Page 13 of The Dragon Ring
“Milord Merlin,” she puffed. From the mud on her cloak and the hem of her too-tight green gown, I guessed she’d run through the rain from somewhere, clutching her precious bundle to her ample chest. “I ’ave the clothing ye asked for.”
Her eyes fell on me, travelling from my lank wet hair to my skinny jeans and walking boots. They went wide with surprise.
Merlin nodded. “Cottia, welcome. You see why we need the clothes, I take it.” Then by way of explanation. “The Lady Guinevere is from Gaul.”
The Lady Guinevere? Me?
Cottia nodded, and, tutting her tongue against her teeth, approached me. “Ye were right about ’er size, it seems. These should fit ’er fine enough.”
Merlin nodded toward the door he’d appeared from. “You may take her into the solar. She’s to have Arthur’s chamber, as it’s the best. Fetch me when she’s ready.”
The chamber beyond the door was not as wide as the great hall. In place of rushes, furs covered the flagstones, and woven rugs hung on the walls. A brazier burned on a bare patch of floor, the smoke rising slowly upward to mingle with that from a couple of wall torches and filter its way through the blackened thatch out into the wet air. The room was warm, but I was still in wet clothes, so I went and stood by the brazier to toast myself a little bit more.
Cottia followed me. “You’re soaking wet, Milady,” she tutted. “Let’s get ye outta these clothes, shall we?”
Exhaustion was creeping over me. I stifled a yawn.
Cottia looked at my jacket in perplexity. I unzipped it and her eyes widened with surprise once again.
I was too tired to cope with explanations. “It’s a zip,” I said. “Get over it.”
I shrugged my jacket off and let it drop to the furs on the ground. My hoody, emblazoned with the name of my old university, followed suit, eliciting an indrawn breath of shock. I tugged off my long-sleeved t-shirt, my boots and my jeans, which peeled wetly off my cold legs, and stood before Cottia in the red lacy knickers and matching underwire bra I’d bought for my weekend away with Nathan.
Her eyes widened with amazement as she took in my underwear. It was easy to tell no one had ever had anything like that on under their Dark Age clothing.
She pointed at my bra as the most outlandish of the garments. “What isthat?” Her accusatory finger wavered.
“It’s from Gaul,” I improvised. “A very new idea. Look, it supports your breasts. Stops them from hanging down to your navel when you get old.” I could see that was where hers were, like a pair of deflated balloons resting on her rounded stomach.
She frowned. “I don’t think ye should be wearing it ’ere,” she said. “Ye’re not in Gaul now.”
Let her disapprove. I wasn’t taking it off. I did wish I had clean knickers to wear, though. The ones I was wearing brought another heavy frown. She was going to love my Brazilian.
Her eyes went to the bracelet on my left wrist, sharpening. I covered it with my hand. It was mine and I wasn’t taking it off. The action made the ring shimmer in the torchlight. She gave it a hard look but didn’t pass comment.
Tutting to herself, she produced a bowl of warm water from beside the brazier and a clean cloth for me to wash myself, which I did with some relief. It felt wonderful to use warm water even if there was no proper soap or moisturizer.
While I was performing my ablutions, she set her bundle down on the bed and spread out what she’d brought. A strong smell of lavender permeated the smoky atmosphere of the bedchamber. I dried myself with a large piece of rough cloth and turned to see what she had to offer by way of clothing.
First, she slipped a cream linen hip-length undershirt on over my head. Then I pulled on soft woolen stockings, gartered above my knees. Finally, she helped me into a long-sleeved, pale-blue gown which hung in soft folds almost to the ground, the linen of my shirt showing at the neck and wrists and open underarms. The lavender scented clothes were warm and comfortable, and I liked them. I slid my feet back into my walking boots, though, before she could find me something different to wear.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now ye look as though ye’re fit to be a bride.”
What? A bride?
My brain did a few somersaults. She was dressing me up to be a bride. Whose, I’d like to know? I was getting in deeper and deeper when all I wanted was to escape back to my own world, and the man I loved, out of this ever-worsening nightmare. One thing I did not want to do was to become anyone’s bride. Not even Nathan’s.
She touched my tangled hair that was drying in the heat from the brazier. “Let me brush yer ’air. Tis a lovely color, but my, so full o’ knots. How did ye let it get like this?” She ushered me over to the bed, pushed me down onto it, and started to tease through my hair with a bone comb. It wasn’t an easy job after the day I’d had.
After a while, I took a deep breath. “Cottia? Why is it you think I should look like a bride?”
She paused in her combing. She was being very gentle and managing not to pull my hair too much despite the mess it was in. “The prophecy,” she said. “Ye being ’ere fulfills the prophecy made years ago. Afore Uthyr were ’igh King. Even afore ’is brother were ’igh King.”
I was sidetracked. “His brother? Who was that?”
She teased out a particularly difficult bit, breathing heavily through her mouth. “Ambrosius, last o’ the Romans.”
Ambrosius. A name from my father’s textbooks, a name whose authenticity was historically more verifiable than Arthur’s. And it seemed as though he must have been Arthur’s uncle.
