Knight Life (22 page)

    
“Your fault. How is it your fault?”

    
“I called one of my contacts with the
Daily News
. I asked him to check through Penn's background to find what he could dig up, dirtwise. He owed me a big favor, and he's one of the best muckrakers in the business. Frankly, I'm surprised the
National Enquirer
hasn't snatched him up yet.”

    
“The point, Moe. Get to the point.”

    
“The point is that he did the investigation. Real deep. Real thorough.” Moe turned a dead glance on Bernie. “Know what he found? Nothing.”

    
“Oh, come on,” Bernie said incredulously. “Your man just didn't do his job, is all. Everybody's got something in their past that can be used against them as a weapon.”

    
“This guy is squeaky clean, I'm telling you. My friend checked with everyone from the FBI and the IRS to the Department of Motor Vehicles. Not only does Arthur Penn not have any sort of negative record anywhere—not even so much as a parking ticket or late credit card payment—but he has a distinguished service record in the army. Everything about this guy checks out perfectly.”

    
Bernie took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigar, ignoring Moe's wincing as the fumes filled the car. “Maybe too perfect, you think?”

    
“It has crossed my mind, yes.”

    
“You gonna keep digging on him?”

    
“I'm not exactly sure where to dig at this point. It backfired the first time around, because my reporter friend became so fascinated by Penn that he wound up doing a big spread on him. A lot of people have started getting turned on to Penn. If I get more people looking into his background, with my luck
60 Minutes
will come in and canonize him.”

    
“So what do we do now?”

    
Moe interlaced his fingers. “We start analyzing his proposals, and elaborate for the edification of all and sundry exactly why they are stupid and unworkable.”

    
“Sounds good.”

    
“And in the meantime we can pray that our luck holds out.”

    
“Our luck?” Bernie shook his head. “I don't see—”

    
Moe fixed him with a look. “Penn could be making a lot more hay of this attention than he is. Instead he's playing it close to the chest. He surfaces for a few hours in random parts of the city, pontificates, then vanishes again. It's like he's making it up as he goes along.”

    
“Not exactly the way to make friends and influence people.”

    
“My feelings exactly. Let's hope that we keep it up. The main thing we have going for us is this Penn's utter lack of experience.”

    
“Yeah.” Bernie laughed with a cheerfulness he did not feel. “Can you imagine a guy who makes speeches and then vanishes? Never accessible to the press? What's he trying to do, run a campaign through word of mouth?”

    
“So it would seem. There's one thing that bothers me though.”

    
“Yeah? What's that?”

    
Moe paused thoughtfully. “What if it works?”

A
RTHUR STOOD OUTSIDE
the door to his offices, wrestling with a crisis of conscience. There was a part of him that wanted to take Gwen and hop on the nearest bus out of town. Or plane. Or boat! That would be excellent. A nice long cruise over the ocean, far away from Merlin and his machinations.

    
He looked at his reflection in the opaque glass. Who was he? he wondered. What had he become? For as long as he could remember—and he could remember quite a
ways back—every action in his life had been made because he'd
had
to do it. Not because he wanted to, but because he had to. His was the eternal sense of obligation, and it had begun to take a toll on him after all these years.

    
“Why me?” he said to no one in particular. “Why can't I have a normal life? Why must I always be a tool of some greater destiny'?”

    
“Because that's the way it is.”

    
Arthur looked down. Merlin was standing at his side, looking straight ahead. No matter how many times Arthur saw him, he didn't think he would ever get used to seeing his mentor clad like a street urchin.

    
“You've been dressing down lately, Merlin,” he observed.

    
The young wizard shrugged. “I've always worn what's most comfortable. In this age it's jeans, sneakers, and T-shirt. Where the devil have you been the past week?”

    
“You know perfectly well where I've been, Merlin. There is no way you could not know.” He paused and then said, almost tentatively, “No hard feelings about ... you know.”

    
“Telling Percival to kill me? Oh hell no, why should I carry a grudge about a little thing like that? It's not as if my life is worth anything to anyone.”

    
“Good. I'm glad you feel that way.”

    
Merlin snorted in contempt. “Are we going into the office? Or are you trying to figure out whether you should simply run off with your precious Gwen? Oh, don't look so surprised, Arthur. There's no way that woman can bugger matters that I haven't already anticipated and—frankly—dreaded.”

    
“Then you're living your life in fear, Merlin, which is a sad way to be. Pardon me if I don't choose to do the same.”

    
Merlin said nothing, merely glowered, and Arthur opened the door, feeling for some reason that he had achieved a minor victory. What that victory was, he
wasn't quite sure. But it was something. He swung open the door and was slammed with a blast of noise that was like a living thing.

    
Phones were ringing, people shouting to each other. As he stepped into the waiting area, he saw to his shock that the entire interior of the office had been redone. The partitions between the small offices had been torn down, and now all the square footage stretched out like a small football field. Desks were sticking out in every possible direction; there were about a dozen in all. Each one had a phone, and there was a young man or woman on each phone. Arthur's eyes widened as he recognized a girl from the crowd who had been wearing an NYU sweatshirt ... his first speaking engagement, of sorts. She was the first to glance up and see him, and she immediately put her phone down, leaped to her feet, and started applauding. Others looked around to see the source of her enthusiasm, and when Arthur was spotted, everyone else in the crammed offices immediately followed suit.

    
Arthur was dumbfounded, astounded, and flattered by the abrupt and spontaneous show of affection. He nodded in acknowledgment, put up his hands and said, “Thank you! Thank you all. You're too kind, really.” He leaned down to Merlin and whispered, “Merlin, who are all these people?”

    
“Volunteers, mostly,” said Merlin pleasantly as he guided Arthur into his private office. “Some paid office workers. Word of you is getting around, Arthur. We're going to have to start putting together a solid itinerary for you. Perhaps even explore a series of commercials.”

    
“The packaging of the candidate, Merlin?”

    
Buddy and Elvis bowed deeply as Arthur passed. “We saw the news thingy about you, Milord,” said Buddy. “You looked really sharp.”

    
“Thank you, gentlemen,” Arthur said briskly. “Now ... back to what you were doing.”

    
“We weren't doing anything,” Elvis said.

    
Arthur glanced at Merlin, who shrugged, and looked back to them. “Yes,” he said encouragingly. “But you were not doing it so well.”

    
Buddy and Elvis smiled at one another, quite pleased to receive such a heady compliment.

    
Arthur and Merlin entered the office and Merlin sighed as he closed the door behind them. “I remember a time when you wouldn't have wasted a second with such fools as those two.”

    
“I remember a time when you didn't get your clothes from the youth department at Sears,” Arthur rejoindered. “Times change, Merlin.”

    
Arthur was in his office until eight o'clock that evening, going over plans and itineraries for the next several months. He noticed and appreciated the fact that Merlin was deliberately hanging in the background, letting him run the show without unasked-for advice. And he found his blood really pumping for the first time. The excitement was beginning to build as a plan was formulated. Arthur was fond of strategies, of form and substance. There was no time for the earlier, self-centered fears and frustrations of someone wishing that they were something they could never be.

    
Nevertheless he was glad when the day was over, for he had other things to do ... and other people to do them with.

T
HE CAB DROPPED
him off in Central Park, and he made his way across, lost in thought. This night there were no interruptions from would-be muggers or helpful policemen. In the distance on one of the streets that cut through the park, Arthur heard the nostalgic sound of horse's hooves clip-clopping on the road. By the rattle of metal he could tell that it was a horse-drawn carriage. He drew a mental picture for himself, however, seated proudly on a great mount, his sword flashing, the
sunlight glinting off the shield he held and the armor he wore. It was an image to do him proud.

    
But it was just that—an image. A part of himself he could never recapture.

    
The castle loomed before him, and yet so lost in thought was he that he almost walked right into it. Everyone knew the castle in the middle of Central Park. A complex weather station was situated inside. Whenever early-rising New Yorkers' ears were tuned to their radios, the statement that it was such-and-such degrees in Central Park came from the readings taken there, at Belvedere Castle. Yet a weather station was no longer the only thing occupying the castle.

    
Arthur walked slowly around the other side, looking for a certain portion of the wall that he knew he would find. And sure enough there it was, as it had been the other nights—a small cylindrical hole in the wall toward one stone corner. He withdrew Excalibur, reveling as always in the heady sound of steel being drawn from its sheath. Then he took Excalibur and, holding the hilt in one hand and letting the blade rest gently in the other, he slid the point into the hole.

    
With a low moan and the protest of creaking, the section of the wall swiveled back on invisible hinges. Before him was a stairway, the top of which was level with the ground in front of him, the bottom of which disappeared down into the blackness that was the castle—or at least an aspect of the castle. Arthur was never thrilled about the prospect of going somewhere he could not see, but he knew he was going to have to live with it. He entered the doorway, and the moment he set foot on the second step, the door swung noiselessly shut behind him. He was surrounded by blackness, illuminated only by the glow from Excalibur, which accompanied him like a friendly sprite. “My old friend,” he whispered.

    
He walked for a time, impressed as always by the total silence of the supernatural darkness. Then, several steps
before the bottom, Excalibur cast its glow upon a heavy oaken door. He walked the remaining steps down to it and pushed. It yielded without protest, and he stepped into his castle.

    
He passed through the main entrance hall, with its suits of armor standing at attention like legions waiting for his orders. He entered his throne room and looked around in satisfaction. Everything was exactly as he'd left it, and yet he could sense, somehow hanging in the air beyond his eye but not beyond his heart, the presence of the Woman. He smiled, the mere image of Gwen in his mind's eye enough to bring an adrenaline rush that made him feel centuries younger.

    
There was a painting hanging behind his throne. In it was a representation of Arthur at the Round Table. Seated around it was an assortment of knights clearly engaged in some deeply intense discussion. None of them really looked like the knights Arthur remembered—the depiction of him was recognizable only because of the larger chair. But that was all right, since the artist had doubtless created it centuries after the table and its members were part of the legends rather than living, breathing men.

    
“It's very nice. I've been admiring it for some time now.”

    
Arthur turned and a grin split his face. Gwen was standing in one of the side entrances. She was wearing a simple blue tunic that hung to her knees, and gray leggings. The bruises from earlier had completely disappeared. She ran her fingers through her strawberry blonde hair and said, a bit shyly, “Hi.”

    
“Hi, yourself. Good to see you up and around. I admit, I was feeling just a little nervous.”

    
“And I was feeling a little guilty.”

    
“In heaven's name, why?” He walked over to her and took each of her hands in his. It was cold in the castle, yet she felt warm.

    
“Because I haven't been much of a guest. Most of the
time I've just been sleeping and sleeping and sleeping.”