Chapter 16: In Harness
I leaned against the kitchen counter and watched Mum pick the tap handle out of the sink. I knew I should have been shaken, completely wierded out by the way I made the water stop and start. Instead I felt a kind of drop in pressure. I was relieved at finally admitting to myself that the story was true, at accepting who I really was.
The old fashioned cross of brass knobs on the top of the handle glinted in the kitchen light. “Your Grandma had the taps for visitors. Of course she never knew if they worked or not. They rusted solid once. The vicar came round and was absolutely astonished. He said they must have been like it for years.”
“Do you have to wave your hands over it?”
“With something like the tap? No. Watch.” Mum turned her back on me. Water began pouring from the tap and the sink filled up. I peered at it. The plug wasn’t in.
“Mum, stop it!” Water held above an open plughole pushed my new acceptance of our situation a little too far. “It’s too weird.”
“You’ll get used to it.” She turned back to me, the water stopped running and drained through the plug hole.
I narrowed my eyes at the tap and without saying anything, I commanded the water to come. Nothing happened. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s not the tap, sweetheart, the tap won’t do anything for you. You have to feel where the water is, in the pipes.”
I reached out with my mind, thinking about the walls of the kitchen and the space beyond them. Immediately I sensed the water, long and slender in a pipe just above the floor. I beckoned to it and it came, sliding like a snake along and up and down through the tap.
“Well done darling.” Mum put an arm around my shoulders. “That took me months to understand.”
“Let’s have a cup of tea.” I put the kettle under the pouring tap and filled it up. I stopped the water and ushered it back along the pipe to its ground level resting place. “Can we heat it up?”
Mum laughed. “No, that’s not part of it.”
I thought of my physics lessons. “Are you sure?” When water heated its molecules became agitated. If I could move water in pipes and drops, then surely I could move it as molecules. I would have to investigate it further. In the meantime I turned on the kettle and sat at the kitchen table. “So let’s have it Mum. The title of Countess of Beckerley, the oldest title in the country to be handed down through the female line as well as the male, whatever, blah, blah. We were called Lady Bride because we were King Arthur’s Lady of the Lake?”
Mum sat opposite me and fiddled with the small vase in the centre of the table. “That’s the origin of the title, yes. It predates the Norman conquest.”
“And do we have a choice?”
Mum’s eyes widened. “I never thought about it like that.”
“Well I have.”
“I don’t think so.” She twisted her hair into a rope. “I mean, does Eddy have a choice?”
“Good question.”
“I didn’t mean it as a question.” She smiled thinly. “I meant it as an example of somebody who doesn’t have a choice. Queen Elizabeth didn’t have a choice. Mr. Neil doesn’t have a choice.”
I got up and poured the tea. “That’s another bad example Mum, Mr. Neil seems to be choosing at the moment not to bother very much at all with Eddy or any of the rest of it.” I handed Mum her tea and sat back down. “And assuming I accepted this role...”
“Assuming you...” She stared at me.
“Yes.” My voice was clipped. “Let’s make that assumption. For the time being. What does it entail?”
“Well, for all the others, your ancestors, not much. Knowing where the sword was. Staying in the area. Helping Mr. Neil, or whatever he was called at the time. If he needed help.”
“But now?”
“For your grandmother, and now for you and I, it is to be adviser and support to the king.”
“Eddy knew Grandma?”
“Quite well. Though he didn’t know who she was.”
I made a mental note to ask him about that first chance I got. “What else?”
“Well, he will need the sword, and we will have to retrieve it from the vanished waters.”
The word ‘sword’ made me jolt upright in my seat. “I’ve already helped him.”
“I’m sure you have. You bought him a phone, you said.”
“No, not that. The Camelot challenge. He’s a bad swimmer. He fell in the pool, and he was the first to the sword. At the time I thought I was just wishing that he would succeed, but actually I was making him succeed. I opened up the water for him. I made it push him along.” Closing my eyes for a second, I relived the sensations of that night on the poolside. How I had turned the water into a conveyor belt for Eddy.
“Oh Maddie, well done, that’s fantastic.” Mum covered one of my hands with hers.
I pulled out from under her grasp. “That’s not necessarily the start of anything. Don’t go leaping to conclusions. I didn’t know what was involved, or even what I was really doing.”
“Oh.” Her mouth drooped at the corners.
“Anything else?”
Her face flickered, then she shook her head briefly.
“No? Really Mum? What is it you aren’t telling me?”
“There might be an enemy. Mr. Neil could never tell. An old malignancy, surviving from when the King was awake before.”
I widened my eyes at her. “I knew it. That doesn’t sound very nice at all.”
“It’s not sure. Mr. Neil was never sure.”
“Well that’s a lot of help now, isn’t it? What with him nowhere to be found and everything?” I looked at my watch. It was after midnight. “God, Mum. It’s really late. No wonder I’m so tired.”
She stared out the window.
“Mum?”
Silence.
“Mum! I’m going to bed.”
She turned to me, her eyes oddly glazed. “Don’t forget to bolt the door Mother, there’s something scary out there.”
I moved from side to side in her eye line, trying to jolt her out of whatever daydream she was in. “Mum! It’s me, Madeleine!”
Mum blinked and started. “What? Oh sorry dear, I thought...”
“I think you’re just as tired as I am.” I narrowed my eyes. It seemed she wasn’t completely recovered from her episode at the hives. “Come on. Bed time.”
A thousand ideas of the Lady of the Lake and what it meant to be her whirled through my mind. My anxiety had lessened though; being in a tricky situation was easier than trying to pretend the situation didn’t exist.
In an attempt to let the fizzing in my brain work itself through, I turned on my computer and had a look around iTunes. Noticing a title at random I had a stroke of inspiration and smiled to myself. In a few minutes I had put together a selection of songs and saved them onto a memory stick.
When I finally went to bed I slept as soundly as if someone had put a spell on me. That week had been so disrupted, and with so much swimming that I was exhausted.
In the morning the first thing I did on waking was to call Eddy. “I’ve been thinking about the, you know, thing.”
“The Lady?”
“Yeah, that. I want to talk to you about it.”
“At school tomorrow?”
“If I wanted to talk to you tomorrow, why would I be calling you on Sunday morning?”
“I’m really busy, Maddie.”
“Oh for goodness sake Eddy.” I had lost most of my old reticence with him. “I’ll come over to the Shire Horse Centre. I’ve been meaning to bring Boxer a token of my appreciation.”
I persuaded Mum to drive me to the Hechters after lunch. We stopped at a corner shop on the way and bought the giant Shire horse a bag of South African apples. Newspapers in the stands outside blared headlines of the latest mass-shooting, a lunatic trying to send the world a message by killing people. I shuddered.
Mum stopped the car at the front gate of the Shire Horse Centre.
I turned to her, looking for the odd, blank look that flashed across her eyes the night before. “Thanks Mum. Are you sure you won’t come in?”
She pursed her lips. “I’d better not.”
I didn’t have time to find out why that was the case, and even if I did I doubted Mum would tell me anything. “I’ll make my own way home, okay?”
I told the volunteer in the ticket booth that I had come to visit Eddy and her eyes widened in surprise. “Um, he’ll be doing the cart tour.” She looked at her watch. “Starting in five minutes. In the main yard. There are signs.”
I hurried along wide sanded paths, then paused beside a stable block. A long inquisitive nose twitched at me from a half door, while its neighbour presented me with a six-foot-high horsey bottom. I addressed the face. “Do either of you know where Mr. Moon is? No? Thank you for your help.”
Turning a corner into the main yard I saw Eddy backing a tall, stocky horse up to a cart. I paused beside the wall, checking my ponytail with one hand. Eddy wore a worn, checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his wide, tanned forearms. I stared at him for a moment, soaking in his beauty, and the grace of his movement.
He looked up, saw me, and a massive, delighted grin burst onto his face. A second later a serious frown chased it away, but I hadn’t imagined it. He had been happy I was there.
“Hello.” I held out the bag of apples. “I brought these for Boxer.”
He grinned again. “He’ll be very pleased.” As he talked he continued working, buckling and clipping straps and harnesses and talking to the horse calmly as he went. The horse shifted her feet and raised one to balance it on the edge of the hoof.
“Will you be bringing Boxer out to pull this?”
“No. He’s too big. They have to be matched. Actually, this is his Mum. Judy.”
I stepped forward and stroked her silky nose. “Hello Judy, I’m very glad to meet you. You should be very proud of your son you know, a very helpful handsome chap.” I pulled an apple from the bag. “Here, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you having one of these.”
Judy picked the apple delicately from my hand with big, flapping, velvety lips.
“So anyway.” I turned to Eddy. “I concede. You and my Mum are right. There’s something weird going on. She and I have some kind of ancestral power.”
He ran a hand down Judy’s flank. “Good.”
“And I got you a birthday present.” I pulled the memory stick from my pocket. “This is for you.” I dropped it into his hand, where it looked tiny and out of place.
“What is it?”
“Some music, put it on your phone.”
“Thanks Maddie, that’s brilliant.”
“But whether you’re right or not doesn’t make things any easier. I’m not sure if I want to be the Lady of the Lake.”
His eyes widened. “Not sure if you want it? Come with me. I have to get the second horse.”
I walked beside him towards a long stable block. One after another horses whinnied loudly at him. He waved and greeted them all by name, before opening one of the stable doors and leading out a shining, jet-black horse. “This is Ebony. Not very bright, I’m afraid. Perfect for pulling carts.”
I giggled. “So rude!”
“Don’t worry, she doesn’t understand a word.” He turned his voice to a coo. “Do you, you pretty old dunce?”
Ebony pricked up her ears and dropped her nose to nuzzle Eddy’s shoulder. He looked at me as he led her out of the stable. “Whether you want to be who you are, or not, you can’t stop it.”
“Yeah, but I don’t need to act on it.” I talked to him around Ebony’s neck. “I might go and live somewhere else. I might not take any notice.”
“I don’t think you can. Look at your interest in historic leaders.” Ebony crossed onto cobbles and Eddy raised his voice to be heard over the clatter of her hooves. “How useful that has been. It all fits together.”
I bit my lip. He was right. I helped him win the Camelot challenge before I knew any of our history. “That side of it fits, yeah. But you must allow some element of choice. Are you going to do everything the exact same way again?” I thought of the legendary love triangle formed from King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and Queen Guinevere. “Is your best friend going to have an affair with your wife, and you end up warring against each other?”
He winced. “No of course. I’ve learnt. I’ve got a second chance; I’m going to do better.”
I jabbed a finger at him. “There! So you’re not going to do everything the same.”
He nodded. We came level with the cart and Eddy backed Ebony up to the shafts.
“You agree. So if that’s okay, maybe it’s okay to...”
Eddy lifted the enormous harness out of the bed of the cart. He raised an eyebrow at me. “Yes?”
“Maybe it’s okay to give me a hug when you feel like it, when I give you an ace present? Instead of just walking off down the High Street.”
He buckled the harness around the horse’s neck, then looked at me over the curve in her back. “But Maddie, that’s the point. I can’t hug you, because that would drive me crazy. It would be like teasing myself.” He dropped his hands from the horse and his eyes blazed.
My pulse accelerated. Acknowledgement of how he felt about me filled me with joy, even though it was part of him explaining why we couldn’t be together.
Muscles jumped in the side of Eddy’s jaw. He looked at me for a second, then back to the horse. His throat pulsed. “I would be teasing myself because somewhere out there is my queen. It’s not you, and I’m already confused about you, and hugging you would just make things worse when the queen comes. Because she will.”
I stamped my foot. It was so stupid. “You have to have free will in this!”
He ran the harness lines back to the seat of the cart. “I had free will once. I used it all up.”
Tears prickled in my eyes. “But I didn’t! It’s not fair. What about my free will? You’re taking it away from me.”
My phone rang. I blanked the call. It started ringing again. I answered. “Hi Mum, I was just...”
“Maddie, you have to come. There’s a creature outside. I’ve pulled all the curtains, but it’s still out there. It can see me.”
“Mum, what kind of creature?”
“It’s dark, why’s it so dark Mother?” Again my skin crawled when she used her own name back to me. “I can feel it coming nearer, Mum make it stop.”