One Knight Only, Page 3

  “Well, now, wait,” Nellie replied. “I mean, if he’s been supporting you since way back . . . it could be argued that you do owe him. Besides, don’t they always say you should be nice to the people you meet on the way up . . . ?”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” agreed Gwen. “Still . . . if I could only get some breathing space . . .”

  “How about I talk to him,” she offered. “I’ll get a little tough with him. That way you can stay nice and sweet, and I’ll be the evil witch.”

  “Trust me,” Gwen assured her, “you’re definitely no evil witch.”

  Nellie laughed at that. “Seen many, have you?”

  But there was no smile on Gwen’s face as she said rather quietly, “Just one. That was more than enough.”

  And she turned and stared out the window, and didn’t seem to be listening to anything else Nellie was saying.

  THE WALLS OF Belvedere Castle were just as Gwendolyn DeVere Queen Penn remembered them.

  Gwen Penn . . .

  She laughed softly to herself. One would have thought that, considering how long she had sported the moniker, she would have stopped wincing every time she thought of it. And she had. Now she only winced every other time.

  The environment, the situation, was, of course, quite different. Surrounding the perimeter of the castle were Secret Service agents, several of them unable to hide the confusion in their faces as to just what the hell they were doing here. Porter was standing there, stiff and dependable as always, occasionally looking pointedly at her wristwatch. Late-night joggers, who tended to travel in packs for obvious reasons, slowed and stopped and watched from a distance, trying to figure out what was going on.

  Gwen managed to ignore them all . . . or, if not ignore them, at least push them to the recesses of her attention.

  To anyone else, Belvedere Castle—situated in the middle of the park around Seventy-ninth Street—was a Central Park landmark. It was not a true medieval castle; it had been constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century on Vista Rock, next to the Shakespeare Gardens. The United States Weather Bureau had instrumentation there, so whenever one heard what the weather was in Manhattan, Belvedere was likely the source.

  But to Gwen, it was something far, far more. It had been the place that Arthur, years ago, had taken her as a refuge from her abusive boyfriend . . . when he had “rescued” her from a horrendous situation, and revealed the reality of his background to her.

  Until that moment, Arthur Penn had simply been a boss to her, a man who was running for political office. To be specific, he had seemed bound and determined to become mayor of New York City. Even from the first, though, there had been so much more about him. His strength, his fortitude, his quiet dignity, his vision. He hadn’t been a particularly tall man, nor widely brawny, although he was strong. The muscle that he did have was compact and sinewy rather than showy, but she hadn’t known that at the time. Still, for all that, there had been something about him. When he walked into a room, he had commanded instant attention even if he’d said nothing. She’d once jokingly said that if one looked up the word “charisma” in the dictionary, Arthur Penn’s face would be pictured next to it.

  But she had not imagined the half of it. The imagination—the reality, rather—made itself apparent the night that Gwen’s former significant other, Lance, had been abusing her terribly . . . the latest in a series of such events and, as it turned out, the last. For Arthur had kicked open the door to the dingy apartment, and that was when she had had a firsthand view of the strength in Arthur Penn’s arms as he had tossed Lance around as if he were weightless. No . . . as if he was utterly insignificant.

  As Gwen moved around Belvedere Castle, her questing fingers came upon a small, innocuous hole in the wall of one corner. That was it. She recognized it instantly. That was the “keyhole” into which Arthur had inserted a glowing sword, opening an entrance to . . .

  Well, she’d never really understood it.

  It had been an entire suite of rooms, furnished as only the best medieval castle could be. It had not seemed remotely possible to her that such a thing could exist. Was it rooms hidden within the castle, but somehow forgotten until now? Was it some bizarre tunnel through time and space, transporting them to another reality right next to their own? All the attempted explanations had tumbled around within her mind, and she had kept coming back to the same answer over and over: Magic.

  And then Arthur had sat her down and explained it to her.

  He was Arthur.

  The Arthur.

  Arthur as in King. Arthur as in Pendragon (shortened into “Penn” for the purpose of modern audiences). Arthur as in the guy who had pulled a sword from the stone and was declared king of all the Britons. Arthur as in Richard Burton and Richard Harris and Sean Connery and just about every other classy actor with a United Kingdom accent.

  Arthur, who had miraculously survived a near-death experience at the hands of his bastard son, Modred, and had been in a cave for half a millennia, kept alive by his friend and mage, Merlin, through . . . well . . . magic again. It had all been most miraculous to her, even though he had pointed out that—to primitive people—something as utterly mundane as a lightbulb coming on at the flick of a switch would be attributed to magic. Still, to Gwen, the idea of a chamber of rooms transdimensionally connected to a castle in the middle of Central Park went somewhat beyond electricity and chandeliers. Arthur, however, saw no difference in terms of degrees, and that was just one of the many things she found so endearing about him.

  He had continued his run for mayor, they had fallen in love, and many things had happened during that time, some of them pleasant, many of them far less so. But they had endured, and they had triumphed.

  As she regarded the full moon hanging in the sky overhead, dancing along the top of the fortress, she thought about their life since then. About his political career, and how he had handled his stewardship of the city. Initially he had found politics wearying. After all, as king he was accustomed to simply being able to issue orders, to accomplish things through royal fiat rather than constant dickering and bargaining. Many was the time when Gwen and Arthur would quietly take leave of Gracie Mansion through a portal Merlin installed there that brought them straight to their castle hideaway, and there and only there, Arthur son of Uther would vent. He would pace furiously, tremble with righteous indignation, and say, “When I was king, I was accustomed to dealing with lords, barons, other kings. Each of them held their own provinces, their own shires and interests. Ultimately, though, they knew who the ruler was. It always gave me the leverage I required to accomplish what needed to be done. But these people, Gwen”—he swept an arm as if he could encompass the entirety of New York—“they all act as if they’re my equals!”

  “You’re dealing with New Yorkers, Arthur,” she would say patiently. “They don’t defer to anyone.”

  “Such an arrogant lot!”

  “Yes, as I said, New Yorkers. You’re not making any new or novel observations, my love.”

  And then he would fume and fret, and claim that he was just going to toss aside the entire thing because he’d never really wanted to rule anyway, it had all been Merlin’s idea. If Merlin had just left him in the damned cave, none of this would have happened.

  “That’s right,” she would say, “and among the things that wouldn’t have happened would have been that you would not have met me. Me, the reincarnation of your beloved queen . . . except, this time, the story ends happily instead of tragically.”

  “Yes, well . . .” He grumbled and shuffled his feet and sulked a bit, but in a charming way, and then said, “Well, the fates owed me that much, at least.”

  Then he would complain and worry about how he could possibly accomplish anything in this cursed environment, and the next morning he would go out and meet with people and find a compromise that suited everyone. It was a cycle that was repeated any number of times, and Gwen never minded it for a moment because she knew that she
was needed, and not by just anyone, but by a truly great man.

  Still, Arthur had his detractors, and they were loud and vehement, so much so that although he felt he was doing a good job, he was considered simply an adequate mayor, nothing special.

  That was until the terror hit home.

  For years, the pundits had warned of how unsafe the United States truly was, of how the belief that “it could never happen here” was a pleasant fantasy to which Americans lulled themselves to sleep at night. As caught up in the day-to-day routine of trying to improve life in the city, inch by frustrating inch of progress at a time, it never occurred to Arthur to worry about the big picture. And then, one day, totally without warning, he was caught up in the big picture ...

  FIRE TRUCKS ARE everywhere, and there are people screaming, and Gwen doesn’t know where to look first. This is madness, this is madness, this is not happening, I’m going to wake up any moment, echoes and reechoes through her head. They are not supposed to be here, in front of the fallen remains of one of the city’s greatest landmarks. They are supposed to be clear across town, attending a taping of a popular late-night talk show on which Arthur has agreed to make an appearance.

  People run past the windows of the limo, a few of them pausing to try and glance in, the rest of them not giving a damn, caring only about trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and this place of death. The streets are becoming thick with people; in moments it’s going to be difficult for the limo to go anywhere at all.

  Suddenly there is a banging on the limo roof. Through the open front window of the driver, she sees Arthur’s grim face, streaked with ash. She can see behind him the sky thick with gray smoke, drifting upward in leisurely fashion as if God is exhaling pollutants. “Get her out of here,” Arthur says.

  “No, Arthur!” she cries out. They had been rerouted here upon hearing of the emergency, and she will be damned if she is suddenly shunted away once more.

  “It’s too dangerous,” he tells her, and to the driver, in a tone that will brook no discussion, he says, “Go.”

  The limo starts to roll forward, but before it gets three feet, Gwen shoves open the door on the side opposite from where Arthur is. They look at each other across the rooftop, his face darkening with a scowl, and then she spots elderly people, struggling to walk or even stand. “Here!” she calls to them, and without a word of question or protest they ease themselves into the limousine. Five of them are able to fit, including one with a walker, and Arthur keeps speaking her name to her in growing frustration, but she ignores him. Going quickly to the passenger-side window, she calls through to the driver, “Hit the siren, Clancy. Take them to the nearest hospital, make sure they’re checked for smoke inhalation.”

  Clancy, caught between two masters, looks from Arthur’s face to Gwen’s and back, and quickly decides whom he is less interested in arguing with. He hits the siren, and as crowded as the streets are, as shellshocked as the refugees may be, they still make way for the limo as it rolls away from the scene of the catastrophe.

  Arthur stares at her, shaking his head. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have allowed a smile to appear in recognition of her annoying pluck, but these are far from ordinary circumstances. “So be it,” he snaps, and then promptly hurls himself into conference and aid with the senior emergency officers on the spot.

  Gwen pitches in everywhere she can. Within minutes she is so covered with filth that she’s not immediately recognizable. It doesn’t matter. She’s smart, she’s willing to work, and she’s breathing; at that point in time, that’s absolutely all that matters. She sees the human misery, she sees the heroism all around her, she sees the suffering and the scattered body parts and the numb looks on the faces of everyone involved, and whenever she thinks it’s more than she can bear, she thinks of the building as it had been mere hours before, and how those who destroyed it would like nothing better than to break the spirit of all Americans, and then she redoubles her efforts and gets back to work.

  As for Arthur, God, he’s everywhere. One minute he’s directing operations, the next he is speaking to the TV cameras, assuring anyone watching that the city’s finest and bravest are on top of the situation, the next minute he’s helping to haul out rubble. His jacket is long gone, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up. His necktie he has tied off around his head, like a bandana, to keep strands of his brown hair out of his eyes and soak up the sweat from his forehead. His white shirt is thick with dirt and perspiration, the pants legs torn. The suit’s pretty much unusable, and yet somehow that seems extraordinarily trivial right about then.

  Already the words are being bandied about, first in whispers and then in full-voice growls of anger: Terrorists. This was no explosion from a gas main leak. This was a series of carefully placed bombs, laid at the foundations of the building, undetected over a lengthy period, and then detonated. Fortunately the great structure had collapsed straight down; if it had fallen to the side, any side, the death toll would be beyond calculation.

  Arthur and Gwen labor ceaselessly, long into the night. At one point Gwen collapses from exhaustion onto a Red Cross bed, just to close her eyes for a few moments. It is several hours later when she comes to. Arthur has not stopped working in all that time. She has no idea how he’s doing it. He may be many things: a thousand years old, a former king, a warrior born, but superhuman in terms of strength and stamina he is most definitely not. Yet there he is, everywhere, determined not to stop standing until he literally can stand no longer, and considering his efforts thus far, it seems just barely possible that he can manage it.

  The journalists take notice.

  Although it is not his intention, and even though he doesn’t really give a damn about the media, nevertheless he benefits from it immensely. Arthur is on the front page of all the daily newspapers, full-color pictures depicting Arthur and Gwen in assorted altruistic moments. But that initial coverage pales beside what happens in the glow of the next morning sun . . .

  “MRS. PENN ...” GWEN blinked, like an owl hit with a spotlight, and brought herself back to reality. “Yes?”

  “Nothing, it’s just,” said Porter, clearly a bit uncomfortable, looking rather out of place there with her beautifully tailored suit and very modern manner, surrounded by an environment that seemed plucked out of centuries agone, “it’s just that you’d been staring at that wall for fifteen minutes without saying anything. Is there something particularly significant about that wall . . . if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “No,” Gwen said softly, her breath misting in front of her as the temperature dropped precipitously. It had been an unseasonably warm January afternoon, but now she was really starting to feel the chill. She noticed Porter shivering slightly and felt guilty. “No, nothing particularly significant about it at all. I was just thinking about . . . things. This is a piece of the past, after all. What better place to think about the past?”

  “Well . . . if you’re asking my opinion . . . the inside of a warm limo seems much better,” Porter ventured.

  Gwen chuckled at that, and then nodded. She headed for the car and Cook was all too pleased to be holding the door open for her. She noticed that, even in this relatively sedate and safe setting, he was looking back and forth, his great head resembling a conning tower. He was trying to spot the slightest hint of danger, from any direction, of any kind. She had no idea how he managed to do the job; if it were her, she would have gone insane.

  She slid into the car, Porter directly behind her, and the door slammed decisively shut. But the sound was a distance away, for her mind was elsewhere ...

  THE PRESIDENT OF the United States arrives.

  It is, more or less, over the figurative dead bodies of his Secret Service men, who are insisting that this is a gargantuan mistake on his part. The area is not secure, they tell him. They cannot guarantee his safety. But the President is an old warhorse of a man, a veteran who spent time in a prison camp, and he makes his position clear through word
and deed: He will not be hunkered down somewhere while a U.S. city is under siege. Furthermore, he is an old-school hard-liner, and has made a war on terrorism one of the centerpieces of his presidency. So he is not about to let the actions of terrorists dictate where he will go and when he will go there.

  There are the cynics, of course. There are those who say that he is seeking to have the photographers and press snap pictures of him walking amongst the rubble, head held high, a flag raised in one hand and an arm draped around the shoulders of a tired but inspiring fireman. There are those who say that he is so obsessed with mindless machismo that he is putting himself at risk rather than listening to the advice of his handlers, who know best and would keep him out of harm’s way. His presence in New York, it is said, will accomplish nothing on any sort of practical level.

  He does not care. He will not be reasoned with, because he knows what is right and true and best.

  He is accompanied by enough Secret Service men to take down the entire offensive line of the Denver Broncos. High overhead, United States Air Force fighter pilots cut through the air in patrol, locking down New York airspace, while all flights from JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark are shut down for the duration of the President’s visit.

  Gwen is not on hand. Exhausted and spent, she has returned to Gracie Mansion, practically collapsing onto the bed as fatigue overwhelms her. She is unaware of the President’s visit until she opens her eyes drowsily and—through some sixth sense—decides to turn on the television. Fumbling for the remote, she snaps on the set and stares across the bedroom, her mind not quite registering what she’s seeing at first. There’s Arthur, her husband, and there’s the President of the United States. Slowly she sits up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. This is totally unexpected. She’s a big admirer of the President, even if she didn’t vote for him. She hadn’t held much hope for him originally, but he seems to have grown into the job and developed a streak of independence that had prevented him from turning into the tool and spokesman for arch conservatives, which she’d feared he would become. She’s annoyed that she’s missing the opportunity to meet him, and wonders if there’s time to change and get down there.