King Arthur's Sister in Washington's Court

by Kim Iverson Headlee

  On Friday morning of that week entered Sandy for his promised meeting, but not with his promised selection of player candidates. Apparently “eftsoons” was going to be later rather than sooner this time. Upon closer observation, Sandy looked shaken, haggard, and so very un-Sandy-like that my annoyance dissipated and my concern for his well-being rose several notches. In response to my query, he said:

  “A preliminary report is available if you wish to see it, Boss. There are still a few players being debated for inclusion. What I would like you to look at, now if possible, is this.” He pulled an old book from his case, laid it upon my desk, and opened it to a predetermined place approximately one-third of the way into the book. The left-hand page was blank. The right featured a sketch of a handsome queen sitting upon her dragon-armed throne, resplendent in her crown of state and sumptuous gown, a plush pillow cradling her dainty feet. The artist had drawn an aura about her head and shoulders representing shimmers of power, political as well as personal. Beneath the image in bold, ornate strokes were penned the words:

  “Is—is this you?” Sandy whispered.

  “What is this book?” I asked.

  He left his finger to mark the page and with the other hand flipped over the cover, upon which I read, A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and, beneath a fanciful yet ridiculous coat of arms, “Mark Twain.”

  Ah. This must be the tome to which Clarice had alluded when we first met, when at the fair in Crownsville I was treated to a reenactment of events straight off a page of my ancient life. True to her promise, Clarice had procured me a copy—though not as old as this one—yet I had been too deeply engaged with Malory’s campaigns to have a go at reading it.

  I said, “’Tis a reasonable likeness, do you not agree?”

  He nodded, but his pallor increased a shade or two. He turned the page. Again, the left side was blank. The right side, arrayed beside a sketch of an armored knight wearing a placard emblazoned with “Persimmons’s Soap ~ All the Prime-Donne Use It”—which reminded me of the people I have seen in this century walking about flashing portable VRTV screens bearing sundry alluring advertising slogans—read…

  Chapter XVI:

  Morgan le Fay

  “IF KNIGHTS ERRANT were to be believed, not all castles were desirable places to seek hospitality in.”

  Well, of course; everyone knew that. The Yankee was not blaring a news flash. For a start, there was the infamous Green Knight, Sir Bertilak, whose grand idea of a party game was to invite his knightly guests to chop off his head in exchange for the privilege of chopping off theirs. Sir Percard, the Black Knight, had invented a similar version of fun, and Sir Ironside, the Red Knight, liked to adorn a massive ancient oak tree near his castle with the bodies of the knights who had lost to him in combat—are we sensing a pattern here? I read silently on, “As a matter of fact, knights errant were not persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern standards of veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: you discounted a statement ninety-seven per cent; the rest was fact.”

  “Hah!”

  Sandy looked at me in surprise; I had forgotten the second rule of queenship, the definition of “bodily noises” having been expanded by the Royal Rules Committee in the Year of Our Lord 502 to include exclamations of a non-verbal nature. He said, “I’m sorry, Boss, you found something to be funny?”

  “Indeed. Knights errant are not the only people whose statements are over-inflated. Just visit the Outfield Inn after the conclusion of any home game.” As fragile as Sandy was looking at this point, I refrained from jesting about the ballplayers’ statistics, which were his lifeblood. That hit would have come far too easily. Statistics lie, and liars statisticate. Instead I asked, with more than a mote of incredulity, “Was this what you would have me see?”

  “Not exactly.” He flipped forward a few pages, past a humorous image of a man trying with his entire body’s weight to pry the pope off the Throne of Peter using a lever named “Persimmons Soap;” a rather unflattering rendition of a mounted Sir Cote Male Taile, his destrier as well as himself also brandishing the soap moniker; and a moody depiction of Sir Boss and the Lady Alisande la Carteloise arriving at the portcullis of my castle.

  I followed the course of Sandy’s finger as it traced down the facing page and stopped mid-paragraph. “Please start here,” he said. Curious, I obliged him:

  …But Morgan was the main attraction, the conspicuous personality here; she was head chief of this household, that was plain. She caused us to be seated, and then she began, with all manner of pretty graces and graciousnesses, to ask me questions. Dear me, it was like a bird or a flute, or something, talking. I felt persuaded that this woman must have been misrepresented, lied about. She trilled along, and trilled along, and presently a handsome young page, clothed like the rainbow, and as easy and undulatory of movement as a wave, came with something on a golden salver, and, kneeling to present it to her, overdid his graces and lost his balance, and so fell lightly against her knee. She slipped a dirk into him in as matter-of-course a way as another person would have harpooned a rat!

  Poor child! he slumped to the floor, twisted his silken limbs in one great straining contortion of pain, and was dead. Out of the old king was wrung an involuntary “O-h!” of compassion. The look he got, made him cut it suddenly short and not put any more hyphens in it. Sir Uwaine, at a sign from his mother, went to the anteroom and called some servants, and meanwhile madame went rippling sweetly along with her talk.

  [Excerpted from Chapter XVI of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, 1889; public domain.]

  Sandy whispered in a tone so low I had to magically boost his volume, “Did you really murder an innocent child—just like that—for bumping your knee?”

  “Yes.” I elected to relieve him of the horror cascading over his face, ere he suffered a stroke before my very eyes. “But there is of course more to the story than the Yankee knew. That page was not innocent. He was ‘bumping’ my husband King Uriens—”

  “That does put a different face on the king’s reaction.”

  I chose to ignore the interruption. “—obtaining damaging secrets during these illicit liaisons and selling them to our enemies, most notably, my brother the good King Arthur himself.”

  “O-h-h-h-h.” I permitted Sandy to put in as many hyphens as he needed in order to expel his concerns and doubts. “Still—”

  “Still, nothing!” I did have a limit to how many dashes—“m” or “n”—that I would tolerate on any given issue. “I was perfectly within my rights and authority as queen to eliminate a catamite, spy, and traitor with one stroke.” The details of the incident flooded to mind; I did not require the Yankee’s reminder. The page’s grandmother had intruded upon the feast later that same evening to lay the curse of God’s wrath upon me for slaying her last remaining kin, and when I would have had the crone burnt at the stake for her treason, The Boss intervened with threats of destroying my castle.

  God’s wrath had proven itself in my subsequent banishment to this century. Heat rose, unbidden, to my cheeks. I closed my eyes against the stinging threat of tears, and I pursed my lips to keep them from betraying me as well.

  After a time—how long, I know not—I felt Sandy’s arm come gently to rest across my shoulders; I accepted his tacit invitation and pressed my face against his chest. His other arm encircled me, too, a mantle of forgiveness that was long overdue.

  Chapter XVII:

  A Baseball Banquet

  THE INCIDENT WITH Sandy and the book convinced me that I must make time to read the entire account of the Yankee’s sojourn in my Britain. Thus while I awaited the final version of Sandy’s report of potential players to acquire, I immersed myself in Hank Morgan’s sixth-century adventures.

  Most High Holy God, what an eye-opener that was.

  To think that such an arrogant, lowborn ass could plant himself in the midst of my society
without so much as a by-thy-leave and believe that he, and he alone, possessed the wit and wisdom and wherewith to institute what he believed to be improvements to said social system, which had been forged and refined by God and His ordained rulers and clerics over the course of centuries—it curdles my blood afresh even now, years after first having read his journal.

  Forgive me, gracious reader; my chronicle is not about him, and thank God for that small mercy.

  If there is one thing I have sorely missed about my castle in Gore, it is the feast hall. I have dined in many a fine locale during my tenure in this era—the grand banqueting venues of the best luxury cruise ships being my especial favorites—but there is no substitute for home: the lavender-laced rushes crunching softly underfoot, hiding whatever else one must be crunching upon, alive or dead, as one treads across the floor; the fires raging from the twin opposing hearths so huge that half a half dozen Hummers could drive through them side by side, racing to perform some murderous mission with room to spare; the legions of dogs barking and snapping for scraps; the acrobatic dancers; the sprightly musicians (on second thought, scratch the musicians); the impeccably trained servants; the excellent company of peers; the fabulous stories of combat and conquest and courtly love (not necessarily in that order) in faraway lands told by visiting knights; the mountains of delectable food and rivers of mind-numbing drink, voraciously consumed to the faint but distinct shrieks of prisoners in the dungeons below…

  Ah. That is what this century lacks. Privily conducted torture has its uses, to be sure; but nothing screams power to one’s honored guests like, well, screams. That these super-duper-ultra-mega-modern people can appear to be so insatiably bloodthirsty when watching SNN broadcasts of real battles and mayhem on the one hand, yet be so hypocritically squeamish regarding the bona fide exercise of divinely appointed authority…the mind boggles.

  Thus when it came to hosting feasts for the team, fellow owners, or other groups, it remained for me to employ the only other available means of demonstrating power: the liberal application of cash.

  And nothing says power quite like chartering Cunard’s magnificent Queen Mary 3 for a fortnight’s slosh amongst the barbarically charming isles of the Caribbean, prior to the commencement of spring training, for all the London Knights’ employees and their families. Of course the players always have to work extra hard to shed the effects of the non-stop partying, even with mandatory daily workouts in the ship’s fitness centers and on the jogging track, but the technique proved to be an effective way both to induce players to arrive at camp on time and to build camaraderie across the organization, an important ingredient in any formula for victory; thus, I have decreed it to be a permanent fixture in the Knights’ annual schedule—and Cunard’s.

  This day, however, I had to lay aside the Yankee’s chronicle for to attend the postseason banquet hosted by the WBF to honor the season’s MVPs and other worthies.

  “Banquet,” here, is a misnomer by my queenly standards. With more than a hundred trophies to award to individual players and managers from all four leagues, plus the team trophies, this makes for quite a crowd when factoring in the invitees’ spouses, agents, significant others, and other cling-ons. The best one can hope for each year is a choice between underdone chicken, overdone beef, or a vegetarian plate that is not worth the ink used to print it on the RSVP card. Heaping insult upon this culinary injury is the necessity of paying for one’s own alcohol consumed during the event—which becomes even more insulting when the voted awards go to players so undeserving that one wishes one could rack the entire voting populace, be they sportswriters, players, or fans.

  On the other hand, these perennial ignoramii are not worth the trouble.

  Such vagaries occur every year without fail. Following a cursory and vague prayer intoned by the WBF’s chaplain, the sentiment of which may be distilled to “Bless this mess,” and an hour’s worth of speech-free (though not conversation-free, making it difficult to attend to the most important business of the moment) eating, and a speech of welcome delivered by the commissioner (ten solid minutes of mindless yapping that lasted eleven minutes too many) at this year’s WBF “banquet,” I had to suffer the indignity of Robbie Clemens, my starting right fielder, losing the Titanium Slugger to none other than Don MacDougal, the former Stirling Bravehearts’ free agent whom I had lost in the off-season bidding war. MacDougal’s batting curse would not take effect till the following season; a pox on all those damned Connecticut Yankees, MacDougal most especially!

  Perhaps it would not be so very much trouble to rack the voting sportswriters after all. A hundred or so, stretched out (pun intended, naturally) over the course of four months, give or take, would go quite far toward making me feel much more at home in this Godforsaken era.

  It is a dream I have.

  Chapter XVIII:

  In the Queen’s Dungeons

  WITH THE OVERDONE beef still curdling inside my vitals upon my return to London following the WBF “banquet,” and with the list of player candidates still forthcoming, causing me to commence making serious plans to rack somebody—anybody—for the unconscionable delay, I was left with no recourse other than to return to my perusal of the Yankee’s chronicle.

  While I found a small fraction of the chronicle to be genuinely interesting—to whit, the disastrous decisions the Yankee had made following my departure from the sixth century—men possess a special talent for bollixing up a thing, with total disregard for consequences; and the higher the rank, the more of this talent they possess—most of the chronicle I consigned to the asinine ramblings of a self-deluded megalomaniac. That being stated, I feel compelled to comment upon what had transpired with the Yankee while visiting my castle, lo these many centuries ago, and my dungeons.

  The Yankee and I endured several disagreements over the law of my land and, specifically, what constituted “valid” reasons for imprisoning and/or executing a person. Somewhere in the dim recesses of the Yankee’s “enlightened” brain, he viewed it as good, right, and salutary to allow thieves, murderers, and other violent people to roam free, with nary a thought in regard to future ill consequences. Imagine if you will an entire country peopled with said thieves, murderers, and other lawless ne’er-do-wells, whose sole purpose in life lies in preying upon innocents, depriving them of life and livelihood, of substance and sustenance.

  Ah, but I forget myself. That in fact characterizes twenty-first-century America; they may keep it, and God help them in the keeping. “Innocent until proven guilty” is the war-cry of the army of the guilty led by lawyers who fatten their purses by defending their guilty “innocents.” Other war-cries they brandish with exuberance are, “Extenuating circumstances!” and, “Temporary insanity!” Merciful God, spare us all.

  It is far better for the rest of the populace to lock away all these miscreants to rot in dungeons to prevent them from wreaking further harm upon the realm. And by “rot” I do mean rot: no VRTV, no contact with one another to plot more evil amongst themselves, no comforts or considerations whatsoever. That and public executions with no appeals will go a long way toward whipping all the closet miscreants into line; trust a queen with many decades of experience on this point.

  Yea, even the man whom I had imprisoned for calling my hair “red” instead of using the proper term, “auburn,” was incarcerated for good reason. My husband King Uriens has—had—red hair, thick and coarse and unruly. By likening my fine, glossy, silken hair to his, the man heaped upon me the most intolerable insult imaginable, and therefore he had to pay for it. A lesser action would have diminished my power and authority as queen in the eyes of all, high and low; in point of fact, it would have destroyed my rule. Arranging faux funerals of the man’s family throughout the years of his incarceration, which I knew he could glimpse from his slit of a window, may have been a bit—I confess—overboard. I do excel at holding a grudge. So sue me.

  As to the matter of the prisoners incarcerated by my castle’s previous owner, well, th
e Yankee did have the right of it. I cannot speak for my husband, but for my part I had not given the dungeons or their contents a moment’s thought. Uriens and I had been far too busy settling affairs—establishing perimeter defenses, patrols, and other duty schedules, assigning quarters for the members of our court, gathering victuals, collecting taxes, meeting with village leaders and tenants, and so on and so forth—when we first took possession of the castle to be bothered with the detritus that had been left behind. After that, there was always some feast or tournament to host, or some errant knight to entertain, or some war to fight, or some crisis to manage, that the pattern of our days never lent itself to thinking about the dungeons except when I needed them to exude noise as an aforementioned public demonstration of my power.

  Again, sue me.

  In regard to the Yankee’s report of my reactions to his freeing of forty-seven of my forty-eight prisoners, well, of course I was furious. Would you, sympathetic reader, not feel thusly when confronted with the highest-ranking minister of your liege lord, who uses his authority to trample your own, especially when he has not the first concept of how matters are conducted in a century to which he does not belong? Would you not suffer under the cruel lash of powerlessness, believing that you could not inflict retribution upon this person for his offenses because the legend of his magical prowess had become known to you—and secretly feared by you—before ever he had set foot across your threshold? Of course you would, on both counts, and you would not have liked it any more than I did.

  And to think all that supposed power of his was an utter sham, and we, all of us, to the last man, swallowed his lie whole as easily as swallowing mollusk meat. For our singular stupidity we, all of us—myself included, alas—deserved all of the insults and atrocities the Yankee meted out to us.