Avalon (35 page)

“How about reviving the Christmas Day address?” said Rhys.

“That’s it!” Cal seconded the idea at once. “You’d get a lot of mileage out of something like that.”

“People still remember the Queen’s Christmas speech,” Rhys continued. “It was a big deal back when I was a kid. The whole country stopped to listen to it.” He glanced around the table, gauging support for the notion.

“It’s true,” Gavin agreed. “My family always did. Something like that would make it seem like old times.”

“A king’s Christmas speech — I don’t know…”

“How about an interview instead?” Shona suggested. “We could get one of the big guns in here for a cozy fireside chat: Christmas Day with the King. Jonathan Trent would jump at the chance to do it. You haven’t given a real interview since your declaration. Maybe it’s time you did.”

“A speech is all very well,” said Embries. “It may even prove worthwhile. Still, no matter how well it is received, it will not answer the fundamental question of your kingship.”

“And that is?”

“What does it all mean? If you are to win the hearts and minds of the people, you must decide the nature of your kingship. What is your reign to be
about
?” At James’ expectant glance, he said, “I cannot do it for you. No one can. You must discover it within yourself. Only when you know what your role is can you count on anyone else to understand, much less to follow.”

James frowned. “I’m not sure
I
understand.”

“A wise man once told me, ‘It is difficult for people to follow a dream,’” Embries explained, “‘but they will follow a
man
with a dream.’ Think about it.’”

A thoughtful silence descended over the group for a moment, broken by Cal, who wanted to know, “What about the speech?”

James reluctantly gave his assent, and Shona began making phone calls. By the time negotiations were completed, James had agreed to an hour-long interview with Jonathan Trent — at Blair Morven — on Christmas Day.

No one, but no one, had any interest in making it easy for James. For a start, the BBC refused to establish subject parameters, nor would they let him see the questions ahead of time. Instead, they insisted that Trent — a professional, highly regarded, award-winning journalist — would conduct himself with all the tact and respect appropriate to the occasion. End of discussion.

The machinery of presaged failure ground into operation as soon as the terms of the interview were agreed. Once notified of the event, the newspapers began running features on what they called — for reasons known only to themselves — the “Christmas Confession,” while their resident pundits began guessing, and then second-guessing, what the King would say. Several daily papers proposed lists of topics he might wish to include, such as the location of the Holy Grail or whether he might reinstate the Round Table. One tabloid ran a competition in which readers were asked to supply a question for Jonathan Trent to ask James. The winner would, apparently, have his or her question included in Trent’s interview.

James couldn’t decide which he found more disagreeable — the inundating cascade of calls from aggressive, impudent journalists which Shona was forced to take or the not-so-hidden expectation in the press that he would be shown a fool and a failure. The easy assumption was that lightning would not, could not, strike twice.

The media, James decided, was a very cynical beast.

“Are you sure you want to be doin’ this, miss?” asked George Kernan, not for the first time since leaving Penzance harbor.

The young woman rose from arranging her equipment, turned, and faced the ship’s skipper. “Asked and answered, Mr. Kernan. For the third time: yes, I know what I am doing.” Her green eyes, almost turquoise against the deep blue of her new overalls, skewered him with angry intensity. “The sea is calm; the weather fine. Don’t tell me there is a problem with the boat, or I shall become quite cross.”

“No,” George hastened to assure her, “she’s in first-class condition, is
Godolphin Girl
. You won’t find a better boat this side of Falmouth.”

“Then why do you keep pestering me with your ridiculous concerns?”

“It’s dangerous, miss, is all. Now, I know we agreed, but I thought you was only —”

“Dangerous!” She spat the word with a force that made the seaman wince. “For the amount of money I’m paying you, Captain Kernan, you can well afford to keep your qualms to yourself, don’t you think?”

Kernan had faced difficult charters before; he drew himself up and gave it one last try. “But diving alone, miss — that’s the crux. We’d got no idea that you was attempting anything like that. We thought you only wanted to see the commotion like.”

“But I most certainly
do
wish to see the commotion. I wish to see it close up, Mr. Kernan. As for diving alone, if the site has become as busy as you say, then I shall hardly be alone, shall I? In any case, I take sole and entire responsibility for myself. Is that clear?”

“Of course, miss.”

“Now then, if you and your idiot son will simply do as you are told, there is no reason anyone should get hurt.” Her green eyes narrowed. “Do we understand one another?”

“Yes, miss.” George swallowed. “I understand.”

“Good,” she said, dismissing him with an imperious flick of her hand. “I do not expect to be interrupted again. You may inform me when we are within a mile of our destination.”

“Very good, miss.”

Captain Kernan stood for a moment, watching the belligerent young woman at her preparations. That day on the quayside she had been all sweetness and light, her low, throaty laugh enchanting as he told her how he and his crew had discovered the boiling, sulfurous sea, and recounted tales of various inexplicable doings in those queer waters. Why, she had even made him feel gallant and obliging when he accepted her money for the upcoming charter.

Still, he had tried to dissuade her. “Two thousand pounds is a lot of money, miss — ah —” He fished for a name.

“You’re right,” she had agreed, counting the bills into his hand. “And you deserve every penny, Captain Kernan. You’ve been so helpful — agreeing to take me out on short notice — it’s the least I can do.”

Well
, thought George, scratching his head ruefully,
there was no ‘you deserve every penny’ today. Women
! He should have figured something was up when they arrived on the quayside to find her already waiting for them with her knapsack and diving bag. “You’re late,” she had informed him with a snarl. Throwing a map at him, she had pointed to a red circle drawn on the water north of St. Mary’s. “That’s where we’re going,” she had said.

I should have given her back her money then and there
, he thought.
It’s Christmas Day, after all
. He returned to the wheelhouse where his son, Peter, was at the helm.

“Any luck?” asked Peter.

“I tried.” George sighed. “She won’t have it any other way but that we take her out so she can dive the site.”

“She’ll get herself killed,” Peter replied. “It ain’t safe. Did you tell her that?”

“I told her right enough. She’s pretty determined.” He looked out at the smooth, glassy sea. “It’s a good day. It’ll probably be all right. Anyway, seems she paid enough for the privilege.”

“All the same, if anything happens to her out here,” observed Peter, “it’ll be our butts in a sling, and two thousand pounds won’t seem like so much then. We shoulda refused to leave the harbor.”

“She paid in advance,” George reminded his son. “What are we supposed to do? You see how she won’t hear a word yer sayin’.”

“Here, take the wheel,” said Peter, moving around his father. “I’m going to talk to her.”

His father grabbed him by the arm. “ ’T’won’t do no good, son. Leave her be. Best thing we can do now is pray she don’t get into trouble and we can be home and dry for dinner.” Peter, unconvinced, reached for the door. “I mean it, boy,” his father said, gripping him tighter. “I done what I could. Now just leave her be. It’s her skin.”

Accepting his father’s caution at last, Peter returned to the helm. “I don’t like it,” he muttered, casting a glance through the window behind him to the aft deck where their strange, auburn-haired passenger had an expensive wet suit arrayed. “Diving all alone an’ on a holy day an’ all. It ain’t right. Look at her. She ain’t no oceanographer, if you ask me. We should never have taken the money.”

“Mark me, it won’t happen again,” his father vowed, shaking his head slowly.

The sturdy little boat sped easily towards its destination — a point twelve miles off the southernmost tip of the Cornish coast. They had set off early — at their passenger’s request — and now they knew the reason why: she intended to spend the short winter day underwater.

The unusual nature of the charter had initially failed to arouse their suspicions, for the simple reason that, because of the curious goings-on around the Scilly Isles, the whole coast had been in something of a mild uproar from St. Austell to Land’s End. Nearly every seaworthy boat had been approached for lucrative charter services since that night when the eruptions first began — mostly by geologists, marine biologists, and other sorts of sea scientists, although there were a fair number of adventurers and well-heeled tourists as well.
Godolphin Girl’s
uncomplaining skipper had taken his share of sight-seers out to watch the queer, stinking bubbles erupting from the seabed, too; and most of the boat owners he knew were eagerly augmenting their meager winter incomes ferrying thrill seekers back and forth to the mysteriously boiling sea.

Although the initial flash of media interest in the phenomenon had largely faded, the sulfurous belches continued unabated. Some sailors maintained they were even increasing in frequency, size, and duration. George found it difficult to say whether this was true or not, despite assurances from several long-time seamen that it was. What is more, Germoe and some of the other sailors who had taken a sudden and intense interest in things scientific — seeing that oceanographers seemed to have very deep, grant-funded pockets — maintained that it could be scientifically demonstrated that the little clutch of islands constituting the Scilly Isles was actually rising, albeit very slowly.

Life at Penzance harbor, as elsewhere along the coast, had definitely become more interesting — especially following the
Sun
newspaper’s feature article of a week or so ago. George had saved the front-page headline which read LLYONESSE RISES AGAIN!

As proof of the headline’s somewhat exaggerated claim, the story included a none-too-convincing photo of some boats in the harbor at Hugh Town, and William Taylor, the harbormaster, pointing to a scum line on the seawall indicating the drop in the water level. The scant scientific evidence was little more persuasive, but did support the islanders’ contention that their homes were gaining altitude at the rate of a centimeter or two a day. Citing the almost continual tremors accompanying the ascendance, geologic experts warned that a quake of major destructive proportions might be imminent. Urgent plans, the paper said, were being made to evacuate the islands’ three thousand inhabitants as soon as possible.

George knew a good many of the islands’ boatmen, and none of them had heard a single word about any urgent plans to evacuate — which just went to show that a body could not believe everything he read in the papers.

“There’s
Saint Keverne
,” announced Peter after a while, “half a mile off the port bow.”

The captain turned to where his son was pointing. The site was relatively deserted — there were only two other boats that he could see; two days ago there had been at least twenty. “An’ who’s that out beyond her?”

“Don’t know,” answered his son, taking up the binoculars with one hand and raising them to his eyes. “Could be
Trafalgar
,” he decided.

“I thought Macky said he was going up Falmouth for an engine bearing.”

“Maybe it’s someone else then.” Peter jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You’d better tell our tourist lady to start getting ready. We’ll be on zone soon.”

George left the wheelhouse, shaking his head. “On zone” was one of the many terms his son had picked up from the scientists; he didn’t use such words himself, and he was a little surprised that his son — and most of the rest of the Penzance population — seemed to adopt the jargon so easily.

“ ’Scuse me, miss,” he said, affably enough, considering his brusque dismissal earlier. “We’re coming up to the site. Do you need any help with your gear?”

“When I require something from you, I will ask for it,” the young woman informed him. With that, she unzipped her blue overall and stepped out of it, revealing a dazzling figure in a brilliant red one-piece swimming suit. Handing the captain the overall, she sat down on the bait box and began drawing on the lower half of a brand-new, insulated wet suit of dolphin gray.

She was suited and zipped in moments — donning her headpiece, strapping on her small, neat doughnut-shaped air cylinder, and slipping into flippers of garish green fluorescent plastic. As the boat’s engine slowed and began juddering in neutral, Peter called, “This is where you wanted to be, miss.”

She stepped to the rail, tested the mouthpiece, and then said, “Put out the buoy, Mr. Kernan.”

The skipper did as he was told, and threw out the bright orange diving marker and flag. “You sure you got enough air in that thing, miss?” he asked, eyeing the newfangled apparatus skeptically.

“Plenty,” replied the woman, tying a bag of nylon netting to her diving belt. From what the captain could see, the bag contained a few small bits of underwater gear.

She turned and sat down on the rail, her flippered feet splayed out in front of her. She drew on a pair of diving gloves. Next, she spat into the mask, rinsed it out, and drew it over her face with both hands. Then, adjusting the mouthpiece, she leaned back, tipping herself effortlessly into the sea.

Once beneath the smooth surface of the water, Moira rolled over and, with a fluorescent flutter of her acid-green flippers, swam gracefully away from the boat. Free of the annoying fishermen and their stinking boat, the keen abhorrence she felt for the human species began to dissipate in the cold, silent waters. Owing to a mild autumn, the winter water off the coast was clear as glass, allowing her a perfect view of the undulating landmass as it rose from the ice-blue depths far below.