Searching for Arthur (The Return to Camelot #1)
Donna Hosie
Acknowledgments
For Steve, Emily, Daniel and Joshua, who gave me time to pursue my dream.
With thanks to Suzie Forbes and Victoria Marini, who gave their time to make this better.
I am indebted to Mike Weinstein for his super keen eyes and attention to detail.
To those friends and writers who follow my blog: Musings of a Penniless Writer.
And Harry!
Searching for Arthur was inspired by Roger Lancelyn Green’s King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and many of the characters featured in this novel are taken directly from the myths and legends laid down through the centuries by writers and poets such as Sir Thomas Malory, Charles Williams, Dryden and Tennyson. A few knights, such as Sir Talan and Sir David, are my own invention. I would, in particular, like to point readers to the epilogue of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which is titled Avalon. There is a legend told in Gwynedd, Wales that King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are simply sleeping, waiting for the day when they will awaken to bring glory to Britain once more.
I thought it was about time they woke up!
Chapters
Are you Arthur?
Avalon Cottage
Starlight
Follow the Rabbit
The Lady and the Bell
Five Strangers
Dwarf-Riders
Caerleon
Bedivere Revealed
Decision Time
Lady Slurpy-Titch
A Flash of White
The Physician
Ddraig
A Warrior is Born
Gore
Arthur’s Letter
A Maze of Information
The Army of Blue Flame
M and M
The Falls of Merlin
Look after your Brother
The Day with no Date
Camelot
The Inquisition
The Sword in the Stone Table
Balvidore the Bear
Make the Trade
And the Winner is…
On the Move Again
Five Friends
Chapter One
Are you Arthur?
Mr. Rochester was jumping through the long grass. It made me laugh because he looked like one of those newborn tigers that you see on nature programmes. Mr. Rochester was a floppy-eared baby rabbit, honey-yellow with large white patches of downy fur on his paws and belly. My brother, Arthur, had given him to me for my seventeenth birthday, two months earlier, and I had fallen in love with him instantly.
Mr. Rochester had slept in my room in a box lined with towels. My first mistake was taking the towels that nobody ever used. Stupid me thought they were old ones for mopping up any old mess, but apparently they were “special ones” for guests.
What guests? We never lived anywhere long enough for people to update their address books and actually find us.
My second mistake was using Mr. Rochester as an excuse to not go to the school dance: an event that everyone, apart from me, was obsessing about.
“He’s a baby. He needs me here.” I knew my mother was standing behind me in the garden, but I was intent on watching Mr. Rochester. He was trying to catch an orange butterfly that was almost as big as he was.
“I am not arguing with you, Natasha,” said my mother coolly. “You will go to the dance and that is the end of it.”
“But I don’t want to go.”
“How do you expect to make friends if you don’t even try, Natasha? Look at your brother. He has lots of friends and a girlfriend already.”
“Arthur can go to the dance then.”
“You’re going and that is the end of it. Now put that rabbit back in the cage, wash your hands, and come and try on the dresses Net-A-Porter just delivered. Other girls would be overjoyed to have their parents spend so much money on these things.”
“I’m not going to the dance.” There was no point in shouting. Being louder didn’t make my mother hear me any better.
Mr. Rochester stopped chasing the butterfly and stood upright, like a periscope. He looked like he wanted a cuddle, and so I scooped him up and buried my face into his downy tummy. I could hear my mother’s clicking tongue over the chirping insects.
“I’m sorry little guy. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”
I hated - absolutely hated - putting Mr. Rochester in the chickenless chicken coop, but I needed to get my mother off my back for a while. As soon as she was over me using her special towels, then he would be back in my room where he would be safe.
I kissed his little nose and he nibbled my chin, but his large black eyes looked sad, almost teary, when I placed him on the hay in the coop.
My mother was waiting in the kitchen. She had already placed the antibacterial soap dispenser on the table.
“Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
There. She had said the magic words. The ones guaranteed to piss me off. The ones that could make me disappear. Poof. Gone.
I’ve always been good at running. It’s a skill that was inherited. My parents – the Foreign Office diplomat and the housewife – were professionals. They’d been running for years, although Arthur and I never knew what they were running from most of the time. It could have been job postings, terrorists, or even ghosts.