Children of the Knight, Michael J. Bowler [classic book list txt] 📗

of Arthur. “Just an expression. Means something’s easy.”

“Oh,” replied Arthur. “Perhaps it should mean something that you make seem easy.”

“C’mon, chicken, get on.”

Arthur’s eyebrows shot up again, but he didn’t respond. Rather, he placed one booted foot on the board as Lance had instructed and attempted to push forward with his other. He managed one good push before the board flew out from under his foot, and he nearly toppled backward. Lance laughed, and even Llamrei, nibbling at the grass, looked up and whinnied in amusement.

Arthur frowned, his pride floating to the surface.

If a boy can do this….

Approaching the board a second time, he again placed his left foot firmly in the middle, adjusted his center of gravity, and began kicking at the ground with his right foot, feeling, he thought, rather like a horse. But the board went forward and he with it. This time he kept firm pressure on the board with his foot so it would not escape him, and he proceeded along the winding pathway.

Lance clapped with delight. “You’re doing it, Arthur! Now ride it, man.”

Arthur raised his kicking foot carefully and planted it firmly behind the other, and did not tumble off. The board, with him on it, moved steadily forward, not with the rapidity Lance could achieve, but forward motion nonetheless.

“Yes!” Lance shouted.

Arthur then made a mistake. He turned his head to acknowledge Lance’s “Yes” and promptly lost his balance. The board flew out from under him, and he toppled backward, crashing hard onto the grass rising upward from the path. The air whooshed from his lungs as he landed, and he lay dazed and confused for a few moments.

“You okay, Arthur? I shoulda tole you not to turn your head.”

Arthur raised himself onto his elbows. “I be fine, my boy. Growing up, I fell from many a horse, and that be a fine art I learnt quite well.”

Lance chuckled. “You did look pretty funny.”

“Yes, you did,” said an unexpected voice from behind Lance. Lance whirled in fright. “Ms. McMullen!”

A lady stood directly behind the boy, clad in jeans and a light jacket, her blonde hair loose about her shoulders, her expression wary. “I was told you hang out here, Lance.”

“What you be doin’ here, Ms. McMullen? It ain’t safe.”

She gave his tunic and pants the once over, glanced down at Arthur sprawled on the grass, then back at Lance. “I just drove over tonight on a hunch. I’ve been worried about you, Lance. You haven’t been to school.”

Embarrassed, Arthur stretched out a hand, and Lance clasped it, helping pull him to his feet. Brushing grass off his hauberk, Arthur eyed the lady awkwardly. The two adults sized each other up.

“Where are thy manners, Lance?” Arthur said, recovering his aplomb as best he could. He had trouble taking his eyes off this lady.

“Huh?” replied Lance, nervously pushing his sweat-drenched hair from his face. “Oh, sorry. This is Ms. McMullen, the teacher I tole you about. This be King Arthur. And I be his First Knight.”

“I be honored to meet thee, Lady McMullen,” Arthur said smoothly and with great respectfulness.

She made no move to shake his hand. “As soon as I saw you on the news, I knew that’s why Lance was asking me all those questions. But I still haven’t figured out what you’re up to.”

Arthur’s eyebrows rose enquiringly. “Up to?”

“He ain’t up to anything, Ms. McMullen,” Lance interjected indignantly, “’cept helping kids.”

She ignored Lance completely, her gaze locked on Arthur’s face. “Is it for the publicity? Is that why you’re pretending to be King Arthur?”

“Pretending?”

“I’m not fourteen years old, mister, no offense Lance, and I don’t fool easily. You don’t expect me to believe you’re really King Arthur, do you?”

“Why not?”

“Because King Arthur, if he was real, died centuries ago.”

Arthur smiled warmly, gazing at her in wonder.

An extraordinary woman, he thought, a woman of spirit.

“Lance hath told me of your fascination with my past deeds. I can assure you my present ones be of the same ilk.”

“What, starting a new Round Table or something?”

Arthur nodded, his eyes never leaving her face. “Precisely, save this time I shalt make it permanent.”

She recoiled in horror. “I warn you, if anything happens to Lance….”

Arthur placed a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “Be assured, milady, Lance shall come to no harm.” He found himself fascinated by the loveliness of her features, especially her golden hair.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t stare at me like that,” she said, her voice firm.

Arthur glanced down. “My sincerest apologies, milady. It just be that you bring forth memories of my beloved Guinevere, both in beauty and in spirit. I did truly never expect to gaze upon one such as her again.”

Lance gazed nervously from Arthur to Jenny and back again.

Arthur’s sincere tone softened her expression for just a moment. But then it returned, a look that told Arthur she’d likely been hurt in the past and was instinctively distrustful as a result.

“Guinevere, huh? That’s a line I haven’t heard before.”

Arthur smiled at the way she bristled with indignation. “You possess my Gwen’s stubborn temperament. It t’were a quality Lancelot loved in her, as well. He called her ‘Jenny’ because she told him it did always make her feel young.”

Arthur noted Lance looking startled, and realized in one corner of his mind that he had yet to tell this Lance of the previous one.

Before he could begin, the lady replied, “It just so happens that’s my name too. Jenny.”

Arthur’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Indeed?”

Lance fidgeted, looking from one adult to the other. “Come on, Arthur, we gotta go. ’Night, Ms. McMullen.”

He tried pulling Arthur’s sleeve toward Llamrei, but Arthur stood his ground. Lance dropped the sleeve, looking like he’d just been abandoned on a street corner. He snatched up his skateboard and sullenly moved up the rise to Llamrei, petting her gently around the snout.

Arthur remained frozen in place, gazing with wide-eyed wonder at the lovely young woman before him. The streetlight cast her blonde hair within a halo of light that entranced him.

“Be thou a good teacher, Lady Jenny?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

Mesmerized by his gaze, Jenny was clearly caught off guard by the question. She cleared her throat, then replied, “I, uh…. I don’t know. I try. I love what I teach.”

“But do you love who you teach?”

Jenny opened her mouth to respond, but then closed it.

Arthur smiled warmly. “Methinks we shalt gaze upon one another again.”

Turning, he strolled up the rise to Llamrei and Lance. So absorbed were his thoughts with this fascinating young woman, he failed to notice Lance glowering down at her as he mounted the horse. He reached for Lance, but the boy ignored the proffered hand and scrambled up into the saddle by himself. Arthur’s gaze remained on Jenny, who looked radiant beneath that circle of streetlight. He raised his hand in.

“Farewell, Lady Jenny.”

Jenny slowly raised her own hand in farewell as Arthur turned the horse and trotted away.

The return journey was made in silence, not because Lance didn’t want to talk, but due to Arthur’s preoccupation with Jenny. Lance had made an attempt at drawing him out, but the king’s responses to questions fell into the category of grunts or nods.

For his part, Arthur found himself replaying in his mind the all-too-brief encounter with that fascinating woman. What had he sensed within her? Strength, yes, stubborn defiance, certainly. But what else? He knew virtually nothing about her except she taught Lance and other children like him. She obviously cared for Lance, which pleased him. But what of her other charges? Did her heart go out to them, as well, or was her teaching job nothing more than that—a job?

He found her by turns confusing and alluring, and felt drawn to her even more than he’d been toward Guinevere. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, after all, part of a treaty agreement. She’d been beautiful and bold, nobody’s fool, his Gwen, and somewhere along the way he had fallen in love with her, and then loved her deeply until the end.

He suddenly realized that Llamrei had stopped. Looking around, he saw they were within the riverbed facing the grill entrance to his lair. Lance stood on the ground, holding open the enormous grate for them to enter.

“Well?” Lance asked sullenly, gripping his board like a weapon.

Arthur shook his head a moment to clear his thoughts. “My apologies, Lance,” he began, pulling himself back into the present. “My mind wandered.”

Lance snorted. “Yeah, I bet!”

Arthur noted the tone and Lance’s slouchy posture and sullen look. “You seem troubled, Lance. What be weighing upon thee?”

Lance looked down at the ground. “Nothing.”

“Hast thy mood to do with the Lady Jenny?”

Lance snapped his head up like a cobra preparing to strike. “Look, she’s only a teacher, okay!”

Arthur recoiled.

Lance looked ashamed and bowed his head. “Sorry. She’s cool. It’s just….”

Arthur gazed down at the boy, concerned, but genuinely mystified as to what was troubling him. “Just what?”

“Nothing. I’m tired,” he said, and then stepped past the grill to enter the darkness of the tunnel without looking back.

Puzzled, Arthur trotted Llamrei through the entrance and closed the grill behind them. The bobbing, bouncing light of Lance’s lantern guided him through the dark tunnels back to their chamber, but the boy said not another word along the way.

As Jenny returned to her apartment, her mind raced, replaying images of her encounter. Tossing her jacket haphazardly onto the sofa, she wandered into her broom-closet-sized kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a carton of orange juice. She was so lost in thought that she took a swig from the carton without using a glass, set the juice down near the sink, and drifted into the living room.

She knew she should be exhausted—Fridays were usually the end of the line for energy levels—but her mind was hyped by the night’s events. Who was this man, and why didn’t she simply call the cops and report that she’d seen him? Report that he had a fourteen-year-old boy in tow and kept that boy out of school every day? She could do these things, and her mind told her that she should. But her heart told a different story. She’d been burned enough times by men—she knew the “user” type very well by now. This guy wasn’t like that.

He almost reminded her of this alien character from an old TV series she’d seen on cable. This alien had been here on earth once before and fathered a child. Thinking his son was in trouble, the alien returned to earth to help him, and discovered the boy’s mother had disappeared. Father and son set out to locate her. Because the alien wasn’t from earth, everything seemed new to him, and he sincerely saw the best qualities in everyone he met. He even helped bring those qualities to the surface.

That was the feeling Arthur gave her. He seemed out of place in this time, in this world, and yet he oozed sincerity. And Lance adored him—that was obvious. She knew enough of Lance to know he was nobody’s fool. Still, he was fourteen years old and could be “wowed” by swords and horses and tales of chivalry.

Like you, Jenny? Isn’t that why you loved those old Arthurian stories, where knights rode horses and rescued fair maidens, and right and wrong were clearly delineated ideals?

But human beings weren’t that simple, were they? People were