Page 88 of The Dragon Ring
The wind soughed in the branches of the apple trees, making them chatter together in a curious clicking language.
I swallowed. “I didn’t think you’d bring me here if I told you.”
“Why would I not have?”
I wrestled with my conscience. I didn’t want to tell him too much, yet I wanted to be honest. I owed it to him, didn’t I? But how much could he cope with? Not the whole truth, that was for sure, because it had taken me all this time even to come to the stage of acceptance I’d now reached.
“Because I came from here.” I watched his face. “And Merlin’s afraid I might go back.”
He didn’t understand. I could see it in his eyes.
“Well, you’re back, so what does it matter?”
“Everything.” I kicked at the dead apple leaves littering the grass.
“Tell me.”
I swallowed again. “I– I come from somewhere else– somewhere a long way away. Merlin brought me here to fulfill the prophecy. He’d been watching me since I was a child, waiting for the right time to bring me here, to Ynys Witrin.”
He shook his head as though to clear it. “He brought you here? How? With what?”
I held up my right hand, on which the dragon ring shone deep and warm even in the wintry light. “With this.”
He reached out and took my hand, staring at the ring as though for the first time. “With the dragon ring?”
I nodded. A great lump welled up in my throat. I didn’t want to lose control and dissolve into tears, so I dug the nails of my other hand into my palm.
Understanding dawned on his face. “And you want to use it to take you back.” There was bitterness in his voice.
“I don’t know,” I said, the tears spilling unhindered down my cheeks. “For a long time I thought I did, but now I’m here, I just don’t know. It’s so different where I come from. When I first arrived here, everything was strange and frightening. I wanted to go home, to the place where I grew up, to my– my betrothed.”
“You’re speaking of how you felt then, not how you feel now.” His face was guarded, his voice uncertain. Above our heads a bevy of crows rose screeching out of the nearby naked chestnut trees.
“Well, then I met you.”
“Am I not enough to make you stay?” His voice was deep with emotion.
We looked at each other for a long time in silence, his words writ large between us in the cold air.
Was he giving me the chance to grab what I wanted? But what was that? I looked hard at him from top to toe, willing myselfnotto want him. At his expressive eyes that could hold mirth or anger or justice– or love. At his mouth that knew the intimacies of my body as no other did except for Nathan. At his long slim horseman’s frame and all the muscles that knotted it together in whipcord strength. At his thick dark hair, and his solemn brows, his determined mouth, the little pulse beating at his throat. Was I committing him to my memory? Was today the last day I’d ever see him?
I struggled to think of Nathan. His face wouldn’t come. I tried to think of our life together, but everything about my old life seemed suddenly trivial. What was it I’d loved? I didn’t know.
Maybe that was it. Maybe its very triviality was important. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to play the bigger role. Maybe I was just plain Gwen Fry, destined to be a librarian, housewife and mother, to one day retire and have grandchildren who would never know what I’d once been– Guinevere, Queen of Dumnonia. A woman who would be spoken of down the ages, a legend, a name known throughout the English-speaking world, forever linked with King Arthur.
Was he enough to keep me here?
“I just don’t know,” I said.
For another long minute, he stood motionless, and then he put up a hand and wiped my tears away. “Don’t cry. If it means that much to you, I’ll take you where you want to go.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
In unspoken agreement,we skirted the abbey and Geraint’s village, and made our way up the steep slope of the Tor, following a narrow path that wound its way around the hill like a twisting mountain road. The bitter wind whipped at us, and we held our cloaks close.
I wanted that climb to last forever, but all too soon we reached the summit, and I saw once again the small circle of gaunt grey stones where, in my time, the ruined tower of St Michael stood. I halted beside Arthur.
“Well, here we are,” he said, with a lightness that rang false.
