“But . . . you know it’s just a church bulletin, Father Crombie!” Benjamin protested.
“Yes, I do,” he smiled, “but the only thing that makes your little sheet of paper money, and mine worthless, is that everyone believes they’re different here and here.” He pointed first at his head, then at his chest. “Money is the biggest fairy tale you ever heard! Yet, just because we all believe in it, money is, sadly, more real to many people these days than you or I are.”
Joby sort of got what he meant, but he couldn’t see what it had to do with Camelot, and said so.
“Yes, well . . . what I mean to say, Joby, is that, just because a place like Camelot exists only in our minds and hearts at present, doesn’t mean it isn’t real, or that it can’t be as solid as this church someday. If everyone believed in it as you do, Joby, it would soon be at least as real as money.” He smiled. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful!”
“You mean, Camelot could come back?” Joby asked excitedly. “Like King Arthur’s s’posed to?”
“Oh, I’m sure it could,” Father Crombie sighed, “if only people dreamed more wisely.”
Joby fell silent, eyes wide but hardly seeing. As if a door had opened inside him, the whole quest suddenly made sense! Maybe Arthur had sent him to bring Camelot back—and the devil didn’t want that! That would explain why Arthur couldn’t help him ’til he won and why Camelot was doomed if he failed. Revelation surged through Joby like a heady explosion!
“Are you well, child?” Father Crombie asked, leaning forward in concern.
“Yes,” Joby said. “I just . . . What if the devil didn’t want Camelot to come back?”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” Father Crombie said, still looking oddly at Joby. “It’s an interesting question, though. What makes you ask it?”
Filled with his own fierce purpose now, Joby ignored Father Crombie’s question, and asked his own instead. “Father Morgan already told us that to fight the devil I had to make sure I never took anything from him, even a piece of bread, no matter how hungry I was. Do you know anything else about fighting the devil?”
Father Crombie sat back, gazing all the while at Joby. “Who is Father Morgan?”
“We rode out here yesterday,” Benjamin said. “But you were at the . . . somewhere else all day, so we talked to Father Morgan instead.”
“Here?” Father Crombie asked in surprise. “There is no Father Morgan here. . . . And I went nowhere yesterday.”
“He said he was just visiting,” Joby added, sure now that it had been Merlin. Just visiting. It was funny if you knew the secret.
“Perhaps,” Father Crombie mused. His gaze became probing. “I’d be interested to hear what else he told you, Joby—if you wish to say, of course.”
Joby recounted what he could recall, omitting his conviction about who Father Morgan really was, of course.
“ ‘The price of failure’?” Father Crombie asked when Joby had finished. “Those were his exact words?”
Joby nodded.
“And that’s all he had to say about it?”
Joby nodded again.
For a time Father Crombie sat in silence, looking at Joby with bemused concern. Then he said, “Do I gather that you plan to fight the devil for the return of Camelot?”
Joby couldn’t hide his alarm. He hadn’t meant to tell Father Crombie that. He should have asked his questions more carefully. He looked to Benjamin, who looked just as worried and confused as himself.
“Don’t worry, Joby,” Father Crombie reassured him. “I meant what I said about not betraying your secret, which I think a very fine one, by the way.”
“So . . . can you help us?” Joby said, not happy about the addition of a third party to their secret, but seeing no help for it now.
“I’d be happy to try,” Father Crombie replied.
Seeing no reason anymore not to ask, Joby pointed at the golden cup he’d noticed earlier, and asked, “Is that the Grail?”
Benjamin rolled his eyes and looked embarrassed.
Father Crombie looked at the cup, then blinked at Joby. “Do you know what the Grail was, Joby?”
“Arthur had a magic cup that could do things and cure people,” Joby answered. “Nothing bad could get near it.” He gathered up his courage and added, “If that’s it, I thought . . . maybe . . . Could we use it to fight the devil?”
Father Crombie’s kindly smile widened, but he looked almost sad as well.
“Joby, there are so many, many things we should discuss, but Benjamin’s parents must be waiting, and there are places I must be soon as well. Would you two consider coming back to see me later this week perhaps, when we all have more time?”
“We could come next Saturday,” Benjamin suggested. “Couldn’t we, Joby?”
Joby nodded.
“For now then,” the priest said, “may I just add a little advice of my own to what this Father Morgan gave you?”
“Sure,” Joby said.
“Thank you. . . . First of all, I’m not certain it’s helpful to be as careful as Father Morgan seems to have suggested. To thwart the devil we must be good, certainly, Joby, but not too good.” He smiled. “The best way I know to fight the devil is to love God with all your heart, and love life as deeply as you can, for life is what God loves.” He smiled affectionately. “I can tell that you are already very good at loving life, but that may become much more difficult if you give yourself no permission to fail at all, Joby. We must all fail a little now and then. If Father Morgan did not make that clear, I’m sure he meant to.
“Secondly, I would recommend laughing at the devil whenever possible,” Crombie added. “It is said the devil cannot stand to be laughed at.”
“But what if he sends people to fight you?” Benjamin asked. “You can’t just laugh then, can you?”
“Defeat your enemies with kindness,” Father Crombie replied. “Hate feeds hate; only love slays it. That is why God wants us to be great lovers, not great punishers. It is punishment enough to be a servant of the devil, justice enough to be the delightful people we are.” He grinned.
Struggling to choose between Merlin’s advice and Father Crombie’s, Joby asked, “Did Geezez fight the devil the way you’re saying?”
“Yes, He did,” Father Crombie replied.
“But didn’t He lose?” Joby asked.
Father Crombie looked confused, then sighed, “Oh yes: the price of failure. . . . Come, boys. Let’s go see that crucifix before you leave.”
They followed him out to the altar and turned to gaze up at the terrible sculpture.
“In a way, what Father Morgan said was true,” Father Crombie explained. “That is the price of failure, I suppose; but not His, Joby. Ours. We would hardly hang a statue of God’s failure right here in His own house, would we?” Father Crombie smiled. “So why do you suppose this awful image is here?”
“I don’t know,” Joby said, glad that someone was finally going to tell him.
“Have you ever heard how God brought His Son back to life after He’d been dead for three days?” Father Crombie asked.
Joby gaped, and shook his head. “Is it true?”
“I believe it.” Father Crombie nodded. He pointed to the kingly statue high above the crucifix. “That one up there is of God’s Son after He had risen from death.”
“That’s Geezez up there too?” Joby asked in surprise.
“I told you,” Benjamin muttered.
“But . . . Father Morgan said it was just a dead bishop!” Joby exclaimed.
“Did he!” Father Crombie said in obvious amazement.
Joby was more confused than ever. Surely Merlin would not have lied. Had Father Morgan not been Merlin? Why had he winked then, when he said he was just a priest?
“But . . . if Geezez didn’t stay dead, why don’t you get rid of that one then?” Joby asked, pointing to the crucifix. “Why not just keep the good statue?”
“We keep them both, Joby, because neither has any meaning wit
hout the other. You probably don’t understand what it’s like to be hopeless. I hope you never do. But there are people who lose everything they ever wanted, even the power to hope for it. They long for another chance, but they think it’s just too late. Well, can you think of any time when it’s more too late than after someone’s dead?”
Joby shook his head.
“Yet that is precisely when God helped His Son,” Father Crombie said. “You see? God waited until anyone could see it was far too late to help His Son at all. Then God helped Him anyway. That is hope, even for the hopeless.” Father Crombie nodded at the crucifix. “That’s why we keep this horrible statue hanging there, Joby. God’s Son lived for everyone, but He died so the hopeless would know it’s never too late for God to help them. You may be glad to know that yourself someday.”
Joby could barely manage his swirling thoughts. Only moments before, his mission had finally seemed clear. Now everything was mixed up again.
“So you see, Joby, the devil lost that fight—not Jesus.”
“Hey, Mom! Dad!” Benjamin called, seeing his parents in one of the big doorways at the back of the church. “We’re almost done!”
Benjamin’s parents waved to Father Crombie, who smiled and waved back before turning to Joby again. “The important thing is this, Joby: what God and His enemy both want is your heart. It’s your heart that’s most important, not the rules, whatever Father Morgan might have said.”
Sitting quietly beside Benjamin as they drove home, Joby could not get Father Crombie’s last words out of his mind: It’s your heart that’s most important. Father Crombie’s advice seemed the same as Arthur’s, but Father Morgan’s seemed a lot like Merlin’s. How could Merlin and Arthur disagree? All the way home, Joby’s head hurt from trying to untangle it, and strangely, so did his heart.
“It was a bishop, you know-it-all little prig!” Lucifer shouted, dashing the bowl of water from his desk. “You’re the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”
In fact, the bishop in question had been a particular favorite of Lucifer’s, with whom—or on whom, more precisely—he still dined occasionally. “God’s risen Son, indeed!” Lucifer muttered in disgust. That moribund lump of funerary sculpture was to the Creator’s risen Son what the pretentious bishop who’d posed for it was to God! But wise Father Crombie knew so much better!
Sadly, anything Lucifer could have done to prevent the meeting might have tipped his hand too badly; and he was wise enough to know that the entire war mustn’t be jeopardized even for such an important battle. He’d been stunned when Joby’s father had allowed the boy to go. He had thought that variable sown up securely, but no; love had intervened! God seemed to have built an endless series of these absurd gags into the universe, and right now Lucifer was less amused than ever!
Someone in Joby’s family, or Benjamin’s, could have died, of course. That certainly would have forestalled their little expedition to see Father Crombie. But Lucifer didn’t have the boy’s measure well enough yet to know which way such a jolt would launch him. Father Crombie, on the other hand, could have had a heart attack without much impact on Joby at all, but that was too much to ask of the cosmos on its own, and, irksomely, the decrepit old meddler was too well protected for Lucifer to have arranged it himself. More angels hovered day and night around that old nuisance than Dante himself could have invented names for. There were back doors, however, even through defenses like Crombie’s, and a whole week was plenty of time.
“We’ll see how you love life in some God-forsaken little outpost far, far away from your beloved seminary,” Lucifer snarled. “Laugh at the devil then, Crombie!”
4
( The Roundtable )
“Ugh!” Laura exclaimed softly, lifting her bare knee from the poor crushed snail very carefully, lest the dead leaves crackle and give her away. Fourth-grade boys kept secrets about as neatly as they kept their rooms, and no one had thought to look behind them for spies as they’d raced out to this wide clearing among the trees for their top secret trials. Once she found out what it was that boys could do so much better than girls, she meant to prove she could do it better than any of them.
Sweeping the long auburn hair out of her eyes, Laura crouched forward to see more clearly through the clump of foliage in which she was hidden. The boys had stopped roughhousing to listen as Joby gave some kind of speech she couldn’t quite hear. Then they all threw their arms up with a loud whoop and holler. Laura’s face scrunched in consternation. She couldn’t tell what was happening. She’d have to get closer.
Before Laura could even look around for some better hiding place, she was alarmed to see Joby running across the meadow directly toward her. Had they seen her? She crouched down even farther as Joby trotted right up to her hiding place, but instead of calling her out and making her leave, he just draped a red bandanna across the thin screen of branches between them, and sprinted back to rejoin the others across the field. There was hardly time to sort relief from confusion before all the boys were charging toward the scarf! Making herself as small as she could, she watched in growing panic as the hollering pack raced toward her, Joby and Benjamin in front with Bobby Lehan just ahead of Duane at the rear. At the last minute, Benjamin pulled ahead of Joby and crashed into the thicket, making Laura cower and scrunch her eyes shut, but Ben still didn’t notice her. He just grabbed the scarf amidst much hooting and groaning from the other boys, as Joby slapped him cheerfully on the back. Then they hung the scarf on the bush once more, and everyone trotted away to do it again.
Running? Laura thought, indignant with relief. That’s all it took to be a knight? She could run! A lot faster than Duane Westerlund! Scooting quickly back behind a safer bush as they prepared to launch their second race, she watched in less and less impressed silence as Joby won the next race, and Kyle Evans the third.
When they’d finished racing, they all went back to the field’s far end where Joby handed his watch to Peter Blackwell, pushed the red bandanna into his back pocket, and lit out for a large pine tree at the edge of the clearing. After waving his arms at Peter, he jumped to grab the lowest branch and dangled for a moment, struggling to kick his legs up around the thick arm of the tree. Then he was aloft, shimmying higher, hoisting himself from branch to branch, up and up until it made Laura nervous to watch. Even the boys had grown quiet by the time he reached the very top, which swayed frighteningly as he tied the bandanna to a small branch there. Then he came down, seeming almost to free-fall from one handhold to the next before jumping easily to the ground.
Peter called out something that brought noisy shouts of approval from the other boys, but, to her mounting frustration, Laura still couldn’t tell what he’d said. The shouting increased as Benjamin walked to the tree and climbed quickly up to touch the bandanna before descending almost as recklessly as Joby had. Another unintelligible announcement from Peter Blackwell brought a second round of excited shouts.
As other boys took their largely more timid turns at climbing to touch the bandanna, Laura realized how she could get closer. Very near them, a large oak tree hung well out over the clearing. From up inside it she’d be able to see and hear everything. The problem was how to get there without being noticed. This difficulty was soon resolved, however, when Joby tied the red bandanna to his arm, and ran from the field while the others just stood listening to Peter count quite loudly. Laura still wasn’t sure what they were doing when, with a wild shout, everyone charged into the trees after Joby.
Since they’d left their shirts in a pile right beneath her oak tree, Laura was sure they’d come back, and when they did, she’d be hidden practically straight above them. Climbing trees wasn’t something she’d ever done really, but it hadn’t looked too hard.
After listening to make sure they were really gone, she crawled from hiding, ran to the oak tree, and grabbed an easily reachable branch. A moment later, having skinned one knee a little on the tree’s rough bark, she was up.
“I’d mak
e just as good a knight as Duane Westerlund,” she muttered contemptuously.
One more hoist up, a short crawl, and she was at the base of the long branch that hung out over the clearing.
It hadn’t looked this high from below. For the first time, she hesitated. How on earth, she wondered, had they climbed clear to the top of that pine tree without having heart attacks? Well, she thought crossly, if they can, I can! She clung to the branch and began to wriggle on her belly away from the tree trunk. Halfway out it began to bounce and sway unpleasantly. She stopped to fend off a wave of panic before inching forward again. When she’d gone as far as she dared, she lay still for a moment, then sat up very carefully to straddle the branch. She looked down. Her position was good. Her confidence was not.
That’s when she noticed the ants. A thick dark trail of the little crawlers moved along the branch like miniature rush hour traffic, passing right beneath her! Or they had until she’d blocked their path with her body. Now they scattered everywhere in agitation; down her legs, up her arms. Yuck! No improvement in view or acoustics was worth this! Conceding defeat, she started turning around.
Suddenly, there was shouting from the woods nearby. Before she could react, Joby burst into the clearing, leaves tangled in his hair, his shirt torn in back, followed close behind by Benjamin and Kyle, then all the others. Joby ran straight to the trunk of her tree, slammed his hands against it, and shouted, “Safe!” He started laughing between gasps for breath. “You guys are the lousiest bunch of boar hunters I ever saw!”
“We had you!” Benjamin exclaimed. “Grabbin’ your shirt should count!”
“I said, I’d make it to the creek and back,” Joby insisted happily, beginning to catch his breath. “And that’s what I did.”
“You were lucky!” Kyle insisted.
“It’s not against the rules to be lucky.” Joby smiled.
The Book of Joby Page 9
