I touched the scar on Genevra's top lip.
"Tell me about the car accident. Must have been awful for
She looked away.
"Worse for my father," she said quietly. "He died in it."
"What happened?"
Genevra reached for the TV remote control.
"Don't like to think about it."
I didn't press her. I looked at the TV screen.
"Hey is this synchronicity or what? The Natural is on."
"That's Robert Redford," she said.
"Yeah-what a cast-him, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, the man who would become Michael Madsen-"
"So what's the coincidence? It's on loads."
"It's a retelling of the Arthurian stories as a 1930s baseball story."
"Uh-oh," she said, snuggling up to Inc.
"It's not exact but there's stuff in there. Assume it's about the search for the Grail-that's to say the pennant the baseball team is trying to win. Pennant-medieval, huh? The guy who's been trying to get it is called Pop Fisher and his team is called the Knights. Huh? Huh? Pop Fisher's team is way down the league-in a wasteland you could say. He's the Fisher King, see?"
She yawned but I was on a roll.
"Now come to save him is this old player called Roy Hobbs."
"Roy Hobbs doesn't sound very Arthurian," she said, stroking my hair.
"Roy-roi-le roi-the king. And he's got a special baseball bat he carved out of a tree struck by lightning. Excalibur by any other name. He sets off at the start of the film to join the best knights in the world-you know, the best baseball team-en route he vanquishes an Slugger played by Joe Don Baker."
"I haven't seen the film so this is pretty-"
"Dull?" I said. "You ain't heard nothing yet. Then he meets the Morgan le Fay person who's going after any sportsmen that is the best and killing them with a silver bullet. I don't get the significance of the bullet but she shoots him. And he ends up in the wilderness-the team he's been playing for is called The Hebrew Oilers so he's like the Wandering Jew-for years. It's good against evil. The silver bullet left a wound in his side so he's a bit Fisher King himself-hello?"
Genevra had clambered on top of me and now, nipples brushing tantalizingly against my chest, she set her elbows either side of my head. She looked at me very intently.
"Hey, it's only a hypothesis," I said. "You can just enjoy it as a baseball film if you want. That's the thing about great movies, they work on different levels and you just plug into-"
She shushed me.
"What's happening with us, Nick?"
"What do you mean?"
"Call me impulsive but I'm getting really fond of having you around. God knows why."
"Yeah," I said uneasily. "Right."
She caught the unease.
"What is it? You don't feel the same?"
God I hate these conversations. But then I'm a man. I would. I tried to think of a way to put it into words without hurting her feelings.
"I like you very much. I love making love with you-"
"But," she said, hurt in her voice. She rolled off me and lay on her back, her face still turned toward me. "There always has to be a but in life."
I didn't say anything, hoping in that typical cowardly way men have that she'd figure it out for herself.
"Someone else?" I gave her my helpless look. "Faye?"
"I know it's crazy, she probably doesn't want me but after all these years I still feel-"
Genevra sat up.
"Faye's not for you, Nick," she said sharply. "Trust me."
"You don't know what it was like in the old days." I said. "We were really close."
"Even without sex?"
"I hoped one day we might but it never happened."
"She managed to get over that with Askwith then."
I'd been thinking about the reference to the Fisher King that Faye had made when we were driving into Glastonbury. His wound is usually held to be a metaphor for impotence.
"I'm not so sure," I said. "I think he was impotent."
Genevra allowed the surprise to show on her face. She frowned.
"When did your relationship end?"
"May, Friday 13, fifteen years ago," I recited "The same day, it turns out, that her brother, Ralph, went missing. Did you know him?"
"Of course. He and Faye lived in the gatehouse."
"Did you know he'd gone missing?"
"Yes. There was a rumor he'd gone off with my stepmother. She left around the same time." She tapped my nose with her finger. "So did you get near to sex with Faye?"
"Okay. We had sex once at the very end. She finished with me the next day."
"That's tough. And you blamed it on your sexual prowess."
"It was a disaster so it made me kind of nervy, yes. Why are you so keen to know?"
"Did you wear a condom?"
"Genevra, for God's sake. Why the inquisition?"
"I was wondering who'd fathered her child."
I tensed.
"What child?"
"You don't know she has a fifteen-year-old son?"
"You're kidding me."
"He's at school down in Sussex somewhere."
I was surprised but I was also puzzled. I was sure I remembered Faye telling me at the college dinner she had no children.
"And the obvious question is this," Genevra murmured. "If Askwith couldn't and you didn't then who is the father?"
The next day everyone was running around getting things ready for the evening. I phoned the hospital to see if John Crow was up to seeing visitors. The woman at the other end told me he'd checked himself out that morning. She was one of those women who on the telephone suddenly perk up at the end of the conversation.
"Byee!" she said, her voice at a higher pitch than in the rest of the conversation.
"Byee yourself," I muttered as I put the phone down. Now I had to find him again. I tried directory of enquiries but there was no number listed for anyone of his name living in Wookey Hole.
My dinner jacket was back at my flat so I'd rented a tuxedo from a shop in Wells to wear in the casino this evening. I collected it and drove over to Wookey Hole at around eleven. I spent the drive trying to get my thoughts into some kind of order.
First, Askwith. He'd been talking to someone in the quad when Bridget and I arrived at the college. He'd had a meeting with Reggie Williamson in the library and Williamson had looked very flustered when he came out. Later I'd seen Williamson in the quad. And Faye.
Then Lucy. She'd been strangled sometime in the afternoon of the Friday I arrived and laid out in a boat as if she were the Fair Maid of Astolet. John Crow may know something about this, although his arthritic hands put him out of the running as her strangler. Lucy had been having an affair with Rex. I remembered Genevra saying that she and her brother had eaten lunch together then he'd been called away. He'd not been seen all afternoon. Williamson was down that day but also out all afternoon. Buckhalter was nowhere to be found either.
I would have loved a sight of the statements they made to the police.
A stray thought flickered in my mind. What had Rex meant by saying he and Genevra were so close? Could they be/have been lovers? It's not unknown, especially where aristos are concerned-normal moral rules don't apply.
I recalled that first evening in Wynn House talking about the incestuous affair between Morgan and Arthur and the complicit look that passed between Rex and Genevra.
Maybe Genevra was jealous of Lucy? She was certainly strong enough to strangle the slighter woman. I shook my head. How sick could my thinking get? Genevra was one of the most normal women I'd ever met. Except, I mused, in one respect. She seemed to have fallen for me very quickly. Which is quite contrary to my usual experience. My rule of thumb-and it's worked so far-is if they're nuts about me, what's wrong with them?
"But why would she kill Askwith?" I said aloud. "And the two deaths must be connected."
Next, the bones. Whose remains were buried with Arthur and
Guinevere in the tomb? If Faye had really seen her brother then they weren't his. I'd thought for one mad moment they might have been Genevra's stepmother until Bridget had told me about Rex paying her off. Whose bones they were I had no idea. Were they somehow connected to Frome's death?
A bunch of men had tried to kidnap Genevra in Bodmin. I didn't really think that was connected to the other things. A man had followed Faye at Tintagel. A man-the same man?-had bopped me over the head in Merlin's Cave and left me to drown. Two men had attacked John Crow and me and warned us off.
Then there was the Japanese man. The more I thought about him, the more I was certain he wasn't the taller of our two attackers. So what was he doing at Wookey Hole? And why had he run away?
And finally there was Faye and her brother. How long had Ralph been around and why had he suddenly reappeared? Faye definitely knew more than she was saying. She hadn't even told me about her own son. I'd been puzzling over that and I had only been able to come up with a couple of things that made some sort of sense. Maybe Askwith hadn't always been impotent. Maybe Rex was the father, my other theory notwithstanding.
There was also another possibility. While the one occasion Faye and I made love had been a disaster, the boy could even so be mine.
I found John Crow's house within ten minutes of reaching Wookey Hole. The man in the village shop gave me directions to a detached, three-story Edwardian Villa in a quiet lane a few hundred yards from the mill. As I banged on the front door I reflected that Crow didn't seem to have had need of my largesse. He was obviously worth far more than I was.
There was no reply, and while I prowled around the sides and back of the house hoping to see him, I drew the line at breaking in. I scribbled a note, put the Wynn House and my mobile numbers on it, and pushed it through the letterbox.
I arrived back at Wynn House to find the courtyard transformed. It was filled with gaudy tents-crimson and purple and green-and caravans faced with polished mirrors. Everywhere pennants fluttered. A canvas awning covered the path from the barn to the entrance to the casino.
I could smell rich, cloying scents. As Mort's travelling players got ready there was laughter and excited screams and strange-very strange-music from high-pitched pipes and discordant woodwind. Two horses, whinnying gently, were having their manes plaited.
I came into the drawing room to find Genevra and Bridget talking to Mort Darthur in his jester's cap and bells. They all turned. Mort stepped forward.
"Nick, I want you to join our Merry Band this evening," he said. "I think you have the makings of a travelling player."
He looked like he was reciting someone else's lines.
"Get stuffed." I turned to Genevra. "I'm supposed to be helping out in the casino, aren't I?"
"Leave us a moment, Mort," she said, with a queenly gesture. Mort made a less than kingly gesture, turned on his heel, stuck his bum out, broke wind, and exited.
"His role model was La Petomane," Genevra said.
"Who's he?"
"The guy who used to perform, so to speak, before the crowned heads of Europe."
"Perform what?"
"And I thought you knew everything," Bridget said. "He used to fart tunes. `The Trumpet Voluntary' was his masterwork. I think `The Flight of the Bumblebee' was what did for him in the end."
"Thanks for sharing that. So what does Mort want?"
"One of the stunt men hasn't turned up. We can manage without you in the casino. You can ride a horse can't you?"
"That's a matter of opinion," Bridget interjected. I flashed her a look.
"And you told me you used to fence."
"Not on horseback."
"No, no but you could joust. You fight on horseback then on foot with your broadsword. It's all choreographed."
"That's hardly fencing," I said. "Fencing is all wrist movement."
"Should come naturally to you then, Nick," Bridget said, making a frankly unoriginal gesture.
"Alright, I'll do it to help out," I said, though a little voice was telling me that this was not a good idea.
I went to find Mort in the barn to get my instructions. Long banqueting tables had been set out round the perimeter of the space leaving a fifty-yard strip in the center for jousting.
About thirty people were getting ready for the evening.
"Hi!" a pretty young woman in a blouse with a very scooped neck said. "I'm a wench. Can I help you?"
I tried not to fall into her cleavage.
"Yes, I can see that. Who's your friend?"
I indicated the pimply youth beside her with long sideburns and the makings of a moustache. He was sitting with a pair of pliers and a pile of what looked like junk metal.
"I'm just making some chain mail. It's a real pain. You have to use pliers, link by link. Does wonders for your arm muscles."
I looked at his spindly arms.
"Looks authentic," I said politely.
"It is, although authentic metals rust quickly." He scratched a pimple, examined his finger-nail. "And it's incredibly heavy. Over two stone. Try to turn sharply while running-the momentum topples you over."
I went over to Mort, who was waving a pig's bladder round on a stick.
"Who do you want me to be?" I said.
I could see myself as Lancelot to Genevra's luscious Guinevere.
"Oh I don't know-Sir Passing, Sir Gical Truss, somebody like that," Mort said, his eyes following another of the serving wenches.
"I was thinking perhaps Lancelot."
He looked over his glasses.
"You do surprise me. He's taken. You're fighting him. The thing to remember is that your opponent is a professional stunt man who knows what he's doing. Even your horse will know more than you-she's circus trained. When you're jousting, aim for the shield. Just do two passes then get off and fight on foot. When fighting with the broad sword, aim for the shield or the sword, never the man."
"And I lose I suppose?"
"Certainly."
"How will I know when it's time."
Mort showed his teeth.
"Oh, you'll know."
He sent me over to an elderly lady who was sitting behind a sewing machine surrounded by racks of clothes. She had permed white hair and spectacles and was wearing her coat and sensible shoes. She looked up.
"Yes, dear, don't tell me, let me guess. I was in the rag trade for fifty years. I can tell you a man's size by looking at him. Just give me a little twirl."
She looked me up and down, then leaned over the sewing machine to peer at my crotch.
"Alice," she called, "bring me a doublet for a 42 long, hose for a 34 inside leg, boots for a size twelve-" She peered at my crotch again. "And better bring one of those padded codpieces." She flashed her dentures at me. "Saves embarrassment. People can be very cruel if your pouch looks empty."
"Thank you," I said, with as much dignity as I could muster. "But-"
She glanced again at my crotch.
"Alice, bring one of the bits of cucumber, too," she added.
"I think I'm here for a suit of armor."
"Are you replacing Donald?"
"I'm replacing somebody-"
"So you're going to be the Black Knight. Well, you've got the height for it." She laughed, although quite why I couldn't say. She pointed into a makeshift changing room. "It's too heavy to bring out. Alice forget all that stuff, this gentleman's coming to look at Donald's harness-" She looked back at me. "That's his suit of armor to you."
Alice was a plain girl with owl glasses and a poor complexion. She smirked as she indicated the suit of armor. It was spread out on a wooden frame-a full suit of armor from helmet to foot. It was easy to see what Alice was smirking at. In fact you couldn't miss it. An enormous steel codpiece jutted out from the crotch.
"Fancies himself a bit does Donald," the elderly lady said, coming up behind me. "Likes to let the ladies see what's on offer. Mind you, he fills it well enough. He's a big lad." She glanced at me. "But you could probably keep your sandwich
es in there. It's hinged if you get peckish."
"How ani I going to get on a horse wearing all that?" I said, trying to ignore her cackling.
"The helmet is rolled steel and the coif-that's that chain mail hood-is heavy but Donald never wore the full hauberk-that's the chain mail body-under it and the rest isn't as heavy as it looks."
"It's all articulated," Alice said, the smirk still on her face.
"That's nice," I said.
Mort introduced me to my opponent, a quiet spoken bloke called Philip who had long hair and a beard. We spent half an hour going through the broadsword fight, working out the basic routine. Which seemed to be that I bashed his shield-excuse me, buckler-then he bashed mine and we did that until one of us got bored, at which point we took turns at whacking each other's swords.
"We'll do it a bit harder, obviously, when we get the armor on," Philip said. "We can improvise a bit."
I was more concerned about the joust. The broadsword was heavy enough but I assumed the lances, which were about fifteen feet long, would be heavier. How I was going to keep mine pointed at the target while at the gallop I hadn't a clue.
"We won't be at full gallop," Philip said. "And the horse knows what she's doing. The spears are fine once you've got their fulcrum. You won't have any trouble keeping on target."
"How long have you been doing this?" I said.
"Not long down here. I've been living in Northumberland. I used to do Viking re-enactments up there. On foot."
"Bit of rape and pillage, eh?"
Something flickered behind his gentle eyes.
"The Vikings got bad press. They were essentially settlers but because they weren't Christians they saw nothing wrong in stealing from churches and abbeys. Since it was the churchmen who wrote the histories, it's understandable the Vikings have been presented in the worst light possible."
"Point taken, Philip."
I excused myself and went into the house. Genevra and Rex were standing in the drawing room over by the long windows looking out at the dying day. They were standing side by side, each with an arm round the other's waist, their heads close together.
I withdrew before they noticed my presence. Hey, nothing wrong with affection between brother and sister. Especially when they have no living parents. Nothing wrong at all.
The Once and Future Con Page 16