And he introduced to them the code of chivalry.
“What’s chivalry, Arthur?” Mark asked, his bright blue eyes fixed with wonder on this so-very-odd man who was unlike any other man he’d ever met.
“Chivalry,” Arthur began, “is a code of conduct which all of thee shalt swear to uphold should ye chooseth to be knighted. Its primary focus beeth on honor and serving the cause of right, protecting those who beeth defenseless in this world.”
“You mean like little kids?” Chris asked, sitting on the floor, as always, near Lance, who sat in a large wooden chair beside Arthur.
Arthur nodded. “Yes, Chris, like little kids.”
Chris beamed and pointed at Lance. “Then I nominate Lance for chivalry guy of the year!” He giggled delightedly, and Lance blushed.
“Here, here! We second that,” blurted Jack from across the chamber, and Mark nodded vigorously.
Now Lance was fully embarrassed and tried to sink into his chair. But Arthur merely chuckled, and good-natured laughter rippled through the group. “I shalt take thy suggestion under advisement, Chris,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, gazing at Lance with pride. Lance could not, however, meet his gaze.
“As thou shouldst all know by now, Lance doth be my First Knight, and Liege Lord in my stead,” Arthur continued, his voice steady and very serious. “Should there be a time I cannot lead, or shalt be indisposed, Lance shalt assume command. Doth there be any amongst ye who choose to dispute this?”
“Yeah,” called out a female voice from the back. “I do.”
All heads turned to see a stunningly beautiful Latina girl stand and face Arthur. There was excited murmuring amongst the children, for no one had ever seen her before. She had long flowing hair that spilled halfway down her back, soft cheekbones, full lips presently curled into a sneer, and an athletic figure, at the moment clothed in a T-shirt and tight, hip-hugging jeans.
Enrique’s lower jaw dropped, and he elbowed Luis beside him, leaning in to whisper, “I just saw my future wife.”
“Not if I get with her first,” Luis replied, also gawking.
All eyes remained fixed on the girl, then turned to Arthur for his response.
For his part, Arthur held his composure and maintained the dignity he must if he was to command. He could not let on that she had caught him by surprise. He’d not noticed her presence. When had she arrived?
“And thou art?” he asked calmly.
The girl haughtily tossed back her head and stood with hands on hips. “Name’s Reyna,” she said as all eyes flew back to her like flies to flypaper. “Heard about your little crew here and thought I’d check it out. See what you got going.”
Her last statement had the effect of a challenge, and all eyes returned to Arthur to gauge how he’d handle it. Lance, in particular, observed his king with keen interest.
Arthur sat very upright on his throne, one hand on Excalibur’s hilt, the other on his lap. “And thine appraisal? Wouldst thou join our cause?”
Reyna had not lost that haughty stance, and her disrespect of Arthur irked Lance.
“Depends. You I could handle. You’re a man who seems to have it together. You dress kinda weird, but hey, this is LA, capital of weird.” Then she tossed a derisive sneer Lance’s way. “But you actually expect me to take orders from a boy younger and prettier than me?”
There were sniggers from the assemblage but no real laughter. Mark’s mouth dropped open in shock, and Jack viciously mad-dogged the girl. Humiliation washed over Lance, his breathing almost stopped and, blushing furiously, he lowered his gaze to the floor.
Arthur, however, remained nonplussed.
“Yes, I do,” he stated with finality.
All eyes returned to Reyna, who stood her ground as though she knew she could whip all these boys at once. Without another word, she snatched a bow and arrow from a startled Lavern, who’d been clasping the precious weapons ever since practice had ended. With a fluidity and grace not seen amongst any of the kids thus far, she slipped in the arrow, whipped the bow up to her shoulder, and aimed it right at the tunnel beside Arthur’s throne. She moved so fast no one even had a chance to breathe, let alone react. She sent the arrow flying.
Lance leapt to his feet, afraid for Arthur. But the arrow whizzed harmlessly past him into the dark tunnel beyond. A thud and a sharp squeak emanated from the darkness, and then silence. From the sound, it was obvious that she’d killed a rat from over fifty yards, and in the dark at that!
Reyna lowered the bow and gazed smugly at Arthur before turning that haughty face toward Lance. She was better than this pretty little boy, and she knew it. She should be Arthur’s second, not him.
Arthur merely looked from her to his First Knight. “Lance” was all he had to say.
Rattled by the girl’s showy performance, and still smarting from her insult, Lance took a moment to meet her mocking gaze before stepping down off the platform. Mark and Jack, in particular, eyed him expectantly. The crowd parted like the Red Sea as Lance strode across the chamber to Reyna’s side and snatched the bow from her grasp. She laughed and let him have it. Glaring at her for a moment, he held his hand out to Lavern for another arrow. The small black boy hurriedly handed one over.
Without another word, and knowing that all of Arthur’s training had unexpectedly come down to this one moment, he cocked the arrow, held his breath, raised the bow, and fired in the same direction as Reyna had shot. There was a slight sound from behind Arthur, then absolute silence.
Lance released his breath and looked Arthur in the eye from across the chamber, and the man nodded. “Enrique, retrieve the dead rat, if ye please.”
Still awed by Reyna’s strength and beauty, Enrique leapt to his feet and ran into the dark tunnel behind Arthur. In a moment he returned, carrying a dead rat.
“Hold it high for all to see,” Arthur instructed without looking. He’d trained Lance well enough. He knew what they would see.
A gasp rippled through the group as Enrique raised the dead rodent above his head. Reyna’s arrow clearly stuck out of its head. But Lance’s arrow stuck out of Reyna’s, having spilt the wood of her shaft as it struck home.
All eyes returned to Reyna and Lance, standing side by side in silence. Lance forced himself to lock eyes with her, hoping she couldn’t hear his wildly pounding heart. She smiled approvingly and nodded, giving him an appraising look.
“I’ll think about it,” she announced, and with a flounce was out of the chamber and gone into the darkness.
Still holding the rat, Enrique murmured, “I think I’m in love.”
Not a sound could be heard except the dripping of water somewhere off in the dark. The assemblage was stunned. Releasing the breath he’d unwittingly sucked in, Lance met Arthur’s gaze across that vast chamber and saw something in the king’s eyes that almost made him tear up—pride.
THAT same evening as Jenny finished dinner and prepared for her nightly paper-grading ritual, she turned on the local news just to make sure the city was still there. Nowadays, with all the stupid decisions made by all levels of government, sometimes she wondered if the world really was coming to an end like all those idiot prognosticators kept saying.
Her thirty-two-inch flat screen powered up, and she set it to channel seven because she liked their anchors better than the other stations’. As she bussed her dinner dishes into the tiny kitchen of her small one-bedroom apartment in Torrance, she heard the first story being announced.
The local anchor intoned solemnly as though announcing an appearance by God himself, “Our lead story tonight is a strange one, as I’m sure you’ve been hearing all day. Has the legendary King Arthur returned from the dead, and does he at this moment roam the streets of Los Angeles collecting children? Here’s our own Helen Schaeffer with the details.”
On hearing the name “King Arthur,” Jenny quickly dumped her dishes into the messy sink and hurried into her living room just as young, vivacious Helen appeared on camera with the words “
Live from Santa Monica Blvd” plastered dramatically across the bottom of the screen.
On the screen, Helen indicated the busy thoroughfare behind her. “As you can see, it’s an ordinary evening here on Santa Monica Boulevard near West Hollywood. But last night was anything but ordinary, as you’ll see from this amazing cell phone video captured by a local passerby.”
The scene cut to a video with rather poor audio of Arthur’s encounter with the two police officers. Because the audio was so poor, the TV station had put up subtitles for the exchanged dialogue. Stunned into amazement, Jenny slid down into her easy chair and gaped at the almost surreal footage unfolding before her. So caught up in the drama, she audibly gasped when the bullet bounced off Arthur’s armor. The tape came to an end, and Helen reappeared.
“As of this moment, King Arthur has continued to elude the police. According to authorities, he is wanted for “questioning,” only, which must be the understatement of the year. This is Helen Schaeffer reporting for—”
Jenny waved her remote and clicked off the set. King Arthur? Obviously some nut, she knew, and yet…. Wasn’t it just last month, or maybe the month before, that Lance had questioned her about King Arthur? Was he real? Wasn’t that one of Lance’s questions? She’d thought it odd at the time, but then Lance could be an odd kid. Now with this news story…. Could there be a connection?
She ran her hand through her wavy blonde hair, absently realizing that she needed to wash it. She also needed to talk with Lance as soon as possible. But how, since he never came to school? That newswoman said something about this King Arthur collecting children… could that explain why certain kids at MTS had been missing these past few weeks? Lance was the key, she knew. I’ve got to find him. These thoughts weaving their way through her head, Jenny set about listlessly grading her essays and preparing for the next day’s classes.
WITHIN the Hollenbeck Police Station, Ryan sat pensively gazing at the TV, studying a freeze-framed image of Arthur from that cell phone video. It was evening, and the gang detail section was quiet. Too quiet, Ryan knew. There had been no more “tagging” for the past month or so and no major gang incidents. The calm before the storm, he suspected. Gibson entered and tossed a report on Ryan’s desk. The older man glanced up at his partner, gnawed pencil dangling from his lips.
“You still looking at that tape?” he asked. “You must have it memorized by now.”
Ryan leaned back in his swivel chair and held up a drawing of the A tag against the freeze-framed video image on the screen. The frozen video frame was blurred, but clear enough to reveal Arthur’s shield emblazoned with the same symbol.
“He’s our tagger, Gib.”
Startled, Gibson leaned forward for a closer look, snatching the picture from Ryan and examining it against the monitor. “Well, I’ll be damned! How the hell’d you make that connection?”
Ryan took back the paper and set it down next to some Internet printouts. These printouts showed various shields emblazoned with heraldic symbols of one kind or another. “Did a little Internet search. I remembered from college about knights and how they always had a crest on their shields. Shit, I was really into that stuff back then when I was young and stupid. You know, knight on a horse riding into South Central and cleaning it up for all the good people?”
Gibson nodded, loosening his dark blue tie, and rolling up another chair to sit beside his partner. “Yeah, I know the feeling. So what do you suppose this guy is up to? He’s gotta know he’ll have every gangbanger in the city gunning for him if he keeps putting that up on their turf.”
“All forty-one thousand?” Ryan asked with a crooked smile, which only accentuated the deep frown lines on his craggy face.
“You know what I mean,” Gibson replied with a shake of his head.
“Yeah, I know,” said Ryan. “Anything on that dagger?”
Gibson picked up the file folder and flipped it open. Within were various photos of the knife Arthur had used against the rookie cop. “Pretty weird, Ry. The lab did all the usual tests.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So they think it’s from England,” Gibson continued in that tone of voice game show hosts use when they’re about to reveal what’s behind door number one.
“So what’s the punch line?”
“Near as they can tell without carbon dating, England of the fifth or sixth century, or thereabouts.”
Ryan dropped forward in his chair. “Don’t bullshit me, Gib! I’m so not in the mood.”
Gibson leaned forward, his tired features dead serious, and handed Ryan the report. “I’m not. It’s all in here.” He tapped the report with one index finger.
Ryan gazed at the report a moment, and then looked his partner in the eye. “I don’t know what the hell’s goin’ on, but I think you and I have an all-nighter to pull with Mr. Internet. We need to find out everything there is to know about King Arthur.”
Gibson’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s a lot of information, Ry.”
Ryan tossed the report onto his desk and pointed at the next desk. “And there’s an awful lot of cyberspace right there on your computer, partner. Let’s get cracking.”
With a heavy sigh, Gibson removed his dark blue sport coat and hung it carefully on the back of his swivel chair. As he further loosened his tie and began rolling up his sleeves, he noted that Ryan was already on his desktop searching for websites. Man, he hated when Ryan got like this. Sighing again, he rolled the chair over to his own immaculately organized desk and set to work.
THE episode with Reyna had excited the boys more than usual. Some of the older ones, like Enrique and Luis, could talk of nothing else but “who she’s gonna like better, me or your fool ass?” while the youngsters were all excited that Lance had bested her. “We don’t need no girl anyways” was a common refrain amongst them.
It had taken Arthur and Lance much longer than usual to settle the in-house sleepers for the night. Speculation ran in whispers among the supposedly sleeping boys about what the morrow would bring, and would she be back, and would she want to join, and how did she learn to shoot like that? Finally, silence punctuated by the ever-present dripping of water and the occasional echoing whinny from Llamrei wafting in from her tunnel, settled over the main hall.
Arthur and Lance sat side by side on the platform in front of the king’s throne, legs outstretched before them, enjoying a bit of downtime after such a tumultuous evening.
Lance pushed his hair back from his eyes and looked at Arthur. He’d removed his circlet, and his lengthening hair framed his soft features like twin waterfalls. “Can I ask you something, Arthur?”
Arthur turned his head toward the boy. “Of course. What is it ye wish to know?
“What was it like when you’s a kid? You know, way back in the day?” Lance offered that engaging smile and Arthur easily returned it, even as memories of the past momentarily welled up in his mind.
“My childhood was magical, thanks to Merlin. But lonely, as well. There beeth only my foster brother, Kay, to play with, at least until Merlin came to tutor us.”
Lance pulled his legs up and under him, Indian style, and faced Arthur. With his long, dark brown hair and delicate, milk chocolate skin, he looked very much the Native American boy listening with wide-eyed wonder to an elder of the tribe recounting stories of old. “What was he like, Merlin? Was he really a powerful wizard?”
Arthur nodded, seeing the wizard’s kindly, bookish face in his mind’s eye. “Merlin did indeed possess powers above and beyond nature. Not in the way thy modern society hath created such magical inventions, no.” He paused, considering how to compare the wizard to the modern technology he’d encountered.
“Merlin beeth like a force of nature. He taught me about life, all life, and the precious nature of it, and why preserving it at all costs shouldst be our primary aim. I owe much to Merlin, and to God, for granting me this second chance to make things right.”
Lance digested this new information for a moment, consid
ering his own life. He supposed he believed in God, but had never given it much thought. He sure didn’t believe God had ever done anything for him. But then, he hadn’t done anything for God, either, so he supposed they were even. “What about your parents?”
Arthur sighed heavily, a twinge of sadness creeping like mist around his heart. “I didst never know my sires, Lance, though I have oft been told of my mother’s great beauty. My foster father, Sir Ector, did his best to maketh me feel as one with his family, so much so that I didst truly come to think of him as my father.”
Lance’s face clouded over at the mention of “foster father,” and Arthur took clear note of it. Perhaps now beeth the proper time, he told himself. “Tell me of thy upbringing, Lance, if thou wouldst have it so.”
Lance squirmed uncomfortably and allowed his flowing bangs to obscure half his face, a trick he used when he wished to hide from others. Just the mention of his past squeezed his heart and sent a lump of anguish into his throat.
“There ain’t much to tell. My mother… she did drugs and shit—my bad. And she….” He paused and sucked in a deep breath, fisting his tunic spasmodically, and then blurted out, “She sold me to a stranger when I was one years old!” His breath lodged in his throat, and he began to sweat. “She sold me, Arthur, so she could buy crack cocaine!” He paused again, fought for air, struggling for control. His entire body had tensed up, coiled, ready for flight. I can do this, he assured himself. I need to do this. “I don’ even remember her face.” That last barely came out as a wisp of breath, and he looked up at Arthur with abject pain welling within his sad green eyes.
“I doth be truly sorry, my boy” was all Arthur could think to say. His own body had constricted with astonished pain and grief. Being on his second lifetime—after having lived to a fair old age in his first—he seldom wanted for words. But what hath been done to these children continually left him speechless.
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