“You are a thief.”
“Yeah. As it turned out.”
“My father should have killed you when you took the sword. I would have killed you.”
“Don’t you think life’s funny that way?” I asked. She stared at me as if I were speaking a language she didn’t understand. “I mean, I guess you’ve noticed, but there isn’t a lot to do around here, and I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, but it seems like it’s been a very long time, and all there is to do is eat and sleep and think. And I was thinking, look at how many things had to happen for me to end up here. You know, if only my dad hadn’t run off on my mom. If only my mom hadn’t died of cancer. If only Uncle Farrell hadn’t volunteered to raise me. If only Mr. Samson had hired somebody else to be the night watchman at Samson Towers. Or if Uncle Farrell had just said no to Mogart like he should have. Or if I had said no to Uncle Farrell. I guess I could go on, but you probably get the point. Your father talks a lot about fate and doom, which is something I never really bought into, but now I’m thinking maybe something does guide us or use us for something bigger . . . What do you think?”
“What do I think?” she asked. “I think you are an idiot.”
“You wouldn’t be the first,” I admitted.
“Your sympathy for my father disgusts me.”
“Well,” I said. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so hard on me, Natalia. I know how it feels.”
“You know how what feels?”
“Losing a parent.”
She looked at me for a long time. It was so long, I started to feel very uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than usual.
“And at least there’s a chance he won’t die,” I went on. “My mom didn’t even have that.”
36
Things changed between Natalia and me after that night. I’m not saying they got much better, but it was like we’d reached some kind of understanding. I still caught her staring at me sometimes, and once or twice I think Mike noticed too. Once at dinner, I looked up from my plate and saw her looking, and then I looked over at Mike and he was looking at her looking at me, and he was smiling.
One morning, after I finished my shower, I passed Bennacio’s door and heard Natalia’s voice, followed by the low hum of Bennacio’s. It sounded like a heated debate was going on; I figured it was about Natalia going with him to the rendezvous with Mogart. I went to my room and closed the door. After a while I heard a door slam and the light tread of Natalia going down the hall.
I went to Bennacio’s room and knocked softly on the door. There was no answer. I tried the knob. It was unlocked.
I stepped inside. The light was off, but there was a glow in the room from two candles sitting on the small table pushed against the far wall. Propped up between the candles was a small painting in a gilded frame of a man in a white robe, kind of floating against a black background, with great white fluffy wings outstretched on either side, holding a sword in his right hand.
Kneeling in front of this picture was Bennacio. He didn’t lift his head or move when I came in. I felt ashamed, almost as if I had walked in on him naked. The main thing that struck me, though, was how terribly small he seemed, kneeling there in front of that picture, how terribly small and alone.
“Yes, Kropp?” he asked without turning or getting up.
“You should take her with you,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“Take her with you, Bennacio,” I said.
“You do not know what you are asking,” he said finally.
“Maybe I don’t,” I said. “There’s a lot I don’t get. Most stuff I probably never will, but this one thing I’m pretty sure of, Bennacio.”
His shoulders dipped, his head fell to his chest, and when he stood up, for the first time he struck me as an old man, old enough to be a grandfather, even. He turned and looked hard at me.
“What are you so sure of, Kropp?”
“Look, Bennacio, when my mom got sick she would get on me all the time about coming to see her at the hospital. She was all worried about me missing school or sleep or meals, but she was dying. There was no hope for her. But I didn’t care. I came every day anyway, for over a month, and I sat there for hours, even when she didn’t know I was sitting there.” All the memories came rushing back then, of Mom shrunken to the size of a pygmy in that hospital bed, bald from all the chemo, big black circles around her eyes. Her teeth seemed huge against her hollow cheeks and thinned lips. And the way she would whimper, Please, please, Alfred, make it go away. Make the pain go away.
“Maybe it was useless my being there. Maybe there was nothing I could do, but where else was I supposed to be? You say you don’t have a choice, but you think she does. Well, maybe she doesn’t have any more choice than you do. It’s kind of hypocritical, if you ask me, saying you don’t have a choice but she does.”
I don’t know if anything I was saying was making any sense. But he listened. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, but he listened, I think.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s it. That’s about all I had.”
I walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me. Standing a couple of feet away was Natalia.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and walked hurriedly past her, muttering as I passed, “There’s no such thing as accidents.” I don’t know why I said that.
37
I went to my room and after a while—I don’t know how long, maybe a couple of hours—there was a knock on the door and Bennacio came in, still wearing that brown robe. He was carrying a long box. He sat beside me, setting the box down on the bed behind us.
“Kropp,” he said.
“Bennacio,” I said.
“I cannot take her.”
“Well,” I said. “You should.”
“One day, perhaps, you will have a child, and you will understand.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“Do not think too bitterly of me.”
“Okay,” I said, as if what I thought about Lord Bennacio, Last Knight of the Order of the Sacred Sword, really mattered. Bennacio was giving off some serious sadness sitting there beside me, as if an invisible cloak of sorrow was wrapped around his shoulders.
“That picture in your room,” I said. “Is it Saint Michael?”
“The Archangel Michael, yes.”
“You know, I was thinking about that. Mr. Samson talked about the master of the Sword and so did the Lady in my dream. Michael is the master of the Sword you’re waiting for, isn’t he?”
He slowly shook his head and smiled. I didn’t know what he meant by that. Was I right or wrong?
“When I was a boy of thirteen,” Bennacio said, “my father took me aside and told me that we were of the house of Bedivere. I had heard the story of the Sword, of course, but like you had always thought it merely a legend. My father took me to the head of the Order, Samson’s father, who had just moved to America. I saw the Sword and I believed. Upon his deathbed, my father told me of Bedivere’s failure.”
Bennacio sighed. “Bedivere was to cast the Sword into the lake—those were the direct orders from Arthur—but he chose to keep it instead, and our Order was created. Of all the knights, he loved his king the most, and from this love rose the belief that one day another master would return for the Sword.”
He sighed again, a longer, sadder sigh. “It is a particular burden, Alfred, to descend from the house of Bedivere. There have always been knights of our Order who saw what he did as a betrayal of his king’s trust. Many believed the Sword should be cast back into the waters from which it rose, thus removing any possibility of the Sword being used for ill. By my honor, as the last knight and the last son of Bedivere, if ever I retrieve the Sword, that is what I shall do. I will atone for his sin, though his sin was of the most peculiar kind, born of love.”
He picked up the box, laid it on his lap, and opened the lid. Inside, lying on the purple velvet lining, was a sword, thin and black-bladed. It looked like the same kind of sword he used
the night I stole Excalibur. He held it up.
“This is the sword of my father. OIPEP recovered it when they stormed Mogart’s keep. On the day my father died, I swore upon this sword the ancient oath of our Order.”
He turned to me. “It may be my fate to fall to Mogart when the hour comes. If so, will you not make the same oath and take up this sword?”
“Gee, Bennacio,” I said. I was shocked. “That’s a big honor and I really appreciate your asking me, but I think you’ve got the wrong guy. Maybe you should ask Mike or Paul or one of those guys . . . Even that Abby woman would be a better choice. I think she might be the toughest one of the lot. Mike’s kind of scared of her, you can tell.”
“Those people, Kropp? They are arrogant and full of their own wisdom. They are fools.”
“Well, some people might say I’m not the ripest apple on the tree, Bennacio. You gotta know your limitations, and what you’re asking is way over my head. Basically, I’m a loser.”
He stared at me with a stern expression. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, I lost the Sword, for one. But besides that, there’s nothing I’m good at. You know how most people have talents? Like some people are good at sports and others good at school—science and math and stuff like that? Well, I’m not very good at anything. I played football, but I wasn’t very good at it, and my grades are pretty mediocre. You know, I’m just . . . average.”
“Average,” he said.
“Yeah. Just your average, um, Kropp. Though I’ve been screwing up more than usual lately. The idea of me taking up your sword and being some kind of hero—well, that’s kind of ridiculous.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that’s important.”
He gave my shoulder a little pat. “And as for being a hero—who can say what valor dwells in the soul unless the test comes? A hero lives in every heart, Alfred, waiting for the dragon to come out.”
38
Bennacio took my hand and placed it on the flat part of the blade.
“I’ll just let you down,” I said. I was about to cry. Maybe I should cry, I thought. That’ll change his mind about a hero dwelling in my heart.
“Perhaps. Our will often falters. My mind tells me you are a weak young man, timid and unsure, but my heart tells me something altogether different. For all your faults, Alfred, you are without guile, without pretense. The Sword shall never be won or evil defeated through trickery and deceit, as those downstairs believe. Will you not speak the oath now, while there is still hope?”
I looked away. His expression was so desperate, I couldn’t look at him. Things really couldn’t get any worse, when a knight like Bennacio had to turn to Alfred Kropp to help him.
“Alfred,” he said softly. “There is something else. Something you do not know that might help you make your decision.”
I turned back. “What?”
“You asked if I had finished Windimar’s training. It was indeed I who finished it, which is not uncommon, as I’ve said. Samson too completed a certain knight’s training, when that knight pledged himself to the Order upon their first meeting in France. You can guess who that certain knight was.”
He waited patiently for my Kropp mind to grasp what he was saying.
“Mogart?”
“Yes, Mogart was Samson’s squire, and more. Samson named him his heir.”
My Kropp mind couldn’t get a grip on that one. “So why did Mogart turn on him?”
His dark eyes glittered beneath his shaggy eyebrows, the same way they had about a lifetime ago in the halls of Samson Towers.
“Have you not wondered, Alfred, more than once, why your name was the code to unlocking the secret chamber beneath Samson’s desk? Have you not wondered why, at the most desperate hour, Samson ordered me to return to America to find you? Have you never wondered why Samson hired Farrell Kropp, an underskilled mechanic, to be the night watchman at Samson Towers? Two years ago, Bernard Samson discovered he had another heir, a true heir, and he wanted to make sure his son was taken care of until he came of age and could be brought into his full inheritance as a Knight of the Order.”
“Uncle Farrell was Bernard Samson’s son? Wouldn’t that make me his . . .” I tried to figure it out. “Grandnephew or something?”
“Alfred, Bernard Samson was your father.”
I stared at him for a long time. “I don’t understand, Bennacio.”
“Sixteen years ago, the man you know as Bernard Samson fell in love with a woman he met on a business trip. A business trip to Salina, Ohio, Alfred. That woman’s name was Annabelle Kropp.”
I was slowly shaking my head. Even though it was larger than average, it wasn’t big enough to hold what he was telling me.
“Samson did not wish to expel Mogart from the Order. In many ways, Mogart was the best of us: intrepid, clever; with sword and lance he had no equal. But Mogart wanted more than to be a mere knight like the rest of us. He desired Samson’s place. But when you were born, he could not have it.”
“Oh, great. This is just great, Bennacio. Now that’s my fault too?”
“It is no one’s fault, Alfred. It is merely a fact. You are the last in the line of Lancelot, the greatest knight who ever lived.”
I didn’t know what to say. Of all the things that had happened to me since my mother died, this was probably the weirdest—and the worst.
“You’re just making this up to get me to take this stupid vow or oath or whatever it is. I’m not his . . . He’s not my father . . .”
I couldn’t go on and Bennacio didn’t make me. He sat very still while I cried.
“Why did he leave my mom?” I finally made myself ask.
“So as not to endanger her—or you.”
“That didn’t work out too well, did it?”
“Not all good intentions do.”
“I still don’t believe it.”
“As with the angels, Alfred, that hardly matters.”
I looked down and saw the sword across my lap.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Bennacio? Why did you wait till now to tell me?”
“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
Bennacio whispered, “Speak the words now, Alfred Kropp. Speak, son of my captain, heir to Lancelot. ‘I, Alfred Kropp, swear in the name of the Archangel Michael, my guardian and protector, that I will sacrifice my life in defense of the Sword of Righteousness, and that by my life or my death, I shall defend it against the agents of darkness.’ ”
I repeated the words, and in the silence that followed, waited for some heroic valor to swell my breast. I didn’t feel anything except a little sick to my stomach.
Bennacio smiled, patted my shoulder again, and placed the sword back into its box.
Then from downstairs came the sound of Mike’s cell phone ringing. I knew it was Mike’s because the ringer played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
“Ah,” he said. “At last. The call comes. Perhaps a good sign.”
“Am I a knight now?”
“There are no knights left, save one, and his reckoning is soon upon him.”
39
Mike knocked loudly on the door and stuck his head in. He was smacking gum and smiling.
“Great news, cowboys. We’re a go. Let’s load ’em up and move ’em out!”
He clapped his hands and clumped down the hall in those big hiking boots he wore.
“You want me to take up your sword,” I told him. “But I don’t even know how to use a sword.”
“There is no time to teach you, Kropp. However, I suspect the day will not be lost or won through swordsmanship.”
We went downstairs. Jeff had laid out sandwiches. He said Mike had given orders to eat before we left.
“Where are we going?” I asked Mike.
“That’s classified.”
Bennacio and I took our sandwiches i
nto the great room and ate by the fire. Abby was standing off by herself, talking quietly on a cell phone and checking her watch. Cabiri was there, and Natalia, of course, but neither of them ate anything. Cabiri was very quiet too, not his usual jokey self, and Natalia looked like she was about to cry.
Everybody gathered by the front door.
“Okay, here’s the game plan,” Mike announced. “Jeff, Paul, Bennacio, and moi head for the rendezvous point. Everybody else hangs here until we get back.” He was kind of smirking in Abby’s direction.
“I am going with Bennacio,” Cabiri said.
“No can do, pal,” Mike said cheerfully. His mood was a lot better now that the game was finally on. “You don’t have clearance.”
“I do not need your clearance,” Cabiri said. “I found you once . . .”
“You try to leave this château and I’ll have you shot in the back of the head,” Mike said with a smile. “I’ve already given the order.”
Cabiri turned his head and made a spitting motion.
“Cabiri,” Bennacio said. There was a faraway-ness in his voice and eyes, as if he were already at the rendezvous point, the Sword of Kings within his grasp. “Stay.”
“Jeez, this is heartwarming,” Mike said. “Parting, the sweet sorrow thing and all that, but we’re on a tight schedule here and we’ve got to get shaking.”
He opened the door and waved at Bennacio. I stepped forward with him.
“You’re staying here, Al,” Mike said.
“Kropp is coming,” Bennacio said. “He is my second.”
“Your second what?” Mike asked.
“He will take up my sword should I fall.”
“No offense, Benny,” Mike said. “But if it were me, I’d take Cabiri here.”
“But I have no clearance,” Cabiri said sarcastically.
“Look, Ben,” Mike said in a tone usually reserved for a little kid. “The kid can’t come.”
“Michael!” It was Abby. “We don’t have time for this. Let him take the boy.”
Mike’s mouth moved a little, but no sound came out. His face grew red.