Page 9 of The Quest for Excalibur
Still miraculously youthful in appearance, the only time I’d ever seen him look anything near his true age was when he’d been moping after Morgana eight years past. Since then, although not precisely happy, he’d seemed settled in his routine of teaching the boys Latin, statesmanship, reckoning, geography and history.
After Christmas, I planned to ask him to include Archfedd in the lessons. At eight, she was old enough, and could already read as well as Amhar, so why not? After all, he’d taught Arthur’s sisters, Morgana and Morgawse, alongside their brothers when they’d been children.
Din Cadan’s magnificent great hall spread so wide it needed two rows of stout wooden pillars, now decked with flaring torches, to help support the roof and divide it into three aisles. The servants had pulled forward the long trestle tables, and men and women now crowded along the bench seats, crammed in shoulder to shoulder and already carousing with one another over horn beakers of mulled cider.
Halfway along the central aisle, the hearth fire glowed in its stone-lined pit. A sweating servant labored there to slice collops of meat off the roasting carcass of the deer that had been tenderizing in one of the barns these past four days. The scent of cooked meat mingled with the tang of woodsmoke and the not so alluring smell of over a hundred unwashed bodies, but I was used to that now. The scents of the hall were the familiar smells of home.
More servants piled the tables with platters of food– meat, vegetables, pies and bread, much of it smothered in some kind of rich sauce. Beside me, Amhar’s eyes glittered with relish as one of the servants slid a large helping of meat onto his plate, then ladled leeks and sauce beside it. In their nursery, where they usually ate with Maia, the children’s fare was much less varied. Too much cabbage, according to Archfedd.
“Can I have wine?” Medraut asked, as the servant carrying it approached. He held out his goblet, a far more ornate affair than the horn cups used by most of the people in the body of the hall, expectancy written across his autocratic face.
“Watered,” I said, at exactly the same time as Merlin, and we both laughed.
Medraut’s expression descended into that of a sulky child as the servant dished out equal measures of water and wine.
“They’re growing up fast,” Merlin said to me over the boys’ heads as they smugly toasted one another in watered wine. “Before we know it, they’ll be leading men themselves.”
I forced a smile. Although Merlin had brought me here from my old world, he had very little idea of what I’d given up when I chose to remain. Did he imagine the world I’d left behind to be like this one? A conglomeration of small kingdoms where boys grew up to become warriors or farmers, blacksmiths or priests? I had no intention of correcting him. I’d long ago learned to keep what I knew of the future to myself.
“Give them time to still be children,” I said, a little more curtly than I’d intended. “Let them enjoy it.”
He raised a quizzical eyebrow and didn’t answer that remark.
I picked up my own goblet of unwatered wine and took a sip. Good stuff. Only the best for the king’s table, probably brought in from the Middle Sea via Din Tagel’s small and rocky port. Like the silk for my underwear, the olive oil we burned in our small clay lamps, and many of our other luxury goods. All thanks to men like Captain Xander– the captain of one of the merchant ships brave enough to venture through the Straits of Gibraltar into the dangerous Atlantic to trade their exotic goods for our prized tin ingots.
Our entertainment for the evening began– three traveling tumblers who’d been here a week already but not yet outstayed their welcome. Two men, and a young woman. Her, lissome as a willow wand and wearing very few clothes, which probably accounted for the popularity of their troupe.
All three of them cartwheeled up and down the central aisle as a warmup, then walked on their hands to loud applause from their tipsy audience.
“Look at her.”
“Show us yer tits, darlin’.”
“Come’n’dance over here, an’ I’ll show you a good time.”
The shouts became more ribald, and I glanced at the two boys, but they were too busy eating, the delights of this particular female form ignored. Although, was that Medraut, always the more precocioius, taking a sneaky peek?
The girl stood on one man’s shoulders, then somersaulted from him to land lightly as a piece of thistledown, balancing on her hands on the other’s shoulders. Another cheer went up, mainly because her skimpy skirts had flopped down to reveal her equally skimpy underwear.
Medraut gave Amhar a nudge and leaned closer to whisper, loud enough for me to catch his words. “Cor. Look at her. I c’n see her pants.”
Amhar’s snigger made me smile. If all they were bothered about was seeing a girl’s underwear, then that was fine with me. Just like small boys in my old world– laughing if you climbed a tree and they got a look at your knickers.
On the table closest to us, young Llacheu sat beside pretty little Ariana, Anwyll’s oldest daughter. However, despite having been enthralled by Ariana’s charms since the summer, he now had his eyes fixed hungrily on the almost double-jointed antics of the girl tumbler. Something Ariana, not a stupid girl, hadn’t missed. Her face had been growing longer and angrier as the night progressed. Trouble brewing there.
As Llacheu had matured, his likeness to his father had become less striking, but he’d nevertheless grown into a handsome young man, popular with the unwed teenage girls in the fortress, and probably some of the married ones as well.
I leaned toward Arthur. “I’m thinking it might be time to see Llacheu married,” I shouted into his ear, an act necessitated by the level of noise inside the hot hall.
He turned to face me, eyes widening. “He’s only eighteen.”
“Exactly.” I inclined my head toward my stepson. “And very popular with the girls already.”
Arthur grinned. “That’s my boy.”
How very typical of the father of a teenage boy, here in the Dark Ages, and in the twenty-first century as well. Of men in general. Until they realized their daughters were prey for the sons of other men.
I sighed. “Have you not noticed that even though he’s been seeing Ariana since the summer, for the last seven days he’s only had eyes for that ridiculously bendy tumbling girl. Making a fool of Ariana and on track for making an enemy of her father. Of course, being eighteen, he’ll probably only have one thing on his mind. For both of them.”
