Knight Life (23 page)

    
“Why do you think that is?”

    
“Because,” and she let out an unsteady sigh. “For the first time in ages, I feel ... safe.”

    
“Then I take your slumber as a compliment, and not any sort of commentary on my ability to be a host.” He laughed and draped an arm around her shoulder as they walked toward the dining room.

    
“I'm still having trouble ... believing this place,” she said slowly. “It's like I'm in a dream. You live here all the time, when you're not at the office? And ... and how ... ?”

    
“It's Merlin's doing,” Arthur told her. “He designed it to be a sort of ... home away from home. Oh, I have an apartment in the Bronx, for appearance's sake. But this is where I prefer to spend my time.”

    
“Why the Bronx? Why not Manhattan?”

    
“A reasonably priced Manhattan apartment?” He snorted. “Some things are beyond even Merlin's magic. Is your bed comfortable?”

    
“It's unbelievably comfortable. And it's so quiet here, but not, you know, quiet in a spooky way. Quiet in a friendly way. You can just lie back and listen to nothing, and enjoy it.”

    
She turned then and faced him. Arthur was amused to recall that once upon a time his Guinevere had had to almost crane her neck to look at his eyes. Now they were practically on eye-to-eye level. Arthur mused that if he disappeared into a cavern for another millennium, he would be a midget when he came out.

    
“Arthur, where are we?” she asked intently.

    
“Why, we're right outside the dining room.” With a sweep of his arm he indicated the table, which was already set. As always there was enough food there to feed a regiment—where it came from, Arthur never knew. It was just there when he needed it. With the bounty available,
sustenance for his “castle mate” had been no problem at all.

    
She shook her head. “No, that's not what I'm saying. I once took a tour of Belvedere Castle, and I know for sure that there was nothing like this. Yet you say that we're in that castle. I find it so hard to believe, and yet—”

    
“Gwen,” he said firmly. “I never lie. Not to you. Not to anyone. To lie is to diminish one's own feeling of self-worth.”

    
“I know, but then ... how?”

    
“You saw how when I first brought you down here a week ago.”

    
“Yes, I saw the mechanics of it. But I didn't understand. I mean,” she stepped away and shook her head in puzzlement, “I saw what you did with the sword, and the door swung open and the darkness. But none of it really made all that much sense or registered. I think part of me believed that I was actually dreaming.”

    
“In the middle of the day?”

    
“Why not?” she said reasonably. “After all, many of my daylight hours have been nightmares anyway. Arthur, I don't understand how any of this works.”

    
“I told you. Magic.”

    
“But, that's no answer. It doesn't explain anything.”

    
Nodding slowly, Arthur crossed to his throne, pulling at his beard as he searched for a way to explain it to Gwen. He went up the two steps to the throne and paused there a moment. Then he said. “Gwen, how do you turn on a light?”

    
“What, you mean like when you enter a room?” He nodded. She looked at him suspiciously. “Is this a trick question? Like ‘How many Jewish American princesses does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

    
“What?” he asked in utter confusion.

    
“No, I guess not. Uh, okay.” She leaned against the stone wall thoughtfully. “To turn on a light, you just flick the wall switch.”

    
“Right. And what happens?”

    
“The light comes on.”

    
“Yes, but why?” He leaned forward and regarded her with infinite patience. “Why does it come on?”

    
Now Gwen was confused. “Because you turned on the light switch. Arthur, if this is your idea of an explanation, it really sucks.”

    
“Gwen,” he said patiently, “what is it that makes the light go on when you turn on the switch?”

    
“Electricity, I guess. It makes the bulb come on.”

    
“How?”

    
She stamped a shapely foot in irritation. “Who cares? I'm not an electrician, for heaven's sake. You turn the switch, and it activates some doohickey, and the doohickey feeds electricity into the what chamacallit, and the light comes on. It doesn't matter to me so long as it works.”

    
“Precisely.”

    
“Precisely what?”

    
Arthur sat in his throne, looking bizarrely incongruous in his three-piece suit. “When Merlin arranged this little sanctum for me, he said it would be someplace to which I can return at night and feel that I belong, after spending a day feeling like a living anachronism. And he was right, that is how I do feel, despite my best efforts to acclimate to this odd little civilization of yours. Merlin was quite pleased when he put this together. He even tried to explain it to me—something about transdimensional bridges and relative dimensions in space and other nonsense. And I said to him about New Camelot exactly what you say to me about electric lights—who cares as long as it works?”

    
“But Arthur, you don't understand!”

    
He frowned thoughtfully. “Odd, that's just what Merlin said.”

    
“Electricity and lights—that's all science. This is ...” She waved her hands around helplessly. “This is magic!”

    
“The only difference between science and magic, Gwen, is that scientists doubt everything and magicians doubt nothing. That's why magicians get so much more done. And if scientists acknowledged that magic existed and put their considerable talents to discovering what made it tick, a great deal more could be accomplished in this world. But scientists have decided that magic does not and cannot exist, so naturally they don't go out of their way to try and find the reasons for it.” He shook his head. “Very short sighted on their part.”

    
Gwen put her hand to her head and sat down in a comfortable armchair. “Arthur, you don't seem to realize that I'm a rational human being. I don't believe in magic. I don't believe in things just appearing because you need them.”

    
“Oh no?”

    
“No.”

    
“That chair you're sitting in? It wasn't there a moment ago.”

    
She sprang from the chair as if propelled by springs. Her hands fluttered to her mouth, and her voice was a combination of surprise and hysterical laughter. “This is crazy!”

    
“Why?”

    
“Because I was always taught to be a very rational person!”

    
“Faugh!” Arthur said dismissively. “Rationality always gets in the way of common sense. Common sense tells you that no other explanation is possible for what you see. But when you try to rationalize the unexplainable, you run into problems.” And as she delicately tapped the arms of the chair, Arthur added in a softer voice, “Like us.”

    
She looked over to him and saw the way he was looking at her. She felt her cheeks color and looked down. She couldn't remember the last time she'd blushed.

    
“Arthur.” She looked up at him tentatively. “Arthur ...
are you really him? I mean, the original King Arthur?”

    
“Yes.”

    
“But ... but it's so difficult to believe.”

    
“Ah-ah,” and he put up a finger. “You're rationalizing again. Didn't I tell you how that gets in the way?”

    
“But if I believe what you're saying,” she said, walking slowly around the perimeter of the room, “then I would also have to accept the part about my being a reincarnation of your Queen Guin ...” Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened in surprise. “You know, Arthur, my name—Gwen Queen—that sounds a lot like Queen Guinevere, doesn't it?”

    
“By Jove, you're right!” He sagged back in the throne. “Fancy that.”

    
They smiled at one another, and then Arthur stepped off his throne and walked slowly toward Gwen. She stood there, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. He came very close to her, then paused and ran his hand gently across her face. She closed her eyes and sighed, and a little tremble rushed through her.

    
“Arthur ... we were married once, weren't we?”

    
He shook his head. “No. We were married always.”

    
“But I hardly know you.”

    
“You've always known me,” he said softly. “We have always been. We shall always be. Not time, not distance, not lifetimes can do more than momentarily interrupt the coexistence we are meant to share.”

    
He felt the softness of her hair, and she said, “Arthur?”

    
“Yes?”

    
“Have you really been locked in a cave for eleven hundred years?”

    
“Thereabouts, yes.”

    
She whistled. “You must be the horniest bastard on the face of the earth.”

    
The expression on his face did not change, but he said, “Gwen, would you mind waiting here a moment?”

    
“Uh ... sure.”

    
Arthur stepped back and went into another room. She pricked up her ears and heard the sound of pages turning. She heard him mumble “Horn ... horned ... hornet,” like someone skimming through a dictionary to find a word he did not comprehend. She stifled a desperate urge to giggle. There was a momentary pause in the page turning, and then she heard the book close. She fought to keep a straight face but felt the sides of her mouth turning up involuntarily.

    
Arthur came back into the room and faced her, looking deadly serious. “Gwen,” he said with great solemnity.

    
“Yes, Arthur?”

    
“You're right.”

    
They both dissolved into laughter.

T
HEY SAT OPPOSITE
each other at the dinner table, with the easy comfort in each other's presence that it takes most couples years to achieve, if they ever do.

    
“I don't know,” Gwen said, picking delicately at the drumstick she was holding in her small hands. “It's like, my whole life, I've felt that ... that I don't deserve happiness.”

    
“Guilt from another lifetime, perhaps?”

    
She moaned. “Oh, great. Other people, they get to blame it on their parents. My parents weren't wonderful. I just figured I could pin it on them, which is sort of a grand tradition of modern man. But no, no, not me. I have to carry mistakes from a couple of centuries ago.”

    
“Mistake or not,” Arthur said calmly, with the air of a man who had long since resigned himself to things that once had pierced his heart, “my queen, Gwynyfar, and my best friend, Lancelot, did the only thing they could. Love is something so powerful that not even Excalibur could cleave it. My kingdom rose and fell on emotion. It could have been no other way.” In an offhand way he added,
“And it was ten centuries, by the way. Not a couple.”

    
“And where have you been ... all that time? You and Merlin?”

    
“Merlin had been imprisoned in a cave by a temptress, Ninivae. And I ...” He paused. “Are you sure you want to hear this on a full stomach?”

    
She lay down the drumstick and interlaced her fingers. “I can take it if you can.”

    
“Very well. I ... after my final battle with my bastard son, Modred, left me with my skull split like an overripe melon ... I was brought to an island called Avalon. It was a place of healing. And when they had done all they could do for me in Avalon, my semiconscious body was also placed in a cave, a different cave from Merlin's. It was one I think he prepared far in advance, as if knowing I would need it some time. That wouldn't surprise me in the least; there's very little that Merlin doesn't anticipate, I think. It was ensorcelled, temporally sealed so that I would not age while I resided within. Once I recovered, I stayed there, waiting ... until such time that I was needed.”

    
“I need you,” Gwen said, and then quickly corrected herself, “I mean ... we all do.”

    
“Of course,” he said. Then he stared at her for a long moment and said, “Gwen ... Jenny ... that's what I used to call you at ... certain times ... Jenny ... I know this is a good deal for you to comprehend. You've borne up extremely well under it, considering the—well, the oddity of the circumstances. Yes, I was your husband ... but I recognize that it was many lifetimes ago, and the lifetime of another woman. Her spirit may live on within you, but you are your own woman with your own concerns and desires. I will not do anything to make you uncomfortable. I have treated your departure from your previous domestic situation, and your stay here, as if you were recovering from a devastating battle. You may stay here as long as you wish, and you may depart this place when
you wish. And you may regard me ... in whatever capacity you desire. All matters, all choices are in your hands.”