“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said with a nervous half-laugh. Though she had no memory of him, Vera instantly felt like she knew him. This might work.
“Goddammit!”
Vera jumped at Merlin’s voice, cursing close behind her. “Where the hell is Arthur?” His glare burned into the man.
Vera tensed and turned back to the man holding her shoulders. This was not Arthur?
The stranger saw the shock on her face. He dropped his hands from her arms and stepped toward Merlin. “May I have a word?”
Merlin’s steady demeanor, which Vera had witnessed only minutes ago, swung to palpable anger. She supposed, considering the gravity of the situation, it was understandable. The unknown man, on the other hand, genially guided Merlin away, an arm slung around his shoulders like an old friend. Vera couldn’t hear their conversation but could see from his gestures and posture that the man was working to diffuse Merlin’s ire. She watched them without any attempt to hide her interest. If there was some reason Arthur couldn’t show up for a horse ride after she’d left her entire life behind, Vera felt entitled to know it. She’d assumed she would be the only obstacle to this plan’s success, not anybody else. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder how Arthur felt about it, nor had she considered until this exact moment that Guinevere and Arthur’s relationship might have been an unhappy one.
When Merlin turned back to Vera, the other man tailing a step behind him, it seemed his efforts had not been in vain. Merlin still seethed, but the aura of fury had dissipated.
“It appears I am urgently needed. I’ll be riding ahead. Sir Lancelot will escort you to the castle. You’ll be safe with him.”
He wheeled about and hurried into the stable without another word, leaving Vera alone with Lancelot.
“Shit,” she said under her breath. She was as clueless as she’d ever been about herself and this world, a maddening combination of concerned and offended by Arthur’s absence, and wildly embarrassed by her interaction with the man she now knew to be Lancelot. He rocked from his heels to his toes, expression light and unfazed.
“Is something the matter with Arthur?” she asked.
“Oh, he’s fine,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Are you hungry? We’ve got a decent ride ahead of us. Maybe three hours.”
Vera sighed, questioning if Merlin had intentionally couched the difficulty of this whole journey. To add to it, she actually was famished. After only toast and tea post-run and frantic bites of stew between serving tables at lunch, followed by having her existence called into question, Vera was wholly depleted.
“I really am,” she said.
“Good, because I’m starving.” He offered his arm to her, which she accepted before they walked back toward the evening market. “There’s a stall with good hand pies up here. Ale or wine?”
“Oh, erm, ale,” Vera answered. Water might have been a better option, but she wasn’t sure if it was even readily available, and the shame of naivety kept her from asking.
Lancelot guided her through the growing crowd beneath the magical lanterns. He made a beeline for a particular food stall. While he spoke with the old man preparing the food, Vera slipped away from him and back into the street, careful to keep Lancelot in eyeshot. This version of Glastonbury was scrambled up, brightly lit, and magically buzzing. It was clearly the town she knew so well, but now she saw it as if reflected in a jeweled looking glass. The instinct to grab her phone and take a picture was so deeply ingrained that Vera even reached for where her trouser pocket should have been before she remembered it wasn’t there. That was going to be stranger to get used to than the new name.
Vera felt Lancelot’s presence at her elbow. He had a tankard in each hand with a steaming hand pie balanced on top and watched her with shrewd interest. She hurried to relieve one of his hands, taking a pie and a tankard, and followed when he maneuvered toward one of many long, shared tables with benches on either side.
Vera had only just sat down before she took as large of a bite as could be deemed polite and shook her head as she chewed. The insides were so scorching hot that Vera had to indelicately hold it in her mouth and suck air in through her teeth.
“What were you looking at back there?” Lancelot asked.
She could barely taste the pie filling beneath the blazing heat but would swear for the rest of her life that it was delicious. Once she managed to swallow, she answered. “It’s so different from how it all ends up in my time. You only find magic in stories, and—I mean, this is our history. I learned about this time period in school, and we got it so wrong. What the bloody hell happened between now and then?”
“Nobody knows,” Lancelot said, suppressing a grin with a sip of his ale. Vera only vaguely registered that it was likely in response to her colorful language. She was more focused on what he’d said. She hadn’t expected him to have an answer. “Merlin can’t access the time between now and nineteen hundred.”
“How do you know that?” Vera asked.
“I’m very smart, and I know a lot of things,” said Lancelot after swallowing a sizable mouthful. “The magic is limited.”
“Really?”
“Yes, so many things.” He leaned forward, eyeing Vera with a mock intensity. “Ask me anything.”
She laughed, which drew a pleased smile from her companion. “No, I meant—”
“I understood what you meant. There’s a full block on the next thirteen hundred years that magic can’t penetrate. There’s no knowledge beyond that,” he said as if that was the end of it.
“Oh.” Vera fell silent as she finished her pie and sipped her ale, trying to organize what she’d learned and what she still needed to ask. It was no small feat. It felt the more she was told, the less she knew. She was holding onto her tankard tightly, her body tense with the effort to stave off panic. Deep breath. Set it all aside. You’re fine.
She didn’t have to work at it long as her eyes snagged on one man, markedly out of place in the midst of celebration as he scrambled through the crowd, his brow slick with sweat and his sights set squarely on Lancelot. Vera’s fear deflated with the distraction as she listed her head to the side. Lancelot followed her gaze as the man reached them, dropping both hands onto the table to steady himself.
“Sir Lancelot!” he said between heaving breaths. “I heard you were here. Bloody fine timing, too.” He hastily shifted his focus to Vera, and she reeled with the unfamiliar sensation of being noticeable. “I’m so glad you’re well and returned, Your Majesty. And please, pardon my intrusion. The matter is most pressing.”
“Is it the thieves?” Lancelot asked. The atmosphere around him shifted before Vera’s eyes. His features somehow sharpened and the twinkle of his friendliness hardened in an instant. The Lancelot across from Vera now was rather fearsome.
“They’ve been spotted approaching from the eastern road. I’ll call for soldiers, shall I?” The man straightened, evidently eager to take action. “High time these boys were tossed in the stocks.”
Lancelot sighed, seeming oddly reluctant, but he gave a nod, and the man turned to go. Then Lancelot’s eyes lit, and he caught the retreating man by his arm. “Wait. Have they harmed anyone?”
“The thieves? No,” the man answered quickly. “Nothing more than scrapes and bruises, thankfully.”
“Hm.” Lancelot drummed his fingers on the table. His eyes flicked briefly to Vera. “Garth, could you give the queen and me a moment?”
Garth, tense with his urgency, huffed a breath and pursed his lips.