Page 103 of The Road to Avalon
“Good heavens,” said a woman’s voice. In English.
I turned my head toward the arched doorway. She stood outlined against the evening sky, a small backpack hooked over one shoulder, a wooly hat on her head and walking boots on her feet. An expensive Nikon camera hung around her neck. Not sixteenth century then.
“What’s going on here?” She stepped toward us, curiosity and compassion on a lined, middle-aged face, devoid of makeup. “Are you all right?”
Did I look it?
I shook my head, groping for words and surprised when they came out in English as well. “My husband’s hurt. I need an ambulance.” My voice cracked and tears welled in my eyes. Tears of overwhelming relief. An urge to jump up and hug that woman to my chest came over me. I didn’t. She was looking wary enough as it was, and it might have sent my savior running for safety.
The woman came closer, getting out her phone, and squatted on her haunches on the other side of Arthur. “He doesn’t look too good. But where did you come from? I was in here only a moment ago, and you weren’t here then.” Almost accusatory. How dared I manifest myself without her knowing it. She drew in a breath. “However did you get here?” The phone leapt into bright life, and her stubby fingers tapped out 999.
Two more people, similarly attired, appeared in the archway. “Moira? What’s this? What’s going on?”
Moira looked up at her friends. “No idea.” She shook her head at them for silence as someone must have answered her call. “Ambulance.” She had an air about her of quiet self-assurance that filled me with confidence.
The two other people, both women, came closer as Moira stepped into the archway, turning away as she spoke to emergency services.
“Oh, my dear,” one of them said, bending down to me and putting a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Whatever’s happened to you? What can we do?”
“Glastonbury Tor,” Moira said. “The very top. Straightaway. The man’s in a bad way. Unconscious. Broken leg, I’d say, but he looks like he has other injuries as well.” She turned her head and took a harder look at Arthur. “Barely breathing.”
At Moira’s friend’s touch and kind words, my reserves of bravery disintegrated to nothing, and the tears that had been collecting coursed down my cheeks. “Tell them to hurry,” I managed. “Please.”
Moira’s friend put her arms around me and pulled me into a smothering hug against her ample bosom. “There, there. Don’t cry. Help’s coming. What’s your name, my dear?”
“G-gwen,” I managed in between the sobs now convulsing my body. I’d been brave for long enough. How wonderful to delegate all responsibility and let myself cry. I didn’t hold back but let the sobs rack my body in their wonderful abandon.
When I’d been able to cry at last for Amhar, I’d been given so short a time and it hadn’t been enough. I’d had to put it all aside for later when I’d had to fight to save Archfedd. Neither of us had been able to mourn as we’d needed to, and neither had Arthur. Then Camlann had come, and I’d had to become a brave leader. Never again would I be that.
Moira’s friend, who told me her name was Sandra, kept her arms around me, comforting me as best she could and patting my back with her gentle hands. “Are you hurt, Gwen?” she asked after a while. “How did this happen? Did someone do this to you and… your husband? I’m sorry. I’m just assuming he’s your husband.”
All I could do was shake my head and keep on crying.
The ambulance arrived very quickly. Of course, the hospital wasn’t far. Two paramedics and a couple of policemen climbed up the path to the summit with a proper, modern stretcher and examined Arthur, putting an oxygen mask over his face, wrapping him in a foil blanket, and getting a line for an IV drip into his hand.
“Who put this splint on?” One of the paramedics, a balding, kind-faced older man, asked me, as he and his colleague replaced it with an inflatable one.
“I did,” I hiccupped, my sobs having died down at last. “I knew I had to straighten out the bones to restore circulation to his foot.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. “You didthat?”
I nodded. They exchanged glances that might have been impressed. I didn’t care. All I wanted was for them to get Arthur to a hospital. Quickly.
Maneuvering the bulky stretcher down the hill proved awkward, but they did it. At last, I found myself sitting wrapped in a red blanket in the back of their ambulance with the younger of the paramedics checking the drip and listening to Arthur’s chest with his stethoscope.
He gave me a thumbs up, his face telling me not to worry, they had it all under control. Probably the face he used all the time for relatives of the injured. I didn’t trust that face.
The back doors closed, and the older man climbed into the front. “It’s going to be noisy, I’m afraid,” he called back. The siren came on. Arthur didn’t stir.
The young paramedic adjusted the oxygen mask. “Can you tell me your names and how old your husband is?”
Now he was asking. For a moment I couldn’t think what to say, before inspiration came. “King,” I said. “I’m Gwen and he’s Arthur. He’s forty-two.” That was it. We’d have to be Mr. and Mrs. King.
He grinned at me. “Very appropriate for Glastonbury.”
I managed a watery smile. Little did he know how right he was.
In the front, the radio crackled as the driver called ahead to let the hospital know we were coming. I glanced forward to see traffic moving out of our way as the driver zipped his vehicle between stationary cars. The paramedic kept working on Arthur, his eyes darting forward from time to time toward the driver.
