchen hallway.

Mary froze in front of the blazing fireplace with her arms wrapped around a straw basket containing twenty-three tattered, jewel-toned, ribbon-trimmed, silk slippers. Though it was barely dawn, she’d only had the chance to pitch one slipper into the flames before Sir Ethan appeared.

“Why are these slippers going into the fire?” he demanded to know.

Mary tried her best to smile casually at him. “Oh, they’ve simply been worn out,” she said as if it were quite normal.

“Worn out?” he questioned, lifting one of the slippers from the basket and turning it in his hand. “These floors are polished marble, and the courtyard is covered in slate. How could they be wearing their slippers out so quickly on such smooth surfaces?” He ran his other hand along the scuffed, torn, dirty sole of the slipper he held, and his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

This slipper had obviously been worn outside over some kind of rocky surface. Apparently all the
slippers had been worn outdoors, judging from the sight of them. He was not a fool. “Tell me, Mary. Last night when you told me that the girls were…indisposed…and could not come to supper, are you sure they were actually in their room?”

Mary was not naturally inclined to lie, and at the moment it seemed fruitless to try. Her master was clearly on the trail of the truth. “I did not
see
them exactly,” she admitted sheepishly. “I simply
assumed
they were within and felt it likely that they might be down with womanly ills when they did not answer my call to dine.”

Sir Ethan harrumphed unhappily. “I see. And were these slippers in such disrepair yesterday?”

“I could not tell you,” Mary replied.

Sir Ethan took the basket of slippers from Mary and headed out of the kitchen, striding purposefully to the bedchamber his daughters shared. He pounded forcefully on the door. “It is your father, open up,” he bellowed. When he got no reply, he banged on the door even louder.

Still no reply came. Cracking open the unlocked door, he peered in.

Ten of his daughters were asleep on one bed, heaped on one another in a tangle of arms and legs. Eleanore was sprawled on another bed, in such a sound sleep that she snored. And Rowena slumbered on the floor, slumped against the wall below the bedroom window.

Not one of them wore a nightgown; all were still
fully clothed for daytime. “They look like a pack of drunken revelers passed out after a night of riotous merriment,” he said to Mary, who had hurried into the room and now stood beside him wringing her hands anxiously.

She stepped beside Rowena and attempted to jostle her awake, but the young woman simply murmured incoherently and repositioned herself on the floor. “Let her be,” Sir Ethan told Mary.

He left the room with Mary at his side. “Issue a new pair of slippers to each girl. Every morning the slippers are to be lined up outside this bedchamber for my inspection. In that manner I will quickly get to the bottom of whatever is going on with them.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing of great concern,” Mary said.

Sir Ethan was
not
as sure. If his daughters were going out into the world through some route he did not know, any manner of harm could come to them. He would not have it and could not even bear the thought of it.

“I’m going into town,” he told Mary abruptly. “I will return with the locksmith and have him fit the entire manor with new, stronger locks. The bolt on the girls’ door will be the first to be changed. No longer will it lock from within, but rather every night you will be charged with the duty of bolting it from the outside.”

“As you wish, sir,” Mary said as he dashed away toward the front door.

The boy who tended the geese in the yard always left his muddy dung-caked boots outside the kitchen door, so Rowena was confident they’d be there when she came to find them. With a quick check to see if she was being observed, she lifted her hem and slipped her stocking feet into them—a nearly perfect fit.

She had arisen an hour earlier, stiff limbed from sleeping on the cold floor, and looked outside just in time to see the boy pass through the front gate with her father, who had no doubt recruited the servant to attend him on some errand in Glastonbury. It would be hours before he had need of these rough boots again. But she needed them.

She had awoken to find her only footwear, her slippers, gone. Then she recalled that she’d given them to Mary for burning. No replacements had yet been delivered to the room. On the previous days she’d found it difficult to walk barefoot through the rocks and sticks, which was why she hoped to borrow these boots for today’s trip into the forest.

“Going somewhere?”

Looking up sharply, Rowena faced the woman
who had spoken. She’d never seen her before, and as she took in the sharp features, sunken cheeks, and beady, peering eyes, her first impression was overwhelmingly negative.

The woman offered her something small and glittering, holding it out in the palm of her hand. “I found this,” she said, and Rowena saw she held Eleanore’s earring. “I’ve just started here, and I don’t want to be accused of stealing. Take it.”

Rowena plucked it from her hand, inwardly recoiling at the touch of the woman’s cold palm. “Thank you,” she said as she recovered from her initial revulsion. She remembered that Eleanore had told her there was a new kitchen servant, Millicent. Rowena assumed this was she.

“Where are you headed in the goose boy’s boots?” the woman asked with a swaggering insolence and hint of menace that put Rowena further on her guard.

Rowena forced a smile. “Where is there to go?”

Millicent responded with a tight, joyless grin and nodded toward the boots.

“Millicent!” Helen shouted from inside the kitchen. “Where have you disappeared to now?”

Millicent’s eyes darted toward the kitchen door, but she made no move to go as she stubbornly awaited Rowena’s answer.

“I was simply wondering what they felt like,” Rowena told her, stepping out of them.

“Millicent!” Helen shouted again, this time in a more exasperated tone.

Millicent reluctantly moved toward the kitchen door. Rowena snapped up the boots and thrust them at her as she opened the door. “These need to be cleaned,” she said in her most imperious tone.

She did not want this woman with her bullying manner to think she was afraid of her. And she needed to prove that she did not intend to go anywhere wearing the goose boy’s boots.

With a hate-filled glower, the woman took them from her and went inside.

Rowena glanced at Eleanore’s earring and put it in the pocket of her gown. She no longer felt sure it was a wise idea to go out into the forest as she’d intended. Was Millicent watching her? She struck Rowena as the kind of angry, resentful person who might delight in causing trouble for her.

But the trees were swept by the spring breezes and rustled above the manor wall. Her sisters were asleep; her father was out. If Millicent had not delayed her she’d be in the forest now.

Glancing in the kitchen window, she saw Millicent fiercely plucking the feathers from a chicken while Helen pounded and kneaded a mound of bread dough. Mary led two servant boys into the kitchen and put a pile of cutting utensils before them for sharpening on a stone.

Rowena rolled off her stockings and padded across the slate courtyard in bare feet. She was quickly through the opening she’d made in the wall and once again wandering through the forest.

There was so much she wanted to think about. Everything that had happened in the past days was so confusing. Who was the mysterious soldier who had touched her heart so profoundly? Did he even exist? Had he died in that battle? Why had she seen him, even changed places with him?

The thought that he might be dead made her shiver, and she cast it aside. She had already fallen so deeply and inexplicably in love with him that the idea of his death was too terrible to be considered for even a moment.

And what of the bowl she’d found and the trip into the underground cavern that had followed? Was Eleanore correct—was the figure in the bowl really their mother? If so, what was she trying to convey to them?

Rowena came upon the boulder she’d rested on the first day she came out into the forest, the one on which she’d had her vision of the battlefield. If she sat on it again, would she once more see the face of her beautiful knight?

Stretching out on the boulder, she rested her cheek on its sun-drenched surface. Its heat soothed the scratches on her forest-roughened feet.

She closed her eyes letting the sunlight create sparks of color behind her lids. Soon the colors formed patterns, falling into place like a puzzle.

And then she was in another part of the forest. She was coming off a road. She felt such inner heaviness, such despair within her. She knew she was no longer in her own body;
surely she had never known this kind of hopeless sadness.

In the next moment, something ethereal inside her lifted up and was able to look down. It was her knight, no longer in armor, looking like the poorest of beggars—but she recognized him just the same.

And yet, he was so different!

Now that she saw him without his helmet, she found him to be even more handsome than she had thought. But a scruffy growth of beard now covered his chin and cheeks, and his face had grown gaunt.

In this vision he was moving through a forest much like the one she was in—coming closer at every moment.

Bedivere wanted nothing more than to rid himself of Excalibur. During the time he’d slept on the old dead beggar’s mat, he’d twice had to leap up to thwart thieves trying to lift it from his scabbard.

He could hardly blame the would-be robbers. Even
he
had considered keeping Arthur’s grand, enchanted sword for himself. Its workmanship was like none other, and the jewels on its hilt made it worth a fortune. And then there was the matter of its enchantment. He’d often seen Arthur bloodied in battle only to be miraculously healed. The lethal blow Mordred had dealt him had to have occurred because of some exceptionally strong dark magic.

For its great value, its sentimental worth, and its magic, Bedivere longed to keep Excalibur and was sorely tempted to do so.
But I am a knight of the Round Table
, he reminded himself at the times when his desire to possess the sword threatened to overwhelm him. Although he now lived in a world that might scoff at his idealism, his high standards regarding honor and duty, it still meant everything to him. The code of the Round Table defined who he was in his
own mind. It didn’t matter how low his fortunes fell or how demoralized he became—he would forever retain the values of a knight of the Round Table. And, as such, he could not keep his king’s sword if he had promised to return it to this Lady of the Lake.

After the second thief had attacked him, just before dawn, he had been unable to fall back to sleep. His stomach rumbled with hunger, even though the boy, Amren, had been true to his promise and had come back to give him the piece of potato.

He walked out of the still-sleeping town, heading down a road in search of a lake, or at least some information about the Lady of the Lake. Just as the sky was nearly light, he’d come to a monastery and knocked on the door.

The old monk who answered, Brother Louis, understandably mistook Bedivere for a beggar looking for a meal and ushered him into the monastery’s plain kitchen with its long wooden tables and huge fireplace. The breakfast of freshly laid eggs and newly baked bread went a long way toward restoring Bedivere’s strength.

“Do you know where I might find either the Lady of the Lake or her special lake?” Bedivere inquired of Brother Louis, who had sat down beside him as he swallowed the last of his bread.

“The followers of the old ways spoke of this lady,” the monk said with a serious expression. “It is said that she was close to Merlin, adviser to the king, and is herself a powerful sorceress.”

Bedivere had met Merlin, the ancient sorcerer, many times. He would have sought out his advice on this matter, but the old wizard had disappeared just months before the battle at Camlan. “Do you know where I might find the lake where this lady dwells?” Bedivere pressed the monk.

Brother Louis grew reluctant to talk about the subject. He tried to convince Bedivere that the world of enchanters, sorcerers, and spirits was best avoided. “You may stay here with us, if you wish,” he offered. “A monk’s life is simple, but it is holy.”

Bedivere was tempted to follow the monk’s advice. “I may, someday, do that very thing,” he said sincerely, “for I am heartsick and weary of the world. I’ve lost my desire for adventure, riches, fame…and even love. The idea of hiding away from the world in a peaceful life of prayer and service is immensely appealing to me.”

“Do it, then,” Brother Louis urged him.

Bedivere shook his head as he rose from the table. “I am duty-bound to perform a task, and to accomplish it, I must locate this lake.”

“There is only one lake that I have ever seen in this whole area. I stumbled upon it more than twenty years ago when I was lost deep in the forest on the other side of the road. Somehow I had wandered off the road, as if under the spell of some forest spirit, and could not find my way back. It was with great relief that I came to a rustic cottage beside a glistening lake.”

“A lake, you say?” Bedivere noted keenly.

Brother Louis nodded and continued. “When I knocked on the door, a gentleman with a military bearing prevailed upon me to perform a wedding ceremony. He was there with a woman of unearthly beauty, and I quickly sped through their vows and pronounced them husband and wife. No sooner had I finished the ceremony than a veil lifted from my mind and I knew clearly how to find my way out of the forest.”

“And where might I find this lake beside the cottage?” Bedivere asked.

“If you continue down this road, you will come to a trail leading into the forest, though it’s a hike of several hours,” he said. “I hear the road was made by Sir Ethan of Colchester, but I have not actually seen it myself as I have not left the monastery since that day I lost my way so many years ago.”

Bedivere thanked the old monk and headed on down the road. In several hours, he came to an area where it seemed that encampments had once been made and that a wide trail had been cut into the forest. Turning into it, he marveled at the dense foliage of this primeval forest. He could well believe that a magical lake existed in such a place.

He had walked for several miles when he climbed up a hill. When he got to the top, he gazed down at an unexpected sight.

He’d been searching for a rustic cottage and so hadn’t anticipated coming upon a grand, walled manor house standing by itself in the depths of this
forest. Surely this was not the place the monk had told him of. It was no mere cottage, and there was no lake to be seen.

He left the trail that led directly to the manor’s wrought-iron gate and thrashed his way through the forest underbrush, assuming that the cottage and lake the monk had told him of must be farther on.

He spotted a field mouse running alongside him and birds flitting through the trees. From somewhere, he heard a brook babbling. He was overcome with the sensation that he had been in the very same place where he now stood, although he knew it was impossible; he had never been in this part of the country before.

And then he experienced that same lifting sensation he’d had at Camlan, the sense of rising out of his body and entering another.

Once again, he was on that same rock with the soothing sun washing over him.

He rose again and was able to see where he had been. It was the young woman from the day of the battle, still breathtakingly beautiful as she lay serenely on the boulder. Again he felt a strong urge to kiss her, despite the fact that to kiss a sleeping woman would have been counter to the code of chivalry by which he lived.

He was not inexperienced when it came to romantic matters. Females of all ages had always fancied him in that way. But he had never experienced anything like the tender thrill he felt when he saw her, the strong pull to embrace and kiss her.

When he fully returned to himself, walking through the forest once more, he became lost in thought, trying to imagine who this woman might be and why the sight of her filled him with such excitement. He was trying to recall every feature of her face when he was suddenly lifted off his feet by a thumping, painful blow to his back.

Landing on his chest, he pushed up and instinctively pulled Excalibur from his scabbard. He stood with the sword drawn, balanced on the balls of his feet, and prepared to fight.

A soldier made of rocks and boulders stood in front of him. Bedivere had heard of spirits who often took the form of rocks and trees. This had to be one of those.

Facing it, he swung his sword at it. The rock soldier dodged the blow, swaying to the left. Bedivere slashed at it again, and the rock soldier moved right. It then swung its stony arms forward, lifting Bedivere off the ground and hurling him into the trunk of a tree.

Excalibur flew out of his hand and lay yards away from his crippled hand, and he couldn’t get to it. The rock soldier bent low and pounded him with a thick stone arm. He came down on Bedivere again, aiming to crush his head. Bedivere rolled away, but not before gashing his forehead on the rock soldier’s hard stony arms.

Recovering himself, Bedivere rose and lunged for Excalibur just as the rock soldier swooped down to seize it. Bedivere got there seconds ahead and
gripped the sword. He began to hack at the rock soldier, blinded though he was by blood running from the gash in his forehead.

The moment Excalibur clanged against the rock, the soldier shook as though the sword’s blade had dealt it a shot of lightning.

Bedivere jumped back and watched it crumble as it deteriorated into a pile of rubble.

He looked sharply in every direction, waiting for another magic attack. Who knew what innocent-looking object might suddenly spring to life in such a place?

His knight’s keen instincts told him something had moved from behind a nearby boulder. Another rock soldier? Even now, something was watching him. His every nerve was alert as he slowly edged nearer to the rock.

With a powerful leap, he sprang onto the flat boulder, quickly shifting Excalibur so that it was gripped between his left arm and his side, and grabbed whatever was behind the boulder with his good hand. His fingers clutched a handful of thick hair, and he lifted its owner up to face him.

When he saw his captive, he drew a stunned breath and released the lovely, young, green-eyed woman he held.