TIME MACHINE CHAPTER TWELVE
Connie was pleasantly surprised by how quickly she learned to ride a horse. Her steed was a gentle mare called Snowstorm, who seemed to take to her straight away.
Ben, being Ben, fell in love with all the horses. They didn't all love him back but eventually he bonded with a black horse called Midnight, and seemed to be less accident-prone when riding.
Dylan, sadly, didn't do as well. He had several attempts at riding until finally he managed to stay on the back of an old horse called Basil.
Poor Ethan would have come last, had this been a competition. He eventually managed to ride on a donkey called Looby. As Ethan was medium height and slim, the donkey didn't feel overburdened and knew Ethan was a pushover for carrots.
Ethan became just a little sulky when Connie decided that Jess should ride behind Cal on his horse, Warrior.
"You don't want her falling off Looby" explained Connie.
"I don't know why you're making Jess go anyway. She's better off staying behind and waiting for us."
Connie lost her temper.
"Really? Did you not hear how that brute threatened Rita? You seriously want Jess to stay behind with that lot?"
Ethan saw her point and apologised nicely.
Alas, there was to be a lot of apologising on Ethan's part later.
Next day they reluctantly said farewell to kind Sir Martin.
"Aye" he commented, "'Tis a pity that such an evil man has a lovely lady for a wife. I fear for Lady Margaret sometimes."
The tears in his eyes spoke volumes.
The party rode for a while and then Ethan cajoled:
"I'm terribly thirsty and there's an inn."
Maybe the party should have been warned by the fact that the inn was called the Saracen's Head. But Connie realised that the group needed to rest and that it was a long way yet to Denham castle.
The innkeeper was attracted to Connie and spent a long time chatting to her, while his pretty daughters, Ruth and Aoife, enjoyed talking to Dylan, Ben and Cal. For a short while they lost sight of Ethan, but they saw him happily drinking with men in Crusader uniforms.
Eventually the group excused themselves, ready to move on.
They were just in time to see Ethan being dragged away by the men in uniforms.
"Mrs Beauchamp! Help!"
Connie and her friends hurried after them and learned the full story.
Ethan had naively drank the recruitment ale and had unwittingly signed up for life in the army. It looked as if Ethan was off to the Crusades.
Connie was tempted to leave him to his fate, but the pain in Cal's eyes stopped her.
"I'll volunteer instead" Cal said earnestly.
"You've volunteered your life for his before, haven't you?" Connie asked shrewdly.
"He's my baby brother!"
Connie did allow Cal to ride after the soldiers and he seemed to be riding for a long time until he heard:
"We are going off to war,
Give the Saracens what for.
Break their heads and break their hearts,
Eat their food and bonk their tarts."
Ethan was snivelling in a corner at the makeshift camp as Cal tied up his horse and approached the soldiers.
"Sorry, mate, draft-dodger here drank the recruitment wine. He's ours now."
"He drank in error. I beg you, let him come back with me. We are on a quest to save a lady."
"Which lady?" asked the dubious Sir Leonard Lyons.
"Lady Ethelfritha Fairhead."
"Blimey, mate, you've got guts, I'll say that for you. But we need compensation for the wine he's chugged."
Cal handed over a golden pendant, the last of the artefacts they had for trading.
"That's a beauty! Done!"
Sir Leonard pushed Ethan over to Cal, who gave his irritating young brother a punch.
"Could you tell us who's holding Lady Ethelfritha and where she is?"
"I can tell you that it's not a 'who', it's a 'what' that has her. Begin with Denham Castle. Must dash."
And with that, the Crusaders marched off, still singing their obnoxious song.
Connie couldn't help herself. She boxed Ethan's ears.
"That's for being so greedy with that wine. Thanks to you we're a day and a half behind on our quest. And Sir Charles has Rita – MY Rita – prisoner!"
"I'm sorry."
"Oh you will be, Ethan. If Rita dies I shall kill myself and then come for you." On seeing Ethan's smirk she added:
"Whichever way round works!"
At first Ethan wanted to laugh at this, then a vision of a ghostly, bloody, vengeful Connie steadied him.
Dylan and Ben silently took in the 'My Rita' comment.
"Okay, you've had your punishment, we'll let it drop but we need to get on."
Connie even ruffled Ethan's hair; he did look genuinely devastated by what he'd done.
They reached Denham Castle by the next evening. They were all exhausted and none of them felt that they had the strength to climb through an open window.
Then, to their amazement, they noticed that the drawbridge was down. They walked in quite easily to a room where a banquet was taking place.
"No wine" Cal said sharply to Ethan.
Then the whole party gasped in nausea and horror. The knights and ladies began to writhe in pain and after far, far too long, collapsed and died.
In the corner, a vicious laugh came from somebody hidden by a curtain.
Poison. Mass murder.
Everybody clung together, then feared for their own lives as the corpses became skeletons which surrounded the travellers threateningly.
Ben's mind stabbed about for a phrase he'd once heard, a phrase that helped lay ghosts to rest.
"In the name of Jesus, how can we help you?" he cried. The phrase was close enough.
The skeletons backed away and became ghosts again, looking as they did before the massacre.
"Sir Charles Fairhead murdered us all for nothing but a cruel game," one of the ladies said.
"Spread the news of our murder far and wide for us. Because here's the really vile bit – Wathelbert here was hung, drawn and quartered for the crime and he was innocent."
A sad young man in the corner nodded.
"I was. I'm Sir Wathelbert Kent – at least, I was."
"So can you all rest in peace now?" Dylan asked.
"They can. I have a bone to pick with that murdering Fairhead."
"He has my lady friend prisoner and will kill her within the month if we don't rescue his sister and take her back to Fairhead Castle," Connie told them.
"You can destroy Fairhead and save your lady friend if you can trick him into summoning my ghost" Wathelbert told Connie.
"But we should rescue his sister, she's done nothing wrong." Ben was adamant.
"Ethelfritha is a week and a half's journey from here, then you would need to get back again. But don't fret, it can be done if you don't waste time in between. She's up in the Garcia caves and someone – or should I say something – is guarding her."
"What?"
"Think winged. Think claws. Think fire breathing."
"A DRAGON?" Dylan might have been forgiven for wondering what insane world he had stepped into.
Ethan, however, was looking thrilled.
"We did Dragon Studies before our school had to close through lack of funds. Hey, a real dragon!"
"You can persuade it not to devour any of us" Dylan snapped.
"Well, I hate to break this up but my friends here want to move on, and you have a quest to fulfil," Wathelbert reminded them.
"I'm sorry for what happened to you" said the kind Ben.
"Water under the bridge, lad. You've all freed us and we're grateful."
All the ghosts except Wathelbert vanished in a silver light.
"Now I'll point you towards the Garcia caves, and don't stop for anything to eat or drink."
He suddenly vanished.
"Oh bugger, that wasn't supposed to happen. Just keep moving to the left and you'll see the signs for the caves. Now, about that dragon…"
But it was too late. He'd vanished.
Leaving the travellers to face their most frightening mission yet.
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