Page 7 of The Dragon Ring

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He pointed the tip of his spear at me threateningly. “Ye keep yer ’ands right where I can see ’em and none o’ yer strange talk.”

They were taking their remit for authenticity a bit far, but it was probably best to go along with them, just in case they were mad. Well, it looked more and more likely that either that was true, or they were so absorbed in their reenactment they’d shut themselves off from reality.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“You mind she don’t disappear on you, Geraint,” the first woman said. “Con’s right. There’s no way she could’ve got ’ere by chance. She’s not one of us. I never seen clothes like that afore. She might’ve come out o’ the ’ill itself.”

Geraint nodded. “I can see that for meself, woman. I’ll ’ave Meb, Rab ’n’ Rath wi’ me. And I ’ave ’er tied. She’ll not get away. And if she do, she’ll drown in the marshes. Abbot’ll know what to do with ’er.”

That didn’t sound very reassuring, but I had no choice. They were all armed, and I could do nothing other than go along with their plan. At least they weren’t hanging me as the old woman had wanted. Seeing the abbot sounded much the safest bet. Surely he’d be an educated authority figure.

Three unsavory men joined the escort. Geraint, holding the rope, led the way. The other three encircled me as I followed him but kept their distance as though they thought I might bite, each of them with a deadly looking spear pointed in my direction. Behind them, the small boy, Con, his sheep forgotten, brought up the rear, as though the fact that he was the one who’d found me gave him proprietorial rights.

The villagers watched me go with the same look of fearfulness I’d surprised in Geraint’s eyes. There must have been close to a hundred people ranging in age from babes in arms, to the old, would-be hangwoman with no teeth. A lot for a re-enactment. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought they’d never seen anyone like me before. There’s such a thing as over-the-top on recreating the past.

I was glad of my walking boots in the mud, but wished they hadn’t tied my hands. If I slowed at all due to the slippery footing Geraint gave the rope a vicious tug, which sent me staggering forward in danger of falling flat on my face again. And I was frightened. Frightened of the nagging doubt that this wasn’t a reenactment at all, but something much more real.

The clearing mist revealed trees clustering close by the village, the path we took snaking between them. Beyond, small brown sheep dotted the steep rise of the hillside.

I had a rather nasty feeling about this. The hill emerging from the mist was definitely the Tor. I knew its shape well and couldn’t have been mistaken. Judging from the view, I should be walking right through the town of Glastonbury at this very moment. Which I wasn’t.

What I was doing was emerging from a scrubby wood into a wide clearing with the Tor outlined to our right and a group of low, thatched buildings in front of us. Small fields surrounded the buildings, fallow and muddy now in early winter, bristly coated pigs rooting about amongst the stubble. A cobbled path wound between the fields, leading us up to an open gateway and into the courtyard beyond.

The cobbles here had been swept clean. Opposite the gateway stood a wattle and daub church, a small tower squatting on its thatched roof. A single small bell hung in the tower, silent now, but surely the bell I’d heard tolling earlier. Down the other three sides lay a range of low buildings. This must be the Abbey, but an abbey unlike any I’d ever seen before.

I hesitated, and one of the men extended the blunt end of his spear and gave me a prod with it as though afraid I might explode if prodded too hard. I stumbled forward, staring around myself in amazement. If this was a historical recreation I’d been plunged into, it was frighteningly well done, and I didn’t like it. If indeed it was just a recreation. Part of me, a part I was trying to ignore, was suggesting that maybe this wasn’t fake, that maybe it was real. Maybe thiswasGlastonbury, and thatwasthe Tor and thiswasthe Abbey, not as it was now but as it used to be. Maybe when I touched that ring it had transported me back in time. It was the only explanation that made sense.

Ridiculous.

The rest of me, the sensible part, was adamant that wasn’t possible. It was silly even to contemplate. There had to be a logical explanation. Time travel was impossible. I knew it because, as a teenager, Artie had gone through a physics phase when he’d told me a lot about time travel and why it was impossible, in between other boring stuff. So I knew I couldn’t be in an ancient version of Glastonbury Abbey and these people, smelly and dirty as they were, couldn’t be people from the past.

Could they?

The door of the church swung open. A string of monks filed out, dull brown robes skimming their ankles. The man at their head strode up to us, coming to a halt in front of Geraint, who stepped to one side so I was visible. He was a tall, thin man with a long ascetic face and eyes so heavy-lidded eyes they made him look sleepy, although the bright intelligence in them gave the lie to that. Thick dark hair peppered with grey grew in a bush around his tonsure, matched by heavy eyebrows.

“Geraint,” he barked. “What do we have here?” His gimlet gaze ran from my head to my feet, and then returned to my face.

“Father Abbot.” Geraint genuflected. “The boy ’ere found this woman on the Tor.” He gestured at Con, who stepped forward with a look of pride on his face. “Don’t know how she could’ve found ’er way through the marshes without a guide, though she’s well covered in mud and must’ve fallen in a good once or twice. Talks all weird too. Asked to see someone who could ’elp her– dunno what with. We all thought as ’ow she might be a Yeller ’air spy. Old Mother Nia wanted to ’ang ’er there and then, but I thought ye’d want to see ’er first. Question ’er, like.”

The Abbot, who had been looking at me the whole time Geraint spoke, raised his bushy eyebrows in curiosity. “What is your name, child?” he asked in a gentle voice.

“Gwen.” I wanted to say a lot more, but common sense stopped me. I wanted to find out what was going on here before I said too much and made him, too, think I might be a fairy. A case of once bitten, twice shy.

“Hmmm.” He gestured to my surrounding guards. “I think you may lower your weapons now. She is but a woman, and unarmed and bound at that. Here, within the confines of the abbey, we frown upon weapons. If she were indeed a Yellow Hair spy, do you think she would waste her time here, with our poor community? What do we have that is worth spying upon? Ask yourselves that.”

Begrudgingly, Geraint jerked his head, and his men lowered their spears and stood leaning on them, their suspicious eyes still fixed on me.

“She’ve got a royal bracelet on ’er wrist,” Geraint said, jerking the rope and pulling me forwards. “Roll back yer sleeve and show Father Abbot what ye’ve stole.”

“I can’t,” I retorted. “You’ve got my hands tied.”

Geraint gave a sigh and jerked back the sleeve on my right arm, displaying the gold bracelet. “Sez she’s ’ad it from a child.”

“Well, thass a lie,” one of Geraint’s men said. “Tis plain. So everything else she’ve said be a lie, too. Can’t trust ’er further than she can be thrown. And that wouldn’t be far, from the size of ’er.”

Ignoring the insult about my size, which, although taller than the women I’d met so far, wasn’t out of the ordinary, I took a deep breath. “Could I ask your name, Father Abbot?” My voice quavered.

A faint smile touched his thin lips. “You may,” he said. “My name is Jerome, and I am head of the abbey here at Ynys Witrin and master of these people.” His gesture encompassed both the gaggle of monks, who had approached more closely, and Geraint and his comrades.