The Broken Sword

by Molly Cochran

  Arthur, meticulously brilliant as always, gave detailed instructions on how she could lose herself in any large city. "After a year," he finished, "you'll be free to go back to work and try to have some kind of normal life. I know now that will never be possible for me. I'm sorry that I've put you through so much grief. Love, Arthur."

  They had drugged her before they left, so that when she first read the note, she could not fully grasp its content. But she did not sleep. Through that night she sat awake at the window of the inn where she and Arthur and Hal had stayed, staring at the bed where Hal had made love to her once, only once…

  At dawn the next day she had read the note again, and howled with grief.

  "Arthur," she sobbed, hating herself for her belated concern. Where had she been during all the years he'd needed her? Where had her love for the boy been then?

  He had known that she resented his presence. When Emily's sister jumped off a bridge five days after giving birth to Arthur, the burden of raising the child had gone to Emily. She had been on the fast track at a national think tank at the time, assisting a scientist who later earned a Nobel Prize for the work Emily had done. With her new responsibilities as an unwilling mother, her career had virtually ground to a halt. She was no longer able to work the long hours that were necessary for advancement in the competitive field of pure science.

  Her anger at having had her career interrupted by the burden of raising her dead sister's child had been all too clear from the beginning. Arthur had spent most of his life with strangers, waiting for her to return from work, and the other half watching her boil with self-pity for the time she was forced to spend with him. If it had not been for the cup, their lives might still be forming that same dull, aching pattern.

  But the cup had changed everything. It had made her realize that Arthur was more important to her than the lost Nobel. And it had brought her the love of a man. It had, for the briefest moment, connected Emily Blessing with the human race.

  And then the cup had taken it all away.

  The police found the smoldering remains of a burned mansion inside of which were several bodies. None of them had been children; neither was one the remains of a seven-foot-tall man named Saladin. Some distance away, perhaps coincidentally, an abandoned field bore the hoof prints of hundreds of horses, although no one in the area had seen them. Scotland Yard sent a man to investigate, but after three months he had turned up nothing except the weird account of a village boy who claimed to have witnessed a great battle on the site, with knights on horseback and Saracens wielding scimitars.

  "The villagers here are superstitious," the investigator told her. "They believe this was the site of the original Camelot, you know."

  "Oh?" Emily said without interest.

  The detective smiled. "Part of the legend is that on St. John's Eve, the ghosts of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table go out riding, looking for their missing king. Arthur was supposed to come back, you know. Rather like the Second Coming."

  "So they think ghosts made the hoofprints."

  "I'm afraid not much goes on in Wilson-on-Hamble," he said apologetically.

  The Yard called their investigator back shortly afterward. Their conclusion was that Saladin had died, probably in transit with the bodies of Arthur Blessing and Hal Woczniak.

  "I'm sorry," the Scotland Yard man told her on the day he left the village. "We might be wrong. We'll keep the case open."

  Emily nodded dully.

  That afternoon, she went back to the meadow. It was September. The summer had been dry, and the muddy earth, churned by the hooves of those never-found horses, had dried as a testament to the mystery that had occurred there.

  She cried. For the past, for the future which would be just like it, and for the tiny window of hope in which Hal and Arthur and Emily would be together again, a window which now was closed forever.

  "Excuse me, m'um," a youthful voice said behind her. Emily gasped at the stark interruption of her thoughts, and the boy quickly removed his hat and bobbed at her.

  "What do you want?" she asked, embarrassed by her tears.

  He was around twelve or thirteen years old, she had guessed, a little older than Arthur at the time. His pants were worn and too short for his lanky legs by a good three inches. The sight of the boy's exposed pink ankles broke Emily's heart. She would never see Arthur during the coltish, awkward years of adolescence. Back in Chicago, his room would be filled with reminders of how much Emily had missed.

  "I'm Tom Rodgers, m'um, and you'd be the lady from America," he said nervously. "There's been talk that the police have done aught to find your boy."

  "The inspector from Scotland Yard just left," she said. "The investigation is over."

  "Aye. I'm sorry to hear it, too. That's why when I seen you I decided to come talk."

  "About what?" she asked. Then she remembered what the inspector had said. A local boy had claimed to see the ghost-horses in this meadow. "Look, Tom Rodgers, or whoever you are," she snapped. "You probably thought it was fun to joke with the police, but it's, damn cruel to try it with me."

  Tom backed away from her as if her words had been physical blows, removing his cap and clutching it over his stomach. "I know as how you might not take me serious," he said meekly. "There's most in the village think I'm daft. But I seen what I seen. And so I won't trouble you except to say that your boy's all right." He tipped his hat and walked away.

  "Wait!" Emily called, running after him. "Please wait." She grabbed his arm. "What do you mean he's all right? Did you see him?"

  "Aye, I did. Him and the American bloke, and the old man, too."

  "What old man?"

  "I don't know what his name was, but he's some kind of wizard, I'll tell you that," the boy said. "And there was a castle, and knights in armor, and a bunch of wogs that looked like Ali Baba's forty thieves—"

  Emily shook her head. She did not want to hear the boy's fantasies. "Tell me about the boy," she said. "Where did he go?"

  "Dunno." He shrugged. "Him and the American took off down the road after it was all over. The castle disappeared, and so did the knights and the others. Only the old man was left." The boy chuckled. "And he was laughing like a loon."

  "Did they—the boy and the American—did they have anything with them?" Emily asked. "Like a cup, or a bowl?"

  "No." The boy frowned, thinking. "No. they got rid of that. Birds come for it."

  Emily stood in silence for a long moment, a thousand thoughts racing through her mind. If they were alive, why hadn't Hal and Arthur come back for her? Where had they gone? Who was the old man?

  And where was the cup?

  She shook her head. This was ridiculous, she told herself. Young Tom here was obviously demented. Knights. Ali Baba. "Thank you," she said, and watched him as he walked away across the field. It was as easy to be crazy in a small town as in a big city, she decided. With a sigh, she went back to the hotel.

  There was nothing for her to do besides go home. Back to Chicago and her job at the Katzenbaum Institute.

  How little that meant to her now.

  Him and the American took off down the road after it was all over.

  What if Tom Rodgers wasn't crazy? she thought, her heart racing. What if he really had seen them leave?

  Then he was just looking for attention, she told herself. Or playing with the emotions of a tourist.

  And who was the old man?

  She had only met one old man since their arrival in England, a professor named Taliesin who had vanished at the same time Arthur had been kidnapped. The police had never found him, either.

  And then, with utter certainty, she knew. Arthur and Hal—and perhaps Taliesin, too—had left her at the inn because they were still in danger. The danger was to themselves; Emily herself knew next to nothing about Saladin or the cup. They had abandoned her in order to spare her life.

  The village boy was telling the truth.

  Emily finished packing her bag and left the in
n. But instead of heading back to Chicago, she took a train to London and began her own search for her nephew.

  That search had continued for the past three years.

  When her savings ran out, she took a job as a chemist in a small London paint company specializing in artists' oils to support herself while she scoured the streets and took out ads in every newspaper in Great Britain and the Continent searching for them. She never bothered to change her name or find a new identity. No one was interested enough in her to kill her.

  And if they did, Emily didn't really care.

  Then, just one month ago, she had met Aubrey Katsuleris. He had come to the paint company to commission a new color. He wanted a Ted the exact color of human blood.

  When he was escorted into the small laboratory where Emily worked, he had begun to explain, then stopped in frustration. "The problem with blood," he said exasperated, "is that it changes color with each moment of exposure to air. I can make those changes; it will be the point of my painting. But I need the original color to begin with."

  Patiently Emily had shown him the palette of reds, trying to arrive at a base color, when Katsuleris suddenly grasped an X-Acto knife and cut open the vein of his left wrist. Blood poured onto the white countertop in a gush.

  While the president of the company scurried away screaming for bandages, Emily could only stare at the artist in shock, watching with fascination as his blood poured out of him.

  "That is the color I want," he said.

  She considered for a moment, then picked up a beaker and mixed into it a compound made from different tubes and vials in the lab. Then she poured it on top of the spilled blood.

  When the president and his secretary arrived back with a bottle of iodine and some gauze bandage, Emily had gone back to her desk.

  "What did she do?" the artist asked as he offered up his arm to the clucking secretary.

  "Who?" the president asked. "You mean Emily? I'm sure I've no idea. Emily, call someone to have this mess cleaned up."

  "Don't touch it!" Aubrey shouted. "Don't you see? The color is exactly the same as it was when it came out of my vein. See this blood, here." He pointed with his chin toward another spattering of blood. "And here. It's already darkened. But this!" He touched his finger to it and drew a line of red across the countertop. The president and his secretary exchanged disgusted glances.

  "Er... Quite right," the president said. "And you say Miss Blessing had something to do with this?"

  "I applied a fixative to it," the mousy woman answered. She had an American accent. "He wanted the exact color."

  "He doesn't want to paint with blood!" the president hissed.

  "Oh, but I do," Aubrey said. He dipped his finger in the color again. "I do very much."

  The president's face broke into an ingratiating grin. "Then we shall by all means provide you with all the color—"

  "I can prepare the fixative," Emily said. "But I will not mix the blood."

  "Fine," Katuleris said, smiling dreamily at her. "I'll take a pint."

  Her eyebrows raised. "That would be enough for twenty or thirty gallons."

  He shrugged.

  "Where will you get the blood?" she asked.

  "I'm sure that's none of your business, Miss Blessing," the president said, ushering the artist out of the lab.

  That had been the beginning of her relationship with the artist. She had tried to forget the incident, but found Aubrey Katsuleris' face returning to her again and again.

  For one thing, he was famous. Even Emily, who had never taken any interest in the arts or in popular culture, had heard of him. He had been called the Picasso of the jet age. Many critics said that Katsuleris was overrated and that the prices of his paintings were out of proportion to their intrinsic value, but others touted his work as a pure reflection of the post-Vietnam generation. Even the British Museum had purchased some of his canvasses.

  For another—and Emily was ashamed to admit this to herself—she found him charming. Of that there was no doubt. Aubrey Katsuleris was as well known for his good looks and success with women as he was for his talent.

  He had come into the paint company several times after that first encounter, each time bringing with him some small but lovely gift for her: a box of chocolates from Geneva, a single rose which he claimed to have plucked with his own hands from the gardens of the Duchess of Kent. Nothing expensive or personal enough to warrant returning; just enough to keep her awake nights with thoughts of him.

  Through it all, she continually asked herself what on earth he could possibly see in her. She was no beauty. Oh, she had felt like one once, when she had been with Hal. She had even given in to one night of abandon in a creaky bed at a roadside inn.

  Hal had thought she was beautiful.

  Hal.

  She slammed her fist on the arm of the dusty secondhand sofa. Hal was gone. He was gone, and so was Arthur, and for three years Emily had been so lonely, so terribly lonely…

  And so, when she'd run into Aubrey Katsuleris a couple of weeks later in Regent's Park on her way home from work, she had told him about Arthur. She hadn't mentioned the cup, only that her nephew had been kidnapped by a man named Saladin, and that she had been searching for him for years.

  "Scotland Yard thinks he's dead," she confessed.

  "But you don't believe he is." Aubrey was quiet, compassionate, intensely interested.

  "No."

  Aubrey swooped her up in his arms and spun her in a circle. "Darling Emily, you're wonderfully stubborn. And I love this mystery about your nephew. I think I shall help you find him."

  "It's not a game," she said, unimpressed by his enthusiasm.

  "Forgive me. That was callous. Nevertheless, I'd like to try. Begin some inquiries, that sort of thing. Would you object?"

  "I wish it were that easy," she said.

  He smiled. "It might be."

  Apparently it had been that easy. Two weeks afterward, Aubrey rang her apartment bell at exactly five o'clock. A plane was waiting at the airport to take them to Tangier.

  Chapter Nine

  Beatrice could barely contain herself as she sauntered with her companions through the Grand Socco in Tangier. It was a feast for newborn eyes, from the magnificent carpets laid out on the ground to sacks of almonds and chickpeas piled into hills twice the height of a man. The air was thick with scent—saffron, cumin, pepper, ginger, verbena, cloves, orange flower, and more. She could identify each with her nose, but it thrilled her to actually see them, to examine each box filled with buds and roots and dried petals. Weaving among the stalls were peasant women wearing the red and white striped foutas peculiar to Tangier, their heads covered by broad hats sporting huge blue pom-poms. The large baskets they carried were filled with dates, olives, pots of henna, wool, flasks of rose and jasmine extract, mint, kohl, amber, or musk.

  "Oh, look!" she squealed, pointing to a boy dressed in a bright red costume jangling with bells. Across his back was a pole with buckets at either end. "What's he doing?"

  "He's a water carrier," Taliesin said as the boy ran past them. "The musicians are calling him over."

  Not far away, a group of dignified-looking men squatted on the ground playing a variety of strange instruments while a belly dancer gyrated around them. Around the corner, a public scribe was writing a letter on a portable lap-desk for an unlettered customer while a storyteller entertained a group of wide-eyed children.

  Hal looked at his watch. "It's almost seven. I think we ought to be heading for the hotel," he said.

  They had left the Jeep on the outskirts of the city, then walked through the crowded market district in case the police spotted the vehicle. Hal was grateful for the walk. It gave him a chance to think.

  He was not happy with his thoughts. They all revolved around the cup, and the danger it had brought them in the past.

  He had told himself over and over that finding Emily's message in the old newspaper had been nothing more than a coincidence. If they hadn't
had the cup, he might have accepted it as such.

  But they did have the cup, and someone had already tried to kill Beatrice for it.

  The Victoria Hotel was built on a cliff overlooking the Strait of Gibraltar. Behind its white domes the sun was setting, turning the sea to gold. Docked near the picturesque oceanside walkway bordered by palm and banana trees were cargo ships flying flags from all over the world. In the far distance, the shimmering hills of Andalusia rose out of the water.

  Hal wanted to see Emily, ached for her. That, too, fueled his sense of unease. The fact that he wanted the ad to have been a coincidence—hell, he wanted her to be in the Victoria Hotel waiting for them, wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything in his life—made him suspicious of his own actions. Had he placed Arthur in danger by coming to Tangier because he himself had needed to make certain that Emily wasn't there?

  "You okay, Hal?" Arthur asked.

  Hal stopped in his tracks. "No," he said. "No, I'm not." He gathered Arthur and Beatrice to him. "Listen, guys, I don't like this."

  "Why not?" Arthur asked.

  "I don't know why, okay? Call it paranoia. All I know is that if this is some kind of setup and the four of us walk in that place together, it won't be good."

  "Hal—"

  "He's right, Arthur," Taliesin said. "The two of you should wait—"

  "The three of you are going to wait. Over there by the docks." He pointed toward the ships. "I'll go in alone. If everything's all right, I'll come back for you."

  Arthur scowled. "What if it's not all right?"

  "It will be." Hal ruffled the boy's hair. "Who knows, Emily might still be there. I'll bring her out to see you, and then we'll all go have dinner, okay?"

  Arthur only stared at him.

  "Come along," Taliesin said gently.

  Hal watched them walk over the embankment toward the docks as the sky melted from red to indigo. Just before they descended out of sight, Arthur turned to look at him again.

  Hal ventured alone into the hotel.