Gwen came through a dark swirling tunnel into what looked like the kind of historic townhouse that has public tours, except that it was polished to the nth degree and many of the items looked new. A man was waiting for her, and if he wasn’t a butler she was a marshmallow. He conducted her through a pair of double doors and onto a terrace where a woman of mature years was seated on a cane chair beside a table laden with cakes and tea. Tea – something she’d sorely missed in the Dark Ages.
“Queen Guinevere, I assume,” the lady said.
“The Duchess of Haverford,” Gwen replied, for that was the name on the invitation she had received.
“Please be seated, your majesty,” said the duchess. “Would you like some tea?”
Taking the offered seat, Gwen looked at the offerings on the table. “Yes, please. I’ve often longed for a nice cup of tea back in the 5th century. Sadly impossible. It’s all watered beer and some rather rough wine. We do get some Falernian imported from the Mediterranean from time to time though, and that’s worth having.”
“I have coffee, too, if you prefer it,” the duchess offered. “Or hot chocolate, though I personally find that a little bitter.”
“Definitely tea—hot and strong as I’ve so often longed for. And some of those fancy cakes.” Another thing that didn’t really exist in the Dark Ages, and which Gwen had often found herself daydreaming about.
“Please, your majesty,” the duchess said, as she passed over a cup of hot strong tea and a plate of little iced cakes, “tell me a little bit about yourself.”
“I’m very happy to be here with you, Duchess. Is that the right way to address a duchess? I’m not used to the gentility of this period, and there were no duchesses back in the Dark Ages. In fact, the term ‘your majesty’ didn’t exist then so I’m more at home with being just called my Lady by my subjects, or Gwen by my friends. I’m more used to a thatched Great Hall and a roaring fire with the carcass of an ox roasting over it. What would you like to know about me?
“Do call me Eleanor,” the duchess said with a smile. “And I’ll call you Gwen, if I may. The note that said you were coming commented you were from the twenty-first and the fifth centuries. How did that come about?”
Gwen nodded. “I consider you a new friend so Gwen will be fine. And as to my origins – I suppose you’d say they were a little unusual. I was born at the end of the 20th century and married in the 5th, about 1500 years before I was born. But I’m afraid I can’t give you an exact date, as back then no one used the same way of dating as we do nowadays, or in your time. That didn’t come in until later. I tried guessing but it was all ‘the twentieth year of the reign of High King Uthyr’ or such like.”
Gwen took another sip of her tea and continued. “I arrived in the 5th century quite by chance, or so I thought, but it turned out I was expected by at least one person.” She smiled. “I’d gone with my boyfriend to scatter my father’s ashes. My dad was an Arthurian scholar, convinced the legendary king was real. I went up Glastonbury Tor first thing in the morning and found a gold ring inside the ruined tower on the top. I picked it up and whoosh, I was back in the 5th century. Of course, time travel was furthest from my mind. I just thought I was lost to start with, and then that I’d stumbled upon a reenactment group. Some might say I was stupid not to realise from the start what had happened, but think about it – if it happened to you, you just would be looking for a rational explanation and time travel would not be it.” She gave a wry smile. “And Merlin was the one expecting me.”
“So there really is a Merlin?”
Gwen nodded. “There is. A lot of characters from the oldest legends really existed. But there’s no Lancelot or Galahad – they were later medieval additions, and Lancelot was French! Not a sign of him in the Dark Ages. It was quite fascinating seeing which of the legends turned out to have been based on fact.” She smiled. “As I’ve said, my dad was an Arthurian scholar, convinced the legendary king was real. I can’t help thinking he’d be impressed to discover his only daughter ended up being Queen Guinevere! After all, he named me and my twin brother after the king and queen. It’s rather surreal being named after yourself.”
“You met Arthur in the fifth century and married him. Or is that just a legend?”
Gwen said, “No, that much is true. I married in the last year of the reign of King Uthyr Pendragon. Actually, right before he died—it was his last command to his son Arthur before his death. And I had no way of refusing. If I had, I’d have risked ending up being married to his older son, Arthur’s not at all attractive half-brother. Not a fate I relished. I found Arthur attractive, but I wasn’t in love with him at that point. It was just the safest thing to do. So I agreed to marry him.”
Eleanor nodded thoughtfully. “In my own time, women often have little choice about whom they marry, as I know to my cost. Please, do have another cake and continue. I am fascinated.”
“Back then Glastonbury Tor was an island in a lot of low lying wetlands and the monks at the abbey escorted me along their secret causeway to the local lord’s stronghold. I was silly enough to ask Merlin, who I met there, if it was Camelot. He’d never heard that name before. I should have guessed that, as it’s really based on the Roman name for Colchester—Camulodunum. Camelot never existed – it was added in about the same time the Lancelot stories were created. Where I found myself was a place called Din Cadan, which back where I come from was known as South Cadbury Castle—not a stone castle, you understand, but a refortified Iron Age hillfort. Not much in the way of mod cons. I don’t know about you, but I was used to flushing toilets. What I got there was a leather bucket in a corner. A rather smelly leather bucket.”
“It must have been a shock,” Eleanor commented.
Gwen nodded her agreement. “It took me quite a while to accustom myself to life in the 5th century. At first, all I wanted to do was get back to my old world, but there was no chance of that. Firstly, it was a good ten miles back to Glastonbury across marshlands I could drown in, and secondly, I couldn’t get out of the fortress. Guards on all the gates. So I just had to put up and shut up. And then Arthur came back. He’d been away fighting somewhere on the south coast – against Saxon raiders. And, well, wow. Quite wow.”
Eleanor sighed. “I have felt that wow,” she confided. “We have stories about your husband in our day, of course, but stories don’t always represent the man.”
Gwen chuckled. “Talk about unreconstructed and totally out of touch with his feminine side (as we’d say back in my old world but probably not in yours). Do you know what the first thing (not quite but pretty nearly) he said to me was? You have good childbearing hips. Not the way to a girl’s heart. I nearly gave him a slap, only I thought it might get me into trouble.”
“Good childbearing hips are an asset,” Eleanor replied, seriously. “I take it, though, that he won you around?”
“He did,” Gwen confirmed. “It helped a lot that he wasn’t hard on the eye. Tall, muscled but not huge, a real horseman. Dark hair and dark eyes, bit of stubble going on. And quite sharp and witty when he wants to be. But whatever I do, I can’t undo his first 23 years of being a Dark Age lordling used to women knowing their places. He has his moments. Moments when I’ve thought a few angry words about his attitude.”
“Stubborn arrogant men can be difficult to live with,” Eleanor said, with feeling.
“And then I discovered I was pregnant,” Gwen said. “Normally, this would make a young newly wed wife happy, but I wasn’t, and the reason I wasn’t was that I was terrified. I knew all about how women died in childbirth back then and I didn’t want that happening to me. I wrestled with my conscience about this for a while, and in the end I asked Merlin what he could see of my future. And he was his typical self—non-commital. What he said was ‘I see you with him to the end, if there is one’. As if that was any help. But I did feel a bit better about the pregnancy after that.”
“Tell me, what aspects of the legend have you found to be true?” Eleanor asked.
“Well… I found out straight away that Arthur really existed, and Merlin, but as I said, there was no sign of a Lancelot or Galahad. I was pleased about that as this vindicated my father’s research.” She bit her lip. “The sword in the stone turned out to be all my fault, and at the risk of giving away some spoilers, so did Excalibur and the Lady of the Lake. And my father had told me about a list of battles written in a ninth century book by a monk called Nennius—they turned out to be true as well. Lots of the people from legend appeared and became my friends.”
Gwen frowned. “At first, I thought my only friend was Merlin, but I made a few mistakes with him. He’s pretty manipulative. And he insisted I was the one who’d make Arthur the king of legend. So I told him no, it was him, and that he’d set a sword in a stone which only the true High King could pull out. Big mistake. That one came back to bite me on the bum. If you don’t mind me saying that. Possibly not a saying you’d use as a duchess. In fact, Merlin has turned out also not to be the sort of person you play chess with. That would be my advice—never play chess with a man who can see the future, at least some of the time. And that was my fault too because they didn’t have chess back then so I introduced it.” She grinned. “I also introduced stirrups which made riding a lot more comfortable. And thank goodness there were no sidesaddles back then – I got to ride astride as I was used to doing.”
Eleanor shuddered. “A manipulative man is a dangerous thing. I can only imagine what it is like to have one with magic.”
Gwen nodded. “He’s had his moments. Luckily for me he’s never really got angry with me, nor I with him, but I know exactly what he’s capable of because I’ve seen it. I can’t tell you, as that would be a huge spoiler for book six.”
“But I can divulge something else. Something not a lot of people know. Arthur had children. I expect you guessed that as I said I became pregnant. I can’t tell you anything else about that though, as that would also be to spoil the story. The children are very important to the story and have major roles to play. And of course, there’s Medraut, called Mordred in later legends. Not a nice fellow at all, but again I can’t give too much away about him. All I’ll say is watch this space as he grows up.”
Eleanor poured more tea. “What would you most like to have been able to share with your father?”
Gwen smiled. “The first time Arthur and I went to bed together after we were married, I decided that was NOT something I wanted to share with my father! I’d been wanting to share some of the other stuff but not that. Little did he know he’d end up being grandfather to his hero’s children. That’s one thing I’ve often wished I could tell him.” She shook her head. “And something a little weird – before one of the battles, Arthur and I were in a location both of us had visited as children but fifteen hundred years apart. We’d both been there with our fathers and stood virtually on the same spot. I wish my father could have known that. I believe my biographer has also stood there. Odd, but rather poignant, don’t you think?”
“And what about the end of the legend?” Eleanor asked. “Is that true? Does Arthur lie sleeping still, waiting for the moment when Britain needs him? Did he go to Avalon?”
Gwen smiled a secretive smile. “Now that would be a spoiler, wouldn’t it? You’ll have to read the last book, The Road to Avalon, to find that one out. I’ll just say this – I think you’ll like the ending.”
Meet Fil Reid
- The Dragon Ring
- The Bear’s Heart
- The Sword
- Warrior Queen
- The Quest for Excalibur
- The Road to Avalon (to come)
Buy from series page on Amazon, or read from KU.