The Night Dance (Once Upon a Time) Read online

  Then she felt herself seem to lift into the air. Glancing down, she saw the whole panorama of the violent battle, and directly below her, she saw a soldier. His armor was sprayed with blood. As his knees buckled beneath him, he threw back the metal visor of his helmet and gazed upward, torment written across his features.

  Her eyes snapped open. Once again she was in the tranquil forest, but her heart was pounding. She searched in every direction, looking for signs of battle. Only the gentle noises of nature surrounded her.

  Feeling unnerved by this violent vision, she slid off the rock, grabbed her cape, and hurried back to the wall. Once back in the courtyard, she pulled a potted tree in front of the opening to conceal it from view and put her slippers back on.

  When she entered the sewing room where her sisters were, she sensed Eleanore scrutinizing her. Her eldest sister was keenly observant so Rowena was especially careful to appear normal and happy, joking with her sisters and betraying nothing. “How was the cooking class?” Ashlynn asked.

  “Smelly,” Rowena answered. “Don’t come near me, I must reek of mutton stew.”

  At supper that night, the sisters joined their father, as they always did, at the long table in the high-ceilinged dining hall. The meal went on around her as she mechanically put food in her mouth, only half aware of the lively conversation her sisters were having regarding a new eight-foot-long tapestry, featuring a castle and a royal forest, that her father had had imported from France. “There’s a prince depicted on it who is so manly,” Mathilde gushed enthusiastically.

  “He’s fine, but I like the adorable unicorn that walks alongside the princess,” Isolde offered. “Where will it hang, Father?”

  “I was thinking of putting it right here in the dining hall,” he replied.

  Mathilde frowned. “I was hoping the prince could be in our room.”

  Sir Ethan raised an eyebrow and cast a wary glance at her. “I’d say it’s definitely going into the dining hall.”

  Rowena liked the tapestry, but she was unable to care much about it. The soldier’s face that she had seen in her vision haunted her. It was as if, in that moment, they had exchanged something mysterious and deep.

  How could she feel so connected to a man she had never met?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sir Bedivere, the Last Knight of the Round Table

  Bedivere bent low in order to hear Arthur more clearly. As he attuned his ear to the dying king’s words, he gazed out over the corpse-strewn battlefield at Camlan. Fallen men from both sides of the horrific fight lay with their limbs still entangled in combat, their blood-soaked bodies turning the grass a blackish red. Their dead horses lay splayed and bleeding beside them.

  He was not yet sure which side had won. It appeared that he and Arthur were the only two left alive. All the other knights of the Round Table now lay dead, their armor reflecting the pink light of the setting sun.

  Mordred, who had raised this army against Arthur, was slain by Arthur’s own hand. In that fight, Mordred had not fallen before dealing Arthur a severe wound, enhanced by a deadly poison at the point of his sword. It had been concocted for him, no doubt, by his witch mother, Morgan le Fey.

  “One good thing can come of this for you,” Arthur spoke in a fading, forced voice. Uncannily a glint of merriment had found its way into his dying eyes. “No longer will the minstrels call you the handsomest man on the island save King Arthur.”

  A blast of dark laughter escaped from Bedivere despite the dire circumstances. The minstrels who sang of the bold exploits of King Arthur and his noble knights of the Round Table always spoke of Bedivere as most handsome save Arthur. It had never bothered him; he was not naturally vain.

  What had irked him was that, of late, they had begun referring to him as Bedivere the one-handed. He’d suffered a severed tendon during a particularly fierce battle and it had cost him the use of his left hand. He didn’t want to be known as the one-handed because it implied weakness. The minstrels were quick to add, “Although he was one-handed, no three warriors drew blood in the same field faster than he.” Nonetheless, Bedivere still found his ailment an embarrassment.

  “So, most handsome one remaining on the island, I have something to ask of you,” Arthur continued, the glint of mirth still alive on his strained, drawn face.

  Bedivere shook his head. “I am not yet the most handsome,” he replied. “And I would be glad never to have that title. Lean on me, and I can support you away from this bloody ground to where we can get you some care.”

  “There’s no reason to move me,” Arthur said, resisting Bedivere’s attempt to raise him. “The wound I suffered to my head, the one dealt by Mordred, is too deep. Let what will be come to pass.”

  He lifted his sword, Excalibur, which he still gripped at his side, several inches from the ground. “Take my sword and toss it into the middle of a lake. Return it to my kinswoman Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake. She who first gave it to me bade me promise I would never let it fall into any other hands but my own.”

  Bedivere turned in every direction. “Do you mean the river?” Bedivere asked, nodding toward the Camel River that ran under a nearby bridge.

  Arthur shook his head and winced at the pain it caused him. “It must go back to the Lady of the Lake,” he insisted.

  Bedivere heard the crash of the ocean’s surf against the rocky shore a short way off. “I’ll plunge it in the sea, then,” he suggested.

  Arthur gripped Bedivere’s arm with surprising strength and pulled himself up. “It must go back to the enchanted lake,” he said, his eyes now burning with determination. “My soul cannot rest until this is done. Swear to me that you will return it to her. Swear!”

  “I swear it,” Bedivere promised as Arthur slumped back onto the ground, dead.

  Bedivere sat down heavily on the chill ground beside Arthur, his friend and king. Excalibur gleamed in the sunlight, and the idea of using it to take his own life occurred to Bedivere. He should be dead; all his companions lay lifeless around him. It was merely some quirk of fate that he still lived.

  He sat, feeling that the life was gone from him, that he was some freakish breathing corpse whose soul had gone off to accompany the departed soul of his king.

  Reaching across Arthur’s lifeless body, he lifted Excalibur from Arthur’s loosened grip and laid it on his own knees. Its golden, bejeweled hilt glistened with diamonds and topaz.

  How could he ever throw his king’s weapon away into a lake? It should be hung on a wall as a remembrance of the greatest king the island of England had ever seen. But what wall? Arthur’s castle at Camelot probably had already fallen to invading armies. There was no place for him to return to, no wall of honor on which to mount Arthur’s sword. And besides—he had sworn to throw it in a lake.

  “But what lake, Arthur?” he asked the dead companion beside him, addressing him as the friend he had been before becoming his king. “What lake?”

  He sat beside Arthur for more than an hour. Then Bedivere got on his knees and lifted his king, staggering slightly beneath the dead man’s weight as he stood. There was nowhere to take him, but he could not just leave him there on the field.

  Bedivere carried Arthur toward the sea crashing at the bottom of tall rocky cliffs. The way down to the ocean was steep, yet Bedivere was so deeply entrenched in sorrow that he barely noticed the difficulty.

  When he reached the pebble-strewn beach, Bedivere laid Arthur down while he collected drift wood and lashed together a raft with tough beach grass as rope. It would be strong enough for his purposes. He wasn’t constructing a vessel that would have to last long.

  When the raft was built, he laid Arthur on it and draped his own cloak over the dead man’s body. He then heaped the raft with more beach grass and wood.

  Bedivere had witnessed warriors from across the North Sea bury their chieftains at sea in this way, and it seemed fitting. With the edge of his sword, he struck a flinty rock but got no spark. Repeated attempts brought no fire unt
il he switched swords and hit the rock with Excalibur’s blade. A spark instantly ignited a piece of grass, quickly creating a line of flame as it spread.

  Satisfied that he’d built a bonfire strong enough not to be extinguished by the ocean breeze, he pushed the raft out into the surf and watched as the tides carried the fiery vessel away from him.

  The salt of his silent tears mingled with the ocean water as he stood a long time and watched the raft disappear out to sea, the flames glinting on the darkening horizon. Once the raft was finally out of sight, Bedivere returned to the beach. With no idea where to go or what to do next, he sat on the sand as a full moon rose and waves crashed onto the shore.

  In his stunned state, with his mind finally free of the pressing urgency of battles and funerals, he recalled the strange thing that had happened to him in the field that day; how he’d swung his blade down upon his enemy, spraying a veil of blood before his own eyes. His heart had hammered with the effort and the relentless horror of flying body parts until he thought he could bear no more—when suddenly he was transported out of the battle.

  Instead of flailing his sword in a fevered dervish of frenetic violence, he was suddenly lying peacefully on a sun-drenched rock. The tranquility surrounding him in this new place was so complete that the smallest sounds could be detected. A bird sang. A brook babbled and insects buzzed.

  His heart-rate slowed and the warm rock soothed his tightly clenched muscles, relaxing them. He heard a woman’s soft sigh, and he had the feeling that the sound had come from his own mouth. He turned, as if, all too soon, his spirit were departing the serene space, and as he looked back he saw a woman reclining on the rock.

  Long, wavy copper-colored hair fanned around her incredibly delicate, breathtakingly beautiful features. A sigh escaped lips that seemed almost poised to speak. He felt a strong urge to go back and kiss them….

  In the next second he was once again on the bloody battlefield, sprawled on his side. Not another man stood. As he staggered to his feet, he saw Arthur, down but still moving, several feet away. He’d had the strange but certain feeling that this mysterious flight he’d somehow taken out of his body had saved his own life.

  Looking down now, he ran his good hand along Excalibur, which shone in the moonlight. His mind swam as it struggled to understand all that had just happened.

  Arthur, dead.

  The other knights of Camelot, slain.

  Surely this was the end of the world as he knew it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Eleanore the Observant

  “How was cooking class?” Eleanore asked pointedly when Rowena returned from her supposed cooking class yet again. She noticed the forked twig caught in the hem of Rowena’s cape, the half of a leaf snarled in her gorgeous hair, the dirt smudged on the back of her wrist.

  And with a glance at Rowena’s feet she saw that though her sister’s slippers were not dirty, her ankles were.

  Eleanore had long suspected that these cooking classes were a fraud, intended only to get her youngest sister out of spinning and embroidery. But the day before Rowena had actually been dirty when she returned. And now here it was again for the second day—signs that she’d somehow gone beyond the wall. Besides everything else, the girl was wet!

  Rain now pelted the window of the sewing room, and it was clear from her frizzled hair and damp cloak that Rowena had been out in it!

  Rowena settled on the cushions of the window seat, carefully arranging her wet cape at her side. She gazed out the window at the falling rain. It was a habit both Eleanore, the eldest, and Rowena, the youngest—just minutes younger than Ashlynn—shared, this tendency to stare longingly out the window, lost in thought.

  How had she escaped the manor wall? How could she possibly have done it? Eleanore had to know.

  She, herself, burned to escape from this prison of a home. She read books; she knew she was too old to be unwed. Other women were mothers long before they were as old as she already was!

  Eleanore put down her embroidery hoop and crossed the room to Rowena. “Rowena, are you feeling well?” she asked softly.

  Rowena shivered and turned away from the window. “Oh, you startled me,” she said.

  “I see that,” Eleanore commented, sitting beside her on the window seat. “I asked if you were well because I noticed a distant gaze in your eyes.”

  Rowena straightened and seemed to force herself back from the daydream with which she’d been involved. A too bright smile formed on her lips. “I’m quite well, thank you. I was thinking about…cooking.”

  “Cooking…” Eleanore repeated, bristling inwardly at what she was certain was a bold-faced lie. “And how was the lesson?”

  “Fine.”

  “What did you learn to make?”

  Rowena blinked at her blankly as if she couldn’t make sense of Eleanore’s question. “Um…pheasant,” she blurted after a moment.

  “Did you kill it yourself?” Eleanore probed.

  Rowena’s nose wrinkled in an involuntary reaction of disgust. “Of course,” she answered. “It was caged outside with the geese,” she added. “I had to go out and get it. It struggled and almost got away. That’s how I got so wet.”

  Eleanore observed her with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. Rowena had anticipated Eleanore’s next suspicious question and answered it before it was asked. Well, Rowena would not put her off that easily. “Then why are your slippers dry though the rest of you is wet?”

  “I removed them for fear of ruining them.”

  “Did the new kitchen servant show you how to kill the pheasant?” Eleanore pressed, undeterred.

  Rowena cast a blank, uncomprehending stare at her.

  “You’ve spent so much time in the kitchen that surely you’ve met Millicent, Helen’s new helper,” Eleanore elaborated on her question. Ha! she thought triumphantly as Rowena continued to stare at her with helpless incomprehension. I’ve got you now!

  If she ever needed absolute proof that Rowena had not spent a single minute in the kitchen, this was it! Millicent had been helping Helen in the kitchen for more than a month now. If Rowena had been there she would have surely known that.

  Rowena grasped Eleanore’s hand and lowered her voice. “I have been out in the courtyard,” she said. “I have found a small break in the wall, and I like to look through it.”

  A flood of urgency surged through Eleanore’s veins. A million questions raced forward in her mind. Had Rowena seen anyone? Had anyone seen her?

  Then she noticed, again, the small piece of leaf in Rowena’s damp hair. “Are you sure you did not find a way through the opening?” Eleanore asked, gently extracting the leaf fragment.

  Rowena took it from her. “This must have fallen inside the courtyard,” she insisted. She suddenly stared intently at Eleanore. “Have you ever seen a battle?” she asked. “The kind with swords, and knights, and blood?”

  Eleanore drew back, surprised by the question. “No. Did you see a battle through the wall opening?”

  “It was a sort of dream,” Rowena replied, her eyes troubled by the memory. “I don’t think I was asleep, though I suppose it’s possible that I dreamt it. It was so real, as if I was actually on the battlefield.” A shudder ran through her as she appeared to relive the awful event.

  Suddenly a strange glow began to emanate from beneath the velvet cape Rowena had tucked between herself and the window. Eleanore imagined a giant firefly had awoken beneath the cape. Before Rowena could stop her, she drew the cape back and beheld a beautiful bowl lined with gold. A ball of light swirled within it.

  “What is it?” Eleanore demanded.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Rowena’s Scrying Bowl

  Rowena looked up at Eleanore, her mind working hard to think of a way to explain the bowl without admitting she’d been in the forest. It would be easier to tell the truth, but then all her sisters would want to go and her father would be on to them in no time.

  The true story was that once again, as
she had done the day before, she’d slipped through the opening in the wall and stole out into the forest under the pretense of taking a cooking class. It had been just hours ago.

  The day was gray and she clutched at her cape. Taking off her slippers and stockings, she once again began to pick her way over slippery rocks and fallen branches, moss and damp dirt. A mist of rain had caused strands of hair to dampen against her forehead.

  She’d gone only several steps when she paused.

  An ornate bowl, from which a strange light emanated, had sat nestled in the gnarled roots of a giant, dead tree. The sky had been so gray that the unearthly swirl of light couldn’t have been a reflection of the sun caught in the bowl’s golden interior.

  Rowena had knelt and picked up the bowl, cupping it in her hands. The light continued to swirl inside the bowl, then unexpectedly expanded until it poured out of the bowl.

  Frightened, she’d tossed away the bowl, which had slid across moss before coming to rest upside down. The glow had shone a few minutes more, illuminating the mossy ground, and then receded. Wary yet curious, Rowena had retrieved the bowl, now looking simply like an elegant vessel with a golden interior.

  At that moment the sky had opened, making a furious tapping on the leaves above her head. Clutching the bowl under her cape, she’d run back to the manor. Her first stop had been to her bedchamber, where she’d planned to hide the bowl in her trunk. But two maids were in there cleaning along with plump, affable Mary, who was supervising them. “We’ll be done in a moment, love,” she told Rowena. “Go join your sisters in the sewing room for now.”

  Rowena had done that, hoping to conceal the bowl under her cape. She’d meant to keep it hidden from them at least until she could think of a way to explain where she’d found it without revealing that she’d been out in the forest.

  But now eleven curious faces surrounded her, alerted by Eleanore’s loud question. “What is it?” asked Cecily, echoing her sister’s query, unable to take her eyes off the ever-expanding ball of light in the bowl.