With the exception of Bennett, who sat with Fox and got quizzed on his various plays, the group stayed quiet when they were in the wagon. Lance was focused on polishing his knife; Maddie was sure it didn’t need any more polishing, but it was a distraction, and Maddie was more than happy not to talk.
After a little over an hour Bennett and Fox took a break. “You’re both nervous. I can tell,” said Fox. Lance glanced up from rummaging through his pack.
“That’s perceptive,” said Lance. “You figured that out by yourself?”
“Lance,” Maddie said sharply. He sighed.
“This isn’t exactly the most foolproof of plans,” said Lance. “There are about fifty ways this can go wrong and that’s only if you don’t think too hard about it.”
“It’ll work,” said Bennett. “The plan is flexible. It can change to fit anything that gets thrown our way. It’s all a matter of execution.”
“Flexible,” growled Lance. “That’s just another way of saying we don’t know what to expect. I tell you, it’s madness. I don’t like it.”
“Then why are you doing it?” said Maddie, exasperated.
Lance looked at her. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Maddie sighed.
“You shouldn’t be so worried,” said Fox suddenly. Maddie nearly jumped out of her skin. She had completely forgotten that Fox had been listening. “We are not the first to go on a quest for the Pendragon. We will not be the last. And we certainly would not be the first to succeed.”
“I’m sure for each of them there’s at least a few that died horribly trying,” Maddie grumbled to herself. Fox looked at her.
“A long time ago, a group of men completed a mission for Arthur,” he said, “and for most of the journey they did not even know what it was…”
CHAPTER 19
Sacred Cargo, by R.C. Mulhare
Archivist’s Note: What follow are excerpts from a journal written in the form of letters written by Lawrence G. Maguire, Pvt 1st Class, Third Army, to his then-girlfriend Mary Patricia Reilly. Names of places have been redacted for security reasons by the U.S. Army.
Late Winter, 1945
Dear Mary Pat,
Just got a new posting. Got pulled off my previous convoy with the strangest message from Sarge: took me aside from unloading a truck in [Redacted] in the midland part of France. Asked me the strangest question he’s ever asked me: asked me if I’m pure of heart. Seemed like the craziest thing to ask a soldier, but Sarge is Sarge and if he asks you how high you can jump, you show him how high. I told him the truth, I’ve only got one lady waiting for me at home (and that’s you, sweetie) and I don’t do anything more than smile and nod to the pretty girls in the odd cafes I’ve been to with some of the guys in the squad. That I try and go to Mass every time the Chaplain offers it, not just on Sunday, and that while I haven’t had to kill any Germans myself, I’ve prayed for the souls of the dead soldiers we’ve seen, and I’ve given some of my food to the hungry kids we find in the villages. He told me to get right with the Lord if I had anything to get off my conscience, because I’d been recommended for an especially sensitive posting. Asked him what it was; he gruffly told me I’d find out soon enough. The two MPs who’d come with him escorted me to their waiting staff car and drove me to field headquarters in an abandoned farm house. Asked them if they knew what Uncle Sam needed me to do, but they told me I’d find out when I got there, that they weren’t authorized to tell me much.
Once in the house, I met my new commanding officer, tall, dark, handsome fellow with an easy smile but something thoughtful about the eyes. Introduced himself as Captain Lance Duloc, good man, commands your respect without demanding it. Met my other squad mates, a kid from Wales named Piers who looked like he’d just come from the sheep farm, a Scottish guy named Borland, who had an honest to God Robin Hood bow and arrow on his back—he took one look at me, said I looked like I hadn’t many postings behind me but that I’d do—the fifth guy, Lynch, a dour-looking English guy, didn’t say much but he looked like he didn’t think much of me or the rest of the company.
Cap got right down to business, said we had a sensitive cargo container to transport, a wooden box containing a valuable piece of art; Lynch spoke up, asking why we had to nurse-maid a piece of art in the middle of a war? Cap said we had to protect it, per Allied high command, on request from a Spanish contact that wanted to remain anonymous. Borland growled at Lynch, “Not yer place to reason why, laddie.”
“Ours is but to do and die?” Lynch asked, giving Borland a stiff sort of smile. Cap got us in line, told us we had a duty to perform and so we went to secure the truck we’d need.
That included loading the truck, a canvas-topped affair that had seen some scuffles given the bullet marks in the paint, piling several boxes and bales of damaged uniforms and equipment around the one box. Guess they needed it for camouflage. Good way to keep the Germans from snooping in it, in case we got waylaid by any errant patrols. Given the condition of some of the stuff, you’d have to be pretty desperate to want any of it. Found the chaplain and made my confession to him: told him I had a new posting and it had me a bit flustered, given the way Sarge had informed me. He assured me I was going where I was needed and that in time, I’d find out why.
A local priest blessed the truck and us. Piers made a clumsy joke about baptizing the truck, which made me smirk and which got a good-natured growl out of Borland. That done, we boarded the truck, Piers in the driver’s seat, with me riding shotgun and Cap, Borland and Lynch following in a half-track. We merged with a convoy heading north and west toward [Redacted] sur [Redacted], where we were supposed to drop off some cargo at a depot there (mostly the junk to be sent back to the states for scrap).
Didn’t have much trouble the first leg of the trip. Got to know Piers better: he grew up in Wales on his mother’s farm, after his dad died in some skirmish on the edges of the British Empire. I told him I’d been a mechanic in the states, and I hoped to marry my girl waiting for me at home. He told me he felt certain that we would.
Reached the rendezvous without much incident and delivered some of the junk, only to pick up more. Managed to get some chow and a rest. Lynch started asking the same questions, why command would want us hauling art when we had so many other things to haul. Borland got cranky and started to tell him to shut it, but Cap stopped them both and let us in on part of the reason for the haul. We were bringing the cargo north to be handed over to a trusted party from Britain who’d meet us in Normandy to pick it up.
“But you haven’t told us what we’re hauling,” Lynch said, stating something that I admit I’d had on my mind since we started, but I didn’t dare ask. Cap replied with a mysterious little smile that it was for him to tell us at the right time.
Cap woke me at dawn the next day, after he’d had me and Piers sleep in the back of the half-track. Not sure if the man had slept, but he looked chipper. Lynch grumbled at the long drive through the night and took my place while I drove the truck and Piers took the shotgun seat. Stopped at another depot along with the rest of the convoy and picked up a load of K-rations; Borland asked Lynch if that load made him feel better about the haul, which made Lynch grumble back at him about the taste of K-rations. I made a clumsy joke about not fighting in front of the kids, which made Piers giggle like a kid himself. I don’t think that endeared Piers to Lynch, but I get the feeling Lynch isn’t endeared toward anyone except maybe himself.
Later that day, we split off from the main convoy, heading in a different direction, just our half-track and the one truck. Seemed a little odd, but I wasn’t about to ask questions.
That’s when I started noticing some odd things around us. Maybe I just imagined it, but wherever we went, driving along those country roads, when I looked back where we’d passed, I swore the trees looked a little greener, the hedgerows, even the fields, stark and unplanted all looked a little greener. Even the trees blasted by shelling showed a little green in the rearview mirrors.
A trick of the light? I wasn’t the only one to notice, as Piers pointed it out as well. Maybe hope putting the thought into our heads?
Also noticed a few odd things about us: we don’t seem to need as much sleep as usual and we’re more alert after we wake up, which makes keeping watch and trading off at the wheel much easier
Later, toward nightfall and after we’d dropped the K-rations in a cargo depot, we got waylaid by an errant patrol of German soldiers, seven or eight guys who’d gotten caught behind our lines and hadn’t gotten the memo that the Allies had pushed onto German soil. We gave them back as good as we got. Took out most of them before we retreated. The rest retreated as well. Worst casualty on our side was the half-track: we’d cracked the front axle while we’d made our own escape and we didn’t have the replacement parts to mend her, so we left her behind on the roadside, which meant we’d have to pile into the truck. Made things crowded, but I’d rather have all of us under the same canvas top on the same vehicle, as long as Lynch doesn’t choke us with his cigarette smoke; not sure what kind of cigarettes he’s got, but they smell worse than a goat in need of a bath, according to Piers.
Bit of a rough night as well. Lynch asked what was the point in transporting a piece of art when we could be carrying anything else, aside from, in his words “keeping it from falling into the hands of the Huns, after they’d stolen so much from so many people.” As wrong-headed as the Germans might be, they don’t deserve name-calling or any kind of contempt, because that’s where the hatred starts and begins to snowball. That and it makes him look ignorant. Cap straight up told him that saving art helped save civilization, that life was more than just eating and breathing and building shelters, that we needed things like art, which helps us make sense of the harder parts of life, in order to transform mere surviving into living. Couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had a sense he was only telling us half the story, but he likely had been told by his commander that he couldn’t tell us more, at least right now.
This next bit may come out choppy, as we had rough going today and a lot happened that I’m trying to get in order in my head, but that’s what this journal is for. Blew a tire on the truck late this afternoon when the sun was going down, so we had to pull her into a ditch by the roadside and change it. Borland kept watch while Piers and I took care of it. Lynch as usual took this as an opportunity to smoke a cigarette. Borland warned him to put it out, as the light would give us away. Lynch argued that the we still had daylight and that would hide it.
“Can’t be too careful durin’ a war, laddie,” Borland growled back. Couldn’t help noticing Borland calls guys “laddie” when he’s either pleased with them or displeased with them, and Lynch displeased him a lot.
Hope the cigarette had nothing to do with what followed, but Borland hardly had those words out when a shot whizzed past our heads, hitting the tree trunks by the roadside, and another whinged off the fender of the truck. Cap and Borland returned fire, covering Piers and I as we got the last lug nuts fastened and we threw the jack over the tailboard of the truck. Piers and Lynch got into the front, while Cap yelled at me to get into the back of the truck. I scrambled over the tailboard, just as the truck started and rolled up out of the ditch. I grabbed Borland as he started to scramble over the tailboard and hauled him into the back of the truck. Then I drew my sidearm and let off some cover fire as Cap grabbed the tailboard. A slug from whoever was shooting at us caught him in the leg. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him in next to us.
“Only a flesh wound,” Cap said, with a pained grin, but even in the dark under the canvas top, I could see the pain in his eyes. I found the first aid kit and tried to bind up Cap’s wound. Piers asked us through the sliding panel if we were all right. Had to tell him Cap had been hit. Borland covered us, till his gun ran out of bullets and he ran out in the ammo pouch on his belt. Then he took down the bow from his shoulder and started firing arrows at them. The gunfire around us actually slowed, the shooters probably startled to find arrows flying about their ears, if he hadn’t hit them. Got a look at them, even as we sped away: civilians, from the look of them, hiding in the bushes and the ditch. Could tell from the motley variety of weapons, everything from a Thompson sub-machine gun to a musket with a bell-shaped muzzle, and the bits and pieces of German uniforms they wore over regular peasant clothes. A helmet on one guy, a jacket on another, one guy had a bunch of German patches sewed onto his work smock. Loyalists, it looked like, people still fighting the war, even though we’d pushed the battle line into Germany. Piers asked who was shooting at us, I told him who, he asked, “Why would they want to fight for the Germans?” I made as wide a guess as I could and told him they were scared, so scared they’d take any protection they could, even if cost them some of their freedom or their humanity. He took that as good an answer as any.
The engine started to sputter and conk out. Got the truck to the side of the road before it died and found out a bullet had pierced the gas tank and caused it to drain out as we drove. Managed to roll the truck into a hollow by the roadside, cover it with camo netting and stray branches. Borland set to patching up Cap’s leg the rest of the way after my clumsy effort, but we needed better cover if he was to do more.
All that got us more attention, this time from an old man with a fishing pole and a fishing creel, who’d come limping up from a nearby brook. Lynch trained a gun on him, but with some gestures and a few broken English words, the old man made it clear he meant us no harm, and with Cap managing a translation even in his state, he told us we could hide in his barn while we regrouped. We pushed the crippled truck down a farm track and into a field where the old man showed us a hayrick to hide the truck under before he led us to his cottage and the cluster of barns and sheds and shooks and shacks surrounding it.
Once we’d bunked down in the one of the barns, the old man told us he’d have let us stay in the house, but it was safer here in the barn: the loyalists that shot at us would probably come banging at his door first, looking for us.
We slept in shifts that night as we’d been doing. I got the next to last shift, then when Lynch relieved me, I settled onto a straw bale for a doze. That lasted till close to daybreak, when I heard him rummaging around noisily. Asked him what he was doing, but he snapped back at me telling me to “go back to sleep”. Took that as a bad sign and nudged Borland. The bigger guy found our dark lantern among our gear and switch it on, training the light on Lynch, who told us to “shut off that blinding light” and brandished a pry bar at us before setting to work with it on the box we’d been charged with protecting. Borland and I jumped him at that point, but he butted me in the jaw with his head. Borland got his arms around Lynch, even while Lynch fought to pry the lid off. Borland tried to pull the bar out of his hands, but he only succeeded in wrenching the lid off, sending it flying.
Inside the box lay a bunch of straw excelsior and something wrapped in a white silk cloth woven with silver threads. Lynch dug into the excelsior, but Borland grabbed the pry bar and whacked him across the shoulders. Something cracked and Lynch fell against Borland, gripping his own shoulder.
“What is it?” I asked, leaning closer. I’m hunting for the words to describe it. We didn’t see any bright lights shining from it or hear angel choirs singing or smell clouds of incense rising, but I felt and I could tell the other men felt great power and yet a gentle one flowing from that bundle. I crossed myself, as Piers reached in carefully to lift the object and unwrap it with great care. A cup, all of a reddish stone, cased in gold set with gems, red and blue and white, probably rubies and sapphires and pearls.
“What is it?” Piers asked looking to Cap who’d been awakened by the scuffle.
“It’s the peerless cup, Sangraal, the Holy Grail,” Cap replied.
I crossed myself again. Piers looked at the cup then looked at Cap. “What is the Grail?”
“Some say it’s the chalice of the Last Supper, the cup from which Christ drank,” Cap said. “Some say that St. Jose
ph of Arimithea used it to collect the last drops of Christ’s Precious Blood as He hung dying on the Cross. Some say it’s made from a stone that fell from the crown of Lucifer, when he threw it to earth after he revolted against his Creator.”
“No wonder they’re havin’ us ship this north and away from the war,” Borland said, awed and going down on one knee.
Piers rewrapped the Grail and laid it back into the box, backing away from it almost as if it scared him. I found a good-sized rock and using it as a hammer, we refastened the box as best we could, easier to say than do, now that the nails got all bent out of shape.
The truck was in no fit condition to drive and as with the half-track, we didn’t have the parts to fix it. Piers suggested we carry the box to the rendezvous. Cap said it sounded like a fair enough compromise, if we couldn’t commandeer something else, and he was ready to pass on his passwords and the writ from high command to Borland, as the toughest of the lot of us. But then the old farmer came out, looking in on us before he set about milking his two cows. He and Cap parleyed for some time, then the old man went back to the cottage, coming back with a bundle of clothes that, according to Cap, had belonged to the old man’s boys before they went off to join the Resistance. Cap told us, the old man was willing to loan us his donkey cart to haul the box, but it would look odd if soldiers were riding in a cart. We changed our gear, our dog tags hidden under the peasant togs and hid our weapons in the straw that we packed in around the box, before we set off. Piers steered the thing, with me sitting beside him on the front of the cart. Cap and Lynch bunked down in the straw, while Borland rode on the back end, his legs dangling toward the road. With that bow on his back and the peasant gear and his generally grizzled appearance, he didn’t look out of place, like he’d wandered in out of a Robin Hood movie, only he looked a lot less tidy and a lot more convincing.
Tales of the Once and Future King Page 18
