To Break a Curse

Chapter 11

The next morning, Rose woke up with mixed emotions: her heart was still soaring about Oliver, but she knew that she would have to tell Tom about what she had discovered.

She wondered if he would be relieved to finally find out who his family were.

She wondered if he would even be surprised about it – she had been less surprised than she thought she would be.

She wondered what he would feel about staying in Camelot; he didn't have a family at home, and would surely make new friends here.

Rose decided to stop wondering and find out.

After she had washed and dressed, she went to Gaius' chambers where they all normally met for breakfast each day. However, when she got there, she found a hung-over Will was the only one at the table.

'Morning,' he yawned.

'Where is everyone?' Rose asked as she helped herself to a bowl of porridge.

'Oliver and Tom had to go to work early, Gaius has gone to buy some supplies, and I have no idea about Torrent and Storm,' Will rubbed his eyes. 'How're you not hungover?'

'I only had two ciders,' said Rose smugly.

Will grunted and yawned again.

Rose took a deep breath: she had to tell someone soon otherwise she would burst...

A few minutes later, Will had stopped yawning and was sitting up straight, all traces of the hangover gone.

'How the hell did you work that out?' he demanded. His mind was racing; everything Rose had said made sense and he realised that he had suspected something like this from the start but had been too worried about entertaining the idea.

'Have you told anyone else?' he asked.

Rose shook her head, 'like I said, I only properly worked it out yesterday at the ball.'

'When are you going to tell him?'

Rose raised her eyebrows, 'and it has to be me because...?'

Will chuckled, 'because you're good with people.'

Still arguing good-naturedly, they made their way to the stables. Because everyone knew they would still be expected at work on time the day after the ball, most people had not drunk too much alcohol. Even so, Will spotted a few stable hands who looked decidedly worse for wear.

Just after lunch, when the two of them were mucking out yet another stable, Will suddenly gasped, 'if the king and queen can do magic... Do you think Tom can too?'

***

'Saw you with Rose...' Tom grinned at Oliver as they continued to plough their way through the piles of washing up.

'Shut up,' Oliver tried to stop himself smiling.

'Not Cara, then?'

'No,' said Oliver shortly. If the look on her face last night was anything to go by, he was not looking forward to seeing her today.

He could now see that Cara was quick to become jealous and had been consistently rude to Tom. Rose, on the other hand, never really got involved in spiteful gossip (he knew that from going to school with her), was friendly towards everyone and had always managed to make him laugh, even on bad days.

They were just finishing their lunch break (Cara had completely ignored Oliver), when chef called Tom over.

'Take this to the guards in the armoury,' he instructed, pushing a basket of what looked like food wrapped in cloth towards him. 'It's up two flights of stairs on the third right.'

Tom turned and raised his eyebrows at Oliver, who shrugged: he had no idea where it was either.

'And be quick,' chef reached for his ladle; Tom ran for the door.

When Oliver was washing up again a few minutes later, he suddenly remembered what Gaius had told them – not to be in the castle by themselves. Oliver did a quick calculation and decided that if Tom wasn't back in five minutes, he would go looking for him.

***

Tom reached the top of the last flight of stairs, panting - the basket was heavier than it looked.

He took a right, and then three more rights, then a left, and came to a dead end. Tom tried to re-trace his steps but thought he must have taken another wrong turning because found himself at the top of a different flight of stairs. After wandering around for a little longer, he came at last to a door.

There was no answer when he knocked, so he tried the door handle.

The room he entered looked like a child's nursery: it had a cot in one corner, toys scattered on the floor and clothes folded up in drawers. Tom looked at everything closer and saw cobwebs covered everything; it was as if the room had been frozen in time.

Something drew Tom further into the room. Looking at the toys on the floor and the bedsheets, for a reason he couldn't understand, he felt tears spring into his eyes. He rubbed them away and turned to look out of the window-

'Thomas, look out of the window, look – can you see your father on his horse? And there's your mother waving him off-'

-Tom reeled from the flashback and sat down on the bed, sending up a cloud of dust.

His heartbeat slowed, but his mind continued to race. He picked up a toy rabbit from the floor and stared at it – it looked familiar. No, it was familiar; it had been his, twelve years ago.

He supposed people never remembered much from when they were two, but these sudden memories were enough to tell him that he was the son of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere.

He was the missing branch of the family tree.

***

Oliver put down the plate he was drying. Tom had been gone for too long; he was going to have to go and find him.

Poking his head out of the washing up room, Oliver saw chef had his back to him. Oliver crept to the kitchen door.

He froze when Cara spotted him and opened her mouth to say something. Oliver looked at her pleadingly, motioning to the chef, and then the door, miming that he would only be a few minutes.

Cara stared at him for a second or two before nodding curtly and turning away.

Sighing with relief, Oliver slipped out the door and made for the first flight of stairs he saw.

He only got halfway there before he heard a shout from behind him.

He turned to find a group of boys about his age sauntering up to him. They looked hungover from the Winter Ball and were spoiling for a fight.

Ah, no... Oliver thought of quite an impressive list of swear words and reeled them off in his head.

'Aren't you one of the ones who were caught in the stone circle?' One of them pointed his finger at him.

Oliver gritted his teeth, 'no.' He ran through the swear words again for good measure.

Another boy leaned closer to him and said, 'yeah, this is one of them alright.'

Oliver could smell the drink on him.

'I'm really not,' Oliver said firmly. He made to run but two of the boys grabbed him and shoved him onto the floor.

As Oliver tried to stand up, he received a kick to his stomach and let out a cry of pain. He was then hauled upright and pinned against the wall. He tried to throw them off but received a punch in reply. More followed.

He wished he could do what Rose could do and become scary instead of scared, but Oliver felt the knot of fear grow...