Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  “So, what are you saying?” Wilcox asked pulling his hand from the stones of the bridge’s pillars and planting himself firmly on the cobblestones. “That there is no way we can get to this sword? Why are we even talking about it then?”

  Theo shook his head. “Bloody hell. I don’t know. I’m just saying, we can’t approach this as if it were some simple game of hide-and-seek or even an archeological excavation. We have to use our heads. Think. Find out what the legends say—if anything!—about the location of the sword and how anyone other than Bruncvík can retrieve it.”

  “Well, aren’t you the local expert?” Wilcox seemed to be getting angry. “What do you suggest?”

  Theo hurried to reassure the American. “No, no—I’m just suggesting we do what we can to read up on the legends. But I think we need to divide the jobs between us or there won’t be time to get through it all. I can talk to Hron. See what he knows or what might point us in the right direction.” He paused. “Maybe you could do some computer research? After all,” he pointed up at the statue of Bruncvík and his sword, “what do we really know about Bruncvík or athames? Anything we find out along those lines can only help us, right?” He paused again. “By the way, your area isn’t directly related to any of this by any chance, is it?”

  Wilcox shook his head. “No,” he answered, “my interests are more along the lines of the relationship between Romanian and German fairy tales.” He thought a moment. “Though I might be able to come up with something about magical swords in those stories. Let me work on it overnight and see what I can come up with. Who knows? Like you said, it can only help—so long as we don’t spend too much time chasing down leads that obviously don’t have anything to do with what we are looking for.”

  “Indeed!” Theo clapped Wilcox on the shoulder. “Information! The more of it, the better!”

  The two men stepped from beneath the shadows of the bridge and heaved themselves back up onto the bridge so as to get back to the hotel and on with their work for the evening.

  Fr. Dmitri sat in the crypt of a restaurant that had once been an inn up the street from their hotel with Sophia and Hilda, the Arthurian scholar who had referred to the Round Table as a pentacle. Sean was sitting with them, having passed through the hotel lobby as Fr. Dmitri was introducing his wife to Hilda. He had accepted the priest’s invitation to join them.

  The upstairs of the restaurant on Mostecká Street had been exceptionally busy, conversations buzzing as waiters, busboys and waitresses dashed about taking orders in between delivering steaming platters of food to the tables. One harried waitress, glancing about in a search for a table for the four academics who had come in from the street—where the restaurant’s outdoor tables were all full—had led them through the crowded main floor and down to the crypt where, so far, they were the only patrons.

  Long tables and benches lined each wall of what had once been the innkeeper’s dining hall. The priest and his wife sat with their backs to one wall, facing the door and the stairs that turned and twisted up to the level of the modern street. Hilda and Sean faced Fr. Dmitri and Sophia. The waitress delivered their dinners—the plates clattering as she unceremoniously deposited them on the table before the diners—after a surprisingly short wait. The academics had filled the time with small talk and chatter, during which Fr. Dmitri felt Sean had been surprisingly quiet. Almost sullen.

  Their food arrived and Dmitri said his usual prayer before dinner, he and Sophia blessing themselves with the sign of the cross. Hilda sat respectfully as Sean shifted uneasily in his seat. Dmitri glanced in his direction with irritation and then turned the conversation to the topic that had so intrigued him at the conference session earlier that afternoon. “Tell me,” he said to Hilda, “more about the Round Table as pentacle.”

  Sean looked up from his plate, chewing. “You are the Arthurian expert, right?” he asked, as if he had not heard the introductory small talk the others had been exchanging.

  “Why, yes,” Hilda replied, sipping her ale, politely not pointing out that Dmitri had introduced her as such back at the hotel lobby. “Fr. Dmitri was quite fascinated by an aside I made this afternoon, during my paper comparing the armor and weapons of the Green Knight with those of Sir Gawain.”

  “An aside about the Round Table being the pentacle of Camelot?” Sean asked.

  “Well, maybe not the pentacle of Camelot but certainly a pentacle, perhaps the pentacle of King Arthur’s court,” Hilda answered.

  “How is it that the Round Table can be considered a pentacle?” Sean continued brusquely. “A pentacle needs to be a five-pointed star in a circle. The Round Table is simply a circle. Potent, perhaps, as a magical emblem, but not a pentacle. Not by a long shot. Even the disk that purports to be the Round Table in Winchester is painted with various designs but no stars,” he pointed out.

  “The table has been variously described in the old tales,” Hilda countered. “It is true, the Table in Winchester has no stars. But the five-petal Tudor rose at its center is a variation on the idea of a five-pointed star. Nevertheless, some illuminations depict the Table as inscribed with a golden star on its surface.” She glanced towards Sean to see his reaction and Fr. Dmitri attempted to hide a small smirk. He was enjoying the academic sparring between the two dinner companions.

  “Furthermore,” Hilda continued between bites of dinner, “the Round Table was a source of stability, harmony, order. Which is what the pentacle is meant to achieve.” She swallowed. “Were you aware,” she asked Sean, “that sometimes it was that harmony and stability of the pentacle that caused it to be confused with the hexagram, the six-pointed star of two interlocking triangles?”

  “Well, both were attributed to Solomon,” he rejoined, “but I hadn’t read that they were considered interchangeable.”

  “Well, not completely interchangeable,” Hilda agreed, “but sometimes used in place of each other.”

  “There is one point in your favor,” Sean conceded, his words difficult to understand as he chewed. “If we look at the Arthurian saga in terms of Tarot suits and magical tools, then the Round Table is clearly the pentacle.”

  “Yes, yes!” Hilda enthusiastically responded. “Clearly. Excalibur is the athame, the suit of Swords and the Holy Grail is the chalice, the Cups of the Tarot deck.”

  “And the suit of Wands is…?” Sophia interjected.

  Hilda and Sean turned to her and answered simultaneously, “Merlin’s staff!” They all burst out laughing. Sophia and her husband exchanged glances.

  “Yes, that makes sense,” Hilda agreed as the laughter died down.

  “Do you think…” Dmitri began. Did he dare ask Hilda her opinion as to what the pentacle of Prague might be? How should he formulate the question? He thought out loud as he spoke. “Do you think… that if the Round Table served as the pentacle of King Arthur’s court in Camelot… there might be something similar… a pentacle of Prague, as it were?”

  Sean glanced from Dmitri to Hilda and back to Dmitri and then Sophia.

  “An interesting question,” Hilda remarked. “Certainly Prague was a mystical center of Bohemia—well, not just Bohemia but all of Europe for a time—just as Camelot was the mystical center of Britain” She took another bite of dinner, but then she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she told the priest. “It would make a fascinating subject for a paper, I agree. But I don’t know enough about the local folklore to even guess as to what the equivalent of the Round Table might be in Prague. Something round. With stories attached to it that stress the order and stability it gives society. Probably with a star of some kind inscribed on it.”

  Sean asked, “Do you think there is a Prague equivalent to King Arthur, Father? A king who would have been interested in creating a pentacle for Prague?”

  Dmitri thought about the question. “I’m not sure about that, Sean. Certainly, Rudolph II was fascinated by magic and would have been interested in obtaining a pentacle for Prague, but he was no King Arthur. In ter
ms of mythic kings… Well, there was Good King Wenceslaus—and he is a saint. And the prophetess-princess Libuše and her husband, Premšyl, who established Prague. But none of them have anything like a Round Table associated with them.” He thought again. “At least, not that I know about.”

  Sean nodded. “Libuše, as a Celtic prophetess, would have had a cauldron of some sort, very similar to the Holy Grail. But probably nothing else great and round and flat.”

  “A fascinating area to investigate,” Hilda repeated. “Perhaps you could write a paper on it for a conference sometime, Father!”

  The next morning, Sean burst into the hotel’s breakfast area and hurriedly scanned the tables. The first conference session of the morning would begin shortly. He would barely have enough time to drink a cup of coffee and hurry to the sessions. But he had overslept and was anxious to speak to Theo before setting out for the Angel House.

  There! Across the room, Theo stood up from a table covered with dirty breakfast dishes. The annoying priest and his wife were with Theo, but that could not be helped. Sean made his way across the room, squeezing between tables, bumping into the shoulders of people raising cups to their lips, knocking his briefcase against tables. “Excuse me,” he rattled off several times in succession. He got to Theo as he was about to step out a side door. Sean grabbed Theo’s elbow.

  Theo turned around. “Ah, good morning!” he exclaimed. “Sean! What is the matter? You look terrible.”

  Sean knew he looked terrible and not simply because he had overslept and forgotten to comb his hair. He was nervous and frightened. He thrust a piece of hotel stationery into Theo’s face.

  “Look!” he sputtered. “I found this slipped under my door this morning as I was dashing out of my room. Look at this! He was insane!” He rattled the handwritten note in his shaking hand.

  Theo took the paper. Dmitri leaned over Theo’s shoulder, trying to read it. Sophia reached out to hold Sean’s shoulder and attempted to soothe him.

  Theo read the paper once quickly, and then again more slowly. “I was able to get the chalice from Magdalena. I brought it by your room but you were out. I gave it to the front desk for safekeeping. It’s signed ‘Peter.’”

  Theo looked across the paper at Sean. “He got the chalice from Magdalena? What does that mean? Did he break into her house and steal it? Did she have the Chalice of Prague in her living room? Did you know anything about this beforehand? Why did he leave it at the front desk?” The questions spilled out too quickly to keep track of.

  “You see? Do you see?” Sophia interrupted. “It must have been Peter that I saw in the park! Just as I told you!”

  “I… uh, we… yesterday afternoon,” Sean stammered out. “The two of us decided to look for the chalice among the historic cups and goblets of the churches and museums. I went to the St. Agnes Cloister and he was going to go to the treasury of Our Lady of Victory and up to the cathedral.”

  “How does that get him into Magdalena’s apartment?” Sophia asked, looking from Sean to Theo and back to Sean. “If he was looking for the magic chalice among the historic chalices, it certainly wouldn’t have been at her house!”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Sean agreed and took a deep breath. “But while we had been making the plan to search first among the historic chalices, he suggested the foolhardy notion that it would be just as effective to use the chalice that had awakened the curse to thwart it. And it would be easier to locate.” Sean shrugged.

  “Magically, it made sense. But I said it was dangerous,” Sean went on rapidly. “Even if he could get it from Magdalena somehow, it would alert them that someone was on their trail. I told him we might consider it, but only if it were really our only, last option.” Sean pointed at the paper in Theo’s hand. “But he must have gone ahead and done it on his own.”

  “And he left it at the front desk?” Dmitri shook his head. “He must have known it would be dangerous to hold onto. That’s why he came to your room last night. He wanted someone else to hold it. But you weren’t there, so he must have figured the safe behind the front desk was the next best location for it. Probably safer than with you.” He nodded to Sean.

  “But you’re right,” Theo told Sean. “It was a dangerous stunt. Foolhardy. But we had better discuss it with Peter. Isn’t he giving his paper this morning? He must be already there. He better be, so the session can start on time!” Sean noted Theo’s concern as organizer of the conference resurfacing. “Let’s get going and talk about it with him there.”

  “But I told you what happened in the park!” Sophia insisted. “He won’t be able to give his paper!”

  Sean stared at her and Dmitri explained what Sophia thought she might have seen in the Kampa park before breakfast.

  “Really? A toad?” Sean snorted. “There may be magic afoot here but… a toad? What a cliché! The worst kind of stereotype!”

  Sophia turned beet red.

  Dmitri said, “I suggest we leave the chalice behind the front desk, in the safe, for the time being. Better there than carrying it around with us to the conference or leaving it in one of our rooms.”

  “Or for Magdalena to retrieve,” Sophia put in. “Or George.”

  Sean shivered. The last thing he would have wanted was for George to break into his room in the middle of the night to take back the chalice.

  George watched the chairman of the conference session, who was nervously waiting for Peter to walk in the door. The opening of the session was delayed for several minutes, as the other panel members and the audience expected the first scheduled speaker to walk in the door at any moment. Finally, the speaker who was scheduled second agreed to go first. The speaker started and still there was no sign of Peter.

  Theo and several others had burst into the session a few minutes late. Settling in seats near the door, they cast anxious glances toward each other and when it became apparent that Peter would not be attending his scheduled session, Theo got up and walked into the hallway.

  George suspected that Theo was stalking the halls and searching the other meeting rooms. He smiled, half-listening to the paper. No doubt Elizabeth had dealt with Peter, as per his instructions, and Peter’s disappearance had been noticed.

  “So, Theo may be involved in this too,” George mused. “Well, he might simply be looking for a missing speaker. A good conference organizer would.” George hadn’t realized last night that Peter’s had been one of the first papers scheduled that morning, but it had worked out conveniently for him when he looked at the schedule over breakfast. “Not only is a problem gotten rid of but it exposes who else might be working with him,” he had thought. Now his expectations were coming to fruition. “But too bad it is only Theo who is looking. Surely, there must be more of them.” George had his suspicions of how many might be involved, but it was only a vague guess. More thought and research would be needed to confirm his suspicions.

  “Would Peter have been so careless as to give the chalice to Theo?” George wondered, noticing Theo enter the session a second time to see if Peter had arrived during the question-and-answers portion of the session. “He seems much too concerned over a missing presenter, even for an outstanding conference organizer,” George thought. “They must have been working together, if only because Peter confided in him last night.” Elizabeth had not found the chalice when she had searched Peter’s room after taking him to the Kampa path, so he must have given it to someone else, so at least one other person was involved in the efforts to thwart the revitalization of Fen’ka’s curse. They would have to search Theo’s room now. But if the chalice was not there, where else might it be?

  “There is one way I might be able to find an answer,” he mused, “but it will have to wait until tonight. In the meantime, I’ll have to talk to Elizabeth—and even that silly girl, Magdalena.”

  During the midmorning break between sessions of the conferences, Theo kept circulating through the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Peter. He did not. However, he did find Alessandro in
a friendly argument with a woman from the Monsters conference as they each held a pastry in one hand and a cup in the other.

  “No, really, I don’t think the two creatures are simply variations of a common legend,” she was insisting.

  “C’mon!” he burst out. “The similarities are too striking to be coincidental. The daughter of the Scandinavian elf-king with her handmaids and the Greek sirens are both companies of beautiful maidens who lure men to their deaths!”

  “But the sirens are water-based spirits and the elf-king’s daughter is a woodland sprite!” The woman laughed at him. “Completely different! Forest-based malevolence and wrecks at sea personified—how can you say they have a common origin?”

  Theo stepped behind Alessandro. “Excuse me,” he interrupted. “Can I speak with…”

  “Oh, Theo!” Alessandro exclaimed, half-turning to greet him. “Perhaps you can help settle a point of dispute. Wouldn’t you say that—oh, excuse me! Have you two met before?” He looked back and forth between Theo and the woman. A half-chewed bite of pastry in his mouth slightly garbled his pronunciation of their names as he gestured with his coffee cup. “Theo, this is Elizabeth—from Dublin. Elizabeth, this is Theo from Oxford.”

  “Professor Theo! A pleasure to meet you!” Elizabeth set her cup down and shook Theo’s hand enthusiastically. “I have been wanting to tell you that these are among the most smoothly running conferences I’ve ever attended! Amazingly so—you should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished! And such consistently high-quality papers from so many disciplines and places!”