Launcelot begged her, quite formally, to be her champion in combat, and she accepted. He was, by then, known as a very skilled fighter and an excellent horseman. The queen often chose knights close to her husband to accompany her on her morning rides through the countryside. It was not amiss to include Launcelot among this group. And if the others were somehow indisposed, it was not unusual for the queen to ride alone with a single knight, particularly one who could protect her under any circumstances.
Launcelot also was not completely aware that the raw, needful lust he was feeling would destroy his life. Had he been asked about it, Launcelot would have stated, with absolute conviction, that he simply adored his queen, who represented the King to whom he had pledged his loyalty.
And if he would have been asked why he had come back to the court of Arthur, where he had once been so sorely tempted by the beauty of the High King's wife, he would have said that he had ended up at Camelot by sheer accident, that he had been wandering the world, and one thing had led to another, and before long he found himself in a part of Britain that seemed familiar to him. Ah, yes, he would remember suddenly, it was the place where King Leodegranz had sent his troops—and Launcelot along with them—to rescue his daughter, who had been stolen away by a band of rustics from the north. And after that, he would recall quite innocently, he had encountered a man in armor, and had enjoyed some friendly combat with him until he'd learned that the man was the High King of Britain himself. It would become another story that the whole world would remember.
On that day, Arthur had not recognized Launcelot, nor indeed remembered anything about the handsome young man, but had offered the knight a place at his table in exchange for his service to Britain.
Launcelot would have said, had he been asked, that the King's mission to unite all Britain against the invading Saxon hordes was noble enough even for him. He had left Joyeux Garde in order to seek adventure, and he had found it in abundance on this wild and fractious island ruled by the most fair, just, and honorable of men.
That is what he would have said, and what he would have truly believed. Unless he allowed himself to get drunk or to think during the minutes before he fell asleep at night, or to let his mind wander during his travels. Because during those times, he knew that all his good reasons and pure-hearted logic were nothing but lies, and that the reason he had left his homeland and his family's estate—left, in fact, everything he knew and loved in his life, all his responsibilities, his entire future—to come back to Britain, was because he could not erase from his mind the image of the woman he had found in the woods.
The memory of her set his limbs on fire. He wanted her so badly that, in the depths of his loneliness, he would sometimes weep uncontrollably and wish for death to take away his misery.
And so, whether anyone wished it or not, whether anyone believed it could happen or not, everything changed on that day at the tournament.
The dead knight had been brought back to life. The miracle was acknowledged. Then, in front of all the petty kings and their wives, the queen bowed before the handsome knight from Gaul and asked him to teach her the ways of the New Religion.
From that moment on, there was nothing to be done for either Launcelot or Guenevere—or Arthur, for that matter—but to see the tragedy through to the end.
The matter of the queen's conversion had raised quite a fuss among the court ladies, who all made haste to display their own devotion to Christianity, wearing large gold crosses over their bosoms and assuming attitudes of rectitude—eyes heavenward, hands templed—whenever there were enough people watching and the light was right.
Only her nurse, who knew that Guenevere had been raised as a Christian and therefore could not have been instantly converted, as she appeared to have been, was not impressed.
"Oh, you're just an old pagan," Guenevere said dismissively when the nurse brought up that fact.
The nurse had made noises of contempt. "I thought you loved the goddess Brigid," she said. "You found the magic sword on Imbolc. You saw the face of your true love then." She set her jaw. "Your husband, that is."
"Those are just silly superstitions," Guenevere said blithely. "Anyway, I was young then. It amused me to think of lots and lots of goddesses, all doing different things."
"Brigid is the goddess of clear-seeing. You'd do well to stay with her, young miss." The nurse's mouth was set in a defiant line.
"I see perfectly clearly," Guenevere answered airily. "I've come to see that the New Religion holds the answers. I've found the right path at last."
The nurse snorted.
"You're altogether disgusting," Guenevere said. "But then, I suppose you can't help yourself." She was about to leave the room, then turned back with a toss of her head. "I forgive you."
The nurse spat into the fire.
Each night that Arthur was occupied with Ector or the Merlin, or with the petty kings discussing their problems with each other, or away doing battle with the Saxons, or training the army, or negotiating trade with Gaul or Ireland... during all those empty, silent, lonely nights, Guenevere sat huddled in her bed, her arms around her knees, her head bowed and weeping, and thought not about her new God and the heaven that waited for her after death, but about the young man whose glance made her feel wanton and desired.
Sometimes she secretly watched Launcelot training with the other knights. Almost every evening when the troops were home, she saw him in the great dining hall at supper. His gaze would seek hers slyly, and hers would seek his, and eventually they would meet, both blushing and filled with shame, both suddenly unable to eat anything more, both their bodies buzzing with longing.
"I say, who are you looking at?" the knight named Dry Lips asked with a poke at Launcelot's ribs.
"No one," Launcelot said stodgily, his face crimson.
Dry Lips scanned the U-shaped dinner table. "Let's see. There's Lot's wife, Morgause. She's quite a beauty." He added, "Rather a handful, though, I should think."
Launcelot made an irritated gesture. "Don't be ridiculous," he said stonily. "Lot's wife." He tore off a piece of bread with his teeth.
"Well, she's the only one at that table worth looking at," Dry Lips said. "Except for the queen, of course."
Launcelot stared at his trencher and tried to swallow his food.
The followers of the Old Religion did not believe in coincidence. Events, especially important events, did not just happen. They were part of a greater story, a movement of some universal force or other. Practitioners of the old ways, at least those women who understood the nature of the gods from what little had been handed down through the ages since the last of the great priestesses, knew that when one walks into the ocean, one had better be prepared either to ride the wave that comes, or to be engulfed by it.
Had Guenevere and Launcelot been pagans, the lust that had grown between them might have been consummated quickly and pleasurably, and then abandoned. But the New Religion forbade such union. They knew how wrong they were every step of the way, from their forbidden feelings to their rationalizations to their lies to their acceptance of their own evil weakness. By the time they gave in to their desire, they each already knew that they were damned.
It happened in the morning, while the two of them were out riding. The fog had not yet lifted, and the air was so still that each step of their horses' hooves made a distinct sound. Neither had intended to do anything other than pass the time in pleasant conversation, but their horses—yes, they would decide later, it had been the fault of the horses—had come too close to one another, until the two humans' legs were actually touching....
There had been nothing to do for it after that. Their words, so friendly, so formal, dried up in their mouths, and their hands moved toward one another almost as if of their own will, and Guenevere touched his cheek so lovingly that she moaned, deep in her throat, without knowing it, and Launcelot felt himself go hard and ready with such swiftness that it was almost painful.
And then their h
ands were all over one another, and Guenevere opened her lips (so soft, he thought, so dark and red) and Launcelot moved his mouth upon hers, and felt her quiver beneath his hands.
Quickly he dismounted his horse and came around to wait for her. She slid into his arms, and wordlessly they walked a little way into the fog-soft meadow, where Launcelot pressed the beautiful wife of the High King into the cool grass beneath an overhanging boulder, and undressed her until she lay naked and welcoming.
"My queen," he whispered raggedly, shaking his head in confusion and shame.
"Shh." Guenevere touched her finger to his mouth. "Let us have this moment. For whatever dread may come of it, I need to be here now." There were tears in her eyes.
And in his, as well. "God forgive me," he whispered, running his lips along the swell of her breast.
They had intended never to see one another again. They had both resolved to pray and fast and thereby free themselves from their base desires. They both refrained from touching themselves while reliving the memory of that languid afternoon when they had filled the air with the sounds of their passion, and filled their souls with the sights and tastes of their hungry bodies. They had both vowed not even to permit themselves to dwell upon the memory of the moment for which they had sacrificed everything. They did all this to expiate what they knew to be their sin.
But it was already too late for that. Within six weeks of their encounter, Guenevere knew that the worst had occurred: She was pregnant.
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE POISONER AT THE WELL
Not for a single moment did Titus Wolfe consider the possibility that a man had been brought back to health instantly after a gunshot wound because of a boy Messiah. And yet he had seen it himself: Hal Woczniak had not been wearing a Kevlar vest or a theatrical bag of pig's blood. Titus was more than adequately familiar with signs of death, and they were abundantly in evidence on the former FBI agent. He had gone down with a lethal injury. And then, inexplicably, he had gotten up without a scratch.
The only possible explanation was the water. But the explanation was not that the water was miraculous. Oh, no. Wolfe had been involved with governments too long to be so naive. The '"miracle" of the water was due, without doubt, to some compound—probably experimental, possibly deadly over the long term—which the CIA or some other clandestine organ of the United States military apparatus had placed into it.
What was it? A vaccine against a virus intended for warfare? The virus itself, which perhaps healed before it killed? Some substance engineered to enhance genetic mutation? The building blocks of a super race? Or might it be a killing drug in disguise, something that made people feel better while actually speeding up the death process in the infirm and elderly?
It could be anything. Anything, that is, except what it appeared to be, which was a beneficial and benign source of healing that was free for the taking. That was not possible.
While the crowd was still thick, demanding more miracles of the boy whom he had come to think of as the Christ Child, Titus returned to the room at the Tally Ho Motel that he had rented for himself and Pinto. He took a small sealed plastic tube from his shaving kit. The tube contained a half ounce of pure strychnine, enough to kill a cow. Some employer or other—not the Libyans; they wouldn't waste the money on an easy death for their mercenaries—had given it to him in case he got captured and wanted to kill himself.
For some reason, he had been given two such packets. Of course, Titus would not have used either, because he did not regard capture as doom. He had escaped imprisonment many times, in many ways, and none of them had involved a thought of suicide. But he had kept the poison nonetheless, for just such a circumstance as he found himself in now.
Pinto had not come back to the room. He was probably hiding, Titus reasoned, amused at his own ability to inspire fear in others. Pinto had not failed, exactly—he had shot the ex-FBI man cleanly enough. But the fact was that nothing had worked out the way Titus had planned. He had come thousands of miles with a psychopath, his life in jeopardy the whole time, just to kill one man who now appeared to be immune to bullets. In another few hours the television crews which transmitted to the world the whole episode of Hal Woczniak's miraculous return from the dead would be back in force.
Titus had to move fast.
But first he had to test the water at Miller's Creek. Because whatever was in it was important enough for the United States government to stage the most elaborate ruse he had ever seen in order to conceal it. Once he found the secret of the water, he could sell it to any government in the world, and make enough from the sale to live in safety and wealth for the rest of his life.
And perhaps strike a blow for the Coffeehouse Gang while he was at it.
The strychnine in Titus's possession was double-sealed, first in a thin, degradable material, and then in a tube of sturdy plastic. The outer vial was curved, designed to fit easily along the base of one's teeth. Once cracked, the interior packet would melt virtually instantly in saliva.
Titus kept the vial in his pocket as he waited in the line at Miller's Creek. Following the events of the morning, the police had dispersed the crowd that had gathered there, and few had returned so quickly. The police themselves were nowhere in evidence: They were patrolling the house where Arthur and his escort were staying, or searching the vicinity for the gunman who had fired a shot into a crowd. The only people at the creek were two busloads of pilgrims who had left their homes too early to hear about the shooting, and too late to cancel their excursions.
It was a good time for his experiment. Innocuously fitting in with the milling visitors to the creek, Titus pierced the plastic tubing with a pin in his pocket and then held it under the cold water. Within three seconds, the strychnine was released into the creek and flowing freely. He replaced the spent tubing in his pocket, along with a small vial of the creek's water.
Then he sat back and waited to see what it did to the faithful.
Several dozen people obliged him at once. It was a hot day, and even those who had no particular need of healing appreciated the water. They drank it, splashed in it, anointed their eyes and mouths with it. They dunked their babies into the water. They dipped their heads into it.
Nothing happened to any of them, except that one man exclaimed that his toothache was gone, and a woman announced, weeping, that the arthritis that had been crippling her hands for decades suddenly vanished.
No one died, or even reported feeling ill.
Not enough strychnine, Titus decided. Or else it had lost its poisonous properties somehow. Or it had never been real strychnine in the first place. Perhaps it had been the Libyans who had given it to him, after all.
He sent part of the water sample, sealed in an airtight container, by express mail to a lab in New York City, and took what remained to Beecham Laboratory in Dawning Falls. Beecham's equipment was at least as sophisticated as that in the lab in Manhattan, since the Miller's Creek water was of such great interest to scientists of all stripes. Between the two labs, someone would be able to detect the presence of strychnine in the water samples if there was any.
He was given the results within fifteen minutes. "You took this from the water at Miller's Creek, didn't you," a woman wearing a white lab coat over a low-cut ruffled blouse accused. She was smiling and good-natured, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. "You wouldn't believe how many people want to find out what's in the water. They think that if they had the recipe, they could make it themselves."
Titus stared at her, stony-faced, saying nothing.
"Here's the chemical breakdown," she said, producing a printout. "It's just plain water, similar to the water in every other small town from Corning to the Finger Lakes. You can keep this, since you're paying for it." She offered him the paper.
He didn't move. There was something about the woman that he recognized. Stewardess? he wondered. FBI plant?
"Did you test for strychnine?" he asked, careful to conceal his British ac
cent.
She reexamined the test results. "Oh, you did ask for that specifically, didn't you? Here it is. No. There was no strychnine. No cyanide or arsenic, either. Just good clean water." She smiled. "Anything else?"
Astonishing, he thought. He would have to wait for the results from the other lab, of course, but... Could it be that the water had actually neutralized the poison?
That would explain why no one who drank the water after Titus tampered with it had gotten sick.
It might be miracle water, after all, and if it was, then whatever the government had put into it would be worth a tidy sum.
"Gosh, you look familiar," the woman said.
"Oh, really?" Titus was edging away, getting nervous. "Well, I really must—"
"Bob," she said, snapping her fingers. "I knew I'd come up with it." She giggled. "You went to college in England or something." She looked down, embarrassed. "Maybe you don't remember. It was years and years ago."
He felt faint. The artist. He had slept with her. A wave of nausea rose up in his throat. Of the entire population of Dawning Falls, New York, he would have to encounter the one person who might recognize him despite his efforts at disguise. "Ginger," he said.
"Hey, you do remember! It's Bob, right?"
Bob? Bob? A sensation of profound relief washed over him. Bob! He had used another name! All those years ago, when his future had been so uncertain, he had still had the foresight to use a false name with her!
"Bob Reynolds." She laughed. "Am I right?"
Titus swallowed. Was this a test? Or did the woman just have the memory of an elephant? Either way, running from her was no longer an option.
He only hoped he would not have to kill her. She smelled marvelous.
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