Wally laughed. “Promise.” He took another look at the hotel. “I’ll go in first. They probably won’t tell me what room’s she’s in; I’ll have to call her from the lobby. Come in right after me but don’t stand too close; stand by the stairs – or the elevator if there is one – and as I pass you I’ll let you know what room she’s in. You can wait until you see us coming down to the dining room, then go up. There won’t be any rush if we’re eating.”
“Okay. Um…why does it matter if anyone sees us come in together? Nobody knows who we are.”
Wally grinned. “It probably doesn’t. But we’re in Scotland. James Bond was born here. And we are facing a supervillain bent on taking over the world, so…why not a little Bondian intrigue just to keep things interesting?”
Ariane sighed. Boys! No, that wasn’t fair. Wally! “All right.”
“Right, then. Here goes.” Wally looked both ways along the street, although there hadn’t been a car in all the time they’d stood there, then crossed the cobblestones, still shining wet from the day’s rain. He disappeared through the big wooden door.
Ariane waited a few minutes, and then followed him.
The lobby of the hotel looked about as she’d expected – lots of dark wood, heavy beams in the low ceiling, big leather chairs, crossed swords above the enormous fireplace. A smell of roasting meat that made Ariane’s mouth water came from the left, through a heavy-timbered arch, while from the other direction came much coarser talking and laughter; presumably, the pub.
Wally stood at the desk, talking on a white courtesy phone. He put it down, and walked toward the stairs. “306,” he said as he passed her.
Well, that’s easy to remember, Ariane thought. It was the main Saskatchewan telephone area code.
Wally disappeared up the red-carpeted stairs. Ariane sat down in one of the big leather chairs by the fireplace and pretended to read an old copy of The Scots Magazine, which, she saw with some amazement, had first been published in 1739. The issue, from February, focussed mostly on Robbie Burns; other articles included an interview with Billy Connolly and something entitled “Ten things you cannae miss.” It was, she thought, the most Scottish thing she had ever seen.
She got so interested in the Billy Connolly interview that she almost missed the one thing she really didn’t want to miss, which was Wally and his mom coming into the lobby. She watched them go into the dining room, and sighed, wishing she could follow them into that meat-scented heaven. But her task lay elsewhere.
Wally having placed the idea in her head, the James Bond movie theme played in the back of her mind as she trudged up the stairs to the third floor. She found Room 306 at the very end of the hall, which, like the outside of the upper two storeys, could have been in a Travelodge in Moose Jaw for all the Scottish character it displayed.
She wondered how Wally had managed to ensure the door wouldn’t be locked. It certainly looked properly closed; but when she pushed, it swung inward without resistance and she saw a plastic bandage preventing it from latching shut.
Good thinking, Wally, she thought, impressed. Not that Wally Knight’s resourcefulness should come as much of a surprise after everything they’d been through. How many times had he saved her or the quest by now? She’d lost count.
The room was surprisingly large, probably due to its being at the end of the hall. It had only one large bed, plus a couch, a couple of chairs, a coffee table, and, of course, a desk.
A stack of books and papers teetered on the coffee table. Ariane crossed to it, wishing she’d thought to ask exactly what “Grandma’s book” looked like. But she supposed it wouldn’t be too hard to recognize.
It certainly wasn’t – it was right on top. Family Stories of the Brays and the Knights, read a label pasted on the outside of a black loose-leaf notebook.
Ariane picked up the notebook and started leafing through it. It consisted of typewritten pages, with a few yellowing photos hand-pasted here and there. Even though she had probably an hour before Wally and his mom came back from the dining room, she worried how hard it would be to find the story of Great-Grandpa Knight – but in fact it was in the very first chapter.
My husband’s father, Ebenezer Alastair Knight… she read, and had to stop for a second right there. Ebenezer? Really? She shook her head and carried on. …was from Scotland and came in 1892 to Cannington Manor where there was an attempt to make a proper British village, which didn’t work so well on the Canadian prairie as you can imagine! He was one of what they called the bachelors because they were young unmarried men which mostly accounts for why they did more carousing and drinking than they ever did learning to farm like they were supposed to but fortunately for my husband and eventually me he didn’t stay a bachelor he met my husband’s mother a nice German girl Laura Umstattd in Carlyle one day in 1901 and they got married within six months they hit it off so fast.
Ebenezer told a lot of stories about the days in Cannington Manor like the time he and Peter Prescott went out to the Beckton Brothers’ big house called Didsbury in a wagon to go fishing and had a little too much to drink on the way and got stuck in the mud and had to… Ariane skimmed over that one, and a couple of other stories of what had passed for outlandish “shenanigans” – sure enough, Grandma had called them that – more than a hundred years ago. Then her eye was caught by the word “treasure,” and she paid closer attention again.
Ebenezer told me he hadn’t really come to Saskatchewan to learn to farm he had come because he had a secret treasure he had to keep hidden away though he never told me from whom.
Funny Grandma Knight knew when to use “whom” but couldn’t punctuate, Ariane thought, then felt a little guilty; Grandma Knight had probably had no more than an eighth-grade education in a one-room school. She kept reading.
He never would say what the treasure was just said it was something that had belonged to his Mama whose maiden name was Eleanor MacPhaiden and rightly a MacPhaiden should have it but it had come to him. Then he said he’d already hidden the treasure away where no one would find it but someday he’d be with it again. I asked him many times what it was but he never did say right up until his dying day which came in 1946 and although he lived in Weyburn by then he was buried back in Cannington Manor in the cemetery of All Saints Anglican Church where he used to attend and about the only thing left of the old town to this day and when my mother-in-law Laura died six years later she was buried there too.
But I’m getting ahead of myself because here I am talking about Ebenezer’s funeral and I haven’t even told you about when I met him when James took me to his folks to meet them. That was in…
Ariane closed the book, heart pounding. A MacPhaiden family treasure. Wally was right – it had to be the hilt of Excalibur!
She carefully put the book down on the coffee table again, trying to make it look exactly as it had before. She’d go down to the dining room, catch Wally’s eye, give him a sign, they could talk again, figure out their next move…
“Hello, bitch,” came an all-too-familiar voice from behind her. Ariane’s heart skipped a beat, then she turned to face the new arrival standing in the just-opened door.
Flish!
•••
Wally had been terrified the last time he’d spoken to his mom. He discovered as he climbed the stairs of the Claymore Arms that nothing had changed. If anything, it was worse this time. From her point of view, he’d run out of the Great Hall to retrieve Flish and simply never come back. She must have been frantically worried about him ever since. How could he explain where he’d been for the past few hours?
She didn’t answer the phone when Alex called, he reminded himself as he paused at the top of the stairs to take a plastic bandage out of the first-aid kit in his backpack, tucking it into his pocket so it would be handy. She might not even be in there. In which case we can just figure out a way to break in, and…
But when he knocked on the door of Room 306, he heard her call, “Who is it?”
He cleared his throat. “It’s Wally, Mom.”
Dead silence for an instance. Then he heard a rustle on the other side of the door – probably Mom peeking through the peephole. That was followed by an audible gasp, almost a shriek, and then the door was flung open.
“Wally!” Mom grabbed him and hugged him. “It is you! Oh, God, Wally, I thought you were dead, I haven’t heard anything since you called your father that one time, and that was months ago!”
Wait, what? “But, Mom,” Wally said cautiously, “you saw me at the castle.”
“Castle?” she said, her voice muffled. She straightened. “No, I didn’t…do you mean you saw me at Castle MacPhaiden? You were there?”
Wally’s mind raced. “Have you talked to Rex Major recently?”
Mom straightened, wiping her eyes. “Why, yes, he called me a little while ago – he’s flying back to Toronto and wanted to make sure I have everything I need for this project of mine he’s funding. Why?”
“I…saw him at the castle,” Wally said. “That’s why I didn’t come to you there. I didn’t want him to see me.” Half of that was true, at least.
Mom clearly had no memory of their earlier meeting, of the argument with Flish, of him running out after her into the rain, and therefore of him not coming back. That could only mean one thing:
Rex Major had heard her account of it, and then Commanded her to forget.
Anger roared up inside him, and most of it was his, even though the shards were close enough, downstairs with Ariane, that he knew they were feeding it, too. But for once he welcomed the sword’s bloodthirsty single-mindedness. Kill your enemies, that was Excalibur’s solution to everything, and the thought of Rex Major forcing his mother to forget she’d already been reunited with her son made that solution seem like a pretty good one. First head I lop off with Excalibur will be yours, Merlin, Wally snarled silently. A part of him recoiled from that, but it was a much smaller part than it used to be.
The phone rang. Mom ignored it.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” Wally said. He was pretty sure he knew who it had to be – Alex MacPhaiden, worrying how he was going to explain to Wally’s mom how her son had shown up on his doorstep with a girl and then vanished into thin air from his kitchen. Wally had been trying to come up with a lie to cover that, not surprisingly without much success. “We slipped out a secret passage you never even knew was there and managed to catch a ride with a guy who drove two hundred kilometres an hour,” was the best he’d come up with.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to put it to the test. Mom said, “Let it ring. You’re more important. Where have you been? What’s been happening to you?”
Wally sighed. They’d already had this conversation once, back in the castle, and he remembered it, even if his mom didn’t. Well, at last I’ll be working from a script, he thought. “I’ve got so much to tell you, Mom, but…can we go get something to eat? I’m starving. I’ve been…hitchhiking, and I haven’t had much money, and…”
“Oh, of course, Wally.” Mom looked stricken. “I’ll just grab my purse.”
She turned back into the room, and Wally quickly went to the door. He pulled the plastic bandage from his pocket, pulled off the tabs, and slapped it over the door latch, and then held the door for his mom as she came back toward the hall, standing so she couldn’t see what he’d done.
“Make sure the door closes, Wally,” she said.
“I will.” And, of course, it closed just fine…
…it just didn’t latch.
They headed down the stairs. Ariane sat by the fireplace, apparently reading a magazine – okay, really reading a magazine; for a minute he thought he’d have to go over and tap her on the shoulder to get her attention –”Excuse me, miss, do you have a Scotch mint?” he’d say – but she looked up just in time. He let his gaze slide over her, and then followed his mother into the dining room, to once again carefully not explain exactly how and why he’d disappeared, and no doubt to once more hear how she blamed herself and how hard everything had been for everyone, and probably to tell him once again how wonderful Rex Major was being to Flish and what a great friend of the family he was, and he just hoped that at that point he didn’t throw up, because he really was starving, and it would be an awful waste.
Thinking of starving – and also, unfortunately, of throwing up – made him think of Ariane. He wasn’t sure exactly how he would justify to his mother asking for a doggie bag – was that what they called them here? – but he had to get food to Ariane somehow.
He wondered where Flish was. He’d been afraid he’d see her again, but if his mom wasn’t mentioning her, maybe she’d been made to forget her, too, in which case he didn’t want to bring her up anymore than he wanted to bring his dinner up.
They had a very strained conversation that really did proceed pretty much exactly the same as the last one, but was made literally more palatable by the addition of a very nice steak. Wally had just gone through the “Tell me about this project you’re working on” part of the conversation, while very carefully avoiding the topic of Great-Grandpa Knight, when he heard a sudden ruckus from the lobby. One word made him twist around in his chair: “Flooding!”
Ariane! he thought. Something’s gone wrong!
A hotel employee, the girl at the desk Wally had spoken to when he first came in, appeared in the entrance to the dining room. “Excuse me,” she called in her lovely Scottish accent, “is Jessica Knight in…ach, there you are.” She hurried over. “I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,” she said in a low voice, “but there’s been a plumbing malfunction in your room. None of your personal items have been damaged, but I’m verra much afraid we’ll have to move you.”
“Oh, dear,” Wally’s Mom said. She glanced at the waiter, but the desk clerk waved him away.
“Your meal is on the house,” she said. “Management’s compliments by way of apology for the inconvenience.”
“How sweet,” Mom said. She stood up. “We’d better get up there, Wally.”
“I’ll be right up, Mom,” Wally said. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
Mom hesitated. “All right,” she said. “Don’t disappear on me.”
Wally didn’t say anything, because, once again, he didn’t want to lie to his mom – but he’d just seen Ariane appear in the lobby, waving frantically at him.
No chance of a doggy bag now. He grabbed the last two buns left in the breadbasket and ran to her.
Chapter Ten
Grandma’s Book
Flish stared at Ariane. Ariane stared at Flish.
“So you didn’t melt away in the water like the Wicked Witch of the West after all,” Flish said. “Dammit.”
“That’s cold, even for you,” Ariane said. “Since that would have meant your brother melting away, too.”
Flish laughed. “Don’t try that. Rex told me Wally would have been fine.”
“He did, did he?” Ariane said. “Same as ‘Rex’ promised to send help for him on that path on Cacibajagua, but really left him to die?”
“He didn’t…” Flish began, but Ariane could hear the doubt in her voice, and remembered Wally had told her the same thing at the Castle.
“Yes, he did,” Ariane said. “Flish…Felicia…I don’t know why you hated me on sight, but don’t let that blind you to the fact Rex Major couldn’t care less what happens to Wally. He wants the shards, and he’d like to have an heir of Arthur to wield the sword once it’s put back together, but that’s all you are to him – a tool, a means to an end, like Wally was before. Wally wised up to what he’s really like, and now he’d be happy to see Wally dead. If he ever decides you’re no use to him anymore, he won’t care any more about what happens to you.”
Flish’s fists clenched. “Shut up. I won’t listen to your lies.”
“You know you can’t stop me from leaving this room.”
“Because of your magic?” Flish sneered. “How’d that work out for you at the castle?”
Arian
e frowned, suddenly wondering if Flish had a point.
“What I want to know is why you’re in this room to begin with.” Flish’s eyes flicked to the coffee table. “Wait…that’s that book of family stories my Grandma Knight wrote. The one that has the story about great-grandfather Knight’s ‘treasure’…” Her eyes widened. “It’s not the Holy Grail, it’s the hilt of Excalibur! Rex was right. There is a family connection!”
And with that, Ariane decided their little tête–à–tête had gone on long enough. Though she was still woefully low on energy, she had enough to reach for the nearest water…
…the toilet tank.
She couldn’t see it, off to Flish’s right in the bathroom, but she didn’t need to. Maybe she couldn’t use the shards to transport Flish against her will, but to her relief, Flish’s mere presence wasn’t enough to stop her using her other powers. The water exploded out of the top of the tank, carrying the lid with it. Both lid and water smashed into the wall behind Flish, who yelped and spun around – giving Ariane an opening to grab Grandma’s book and run past her, not into the hall, but into the bathroom.
“Give that –”
Back, Flish’s shouted sentence presumably ended, but Ariane had already plunged her hand into the toilet bowl and vanished.
She popped up an instant later in the fountain pool in the village square, stumbled out, ordered the water off herself and the book, and ran for the Claymore Arms. She pounded up the steps and into the lobby just as hotel employees charged up the stairs, presumably to deal with the flood she’d just caused on the third floor.
Wally was in the dining room, standing at a table with his mom. Ariane waved frantically at him. His mom turned and, not paying the slightest attention to Ariane, hurried for the stairs.
Wally hurried over to Ariane instead. He held out both hands, a bun in each one. “Best I could do,” he panted.
Ariane took one bun, put the book in Wally’s freed hand, and then took the other bun. “I had to take it,” she said. “Flish was there and figured out I was after it.”
Door Into Faerie Page 10
