In My Eyes: The Rise of King Arthur and His Knights

Chapter 1 Rescue

Darkness, and pain, and cold. That was all I had known for... Days? Weeks? I no longer knew nor cared. All I knew was that Mamma and I had been captured in late summer and though it had always been cold in this hellhole, it had only recently become the bone aching, numbing cold of winter. All the clothing I had was my tattered summer shift and there was barely enough of it left to cover what it should.

I curled myself around my aching, dislocated knees and prayed for death to come quickly as I listened to skinny monks chant in Latin, the moans of my fellow prisoners, and the rattle of chains. Tears made new tracks through the grime on my face. I think. I couldn't feel so light a touch anymore.

I looked over at Mamma's decaying body, still lying in the cell with me. They hadn't bothered to pull the "witch" out after she'd died. I longed for the energy to be angry. At least if I was angry maybe I could fight, even as badly hurt as I was. Lethargic hopelessness had crippled me far more than the beatings, rapes, and the most recent damage inflicted on my knees. And all had been done in the name of God. I knew these misguided monks were not of God. Mamma and I were not witches, and our souls hadn't needed saving. Mine still had no need for salvation--and certainly not for their version of salvation.

As I drifted in and out of consciousness, new sounds entered my cold, dark world. Footsteps--heavy ones--accompanied by the jangle and clatter of armor and the creak of leather bindings. And light. I squinted against the light that had flared into existence.

The head monk stopped chanting and began to whine and threaten the newcomers, insisting that they were defiling the temple of God. I choked. Temple of Satan, maybe. This was never a temple of the Most High.

New voices answered the monks. Angry male voices. My heart hammered in my chest. They were speaking Briton. There was smattering of commonly used Latin words, but the thought that worked into my brain was that I could understand them. The fat, piggish Roman, my captor, spoke only highborn Latin when he visited to see if any of the prisoners had 'converted'.

I made an excruciating effort to sit up, pain shooting violently through various parts of my body with every slight movement. It was all I could do not to scream.

"Out of the way!" one of the new voices demanded. There was silence for a moment before he continued, "The work of your god. Is this how he answers your prayers?"

"See if there are any still alive," a second voice said in calm answer to the first's veiled accusation. I flinched at the sudden crash of metal against metal. The following squeak of little-used hinges drowned out my whimper from the pain. One of the newcomers retched.

"How dare you set foot in this holy place!" shouted one of the monks. I imagined spit flying from his mouth with every word, he sounded so angry.

There was a strange sound, followed by a death gurgle.

"That was a man of God!" the head monk cried.

I would have been violently sick, had there been anything in my stomach to come up. I shuddered at the unwanted memory of the things done to me in this 'holy place' by 'men of God'.

"Not my god!" the first of the new voices shouted over him.

"This one's dead." the second voice spoke up, immediately followed by a third.

"By the smell, they're all dead."

"And you. You even move, you'll join him." said a fourth voice right above me that sounded younger than the others and a bit shaken.

More metal clattered. "Arthur!" The third voice. He murmured something else after that, but I couldn't quite hear.

The flame of a torch whipped back and forth in front of my cell. As the light flickered over Mamma's rotting body, I tried to scoot myself closer to the opening and the flickering torch, but the pain made it impossible. The light bearer started to move away, having not noticed me huddled in the corner. "Help me, please!" The sound of my own voice startled me. It more closely resembled the rasp of an old woman than the lilt of a young one.