Page 10 of The Dragon Ring
Luckily for me, there was, at least, a mounting block.
I climbed onto the block and took hold of the front far-side horn, then swung my right leg over the pony’s back and settled into the surprisingly comfortable saddle. Brother Mark passed my pony’s reins to one of the lay brothers, and Brother Caius handed over the coiled rope that was attached to my wrists.
Abbot Jerome stepped up to my pony’s shoulder. “My people will escort you to Din Cadan and deliver you safely. Speak the truth, and if you are not guilty, then you will not be punished. Hide nothing from our prince.” He nodded to the man holding my pony’s reins. “Watch her well, Corwyn, and take care on your passage through the marshes. She must arrive safely at Din Cadan.”
I had no time to wonder about who I was being sent to because the lay brothers were in a hurry. Corwyn kicked his pony into a trot and behind him my pony and his three fellows followed.
We rode under the wooden archway and out of the courtyard. While we’d been waiting, the morning mist had vanished. Swiveling in my saddle, I saw the Tor high above the squat abbey buildings, still bare of the tower I was so used to. Turning my back on it, I looked instead at the track ahead, winding southwards between the earthen banks and scrubby hawthorn hedges that divided the land into the patchwork of fields I’d seen earlier.
I soon discovered that Dark Age Glastonbury was indeed the island modern day scholars thought it had been– an island in a sea of marshland and open waterways. The path branched, and Corwyn led us off to the left where the ground fell away, and dark water glimmered through gaps in the grim undergrowth. The narrow pathway snaked between stunted willows and stagnant pools, skirting dark reaches of water and thick reedbeds. Corwyn followed the path as though it was as familiar as the route a child takes every day to school. The cold air was redolent with the smell of the damp land and still water. I was soon chilled to the bone despite my thick jacket.
Corwyn spoke only once. “Stay on the path. Don’t think o’ throwin’ yerself off and runnin’, because if ye stray even a step off the path ye’ll be swallowed up and never seen again.” He leered at me. “And these marshes be ’aunted. The Old Ones used to sacrifice men ’ere and throw their bodies into the water. On a full moon it’s said ye can see their ghostly faces looking back up at ye outta the pools.”
I shivered at the thought. I wasn’t a believer in ghosts, but then, I hadn’t been a believer in time travel either.
After that, we rode in silence, which gave me time to think. Jerome had claimed I was speaking his own language. On the whole, it might be best to assume he was telling the truth, which would mean this reallywasthe Dark Ages and hewasa real Abbot called Jerome. But how I could have both travelled back in time, unlikely as that sounded, and on top of that acquired the power to speak their languages, even more unlikely, I had no clue.
But if it was true, and I was fifteen hundred years back in the past, I had no idea how to get back to my own time, to Nathan and my comfortable modern life. I would just have to make the best of it and see if I could find out how I’d got here, as that might help me to get back. That it had something to do with the ring on my right hand seemed a real possibility. However, as it didn’t seem to function like either Aladdin’s lamp or Dorothy’s shoes, I had no idea how to make it work to take me home.
Yet.
My brain followed as convoluted a path as the one we were taking through the marshes. I would never have been able to find the way again, as even though we left deep muddy hoofprints behind us, the marsh swallowed these up nearly as quickly as we made them. My body rocking gently with the pace of my pony, inside my head I followed dead end path after dead end path, turning over what I knew so many times my brain felt as though it was spinning.
Overhead, the clouds thickened again and a thin drizzle fell. With difficulty, thanks to my bonds, I managed to pull my hood up then hunched my shoulders against the cold. My hands were frozen, and my feet like blocks of ice despite my fur-lined walking boots. Exhaustion crept over me. I didn’t like the Dark Ages one bit.
At last, the land began to rise, and the marshes fell behind us. Forest closed in about our path on both sides, thick and dark and uninviting. Corwyn didn’t need to warn me again– there was no way I would have run away into that. Who knew what sorts of wild animals prowled its inner recesses.
After what felt like hours, the forest thinned. In rain that was now heavy, we emerged onto a track that led between small fields. Shaggy cattle and tatty sheep grazed there, and pigs ploughed the ground with their snouts, all of them oblivious to the weather. Houses crouched inside defensive banks and ditches, many with wooden palisade walls on top of the banks. Smoke drifted up from the darkly thatched rooftops, but no one was about.
Then I saw it. Ahead of us, rising out of the plain, steep sided and shorn of the trees that covered its slopes in my time, South Cadbury Castle. Great earthen banks rose one after another to a flat-topped summit where a huge wooden wall topped its inner ring of defenses. I would have recognized it anywhere.
The thought that this was truly Dark Age Britain filled my head. A time when a local king had refortified this ancient Iron Age fortress. A king who was probably the basis for the legends of King Arthur. Was this his Camelot I was heading toward? Was the man I was about to be brought before the original King Arthur himself?
Chapter Four
The muddy pathwe followed around the hill foot became a cobbled road, wide enough for a horse drawn cart, leading between clustered farms. But the structure looming above us drew all my attention. The steep hill rose far more spectacular and impressive than in my time. The fortress looked impregnable, with its massive earthen banks topped by high defensive walls. Once I went in there, I wouldn’t be coming out again unless whoever held it wanted me to. A sobering thought. I shivered, acutely aware that just because our modern stories of King Arthur cast him as a chivalrous hero, it didn’t mean he was one.
The road snaked up the steep hillside, through the concentric earthen banks, toward a towering wooden gateway. Timber walls to either side stood on a sturdy stonework base, and a lookout platform that spanned their full width topped the gates. Above the wooden battlements, warriors in chainmail shirts and rounded helmets peered over as our little column made its way up the road. As we drew nearer, the gates swung open, and we rode beneath the gatehouse and into the fortress.
My head whirled at what lay within the walls. I couldn’t get over the idea that this was some surreal dream or that I was part of some realistic reenactment, even though I’d pretty much decided to go with the flow and believe I was in the past. Easier said than done, even in the face of all this evidence. I kept hoping I’d wake up soon in bed with Nathan.
I was treading land I’d walked across many times as a child. Only now, instead of long grass blowing in the wind, before me I saw scores of huts and pens, muddy pathways, cattle, stacks of firewood, store houses, steaming middens, and bedraggled chickens scratching in the dirt. Armored sentries manned the walkway that ran along the inside of the wall, and smoke curled from a hundred roof tops. The damp air hung heavy with the smell of woodsmoke and the middens’ stench. In the center, on the highest ground, the great whale-like hump of the Great Hall dwarfed all the other buildings.
I didn’t have long to digest the sight. Evening was drawing in, and the rain still sleeted down. Icy water dripped off the front of my hood and ran down my cheeks as my pony followed Corwyn’s toward the Great Hall. Despite my trepidation, by now I was feeling pleased to see it. I wanted nothing more than to get off this pony and inside somewhere warm.
In the courtyard in front of the Great Hall, Corwyn and his men dismounted, and I slithered down in an awkward frozen heap onto the cobbles. Not that anyone was looking. They were probably all as cold as I was.
Corwyn yanked me to my feet with the rope and handed our ponies’ reins to one of his men. He jerked the rope again as though I might run away if he didn’t hang onto me. Hadn’t he noticed the awful weather and all the armed men?
“This way.” He pushed me toward the Hall doors, where two disgruntled looking guards stood beneath the shelter of the overhanging thatch. They’d been leaning against their spears, but as we approached, they straightened and banged their spear butts on the ground in acknowledgement.
“I’ve a present from the Abbot of Ynys Witrin.” Corwyn indicated me with a nod. “So ye’d best let us inside.”
I didn’t much fancy the idea of being described as a present but was too cold and fed up to argue. As the guards stood aside, I let myself be pushed through the doors and into the Great Hall.
I’d seen drawings of great halls showing how historians imagined them. On paper, they didn’t look or sound that big when compared to modern buildings, but in reality, this one felt huge. It must have been at least twenty-five yards long and half as wide. Although from the outside, the walls had looked low because the thatch came down so far, inside, the roof arched out of sight into a smoke-filled raftered gloom above my head.
Stout posts down each side supported the roof, each with an iron bracket bearing a burning torch that lit up the gloomy hall with a flickering glow. A layer of rushes covered the paved floor, and shields adorned the walls, empty trestle tables and benches standing to one side.
