Chapter 24: Rugby
Carrying me, the suit of armour soared over the first hedge. Eddy straightened, slightly to the left of our path. His sword flickered as it swung. I felt the jolt and heard a harsh clang, and then we landed in the meadow beyond the second hedge.
Immediately I could tell there was a problem. The armour hit the ground at an angle, then limped heavily. One of the metal-plated feet had gone, amputated by Excalibur, and my kidnapper couldn’t keep to a straight line.
We stumbled across the field for a few seconds before Eddy stood in front of us, panting a little. “Stop!” he commanded.
The armour marched toward him.
“It can’t.” I sobbed as I spoke. “There’s nobody inside it.”
One iron gauntlet came free of me and extended toward Eddy. Metal screeched as he cut it off at the elbow.
The suit of armour slowed now, and Eddy kept pace with it. “Madeleine, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I don’t care. Chop it to pieces.”
“Pull your legs up.”
I did as Eddy asked, and he cut through the thing’s good leg at the knee. We toppled sideways. The legs worked rhythmically, but could get no purchase. Eddy bent and pulled at the arm holding me. He dropped his sword and wrenched at it with both hands. Veins stood out on his forehead as his enormous strength managed to do what the other boys could not, and loosen the arm. I wriggled from underneath it and fell into his embrace, sobbing uncontrollably. Eddy stroked my hair and whispered into my ear. “It’s okay, it’s okay. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Besides us the suit of armour clanked and I gasped. “Eddy, please can you do something about it. Finish it.”
The thing jerked obscenely, propelling itself towards me on its one arm and its three quarters of a leg. Eddy picked up Excalibur and stood over it for a second, before slicing off the helmet, and then the good arm. Forgetting his sword he stepped onto the torso, pushing it down to the ground, then jumped on it.
“What is it?”
He pushed hair back from his face. “You know what it is. It’s a thing of hers. She’s animated old, old iron.” Raising his sword again he stabbed it hard into the back plate of the armour. Metal on metal screeched, then the armour faded to rust red and shrank, worn and aged at the edges.
“I feel bad for those archaeologists.”
Eddy shrugged. “I’ll try and think of something else for them to find.” The gleaming sword hung in his right hand. He placed his left hand on my waist. “I’m so happy you’re okay.”
My heart fluttered in my chest. “All thanks to you.”
His face maintained its impassive expression, but his eyes shone. “When I knew something had happened to you I realised that I...”
“You what?” I moved towards him.
“It’s difficult Maddie, I’m trying to work a lot of things out but I feel...”
I couldn’t tell if he pulled me, or if I stepped back into his embrace, but in a moment I was pressed against the solid warmth of his body. His arms circled my back.
“I don’t know if what I feel is right or wrong, but you deserve honesty.”
Maybe it was shock, but I felt more alive that moment than ever before. I floated in a space of winter stars above the dark meadow. “Eddy.” I had to tell him. To not tell him would be pretending to be somebody I wasn’t. “I love you.”
For once emotion shone through the responsibility and seriousness on his face. “I love you too Maddie, but-”
Car engines roared in the distance, getting closer. The Four Horsemen.
He shook his head. “I’ll tell you later. We need to call the school, or somebody, tell them you’re okay. They’ll probably have called the police.”
I did as he said, telling the Camelot house tutor that the armoured man had run away into the countryside. In the darkness I flushed at the lie. When I turned the phone off Eddy lightly clasped my shoulder in on hand. “Well done. That must have been tricky.”
I smiled.
He stepped away. “Now come back to the car. Your Mum will be getting worried.”
I stared at him. “You’ve brought Mum?”
He replied over his shoulder. “I had to. I’ve got the child. Somebody had to look after it.”
Hurrying after him I tried to process what was going on. In the front seat of the car Mum sat with a tiny baby in her arms. Eddy’s child, born hours after it was conceived. I shuddered.
“Hello Maddie.” Her voice sounded oddly bright and brittle. “Is everything alright now?”
“Everything’s fine. How are you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m thinking about the baby.”
Mum turned the bundle towards me. Dark eyes glittered in assessment. A baby face twitched, I expected a baby smile, or a baby yawn. Instead the baby scowled at me, showing a mouth full of teeth.
I jumped backwards. “That can’t be normal.” I turned to Eddy. “How did you get it?”
“The Naylors didn’t need much persuasion. They didn’t really understand why they had it. I think Morgan kind of entranced them, somehow. They were pretty freaked out when it started teething.”
“What are you going to do?”
Eddy got into the driver’s seat. “It’ll spend the night at your house, then we’ll decide what to do in the morning.”
“At home?” I got into the back seat. “What about Morgan?”
He spun the wheel expertly, as if he had been driving for years. “She’ll be exhausted, after hastening her pregnancy like that, giving birth, and driving that suit of armour around the countryside. Besides, you have an old friend back. Look.”
As we crested a slight rise the car headlights shone into the sky and caught the slow flapping wings of a large, black bird.
“The cormorant! What happened?”
“I don’t know. I think you’re just lucky. It was nearby and sensed your panic.”
I switched my focus to the other seat. “And you Mum, are you okay? How’s your arm?”
“Oh that? Ha ha!” Her laughter was high and strained. “I forgot about it.”
“And what are we going to do about the baby?” I stopped there, not wanting to go on and voice the horrible question hanging over us. Will we have to kill it?
“We’ll decide in the morning.”
I looked from Eddy to the child in Mum’s arms. I couldn’t tell how he felt about it, but he had to feel something. Unnatural, freakish as it was, the baby was still tiny, defenceless, and his own flesh and blood.
“But Eddy.” I couldn’t restrain myself. “It’s yours, your son.”
Eddy snorted. “Only slightly. She can manipulate things like that. It’ll have the bare minimum of my characteristics, and only the practical ones.” We stopped at a junction. “You know how sharks are born killers? They don’t decide, or learn, nobody influences them. They hunt because they’re made for it. Some sharks even kill and eat their siblings when they’re still in their mother’s womb.”
I shuddered. “So?”
“So this thing...” He inclined his head at the bundle in Mum’s arms. “Is exactly like that. It’s like it’s been programmed, look.” He raised his hand from the gearstick and extended a finger towards the baby. When it was within reach a small hand shot from the shawl, grabbed Eddy’s finger, and hauled itself upwards.
“What? So it’s strong. I bet you were a strong baby.”
The baby got its face to Eddy’s finger, then lurched forward and sank its teeth into his flesh.
He hissed. “Countess Bride, can you get it off me?”
Mum tugged at the infant, but it wouldn’t move. A strange, high-pitched snarling came from the small clenched jaw.
“I need to change gears.” Eddy glanced sideways. “Please try harder.”
Mum took Eddy’s hand in one of hers, and pressed the baby downward away from it with the other. “Eddy, this has to be really hurting.”
I heard a pop as Eddy’s finger sl
ipped free of the child’s teeth. Blood lined the deep indents in his flesh and ringed the baby’s mouth. It licked its lips with a weirdly long tongue.
A freezing chill swept over me. “I see what you mean.”
The rest of the drive passed in silence.
At home Mum pulled a drawer from her chest and settled the baby in it on her bedroom floor. I gave Eddy a blanket and showed him to the sofa in the front room.
In my own room, in my pyjamas, I was powerfully aware of his presence downstairs. I could imagine the length of his sleeping body, filling the sofa completely. I rolled over twice, thinking that sleep would never come, so strong was my awareness of his proximity. I was exhausted, though, and the next thing I knew, it was dawn, and I woke to the slow building novelty of his presence in the morning.
I crept down the stairs and peered around the corner. He slept with one arm flung over his head. The blanket had slipped and his broad chest was bare in the dawn light. His beautiful face turned to the ceiling, tense and serious. I hovered in the doorway. Should I wake him? How?
He answered the question for me. His eyes snapped open and he twisted into a sitting position. “Madeleine.” His voice was sharp. “What’s wrong? How’s your mother? And the baby?”
“Um...” I blinked, flustered, then turned back to the stairs. Of course I should have thought of her first, instead of Eddy Moon in his underwear on my couch. Mum was in bed, but the baby had gone. I glanced around the room, wondering if it was already able to crawl. In my imagination it became a scuttling little creature with sharp, pearly teeth. I shivered. “Mum?”
She didn’t move.
“Mum!” My voice rose. I hurried to her bedside. Her face was gaunt and white. “What happened to the baby?”
Her eyes opened a crack. I gasped.
“Maddie,” she whispered. “It’s in a safe place. Don’t worry.” Her eyes closed again.
I took her cold hand, between both of mine. “Where Mum? What did you do?”
She didn’t answer. Her breathing was shallow, but steady. I turned to Eddy. “We need to get her back to the hospital. She’s not well, not yet.”
The ambulance came in ten minutes, and I spent the rest of the day in hospital with her. I sat beside her bed in the ward, watching her slip in and out of consciousness and wondering whether I could ask her about the baby again.
I didn’t have an opportunity, and in part I was glad. A horrible decision had been avoided, and I didn’t want to know the way out Mum had found.
She woke in the evening, but was still very weak and her grasp on reality flickered. That night I stayed with Sarah in Logres, before visiting Mum again in the morning. She was brighter, but still called me Mother a couple of times. That afternoon I returned to class with huge relief, glad to be back to one aspect of ordinary life.
Normality disappeared for an hour after school, though, when the police visited. I made up as little as possible about my armoured attacker, only saying that I had thought somebody was following me. I said I never saw his face, which was true, and that he disappeared in the darkness, which was also kind of true. The school arranged extra security, the police told me to contact them if I remembered anything else, and then I went to Logres, where Sarah coddled me for the evening.
The following day Mum seemed stronger still, and doctors said she would probably only need a couple more nights in hospital before she recovered from her ‘concussion.’ I asked her again about the baby, but she didn’t remember what she had done with it. I knew Mum, though, and couldn’t believe - however disconnected she was from reality - she could have done it any harm.
The next day, Saturday, saw the final sporting competition of the autumn term. The rugby final, Orkney against Camelot. My school in London hadn’t played much rugby, and so I sat in the stadium with Sarah, asking her questions.
“What’s that for?” I pointed as two groups of players formed tight lines, bent at the waist, and surged against one another. Eddy heaved at the back of the Camelot pack.
“That’s the scrum. Those players are the forwards, they push one another, trying to get the ball. When they get it they pass it across the field and try to run it to the other end.”
“Okay. The Four Horsemen will do the running?” I pointed at Gennady, Kieran, Rami and Tiago, who formed a loose line across the field.
“Well they will, but only if John Owen and the Orkney Lot let them.”
John Owen, the head of Orkney, was the best rugby player in the school. He already had a professional contract for when he graduated in the summer.
The scrum heaved and pushed, then fragmented and John Owen emerged from it, carrying the ball. Kieran, then Rami leapt at him, but he handed them off. The Camelot team zeroed in on him, leaving wide spaces in the rest of the field, so that when Owen passed the ball, two light, quick members of his term were able to run through the gaps and score.
I hissed with disappointment.
Sarah patted my knee sympathetically. “See, that’s the Camelot problem. He’s so strong, and quick that they need three or four players to tackle him, then that leaves other players free.”
“Eddy’s strong and quick too.” To me the pale winter sun seemed to focus on Eddy, like the crowd focused on John Owen. Golden, magnificent, he ran across the pitch patting team mates on the back, then gathering the Four Horsemen around him for a hurried discussion. My heart swelled with pride.
“Eddy is strong and quick,” Sarah agreed. “But he never played rugby before this term.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I grumbled. “He’ll learn.”
I watched him stand towards the back of his team, bulging arms folded across his chest. I could practically hear his mind whirring at light speed, assessing this new experience, working out how he could succeed. As I looked on my own mind whirred along a different path. Life had settled down a little - though it would never be the same as before we met – and I had more time to think about Eddy.
Eddy, and the way he had kissed me. The feeling of flight he gave me when he said he loved me. The sound of the words in his deep, warm voice. I could tell from the way he looked at me that he thought about it too. For tiny moments his eyes showed his indecision. Eddy was accustomed to battle, and I knew he was fighting his feelings for me. Unlike the rugby, this was a struggle I hoped he would lose.
Orkney scored twice, gaining seven points each time, before Eddy proved me right for believing in him. The referee called a scrum, and Eddy pushed at the back of it. Again John Owen bulled forward, drawing Camelot players toward him, until he flipped the ball away into open space. Eddy had seen the pass coming, though, and was on the boy who caught it before he had taken three strides. He lifted him into the air and took the ball from him, before stepping around him and beginning his own run. Powerful and effortless he blazed the length of the field without a single Orkney player coming close.
John Owen screamed in fury. At half time he bellowed at his team and his anger could be heard across the field. The second half continued as the first had finished. Eddy scored again, then Gennady ripped the ball from a scrum and his three friends passed it between one another before Rami ran it over the end line. Camelot were in front. Mr. Duke, the head rugby coach stood at the half way line, watching with his chin in his hand. This had to be interesting for him, watching Levels boys play without his direction, deciding their tactics for themselves.
Orkney mounted a final attack, their superior mass and experience rumbling them through the Camelot defense. If they scored the match would be theirs, with seconds left to play. Six feet from the line John Owen received the ball, but Eddy faced him, caught him, and tossed the ox-like rugby captain onto his back. Snatching the ball from his grasp Eddy accelerated down the pitch. In a flat out sprint nobody came close to him, his powerful muscles pumped his long limbs like lightning. Camelot scored again.
At the final whistle I ran onto the field and waited for Eddy to escape the hugs and congratulations of his team mates.
“Well done Eddy, oh well done.” In an effort to restrain myself I clasped my hands behind my back and stood on tip-toe to kiss him on the cheek. “Eww! You’re all sweaty.”
“Sorry Maddie.” He grinned down at me and my heart skipped a beat. Light hearted like this, his generous features were even more beautiful.
He slung a heavy arm over my shoulder and I put mine across the small of his back. Ignoring his perspiration I leaned against him, the heat of his body blazing through my winter coat. We walked toward the pavilion together, Eddy asked me about this or that bit of the match and I told him how exciting it had all been.
“Anyway...” He slowed when we reached the path, the studs on his boots clattering on its hard surface. “Enough rugby.” He took my hand between his finger and thumb and my heart flipped over. “I didn’t thank you for the music you gave me. Kieran helped me transfer it over to my phone.”
“Really? And you liked it?”
“I think its brilliant.” He began humming the first lines of ‘Love Me Tender’. I warmed with even more love for him, something I hadn’t thought possible. Eddy Moon wasn’t good at everything. He couldn’t sing. I smiled at him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Why did you get me Elvis, though? I don’t understand. Not very up to date.”
“More up to date than you, though.” I smirked at him. “However, you’ve got something in common, apart from being old. A little phrase.”
“What is it?”
My lashes lowered. “Not telling. You’ll have to find out.” I sighed. “Wouldn’t it be nice if it was always like this? No worrying about Merlin, or Morgan, or a demonic little baby hidden away somewhere.”
“The baby’s growing fast, but still he won’t be dangerous for a long time.” Eddy tilted his head to one side. “Or maybe ever. Maybe your Mum found a way to neutralise him.”
I shrugged. It seemed Eddy had come to terms with the way Mum took charge of the baby’s future. Possibly he was even relieved. I examined his face, but he gave nothing away. “And as for Morgan, she won’t be able to hurt us for a while. She’s exhausted somewhere, and you’ve got the cormorant watching over you again. There’s time to get your Mum back to health and work out how to stay safe.” His voice warmed. “Seriously. It’s me Morgan really hates.”
“She didn’t kidnap you though.”
Eddy nodded. “Good point, but she only attacked you to get at me.”
“Why though?” I raised my tone slightly. “Why has she been so intent, for so long?”
“It’s jealousy.” Eddy’s voice darkened slightly. “Kind of a family thing.”
“A family thing?” I pulled my arm free and stopped walking. “What do you mean?”
Eddy turned to face me. “A family thing. Morgan le Fay is…”
Mr. Duke appeared beside us. “Great game Moon. I had no idea you were a rugby player.”
“Thanks, sir.” Eddy bobbed his head. “Oh Mr. Duke, quick question, you like Elvis don’t you?”
Mr. Duke frowned slightly, a half smile on his lips. “Well I do, but-”
“Did he have a catchphrase, or a nickname or something?”
“Catchphrase? No, not so much a nickname. More a title.”
“What was it?”
Mr. Duke grinned, beginning to turn away. “They called him ‘The King’. I’ll see you later.”
An enormous smile spread across Eddy’s features. “You’re so cool!” An odd noise issued from his throat. I shivered with pleasure when I realized it was a horribly mangled, Eddy Moon version of ‘It’s Now or Never.’ His voice dropped to a murmur as his face dipped towards me.
I felt his breath on my skin and closed my eyes in anticipation, then half-opened them. “What was the thing about Morgan le Fay?”
Eddy paused his slow descent towards me. “Well I suppose, if you wanted one, an interpretation in the modern age might be to call Morgan my, um…” He bit his lip. “My kind of half sister.”
Epilogue
A silver-grey BMW slowed in a country lane, then stopped beside a farm gate. The engine died and the headlights blinked off. A tall woman with broad shoulders and long, grey-streaked hair got out of the driver’s seat and moved around to the back door. She bent, then stood. Her left arm in a sling, the woman carefully held a baby wrapped in a shawl.
The woman closed the car doors, then opened the gate and made her way along the side of the field. Her steps seemed unsteady, and her progress was slow.
In time she reached the top of the small hill and sat down on the withered, winter grass. Placing the baby on the ground beside her, she pressed a hand to the soil and murmured. The baby turned its head and looked at her, curling its lip to reveal shining white teeth.
After a minute the woman lifted her hand. It glistened with water, as did the ground it had touched. Water pooled among the grass stems, then trickled down the hillside. A small spring had been born and it ran down the steep face of the hill in a narrow stream.
Where it ran it seemed to erode the ground. It cut a notch in the grass, revealing dark soil. The water sank into the space, deepening it further. The woman sat motionless, her eyes closed and both hands pressed flat to the earth. After an hour the cleft in the ground was six feet high and two feet across. Crumbs of soil and drops of water fell through it, into a space below the ground. The opening in the hillside grew into a gap the size of a narrow doorway and the woman took up the baby and stood.
Pale dawn light shone into the cavern. Small, low ceilinged, it held seven rough mattresses. Sleeping youths occupied five of them and two lay empty. The woman stepped into the cave and placed the baby onto one of the vacant berths. As it touched the blanket its eyes closed and its head lolled in sleep.
The woman stepped back out onto the hillside. The water stopped running and instantly the hillside, earth, roots and withered grass grew back over the opening. In three minutes it had disappeared and the woman returned to her car. She drove away from Windmill Hill, leaving its surface exactly as she found it.
THE END