The Midsummer Wife (The Heirs to Camelot Book 1) Read online

  Reading the dispatch, Ava could feel Chessie’s excitement jump off the page, even fifteen years later.

  Harper continued, “The dream of sixty generations, and I got to live to see the king restored! I was permitted to sit in and listen as Ron, Gus, and Father discussed the steps that would need to be taken once they saw the signal.” He looked out the window. “I remember thinking, ‘Thank Goddess I don’t have to be the Merlin, and this task falls to Father. He’s so wise and always knows just what to do.’”

  “But now you know you are the heir foretold,” she said.

  “Yes, however misguided a choice that may be.” He turned back to her. “I am sure Ron is the right one to be Arthur.”

  “This I also feel. Ron is surely the one foretold. But I think you’re wrong about yourself. I know it, here,” Ava tapped her heart, “that you’re the right person to represent Merlin. You have qualities that go beyond ‘understanding.’ There’s a presence about you I don’t think you’re aware of.”

  Harper seemed bemused. “No one’s ever said anything like that to me before.”

  “It is so.” Was he so unaware of his power? How would he react when Ava told him he was Merlin? “However, I know what you mean about not feeling up to the task. When my grandmother died, and the Goddess revealed that I was chosen to accomplish the mission, I thought, ‘It should have been Katerina! She had such power and knowledge!’ But it is now, and it is us, with all of our limitations. We must try to live up to the task as best we can.”

  They shared a moment of silence, appreciating each other’s predicament. Yes, if I work at it, I think we can bond in friendship.

  She hoped.

  Something attracted his attention outside. “There’s the car.”

  “Before Ron comes in, I want you to know something, Harper. I will be your friend and ally until the end of time. This, I promise you.”

  He blinked rapidly, clearly touched. “Good,” he said. “That’s settled, then. Now we can stop circling ’round each other.”

  Ava reached out and took his hand. There was that static-electricity spark she’d encountered at their first meeting. “You and I must agree to work together. We have a big job to do after we accomplish the healing of Britain. Ron only has to run the country and knit together the British soul.”

  Harper chuckled and took his hand back.

  Ron walked in. “Hello, all,” he said. His eyes locked on to Ava’s, and she quite lost her breath. He sat next to her and gave her a quick kiss that made her want more. Much more. “You look lovely today,” he added

  “Thank you.” Her heart and mind were a-flutter.

  “Things all settled with the police?” Harper asked.

  Ron sighed. “Apparently there’s not a lot for our constable to do besides drink my tea, chew through an entire tin of now-irreplaceable Forrey & Galland biscuits, and ask the same six questions over and over for hours,” he grumbled. “He’s under the impression I somehow knew the woman who died, and that I crashed my beautiful antique car for fun.”

  “What do you think his problem was?” Ava asked.

  Ron’s mouth set in an irritated line. “Let me put it this way, he asked me if I had been adopted.”

  Ava gasped. “He said that?”

  “I know Constable Wicket,” Harper said. “I wouldn’t have thought it of him. But as you’ve so often reminded me, I don’t always see racism because people assume I’m white.”

  “Racism is everywhere. Being a lord doesn’t stop people from being idiotic,” Ron said.

  “I’m stunned he would have the temerity to say that to your face,” Ava said.

  Harper grumbled, “If he bothers you again, just put him on to me. I’ll set him straight.”

  Ron said, “I should have called you right away, Harper. You have a special way of shaping your retorts so that people think it’s a compliment until they walk away and start thinking about it.”

  Ava laughed, but marveled at how protective Harper was of Ron.

  Ron looked at the tea tray. “You two having a nice get-together?”

  Ava realized he was slightly jealous. She wouldn’t have thought him the type. “Just a bit of tea.”

  Harper cleared his throat. “Well, before we go down to the Grotto, we should start to consider what our next steps are.”

  Ron tore his eyes away from Ava. “Yes, quite. What were your thoughts?”

  “As you know, but Ava doesn’t, Father thought an appeal to the royal household would be the best approach. He spent years developing a cordial relationship with Robert McTavish, the King’s Equerry,” Harper said.

  “But now that most of the royal line, the Equerry, and Buckingham Palace have been blown to ashes, that puts a kink in the plan,” finished Ron.

  “Indeed,” Harper said. “Ava, do you have any family with ties to the temporary government—the Prime Minister Pro-Tem—what’s-his-name?”

  “Bertram St. John-Smythe,” Ron supplied.

  “Right,” Harper says. “Or this fellow who styles himself King Edward IX?”

  “Not that I’m aware. But that’s a good thought. I’ll check.” Ava tapped out a message on her phone, although it was unnecessary. The Sisters monitoring her mental journal would pick up the request. “We’ll see if anyone has any ideas.”

  “Not sure there’s any point in talking to those idiots,” Ron said.

  “I was in a rush preparing to come here and so don’t know much about the temporary government. I know they set up in Cardiff,” Ava said.

  Ron said, “St. John-Smythe was undersecretary for finance, retirement benefits division, before The Day. He’s way out of his pay grade.”

  “King Edward is the former Earl of Gloucester,” Harper said. “He was sixteenth in line to the throne and happily ensconced in managing a bird sanctuary before London was destroyed.”

  “And they’ve not been helpful during the crisis?”

  “Well, someone’s been on the spot, but I doubt it has anything to do with those two,” Harper said. “One of their first acts was the clever idea of going back to old tech. They put an old-fashioned radio tower on top of Cardiff Castle. Then they quickly put together cheap little crystal radios, which they dispensed with emergency rations. They’ve been able to provide information, advisories, and updates on the situation to people who don’t have old fashioned AM radios.”

  Ron said, “For reasons only the temporary government knows, they fill the intervening time between bulletins with music from phonographic records of the 1930s to the 1990s in a mix that can charitably be called ‘eclectic.’”

  “Oh, I thought I heard a strange combination in the Rolls the other day—symphonic music followed by the Beatles, I think.”

  “Yes. But it gets quite madder,” Ron said. “Elgar’s ‘Enigma Variations,’ then right after, the Sex Pistols’ ‘God Save the Queen’!”

  “What?”

  Harper chimed in: “Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” played right before Andrew Lloyd Weber’s ‘Music of the Night’ from Phantom of the Opera!”

  “Dame Joan Sutherland’s rendition of ‘Il Dolce Suono,’ and then Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’!” Ron interjected.

  “Handel’s ‘Messiah,’ followed by Fred Heatherington’s ‘I’ve got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’!” Harper said.

  They gave in to a collective case of the giggles. When things started to calm down, Harper began humming the “Coconuts” ditty and they dissolved into laughter again.

  “Too funny!” Ava exclaimed.

  “It is,” Ron said. “And completely British, which makes it bizarrely comforting—the music, not the Prime Minister.”

  “The new king tends to laugh at the oddest moments. St. John-Smythe just reads anything anyone hands him.” Harper said.

  Ron started to chuckle. “Once, he actually said, ‘Drink some water or something’! It must have been a private note, and he never noticed.”

  Before Harper could start back on what their
plan was, Ava excused herself to use the W.C.

  When she came back, she heard Ron say to someone, “How’s the arm, Falke-boy?”

  A young male replied, “I was supposed to have the final cast off next week. But the doctor’s so swamped with refugees, it might be a while till I can get in.”

  When Ava walked in, the boy gasped. Like a crashing wave, Ava received his intense, complex emotions all at once and couldn’t immediately figure them all out.

  Harper said, “Falke, this is Ava Cerdwen. You could say she’s a distant relative of ours. Ava, my son, Falke.”

  Ava had read about Harper’s fourteen-year-old son. Falke was almost as tall as Harper. He was apparently going through a growth-spurt, as his pants ended unfashionably just above his ankles. He brushed the sandy hair out of his gray-blue eyes and smiled at Ava in a very un-Harper-like way. She presumed he favored his late mother. There was an ultrasonic cast on Falke’s right wrist. “Um, hi,” he said shyly.

  “Hello.” Ava said. “How did you hurt your arm?”

  “Luckiest break in the world,” Harper said.

  “How so?” she asked.

  “I’d just started down the drive on my way to House of Lords for the last session before the Whitsun break, when the school rang and told me Falke’d been injured during that morning’s football match, could I come right away and take the boy to hospital? The Director of the Harp Trust had already gone ahead to set up some meetings. Instead of being incinerated in the nuclear holocaust, I survived.”

  “And had your director not been lost on The Day, you’d never have posted the job to which Ava responded,” Ron said.

  While there were no coincidences with the Goddess, some of the things She arranged were a little eerie. “I’m sure we would have found another way to be introduced.”

  Falke stepped forward and took, rather than shook Ava’s hand. “I’ve dreamt about you,” he said wonderingly.

  “Really?” Ava scanned him briefly. His feelings were a complex mix of shock, excitement, and…love. What’s going on here?

  “When did you have these dreams, Falke?” asked Harper.

  “Off and on, the last year—maybe two,” he said, never taking his eyes off Ava.

  “We discussed sharing intense dreams, didn’t we?” Harper asked.

  Falke dropped Ava’s hand. A red flush came up his throat and into his fair cheeks. “You said ‘Goddess dreams.’ This wasn’t about the Goddess. I didn’t think…”

  “Hm,” Harper said. “Ava, have you ever dreamt of Falke?”

  Falke looked surprised. The blush died down.

  Ava stepped closer and studied Falke. “No, I don’t…” Wait. “It’s possible.” Not all her dreams were nightmares. And maybe she had dreamt about him. It was not his face so much as a feeling she was getting from the boy. In the past few years, she’d had dreams about a male. At first, it was about holding a baby in her arms; he had a shock of red-brown hair. In other dreams, she was raising the boy: showing him how to milk a goat, behave with people, weave a spell. Just last week, she dreamt about a red-haired young man—her grown son. She respected the man he’d become. Could Falke be Falcon, Anya’s son by Merlin? “No, I don’t think so,” Ava said quickly. Harper would be aware that she was not telling the truth, but she couldn’t do anything about it right then.

  Harper paused a moment, considering her lie. Finally, he said, “Falke, we’ve discovered Ava is part of the family we didn’t know about. She’s descended from Anya’s daughter, Arianrhod. Their family has always been here to watch over us. Mrs. Paterov is part of that family.”

  “Mrs. Paterov?” Falke let his rucksack slump to the floor. “You’ve been, like, spying on us?”

  One thing was sure, Falke could be every bit as annoying as his father. “Not spying, no. We’re to observe, watch who became the heirs, and be aware when the time came.”

  “We were all a bit surprised to find out we have more family than we thought,” Ron interjected. “But she’s been very helpful.”

  Falke looked curious, then somewhat grumpy. Ava felt from him the usual whipsaw of adolescent emotions, but also an awareness of her connection with Ron. Sharlyn, her cousin at Eight Lights where Falke was being psy-trained, reported that the boy would be even stronger with the power than his father when he came into his own. His aura told Ava he had the potential to be a great adept; it was a strong violet with blue swirls, indicating creativity and musical talent as well as strong spirituality. “Secrets again? I assume the usual ban about mysterious behavior applies, and I can’t ask what’s going on,” Falke grumbled.

  Harper said, “You know, I recall my brother Sam asking me once, ‘Don’t you ever get bored with secrets for breakfast, mysteries for tea, black arts for pudding?’”

  Ron and Ava laughed. Falke didn’t.

  “In truth, no. I’ve always loved this family and the mystery that surrounds us.” Harper took his son by the shoulder. “What are your plans tomorrow?”

  Falke shrugged. “I was going to help out in the infirmary.”

  “Do you mean to include him?” Ron asked.

  “I think he should be with us. The time is at hand. He’s of the family. I feel strongly he should be present for what’s to unfold.”

  The words struck a chord of Truth in Ava’s soul. What role does he have?

  Falke looked startled. “You mean I can be part of…whatever it is?”

  Harper said, “This is The Time Foretold, son. It’s your heritage, as well. I don’t know what role you’ll play yet, but I think you may as well come with us.”

  “Where?” he asked, all eagerness.

  “To the Grotto,” Harper replied.

  “Yes!” His fist shot into the air. “I thought I wouldn’t get to see it until I was eighteen!”

  “I don’t believe anything will be left in the Grotto soon,” Ava said.

  Harper’s broad forehead wrinkled in consternation.

  “When are we going?” Falke asked.

  “We were just about to head downstairs,” Ron replied.

  “Let’s go!” Falke headed toward one part of the bookcases.

  “He knows the way?” Ava asked.

  “Oh, I don’t expect any in the Merlin and Arthur lines haven’t tried to get in before their initiation,” Harper said with a chuckle.

  “I know I must have snuck down the stairs dozens of times,” Ron said. “How about you, Falke-boy?”

  Falke turned to look guiltily at his father. His blush was back. “Um, a lot of times. I mean, a lot.”

  Harper explained, “I’ve caught him several times. I’ve never gotten mad. I did the same in my time. My father was never irritated with me. It’s part of the ritual the Drunemetons and Steadbyes have all been through. We’re always told there isn’t a way to break in until it’s time.”

  “I thought I’d never get in!” Falke said.

  I know exactly how he feels. I’m getting in the Sacred Grotto!

  Chapter Twelve

  Falke picked out a battered, leather-bound copy of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities off the shelf, and a hidden bowed door full of books swung open.

  “Oh! That’s an elegant piece of engineering and design,” Ava said. Both Harper and Ron smiled at her reaction.

  They followed Falke down the well-worn, creaky wooden stairs. The walls went from red brick to daub and wattle as they entered the sixth century section of the house.

  Ava ran her hand along the old plaster, and the touch seemed to trigger something. Her vision doubled, and she saw both the present and some time in Mother Anya’s life. In the sixth century, she was walking down this same staircase with Falcon and Stephen, talking about keeping cattle out of the Sacred Grove.

  Falke turned right at the end of the corridor, and they ended up at a blank wall. “What’s the trick, Dad?” he said.

  Harper pushed past him, pausing to whisper in his ear, “Magic!” Then he said some ancient words. They weren’t familiar to Ava, and she reali
zed they didn’t know the same spells. A keyhole appeared. Harper took out a key from a silver necklace she hadn’t noticed that he wore under his shirt and applied it. The door swung open to another set of stairs. Falke thundered down them with adolescent enthusiasm. The adults followed at a slower pace—although Ava was so excited, she wanted to race down with him.

  “Wait! I’ve been in this part of the cellar!” Falke said.

  “Yes, the cellar isn’t a secret,” Harper said. The underground room resembled Steadbye Place’s cellar, including the leaky walls. “What we want is over here.” Harper led them to a spot over in the eastern corner. He said a few more words in the ancient tongue, and the outline of a trap door appeared on the floor, another keyhole at the edge.

  “Are you kidding me?” Falke complained. “I must’ve walked over that a hundred times!”

  Ava laughed at his indignation. Ron chuckled fondly, and she could feel how much he cared for the young man.

  Harper opened the trap door, exposing a long ladder down. A light appeared in the tunnel below. “Ava, will you go first?”

  Ava practically leapt at the chance. She had wanted to get into the Grotto since the first time she read about it. “Do you know that Mother Anya went down this ladder when she was about to give birth to Stephen?” As Ava went down the rungs, she realized: Mother Anya is was…me. Anya had gone down that ladder, nine months pregnant and possibly in labor. It was such an odd feeling of duality.

  “Why would she do that?” Falke asked as he got on the ladder.

  “Because King Arthur was about to be killed, and she knew the opposing army would ravish the countryside,” Ava said. She looked around at the dim rooms off the main cavern. “In fact, she had the entire village down here with her.” Again, her vision doubled. She could see those villagers huddled on the floor with their family members and meager belongings. They looked up at her with such trust as she walked by. What a terrible burden that had been—to be pregnant and about to lose one’s love and having to be strong for these strangers!

  “This has been the best hiding spot from warring armies, marauding Saxons, tax-collectors, political purges, and German bombs for 1,500 years,” Ron said as he came down.