Ides of the May (Children of the May 2 - updates weekly)

Chapter Sixteen: Shooting Stars

Martha delicately pushed Petal’s hair out of her face. She nodded.

‘Bedtime, then,’ I said.

Martha came over to lift Petal from me, but I told her I could manage. I put the little maid to bed, and Martha tucked her in.

* * *

 

I was restless after I snuffed my candle that night. The music in the room below went on for another hour or so, until the musicians staggered happily out into the road, seemingly oblivious to King Arthur, to my mother, to everything that seemed important to me. ‘Take your pleasures where you can!’ one roared out when he was some way down the road. ‘For tomorrow we may all be dead!’ A lone cow mooed, disgruntled by the disturbance.

The thin curtains were open, and I passed the time staring at the beautiful blueish night sky, glittering with the soft tracery of the constellations. The night was enhanced by occasional shooting stars, which glanced across the heavens at intervals. I tried counting them to send me to sleep, but they came so irregularly that after each one I became tense in anticipation of the next.

There was a soft knock at my door, and it opened a crack.

‘Drift, are you awake?’

Without waiting for an answer, she came into my room, closing the door behind her. I had been so tired I had not recognised her voice, but as she stepped into the clean light from the window I saw it was Bellina. She was in her nightdress, her hair falling about her shoulders. She came barefoot to the side of my bed, and sat down with her slender back to me, looking out of the window. I shifted to give her more space.

‘I can’t sleep,’ she said. There was none of the customary harshness in her voice.

‘No,’ I said.

She smiled at me, and turned back to the window. Now she knew for certain that I was awake.

‘What do you think is going to happen to us?’

‘I don’t know.’

I had moved myself to the far side of the thin bed. She lifted the covers on her side and climbed in with me. Her fingers reached out and touched my chest.

‘It’s over with you and the Saracen girl.’ Her words were halfway between a statement and a question.

Bellina’s hand snaked round my waist and pulled me to her. She was so very beautiful in that light, the moon and stars from the window flowing together in her hair. She smelled of a fine perfume, sweet and fresh and misty. Desire for her seared my throat. I pulled her towards me and kissed her, and in that kiss I felt what she wanted: she wanted me to have the arms and chest of Agravaine, the hair of Sir Lancelot and the face of the first man she had ever liked. So I altered my glamour to give her what she desired.

Don’t judge her: it was simply the way the world had taught her to look upon such things. In her own way she had been too well-loved: the fierceness of her father’s care for her, and the cruel way he treated his many wives – Bellina’s stepmothers – had left her afraid of real emotions. She concentrated on the superficial because life had taught her how mortally love burns.

But as for me: I knew this about her, I understood it completely. It was all I felt I deserved, to be provider of attractive surfaces to a girl who did not, and could not, care for me.

And I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

* * *

 

Our crawl up the northern half of the country began. We reached the Emperor Hadrian’s wall in three days, crossing at the same collapsed place as on our outward journey. But after this we slowed terribly. The settlements were much more sparse beyond the wall, and our meagre provisions meant that we were more often looking for food than moving forward. Most days it seemed that I could still spot the place where we had begun the morning’s ride from where we pitched our tents for the night.

We had only brought two tents with us: a larger one for Bellina and Petal, and a smaller for me. Martha would stay in the open air, standing guard all night. I had known her all my life, but this was the first time I realised that she barely slept, if she slept at all. Some nights Bellina would sneak from the tent she shared with Petal to mine. Perhaps two nights out of three this happened, skipping nights when I had done something to annoy her. Each time she came to me I would learn from her kiss that she wanted me to appear slightly different from the time before. She was always aware that I was changing myself for her, and soon she simply told me how she wanted me to be that night. Sometimes she became harsh, criticising me for not moving correctly, just as she had noticed that I was walking like a hunchback back in the valley camp. But other times she spoke softly about how happy she was in my arms. And indeed, I knew that at those times she felt as much happiness as she was capable of experiencing.

If Martha noticed Bellina sneaking between tents in the night she didn’t say anything to me.

As night fell on the eighth day we had travelled perhaps the distance we had managed in five on our way south with Garnish. The northern sky was brilliant and mysterious with shifting lights in greens, blues and reds. Excepting Martha, I don’t think any of us had seen such lights before. We pitched our tents, but instead of going to bed that night we sat out and watched the glorious display. I had not said a prayer to the Lord Jesus in many days, but felt an urge to say the Our Father from Matthew’s book, which I did under my breath in case I irritated Bellina, who took a dim view on faiths of all kinds.

‘Look at that,’ said Petal, pointing towards the horizon. ‘What a strange shooting star.’

An ordinary shooting star appears in the sky for only a few moments. It falls in a straight line or an arc, burning a brief streak before blinking out of existence. This one was different. For one thing it seemed to be rising from the northern horizon. It moved silently, arcing over us, giving a constant white light that never twinkled or faded. It rose and rose so very high into the sky, like an arrow with one thousand times the range an ordinary archer can attain. I only realised what the light was when it reached the apex of its arc and began to fall, when it was far to the south of us but so high in the sky it was still visible. At that distance it resembled the small spark that had flown from the butt of the Spear of Longius, when Sir Lamorak ground its point into Garnish’s throat.

I crumpled to the grass and hid my face in my hands.

‘What is it, lad?’ said Martha.

‘We’re too late,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘He’s found her. Sir Lamorak has found Epicene.’