Avalon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Synopsis:

  It has been fortold: In the hour of Britain’s greatest need, King Arthur will return to rescue his people. In Portugal, the reprobate King Edward the Ninth has died by his own hand. In England, a dark scenario conceived by the power-hungry Prime Minister, Thomas Waring, is about to be realized: the total destruction of the British monarchy in the twenty-first century. And in the Scottish Highlands, a mystical emissary named Mr. Embries — better known as “Merlin” — informs a young captain that he is next in line to occupy the throne. For James Arthur Stuart is not the commoner he has always believed himself to be — he is Arthur, the legendary King of Summer, reborn. But the road to England’s salvation is rocky and dangerous, with powerful waiting to ambush: Waring and his ruthless political machine … and the agents of an ancient, far more potent evil. For Arthur is not the only one who has returned from the mists of legend. And Merlin’s magic is not the only sorcery that has survived the centuries.

  AVALON,

  The Return of King Arthur

  By

  STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD

  Copyright © 1999 by Stephen R. Lawhead

  The Britons believe yet that Arthur is alive, and dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves; and the Britons ever yet expect when Arthur shall return. Was never the man born, of ever any lady chosen, that knoweth of the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom was a sage hight Merlin; he said with words — his sayings were sooth — that an Arthur should yet come to help the English.

  — LAYMON, BRUT (CA. 1190)

  Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the Holy Cross. I will not say: here in this world he changed his life. And many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: HIC JACET ARTHURUS, REX QUONDAM, REX FUTURUS (Here lies Arthur, king once and king to be).

  — MALORY, LE MORTE D’ARTHUR (CA. 1469)

  The throne of Britain shall become an iniquity to the nation, and a reproach to the people, ere Arthur returns. But, when Avallon shall rise again in Llyonesse, and the Thamesis reverse its course, then also shall Arthur take up the kingship of his nation once more.

  — ANEIRIN, THE BLACK BOOK OF ANEIRIN (CA. 643)

  Prologue

  The low red car skidded to a halt on the dusty driveway outside the whitewashed villa. The driver unfolded himself from behind the wheel, stepped out, and cast a lingering, if bleary, glance down the lush hillside at the red tile rooftops and pale-blue swimming pools of Madeira’s elite.

  Above the quiet tick of the cooling engine and the warm sea breeze rustling the dry palm fronds, Teddy imagined he could almost make out the clink of ice in crystal glasses and the twittering voices of the buffed-and-polished hostesses below as the evening’s social fandango began anew.

  Reaching back into the car, he withdrew a nearly empty bottle of Jameson’s, unscrewed the cap, drained it, and flung the empty bottle into the overgrown garden surrounding the sprawling house. He then turned and walked to the front door and pushed it open. “Cozu!” he shouted as he stumbled into the cool marble-faced foyer.

  There came the quick slap of tennis shoes on the stone, and a small, sallow-faced Portuguese man in an oversized white jacket appeared in the arched doorway leading into the rambling interior of the house.

  “Good h’evening, sir,” replied the manservant in heavily accented English. “I trust sir has had a pleasant day.”

  “Tolerable, Cozu. Tolerable.” Teddy took a lurching step towards the stairway. The servant quickly closed the door behind him. “The sea was a bit rough beyond the point, so we stayed this side of the headland. Anything come for us today?”

  “The package you were h’expecting arrived this morning, sir. I have placed it on the desk in your study.”

  “Brilliant.” He shucked off his pale yellow windbreaker and pushed it at his servant. He looked up at the wrought-iron sconces on the stuccoed walls and the scrollwork balustrade along the upper gallery. Overpriced tack, he thought, not that he’d ever noticed before. Then again, he was seeing a lot of things he’d never really seen before. “Any calls?”

  “Two phone calls, sir. As requested, I have allowed the machine to answer. Miss Vierta rang to say that she is staying in the town tonight. You are welcome to join her for a late dinner at her apartment.”

  “And the other?”

  “It was the gentleman from the Foreign Office again — most insistent. I left both messages on the answering machine.”

  Teddy nodded. “I’m going to take a shower.” He belched and took hold of the banister as if to haul himself up the stairs hand over hand.

  “Will sir be dining out this h’evening?”

  “No, sir will not be dining out. Sir is bloody knackered. Have cook send up a tray. Bring me a bottle of champers — something decent for a change.” He started plodding up the stairs. “Oh, and bring the package to my room.”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Teddy dragged himself up the curving stairway and paused at the door of his room, listening. How empty the place seemed when Theresa was out. He shrugged and ambled into the spacious, high-ceilinged room, threw off his clothes, and stalked naked into the bathroom where he took a long, hot shower, emerging twenty minutes later in his favorite old white terry cloth bathrobe.

  Relaxed and much revived, he drifted back into his bedroom to see that Cozu had already been and gone. His dirty clothes had been removed, and a clean white shirt and khakis were laid out for the evening. The balcony doors were open, and the glass-and-aluminum table prepared with a gleaming white cloth. There was a sweating bucket beside the table, a crystal champagne flute on a tray in the center, and a large parcel wrapped in brown paper to one side.

  Padding barefoot onto the balcony, Teddy seized the dark-green bottle from the ice bucket and glanced approvingly at the pale yellow-gold label as he poured his first glass. He collapsed into his chair, propped his feet on the railing, and, raising his glass to the empty air, said, “Here’s to Mister Moët and Mister Chandon!” He threw back his head and drank deeply, savoring the icy bite of the bubbles on his tongue. “Ah! Many thanks, chaps.”

  Tossing down the rest of the glass, he quickly poured another; this one he nursed, watching the last of the sunset as the colors faded into deepening shades of gray and blue out over the bay. The air was warm and perfumed with the sweetly intoxicating scent of wild gardenia. Below him, among the palms and bougainvillaea, the lights of the stylish villas and verandas of Funchal were beginning to glimmer. The diamond-spangled hostesses were, he imagined, wheeling out the hors d’oeuvres and dishing up the first juicy tidbits of what passed for society gossip.

  He poured another glass of champagne, and felt the familiar glow rising from stomach to head. “Where has that blasted Cozu got to?” he murmured.

  As if in answer to this question, the servant knocked on the door and backed into the room carrying a covered tray. He stepped silently around the table, placed the tray on the table, and made to remove the parcel. “Leave it,” said Teddy, whereupon the manservant busied himself with the dishes. “Don’t bother,” Teddy told him. “I’ll help myself when I’m ready.”

  “Of course, sir.” The butler straightened. “Will sir require anything else?”

  “No, Cozu, sir does not require anything else but to be left bloody alone.”

  “Very good, sir.” The servant inclined his head, bade his employer good night, and departed, pulling the door shut after him.

  When he had gone, Teddy took the cover off the tray and picked up a slice of cold smoked salmon with his fingers. He dangled it above his mouth, dropped it in, and chewed thoughtfully. He slid another slice of salmon onto a triangle of but
tered brown bread, took a bite, and washed it down with icy champagne.

  Then, taking up the parcel, he walked back into the bedroom, placed it on the bed, and unwrapped it. Under the plain paper was a simple box of white cardboard. Teddy opened the box to see a handsome facsimile of England’s royal crown, and a white envelope. Ignoring the envelope, he took the crown out of the box and studied it more closely. The Star of Africa was zirconium, of course, and the crown itself was gold-plated; but the trimming was real ermine, and the red velvet hand sewn. To the untutored eye, it looked for all the world like the real thing. It ought to, he thought, it had cost enough.

  Teddy lifted the crown and balanced it on his head. The weight of the piece made his head slightly wobbly — that, and three glasses of champagne. Steadying himself, he picked up his drink and walked to the mirror in the bathroom; he rubbed the steam from the glass with his sleeve, let his robe drop to the floor, then stood back to regard himself.

  Beneath the crown was a ruddy-faced, balding man with a receding chin, a bulbous nose, and a wattled neck running to jowls; but his gray eyes looked out from under low, even brows, his teeth were straight, and his skin nicely tanned from many idle days on his boat. Turning sideways he sucked in his stomach and slapped his belly three times with a satisfied grunt. All in all, not bad for fifty-eight years, he decided.

  He took another gulp of champagne and sauntered back into the bedroom, pausing at his desk to tap a button on the answering machine. There was a beep; a woman’s voice drifted airily into the room. “Teddy, where are you?” she spoke rapidly, her English lightly spiced with a Portuguese lilt. “I haven’t seen you for days, darling. I meant to come up, but Amanda is in town and I promised to have a drink with her. But do come down, my sweet. We’ll have a late supper, just us two. I’ve got a bottle of your favorite brandy. Okay?” There came the sound of a doorbell on the tape. “That’s Amanda. Gotta run. Kisses. Bye.”

  “You mean Armando, don’t you, love?” He tapped the button again, and another voice came on — a man’s voice this time. It greeted him coolly and identified itself as representing the Foreign Office, whereupon Teddy jabbed a second button to cut it off. “Bastards,” he muttered; he had heard it all before.

  As the machine rearmed its digital memory, Teddy dropped his hand to the center drawer of his desk, pulled it open, and took out a brown wooden box. He wandered back onto the balcony, set the box on the table, and drained his glass. He stood for a time, clutching the empty glass and staring out into the gathering darkness.

  Coming to himself once more, he retrieved the bottle from the bucket and ceremoniously emptied the remains of the bottle into his glass, spilling most of it over the tablecloth. He then turned and heaved the empty bottle over the balcony. From the satisfying crash that followed, he guessed he had hit his new Alpha Romeo Spider in the driveway below.

  “C’est la vie,” he murmured, and sucked at the rim of his overflowing glass.

  He sat down heavily, sloshing champagne onto his bare thighs. Setting his glass carefully on the table, he brushed at the liquid and then took up the wooden box and placed it on his knees. He stared at the box for a moment, then opened it and withdrew the small, silver-plated British service revolver.

  He hefted the gun in his hand, turned it, and peered at the cylinder to make sure that each chamber contained a bullet. He transferred the revolver to his left hand and took up his glass with the right.

  “To England!” he growled, knocking back the champagne in a single gulp. “Bloody England.”

  He gazed unhappily at the empty glass, then hurled that, too, over the balcony. Reaching up, he straightened his crown. Then, pressing the muzzle of the revolver tightly against his left temple, he gently squeezed the trigger and blew away the right side of his head.

  Part I

  One

  Even as a child, James could remember feeling that some mysterious power held his fate in strong, infallible hands. Perhaps a youth spent in the Highlands — where ghosts and Fair Folk still haunt the hidden glens, and the quaint predictions of country sages and seers find enthusiastic reception among the locals — had shaped him more than he imagined. Superstition clings to the ancient hills like the gorse and heather, and it would be unusual indeed if an impressionable youngster did not imbibe something of his surroundings.

  He did not ask for second sight; he never sought it, but simply accepted it as a feature of his unique being. In time, he learned that not everyone possessed the power of the fiosachd — Gaelic for “the knowing.” It covers a range of subtle manifestations — some physical, some mental — which most people view as extraordinary. As a child, however, James did not think himself unusual; he merely considered his gift a sign intended to confirm his special existence. Children are self-absorbed creatures, true enough, yet many was the time he had dreamed of greatness. Many was the time he had awakened in the night to the knowledge that his soul was destined for a higher purpose.

  Of course, every child entertains similar thoughts of grandeur. Growing up, however, dulls the secret insistence; life’s harsher lessons teach us we are not so special after all. Sooner or later, we arrive at the cold realization that we will never be the first astronaut to set foot on Mars; we will not be the doctor whose miracle cure rids the world of cancer; we will not win fame and fortune and the eternal adoration of the masses through the wondrous artistry of our writing, singing, or acting.

  Despite this — despite all evidence to the contrary — James never outgrew his belief that something amazing would happen to him one day. Although he did come to understand the natural limitations of circumstance, and the extreme randomness of opportunity, deep in his inmost being the belief in his own particular destiny doggedly persisted. Like the fiosachd, he was born with it, and it never deserted him. He had always known his life would end in one of two ways: triumph or tragedy. One or the other, but nothing less.

  This produced a curious bravado. Once, when as a freshly commissioned officer with the UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, Captain Stuart was leading his small company of men down one of the many shattered streets of Kabul, the fiosachd began jangling like crazy. He recognized this as its usual manifestation — a sharp tingling or squirming sensation on the back of his neck or down between his shoulder blades — and by it he knew, as the company approached a deserted intersection, that they would be ambushed by snipers. The flesh between his shoulder blades began twitching, and in his mind’s eye he saw, as if in the very room with them, six black-turbaned rebels crouching at the windows of a bombed-out apartment block across the street.

  He halted the company, chose two men to help him reconnoiter, and the three of them circled around and came into the building from the back. They climbed three floors up a mangled fire escape and crept down a blackened hallway to the room where James knew he would find the rebels. Without the slightest hesitation, he put his hand to the doorknob, pushed open the door, and strode into the room, demanding their surrender.

  The six snipers were so surprised, they threw down their rifles and gave themselves up without protest. James’ men were likewise amazed; afterwards they made out that he was the fearless hero — a latter-day John Wayne beating back a war party of bloodthirsty Apaches with bare hands and a rifle butt. He won a commendation for saving the lives of a dozen men that day and capturing a valuable rebel cell without firing a shot.

  He was also given a citation for valor — a fine gesture but one James felt superfluous. Although, as a career officer, he recognized the tremendous risk — of all the possible outcomes of such an action, the one actually resulting was the least likely — he knew in his bones it was not courage that had sustained him but simple conviction: he knew what lay behind the door and, just as surely, he knew his life would not end in that room.

  Even James — who understood better than anyone else the peculiarities of his special gift — accepted the extreme improbability of his childhood intimations of greatness ever coming to fruition. Aft
er all, it is one thing to pretend oneself a prince or a pirate; but who, in all sanity, could imagine — much less orchestrate — the extraordinary interplay of incident and accident, chance and serendipity, as well as the immense complexity of enterprise needed to make such a pretense possible in reality?

  That this dream should become solid waking reality seemed no less incredible to James than it would have to anyone else. Although he experienced it daily, he did not pretend to fathom it. If pressed for an explanation, he would only shake his head and say that there were forces in this universe which even the most gifted among us apprehend but dimly… and the rest of us not at all.

  Privately, however, deep in his secret heart, he thought that if there was a higher power at work in the world, shaping men to its purpose, then might we not apprehend it in action from time to time? And if so, might not that action look suspiciously like destiny?

  Like everyone else in Britain, James learned of the King’s death from television. It was a cold Thursday night in November, and he was at the Pipe & Drum with Calum and Douglas, watching Hearts in action against Celtic on big-screen TV. Aberdeen was down by one and mounting an attack in the closing seconds of the first half when the picture blanked and a Stand By sign flashed on.

  “Hey!” shouted Cal — and half the pub with him. “Bring back the football!”

  While the pub crowd was moaning about the interruption, the face of newsreader Jonathan Trent suddenly appeared. “We interrupt this broadcast,” he said, “to bring you a special news bulletin.”

  “Turn it up!” shouted someone from the back.

  “Shut up, and you’ll hear it!”

  “Listen!” hissed the crowd.

  “The King is dead,” intoned Jonathan Trent. “I repeat: Edward the Ninth, King of England, is dead. Turning to our correspondent, Kevin Clark, on the Portuguese island of Madeira, we bring you this report.”

  The announcement sent a rumble through the room. “Well, I’ll be… Did you hear that?” asked Calum.