“It is my pleasure and my duty as your chamberlain, Sire,” Sir Ulfius said, sparing Britt a smile she could barely see behind his impressive facial hair before he opened the door. “The Great Chamber: your room, My Lord.”
The room was big—almost embarrassingly so considering Britt would be the only occupant, she was going to freeze in the winter. There was a fireplace with a chimney to siphon the smoke away. A wooden stool was placed in front of the chimney, and the walls were decorated with tapestries of battle scenes. The only other furniture was the bed—which had a canopy suspended from the ceiling that cascaded over it—and a wooden bed stand.
Britt wasn’t completely surprised by the room. She had roughed it out in the London inn long enough to know that bedrooms were not the personalized rooms she was used to. However, she was heartened by her backpack—which was carefully placed in the corner.
“Thank you, Sir Ulfius. It’s wonderful,” Britt said when she realized the knight was waiting in silence for her judgment.
The older knight nodded in satisfaction. “Do you need or require anything else, My Lord?”
“No, this is great. Thank you for bringing me here,” Britt said as she—and Cavall—walked to her backpack.
“It is my honor, My Lord,” Sir Ulfius said with a partial bow before he left, closing the door behind him.
Britt hesitated. Excalibur and her saddle bags were stacked carefully beside her bed frame. She sat down momentarily on her bed—pleasantly surprised by the feather mattress. She peeled up the mattress to glance at medieval version of a mattress spring, which was formed by ropes woven and intertwined together—before digging through her bags.
After a minute she found what she was looking for—her British travel guidebook—and got up to approach her backpack. She stopped when she reached it, and nudged it with her foot. She started to crouch, intending to open it, before she shook her head and made a retreat to the bed.
“I can’t look at it. Any of it. If I look at my stuff I’ll only remember what I’ve lost,” Britt told Cavall as the dog lay down at the foot of her bed. Britt looked around her room again, cringing at the overwhelming masculinity of it, and sat down on her bed. “So this is where I’ll be living. This is my room,” she said, the words tasted bitter in her mouth, and she closed her eyes against the stark reality.
Britt wanted to go home.
“The only story as famous, or perhaps even more famous, than Arthur is the romantic relationship between Guinevere and Sir Lancelot—Arthur’s best knight. It is said that Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot destroyed Camelot and King Arthur’s Court—,” Britt stopped reading and threw the guidebook, making her guards jump when it smacked against the stone ground of the wall walk.
Britt leaned against the crenellation—the wall of the walkway that was built in a saw tooth pattern. “Why doesn’t the guidebook have more information about Arthur? I don’t care about Guinevere and Lancelot!” Britt spat, shivering in the chilly night air. “I’ve hated them since childhood!”
It had to be midnight, or later. Time was relative to Britt since she arrived in medieval England. She knew it was three weeks since her arrival at Camelot. The days were interesting enough. Sir Kay took her riding and sparring, Merlin continued his usual/unwanted lessons, Sir Ector stood with her and made amusing comments when she held open court and listened to “her” knights argue back and forth about the best way to attack King Lot and his allies. It was the nights that were the worst. In the middle of the suffocating nights Britt would wake up, screaming for her mother, for her sister and friends, only to be hit with the realization that she would never see any of them again.
“I’m an orphan,” Britt reflected. “An orphan with insomnia,” she said before she pushed herself to her feet and retrieved her British guidebook. Britt dusted it off, sparing a smile at Cavall when the giant mastiff slowly approached her, his nails clicking on the stone. “Gentlemen, we walk,” Britt announced to the six guards strategically grouped around her—new protective measures compliments of “her” knights. (Although Britt suspected Sir Kay was the ringleader of this idea.)
As she had for the last two weeks, Britt walked up and down the walkways of Camelot’s outer walls, occasionally stopping to stare out at the darkened countryside, or to twist on her heels and watch the poorly lit innards of her castle.
The weather was cool—much cooler than Britt’s home in America—but the endless walking would eventually push Britt into exhaustion, allowing her to sleep.
Britt placed her hand on Cavall’s head and walked. The guards in front and behind her clinked in their chain mail—their matched steps beating a steady rhythm. The air was peppered with smoke from household fires. Britt couldn’t smell anything yet, but she knew in a few short hours the castle cook would be up, baking heavy, filling breads.
“So it’s true.”