Now the voices sank to a rhythmic moan that kept time with the dip of oars from a boat shaped like a swan.
The rowers were hooded in black, but the woman in the prow, her back to the shore so that Adelia couldn’t see her face, was in white. As the boat reached the bank, one of the knights stepped forward-he had an ax in his hand…
“No.” With a grunt of effort, Adelia woke herself up before she had to see Guinevere’s body severed once more.
For a while she lay, sweltering and resentful. I’m not a dreamer; I don’t believe in dreams. What are you telling me?
She got up, still chuntering with discontent. Lord, how I hate Avalon. Too beautiful, too terrible. Once and future kings-you can keep them.
She snatched her green tunic off its hanger because it was the nearest and coolest clothing to hand, put it on, stepped into her shoes, checked to see that Allie was still asleep, and tiptoed out.
Millie lay on a bed of rags under the landing’s barred window, tossing and turning in her sleep. She’d thrown off her coverlet so that the moonlight shone on her naked back. Which was striped.
Oh, God, they whip her.
Adelia blundered down the stairs, rammed back the bolts of the door to the courtyard, and went out, gulping in air little fresher than that inside.
A white figure was sitting on the wellhead parapet, and for a moment she thought Guinevere had come to haunt her.
It was Mansur. He had the sword from the cave in his hand and was musing over it.
She went and sat beside him. “Can’t you sleep, either?” His dreams must be as awful as hers-he was the one who’d nearly been buried alive.
He shook his head.
“Mansur, that child Millie has been whipped.”
He sighed. “They are not good people here, I think.”
She sighed with him. “Do you still believe Glastonbury to be the omphalos?”
“Yes,” he said, “I fear that it is.”
Patting his hand, she said, “Go to bed, old friend. Go to Gyltha; she’s the world’s only true navel.”
He rose and bowed to her. “Are you coming up?”
“I’ll stay here awhile. It’s too hot indoors.”
Full of love for him, she watched his dignified figure stalk indoors.
She got up, sent the bucket down the well-she always liked that echoing, faraway splash-and cranked it up again. The water was chilled, and she drank some, pouring the rest down her front.
Shutters were flung back and, looking up, she saw Hilda’s face staring bad-temperedly down at her. The well chain’s rattle had woken the landlady.
Deliberately, Adelia took up the sword, holding it by its blackened pommel, and stared back.
The shutters slammed closed.
Good, Adelia thought.
There was a quick movement behind her, and she was enveloped in a familiar smell of sweat and stale clothing as somebody seized her from behind and began carrying her away.
She lashed out with the flat of the sword and felt it connect with a shin. “Will you stop doing this.”
Will dropped her in order to rub his leg. “Where’d you get that bloody thing?”
“I found it.”
“Bring it, you might be needin’ it.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” She was shaken and angry.
“Thought you wanted to know ’bout your friend.”
Adelia’s eyes went wide. “Truly? Tell me now. What’s happened to Emma?”
“Keep your bloody voice down, will you?” He pulled her across to the entrance. As they went, Adelia heard the shutters open again.
She tried to get her arm free. “I must tell my people where I’m going.”
He wouldn’t stop. “You just told ’em. Told the whole bloody county. Come on. We ain’t got time for messages.”
Out in the road the tithing were mounted on their donkeys, holding the reins of another, ready to ride, edgy. “Hurry up, can’t you?”
There were only three of them this time: Will, Toki, and Ollie, the one who rarely spoke. “Where’s Alf?” she asked.
“Waitin’ for us. Get on that bloody moke.” Still clutching the sword, she was hoisted up behind Toki; Will got onto his own donkey and led the way up the high road.
“Where are we going?”
“You listen to me now,” Will called over his shoulder, his voice rough with the importance of what he was telling her. “You want to know what happened to your friend? Well, you’re a-goin’ to, but one cheep and this time we all gets our throats cut. You hear me? Never mind Glastonbury nor Wells, it’s his forest an’ his road. He’s king of ’ em both. He ’s doing us a favor, and he don’t do many.”
“Who? Who’s doing us a favor?”
“He’s given us three hours, but he’s chancy-sweet Jesus, he’s chancy. Iffen he changes his mind, we’re bleeding meat.”
“Who?”
“Never you mind. We calls him Wolf.”
“And he’ll tell me what happened?”
“He told us. He’s a-lettin’ us show you.”
At the top of the hill, they took the Wells road.
Clinging on to Toki’s back, Adelia said quietly into his ear, “Did Wolf kill them?”
Toki murmured back, “He’s told us he’ll be raidin’ over Pennard way tonight, but you can’t trust him, he’s chancy, terrible chancy, is Wolf.”
“Are my friends still alive?”
But they had turned onto a track leading into the forest and Will had slowed to look back. “You startin’ to listen’, Toki?”
“I’m listenin’, Will.”
The donkeys were reined in to a walk so that their hooves trod the ground’s leaf mold almost without sound. An enormous yellow moon shining through branches in dapples obviated the need for a lantern, but Adelia guessed Will wouldn’t have allowed one to be lit in any case; holding on to Toki’s back, she could feel a vibration in his body.
He was afraid, all the men were afraid; they exhaled fear.
There was a clearing ahead with a charcoal burner’s hut in the middle of it-Adelia could smell ashes. She was lifted down. The donkeys were led into the hut and shut in.
“Now we walk,” Will whispered.
They walked. If the men were silent, the forest was not. It rustled with unseen life: A nightjar gave its long churring call; somewhere an animal screamed. A badger lumbered onto the path ahead and disappeared.
At one point, Toki was hoisted to the lower branches of a tree and climbed to its top. Those at the bottom stood completely still until, after several minutes, he came down.
“Sounds like there’s a to-do over to Pennard, Will. I heard screamin’. Reckon as he’s kept his word and we’m clear.”
“Fucking hope so.” Will crossed himself. He was still afraid.
Adelia was afraid with him. She knew little of these men except that they weren’t frightened easily. She didn’t know where they came from; she’d begun to think that probably they’d been dispossessed of their employment by the Glastonbury fire and were surviving however they could, nibbling at the edges of criminality while trying, for the most part, to aspire to normal, law-respecting life-hadn’t they gone to extraordinary lengths to prove Eustace, and therefore themselves, innocent of arson?
But here, in the forest, they were in the kingdom of Wolf, somebody who terrified them, someone who had broken away from society and recognized no law, a wolf’s head, a creature-Emma, oh, Emma-who pounced on travelers on the Wells road, taking their goods and lives.
The tithing knew him well enough to be granted this favor, knew him well enough, too, to be scared to death of him.
Chancy, she thought, the description of an unstable mind.
The wonder was that in order to keep the bargain they’d made with her, they had actually approached Wolf and were risking this foray into his lair. Thieves they might be, but there was honor here-more honor than in a Christian abbey.
Moonlight took color from foxgloves, bellflowers, and yellow archangel that in daylight would have patched the June forest. The branches of a dying tree threw shadows across the track that resembled stripes on a girl’s back.