Summary: In Victorian London, an emigre count, Uther, and his landlady listen to an innocent girl's bloodcurdling story.
The Dark Place by frostygossamer
Part 2: The Stranger
There was a rattle of tea cups from the corridor outside. Uther got up to let Hunith in, and moved his ivory-inlaid card-table closer to the fire, to hold the tray. He whispered a precis of what she had missed into her ear, as she poured three cups of tea, and added several lumps of sugar.
"Please go on dear", she said, handing the girl a cup, and taking the empty cognac glass from her hand, to set it down on the table.
"If you can", she encouraged.
Gwen sipped her piping hot tea and went on.
He released her hand and she was alone in complete blackness. He struck a match, and lit an oil-lamp that barely illuminated the centre of the room. More of a warehouse than a dwelling, it was heaped with boxes, coils of cable and nautical gear, and it was cold.
The lamp stood, with a wine bottle and a glass, on a small table. By the table was a single chair and a bed, neatly made. The lamplight flickered on his handsomely rugged, tanned face. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore his blond beard and hair close-cropped. He was dressed like a sailor in pee-jacket, woollen jersey and dungaree trousers, all black.
He half smiled and indicated the chair. Gwen sat down.
"I still remember my manners", he said perching on the corner of the bed, "My folks were godly people, proper. They gave me a good pious upbringing."
He asked her name and she told him 'Guinevere', and that she was a housemaid and had to be back by eight o'clock. He promised he would take her home when the fog lifted, and he began to tell her about himself.
His name was Arthur Pendragon. He was a farmer's son, but he was born restless, a wanderer. As a boy he had drifted from home to the coast, and signed on with a sea-going trader, sailing the oceans of the world until he finally washed up in the Port of London. But, for all his travels, he had found peace neither on dry land nor high seas. It was a hard life, hard and lonely.
Arthur sighed and poured himself a glass of red wine. He asked her if she cared to take some with him but, before she could reply, he set down the bottle and brought the glass to her. Gwen had never drunk wine before, but she took it. He knelt beside her chair as she drank. She did not know that is was spiked with laudanum. It filled her heart with a warm glow and she was no longer afraid of him.
His sad story aroused her compassion. She told him that she knew so well how it felt to be alone amongst strangers. He took her little hand and pressed it to his lips. She pulled it free. He tried to kiss her cheek but she turned away. She stood up, dropping her glass flustered, and made a move for the door. In a heartbeat she was in his manly arms.
"Stay", he whispered and then he kissed her, impulsively, desperately.
She tried to struggle against his ardent embrace, but her resolve was just not strong enough. She was lost.
('o')
Uther leapt to his feet.
"Mascalzone!", he cried, "Gredin, scoundrel, despicable coward, contemptible betrayer, deceiver of women! If I could get my hands on him I should break his villainous neck, flog him, horsewhip him! I should..."
He became inarticulate in his fury. Hunith rose to restrain him.
"Please Count, control yourself. You're frightening the girl", she said.
Uther composed himself and returned to his chair, continuing to mumble angrily under his breath. Hunith sat down once again beside Guinevere and took her hand in hers.
"Can you go on?", she asked sympathetically.
When she awoke the next morning, Guinevere knew that she could never go back - at this Uther coughed and Hunith gave the girl's hand a squeeze - and since that night she had stayed with him.
Conditions in the docks were Spartan, but the Chinese laundrywomen were neighbourly, and Gwen was no stranger to hard times. Another woman might have fled, but she had nowhere else to go, nowhere but the river. And he was so much more welcoming than the cold, dark, swirling waters of the Thames.
Arthur frequented the two sailors' haunts, the Mermaid Tavern and the Seagull Inn. Here he made a living buying and selling contraband, smuggled into port by sailors. His contacts kept him abreast of the comings and goings on the wharves.
Guinevere suspected that he might be a wanted man. Constantly darkly brooding, he seemed to carry his own black cloud, a sinister burden that never left him and made him weary beyond her comforting. He could find no rest. He was a tormented soul.
He often stayed awake all night, and he frequently went without sleep for days at a time. He told Guinevere that he had never known restful sleep, even as a child. At sea, only when he was utterly exhausted could he sleep, like a dead man without dreams. Otherwise he stayed awake all night or resorted to laudanum. It was hard to go without sleep but it was worse to dream. His dreams were terrible.
In his nightmares, he knew that he had lived many thousands of lives. He had stalked as a tiger, sped as an antelope, soared as an eagle. He had been bear, fox and monkey; beggar, soldier and prince. He had suffered the sandstorms of Arabia, swum in the sacred rivers of India and stood at the red heart of Australia. Life after life; rich or poor; unlucky and desperate; he had always been an outcast, wanderer and fugitive.
Through all these lives, he had carried with him his age-old burden. It was something that had been left undone, something unfinished, that cast a shadow over his existence and blighted his life. And, worse still, there was another in that dream, someone else who shared that dreadful past, the 'Other' whose fate was inextricably bound up with his own. They had tangled before and they would again. There could be no escape.
('o')
The darkness took hold of Arthur in the evenings, so he always took Guinevere with him to the tavern as soon as the sun went down. The publican's hearth was warmer and more cheerful than his lodgings. She had never spent so much time in a public house, but soon the regulars had become comfortingly familiar, the old salts in the Seagull, the old 'ladies' in the Mermaid.
The old sailors were jolly, full of incredible stories of the sea, but they had roving hands when the drink was in them. The old girls were kind-hearted and they let her sleep on their customary settle by the fire.
One night at the Mermaid, Guinevere sat in her favourite spot while Arthur fetched two glasses of ale. An old acquaintance, Bible Will, drifted across looking thirsty. Arthur gave him the price of a drink and he came back a moment later, sitting down opposite them.
"He's here", he said.
"The Dutchman?", Arthur snapped, now animated.
"Aye", Bible Will replied, "He came off the Bonaventure this morning and he's been asking around. Taken lodgings at the Seagull. He's putting the word about; cash for news."
Arthur leapt up and dragged Guinevere out of the tavern. They returned to their lodging and he sank into a strange mood, a scowl disfiguring his even features.
After an hour or so he jumped up abruptly and began to gather her things, rolling them into a bundle, and told her that she had better go home. He cursed the night that he had betrayed an innocent girl out of desperate loneliness, and the fear of facing the inevitable alone. He was angry, at what she did not know.
Dismayed, she demanded to know if this stranger was the reason he was in hiding. Did he mean him harm. Had he wronged the man somehow. He laughed sardonically and said that he was not hiding from him; he was waiting for him. He insisted that it would be better if she was not around, but she refused to leave him.
She clung to his neck and said that she could not leave him. He relented and, tossing the empty laudanum bottle petulantly into a corner, he lay down on the bed resigned. She sat by his side quietly for a moment and then asked him again about the sinister newcomer. He sighed and related his story.
As he had already told her, he had been a seaman for many years and had voyaged all over the world. One evening he was in a tavern on the docks of a South African port. Here he fell into conversation with a wealthy winegrower from the hinterland, down at the port to trade his crop. His name was Merlin. They struck up an immediate friendship and played cards into the small hours.
At length Merlin laughingly asked Arthur if he would not need to get some sleep before the voyage out. Arthur told him that he never slept. The Boer said that he was the same, and when he did sleep his sleep was restless.
"Nightmares", Arthur groaned. "Yes, I have them too; dark and dreadful."
"Dark", repeated Merlin, "and haunted by a thousand grim memories."
They caught each other's eye, and in an instant they both knew that they were looking at their immortal foe, that terrible 'Other' of their dreams. Merlin sprang to his feet and backed out of the room, disappearing into the night. Arthur himself fled that unlucky place, like the Devil himself was after him.
TBC
A/N: Hope you're liking it so far. Updating soon.