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  It was time for a break. The head of human resources said how pleased she had been to meet the three of them; she was sure they would all do fine in their new jobs, and then she said goodbye and handed over to the hotel’s assistant staff manager Tom Hughes, whom they’d all met before. As the back of Mrs Elizabeth Morley disappeared from view, Tom indicated that they should take time out for some tea and snacks. He led the way into the hotel’s lounge.

  “Enjoy this while you can,” smiled Tom Hughes. “Staff will not be allowed to sit in here when we are open, and you certainly won’t have time to relax and take it easy soon. We are going to have a big splash campaign in the local and national media over the next week or so and our first day of operations will be to entertain a legion of journalists who will come in and pore over every inch of the place. And mind you are on top of your game when they arrive – if not, they will be sure to print any criticisms. And if that happens, heads will roll in consequence, you can be certain of that!”

  Gwen smiled at the others, giving nothing away. Here was another warning of the high standards that were expected – these people certainly knew how to rub it in on new recruits.

  Freddy voiced the same thought. “Are you trying to frighten us?” he asked nervously, “because, if so, I can tell you it’s working! Mrs Morley has already said much the same thing.”

  Tom laughed. “It’s not just you who are being frightened. We’ve all had the same message rammed into us from the general manager at the top, down to the cleaners and gardeners at the bottom; myself included. You’ll see – we are all together in this, and as a team we are all pulling together too. Don’t be so worried. You will find plenty of help here as you settle in.”

  “Well that’s a relief,” said Victoria. “We are going to need all the help we can get at first until we find our feet.”

  “Talking of gardeners,” said Gwen, “we’ve had a good look around inside the hotel but any chance of seeing a bit more of the grounds outside? Before we get immersed in the details of our job on the front desk, I’d love the opportunity to take some fresh air and have a look at the wider estate.” She was doing her best to look enthusiastic. To be sure, a jaunt around the lawns outside in her high heels had no real attraction for her, but it was a chance to get a breather from the high-pressure environment that was being pushed at her, and maybe also the opportunity to flaunt herself at, and maybe gain some favour from her immediate boss.

  “Sure. When you’ve finished up here we’ll go out and I’ll see if I can find Dai Mervyn for you. He’s something of a legend. He came with the property when World Travellers bought this place. They say he’s as old as the grounds themselves.” Tom laughed again. “Mind, that would put him at several hundreds of years of age!”

  Twenty minutes later, as the sun began to win the battle against the thinning mist, the three novices stood outside on the lawns waiting while their host disappeared in the search for the head groundsman. Alone for a few moments, Gwen had no wish to fill the time with false enthusiasm for the job with these future colleagues. Let those two together get all animated about this fake enterprise, she thought. Give me space!

  She wandered off a little to be by herself. Looking around, her idle curiosity was taken by a movement some distance away where fields stretched down to the woods at the westward limit of the estate. A large hound seemed to be running to and fro, seemingly searching out some scent or other. After a pause when it vanished from view into the woods it then reappeared to start galloping towards a tall, slow-moving figure dressed in black or grey. These two came together and made their way across the fields in the general direction of the hotel: an elderly man, as it turned out, and a large, lively Celtic wolfhound that the man seemed to pay no heed to as it leapt and gambolled about him. Tom Hughes suddenly appeared from beside the hotel and directed the man and his dog up to meet Gwen and her two companions.

  “Gwen Price, meet Dai Mervyn, our oldest, most experienced and most valued member of staff,” Tom waxed expansively. The man in question just snorted.

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr Mervyn,” said Gwen holding out her hand. She wasn’t so sure about his dog: she hated animals that were unpredictable.

  “The pleasure’s mine,” nodded Dai Mervyn, drawing back his dark cloak and taking her hand gently in his wizened paw. He had thin greying hair, a bronze, weathered face with more lines on it than Network Rail and a small, white goatee beard. “Don’t mind Morgan, my companion,” the groundsman grunted. “He’ll be fine when he gets to know you.”

  That monster doesn’t look at all fine just yet, thought Gwen. The big hound had backed off a little and was fixing her with a stony glare, his teeth barely covered in a low growl.

  Dai Mervyn ignored this stand-off and moved past Gwen to say hello to the other two who were waiting to meet him. Morgan the wolfhound did not move. He did not shift his gaze either, Gwen noticed with some discomfort.

  “I’ll leave you with Dai, here, for a while and he can tell you more about this place,” said Tom Hughes. “When you’re done, come back inside and meet me in reception.” He gave a cheery wave and moved off, leaving them all to get to know each other.

  The groundsman walked the three new staff around the side of the hotel to the overflow car park that gave a magnificent view over field, valley and distant forest, the big hound following dutifully at a distance.

  “I’ll not take you down over the meadows,” said Dai Mervyn, “seeing as you’re all wearing decent clothes and you’ll not want to get mud all over you. But you can get a good feel for the estate from up here. You got any questions?”

  Away and out of earshot of the hotel management, Gwen was anxious to prick the bubble of this whole Arthurian sales promotion that had been pitched at her. She was too old now for fairy stories and had been biting her lip throughout the tour so far. But this groundsman character was a local gardener or something and clearly had had nothing to do with the hotel company and all its fantastic designs before they’d bought this place. Was he as sceptical of all this as she was?

  “What do you think of all this about Camelot they are trying to sell here, Mr Mervyn? Isn’t it all a sham? Just a load of rubbish?”

  “Aye…it could be…” Dai Mervyn stopped and turned a beady eye upon his young questioner. “What do you think, young lady?”

  “Well o’ course it is! This place is no more like Camelot than the dump I live in. They’re just trying to make money out of stupid tourists.”

  The head groundsman threw his head back and laughed at how quickly this outrageous young woman was to pour scorn on her new employers.

  “You take care, young lady,” he grinned at her. “Or you’ll not go far with the owners of this place if you persist with that attitude…”

  “But come on, Mr Mervyn. You’re surely not taken in by all the hype, are you? That’s just for the gullible public!”

  Dai Mervyn laughed again. “Now, you look here, my girl. Firstly, the guests who will be staying here in due course are not likely to be so stupid as you think they’ll be…and secondly, I don’t know about the so-called dump you say you live in, but this place has as much right to call itself the site of Camelot as any other.”

  “Sure. Any place and no place could be Camelot!” came the cynical reply.

  The old man looked around at the other two new members of staff. They had said nothing so far and he didn’t know whether the three of them were thinking the same or not. He turned back to Gwen.

  “You young people think you know it all. Seems there’s nothing you can learn now…” He sniffed. “Tis a shame – you live in a world where everything’s bought and sold, where appearances are everything and all is superficial and skin deep. And if you can’t get what you want straight away, what language – woe betide us! No patience. No one makes any effort now to look any deeper…”

  “Well, do tell, Mr Mervyn,” piped up Victoria, “if you think there is some basis for the Camelot story here. You must know this pla
ce so well and have seen and heard much more than the rest of us. We are not all deaf to the lessons of history.” She glanced disapprovingly sideways at her colleague.

  “Well, there’s more to this place than first meets the eye, that’s for sure,” said the old groundsman. “Over the years, several castles have stood here to defend these rich lands. For example, if you look carefully at the terrain below here you can still see traces of how the farming used to be divided in to long strips in feudal times – this was all centuries before the enclosure movement which gave us the patchwork of fields you see today. There are tracks of medieval jousting lists beyond the stables there, then there are the remnants of the forest to the east where the king and his court used to hunt deer and wild boar. You can also find Roman remains in these parts and even, way before that, there’s evidence of stone circles from Neolithic times. So there you have it: a land with a millennia of stories that you people dashing around from here to there today can scarcely guess at.”

  “And Camelot?” asked Freddy.

  “Well, there are lots of places from Cornwall to Carlisle that lay claim to that fabled location, but I’ll tell you this: none have a better right to own that myth than this. Arthur was a Celtic king. He fought Saxon invaders and others to establish his rule and I reckon that was hereabouts. You’ll find few places on earth more fought over than these borderlands between England and Wales. There’re remains of more castles, fortified houses and battlements of one sort and another per square mile in this area than almost anywhere else in the world. Romans, Vikings, Saxons, Celts, Ancient Britons and Normans – they’ve all been here. What with the River Wye to the east and the Usk to the west, the natural harbour of Newport to the south – invaders can reach here easily by boat and there’s been many a battle and much blood spilt defending these lands, I can tell you. And why does the Welsh national flag sport a red dragon across a green field? There’s stories told here that originate well before the Church came and people could read and write. King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are just one. Aye, Camelot is a mythical place; a spiritual place; an ideal that has captured the imagination of many over the centuries. Too right it could have been here: all the elements that go to make up that story can be found around where we are standing right now…”

  The old man’s quiet way, his slow musical accent and twinkling eyes caught the imagination of two of his audience. They were ready to believe that Camelot was more than just a fable and had really been here once. Even Morgan the wolfhound had crept closer and had lain mesmerised at the feet of his master as he had unfolded his tale. Gwen, however, was as cynical as ever.

  “Well, I don’t believe in all this guff – nor Father Christmas neither!” She stood up. “Get off me, you brute!” she brushed aside the wolfhound that had risen up with her.

  The hound, being so roughly dismissed, snapped back at its tormentor. Gwen pulled her hand away quickly but not before the dog had drawn blood.

  “Ow! He’s bitten me!” Gwen cried out more in anger than pain.

  “Tis only a scratch, young lady. It’ll do you no harm,” replied the groundsman. “But you be more careful with Morgan in future. That hound has more about him than you credit him for – he can sense your ill will.”

  Gwen turned and walked off, shaking her injured hand and swearing aloud. “He’ll sense a lot more than ill will if he comes near me again,” she blustered. The fields and creatures around here, she decided, were definitely outside her comfort zone. She was no country girl and this hotel was as far from her urban ideal as she wanted to stray. Re-entering the main building, closing the outside door and shutting off the surrounding estate with its elderly keeper and his mangy, long-haired brute of a dog couldn’t be done quick enough for her. She had had enough of the fresh air that she said she had wanted.

  Tom Hughes breezed over to welcome her back inside. This was more like it, thought Gwen. He was a good-looking executive with an open and friendly manner and was clearly someone of status and influence in her new employment. She switched her smile back on and batted her eyelashes at him.

  “Thank you, Mr Hughes,” she cooed. “I’ve seen enough outside. Time to get acquainted with everything here now.”

  “Fine,” said Tom Hughes. He could hardly miss the show of sex and sensuality that simply oozed out of this young recruit as she moved in his direction. This was not exactly the image the company wanted to project, but he’d withhold judgement for the time being. “Let’s go get the others and I’ll show you your workstation.”

  The remainder of the day was given over to briefing the three receptionists on the specific details of their post. It was broken by lunch which was provided for all the staff at the same hour – again with a warning that such practice would change as soon as the hotel opened. It nonetheless gave the three newcomers the chance to meet others and begin to get to know the people who they would be working with.

  Gwen held herself in and tried to give little away whilst being introduced to the variety of people that staffed this luxury resort – she quickly realised that most had a great deal more experience than she. Despite what she had written on her CV, Gwen’s only knowledge of the hotel trade had been a couple of stints serving behind the bar in her local pub. She was a pretty girl, however, and had long ago learnt that a flashing smile and innocuous conversation could compensate for a lack of talent in other respects. It had got her so far, at least, she thought.

  Later that evening, it was to the King Offa again that she retired to meet with her friend Paula and recount her first day’s impressions of the new job. This time the place was only half full.

  “Well? Any decent men there?” Paula settled down with drinks for them both and got straight to the point.

  “The head porter kept giving me the eye, as did the assistant chef…good-looking sort, too…but I cut ‘em both dead. I’m not interested in their type. Now, the assistant general manager – Tom Hughes – is more like it. He’s late twenties, early thirties, I reckon. Smart dresser, got a real way about him and drives a flash Jaguar. I could go for him.”

  “Married?”

  “I guess so, but that don’t matter. I’d give him a run for his money!”

  “I bet you would too. Has he shown any interest?”

  “Not as yet. I’ll work on it!”

  Paula laughed. “What else can you tell me about the place? You seen inside any of the rooms?”

  “That was the first thing they did. Gotta know all about it if we gotta sell it, see. The King Arthur suite is something, I can tell you. Spared no expense in fitting that out – right down to the fancy creams, oils and shampoos in the bath-and-shower suite. All top of the range. I nicked a few, soon as I could. They’ll do well in my loo if I can stop my mother from using ‘em.”

  “Oooh, do get me some if you can.”

  “Should be no problem. They’ll have masses of them in the housekeeper’s stores and I’ll get in there soon as no one’s looking. But like everything else in that hotel – money seems to be no object in setting the place up. You should see the main banqueting hall behind the reception desk where I’ll be working. Imposing is an understatement. Big stone fireplace; massive oak beams; and they are still working on it: flags and banners are going up overhead with the names and emblems of who they say are the Knights of the Round Table. It’s all a load of balls, of course, but that’s what I’ve got to sell. They’ll be dressing us up next; I mean the front of house staff, when the media come to the grand opening!”

  “Oh, Gwen – you in fancy dress like some lady-in-waiting? That’ll be fun”

  “No way! A bloody lady-in-waiting? Get me to behave like some brainless bimbo in a fairy tale? They’d better not try. I heard staff talking about it over lunch today. A big joke it was, trying to guess who was going to be dressed up as what. They reckon that even Dai Mervyn will be squeezed into something.”

  “Dai Mervyn? Is he still there?”

  “Yes. Do you know him?”


  “My dad does. He works for a construction company that was restoring the country house well before it became this hotel. Dai Mervyn, he’d say – been up on that estate for donkey’s years. Knows every wild herb and remedy known to nature; makes his own brew and could drink any of builders under the table. There’s respect for you!”

  “I don’t know about that. He knows the history of the place well enough, though he can’t sell me on Camelot any more than the rest of ‘em. But he has a dog the size of pony up there – look what he did to me!”

  Gwen held up her hand. The scratch at the end of her middle finger had swollen a little in the course of the day.

  “You’d better put something on that,” said Paula, “looks like it might be infected.”

  “Nah, I’ll live. It’s really nothing. Let’s get another drink in, it’ll be time to go soon. I’ve got to be back in the hotel bright and early, they’re going to show me all the software I’ll be using.” Gwen didn’t have much patience for computers, she knew, and mastering the booking-in process for hotel guests was going to be headache. She couldn’t afford to be late tomorrow, she thought ruefully.

  Gwen slept badly that night. Dreams of knights on horseback, strange woodsmen and enormous wolfhounds kept racing through her head. That, and a growing throbbing in her hand where she had been bitten, disturbed her sleep. She woke up early and noticed the scratch on her finger was even more swollen and now looking discoloured. She wished she had applied some antiseptic on it earlier. She showered carefully, using the shampoo she had stolen from the hotel, and tried to use her hand as little as possible. She squeezed some antiseptic on her finger after drying off. Better late than never, she reckoned.

  Breakfast was hurried. Gwen didn’t want her mother noticing anything – she was tired of all the fuss and moralising that never stopped coming from her. It was a wonder she had survived so far. For the umpteenth time, Gwen thought that she’d leave home as soon as she could afford it but she cursed her luck that that was not possible yet. She’d never held down a job long enough, and anyway there were a hundred and one clothes, shoes, electronic playthings and iPhone bills to pay for that prevented her from putting any real money aside.