Children of the Knight (18 page)

Arthur seemed so sincere, even with a cheap pick-up line like that, and Jenny experienced genuine confusion. Her brows knitted, and her breath tightened in her chest a moment. But she finally decided he
had
to be playing her. She’d had enough bad experiences with men charming and then leaving her to recognize a scam line when she heard one. “Guinevere, huh? That’s a line I haven’t heard before.”

Arthur smiled at the way she bristled with indignation. Such qualities appealed to him. “Thou possesseth my Gwen’s stubborn temperament. It ’twere a quality Lancelot loved in her, as well. He called her ‘Jenny’ because she told him it didst always make her feel young.”

Lance looked at Arthur, startled to hear a name that sounded so like his own. But before he could speak, Jenny hesitantly replied, “It just so happens that’s my name too. Jenny.” Against her will, she blushed.

Arthur’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Indeed?”

Lance
really
wanted to know who this Lancelot was, but mostly he wanted to get Arthur away from here. The attraction between the only two adults in his life who’d ever been good to him was obvious, but for reasons he couldn’t understand, he
didn’t
like it. Not at all.

“Come on, Arthur, we gotta go. ’Night, Ms. McMullen.”

He tried pulling Arthur’s sleeve back toward Llamrei, but Arthur stood his ground and ignored him. Lance dropped the sleeve, suddenly feeling invisible. As though punched in the stomach, he snatched up his skateboard and sullenly moved up the rise to Llamrei, petting her gently around the snout.

Arthur remained frozen in place, gazing with wide-eyed wonder at the lovely young woman before him. The streetlight cast her blonde hair within a halo of light that entranced him.

“Be thou a good teacher, Lady Jenny?” he asked with a tilt of his head.

Mesmerized by his gaze, Jenny was caught off guard by the question. She cleared her throat, then replied, “I, uh…. I don’t know. I try. I love what I teach.”

His gaze never wavered. She felt he could see her every secret, her very soul, yet she saw in him nothing but sincerity.

“But do you love
who
you teach?” he asked cryptically.

Jenny opened her mouth to respond but hesitated because she didn’t know the answer, because no one had ever asked her that question before.

Arthur smiled warmly. “Methinks we shalt gaze upon one another again.”

Turning, he strolled up the slight rise to Llamrei and Lance. So absorbed were his thoughts with this fascinating young woman, he failed to notice Lance glowering down at her as he mounted the horse. He reached for Lance, but the boy ignored the proffered hand and scrambled up into the saddle by himself. Arthur barely glanced back at the boy, his eyes once more fixed on Jenny, looking radiant beneath that circle of streetlight. He raised his hand in a gesture of farewell.

“Farewell, Lady Jenny.”

Speechless and feeling overwhelmed by the encounter, Jenny barely remembered to raise her own hand in farewell before the horse and riders vanished into the night.

T
HE
return journey was made in silence, not because Lance didn’t want to talk, but due to Arthur’s preoccupation with Jenny. Lance had made an attempt at drawing him out, but Arthur’s responses to questions fell into the category of grunts or nods for the most part. Knowing the reason for the king’s silence caused Lance to sink into a funk for the entire trip.

For his part, Arthur found himself replaying in his mind the all-too-brief encounter with that fascinating woman. What had he sensed within her? Strength, yes, stubborn defiance, certainly. But what else? He knew virtually nothing about her except she taught Lance and other children like him. She obviously cared for Lance, which pleased him. But what of her other charges? Did her heart go out to them, as well, or was her teaching job nothing more than that—a job?

He found her by turns confusing and alluring, and felt drawn to her even more than he’d been toward Guinevere. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, after all, part of a treaty agreement. She’d been beautiful and bold, nobody’s fool, his Gwen, and somewhere along the way he
had
fallen in love with her, and then loved her deeply until the end.

He suddenly realized that Llamrei had stopped. Looking around, he saw they were within the riverbed facing the grill entrance to his lair. Lance stood on the ground, holding open the enormous grate for them to enter.

“Well?” Lance asked sullenly, gripping his board like a weapon, his chest tight with emotion.

Arthur shook his head a moment to clear his thoughts. “My apologies, Lance,” he began, pulling himself back into the present. “My mind wandered.”

Lance snorted. “Yeah, I bet!”

Arthur noted the tone and Lance’s slouchy posture and sullen look. “Ye seem troubled, Lance. What be weighing upon thee?”

Lance looked down at the ground. “Nothing.”

But Arthur knew better. “Hast thy mood to do with the Lady Jenny?”

Lance snapped his head up like a cobra preparing to strike, his words sharper than he’d intended. “Look, she’s only a teacher, okay!” He noted Arthur’s look of obvious shock at his tone, and his face softened. “Sorry. She’s cool. It’s just….”

Arthur gazed down at the boy, concerned, but genuinely mystified as to what was troubling him. “Just what?”

Lance shook his head. How could he explain without sounding like a whiny little kid, especially when he knew Arthur depended on him, counted on him to be his equal if the need arose?

“Nothing. I’m tired,” he finally said with a sigh and then stepped past the grill to enter the darkness of the tunnel without looking back.

Puzzled and concerned, Arthur trotted Llamrei through the entrance and closed the grill behind them. The bobbing, bouncing light of Lance’s lantern guided him through the dark tunnels back to their chamber, but the boy said not another word along the way.

A
S
J
ENNY
returned to her apartment, her mind raced, replaying images of her encounter. Tossing her jacket haphazardly onto the sofa, she wandered into her broom-closet-sized kitchen, opened the fridge, and pulled out a carton of orange juice. She was so lost in thought that she just took a swig from the carton without using a glass, set the juice down near the sink, and drifted into the living room.

She knew she should be exhausted—Fridays were usually the end of the line for energy levels—but her mind felt hyped by the night’s events. Who was this man, and why didn’t she simply call the cops and report that she’d seen him? Report that he had a fourteen-year-old boy in tow and kept that boy out of school every day? She
could
do these things, and her mind told her that she should. But her heart told a different story. She’d been burned enough times by men—she knew the “user” type
very
well by now. This guy wasn’t like that.

He almost reminded her of this alien character from an old TV series she’d seen rerun on cable. This alien had been here on earth once before and fathered a child. Thinking his son was in trouble, the alien returned to earth to help him and discovered the boy’s mother had disappeared. Father and son set out to locate her. Because the alien wasn’t from earth, everything seemed new to him, and he sincerely saw the best qualities in everyone he met. He even helped bring those qualities to the surface.

That was the feeling this Arthur gave her. He seemed out of place in this time, in this world, and yet he oozed sincerity. And Lance adored him—that was obvious. She knew enough of Lance to know he was nobody’s fool. Still, he
was
fourteen years old and could be “wowed” by swords and horses and tales of chivalry.
Like you, Jenny
, she asked herself?
Isn’t that why you loved those old Arthurian stories, where knights rode horses and rescued fair maidens, and right and wrong were clearly delineated ideals?

But human beings weren’t that simple, were they? People were shades of gray, at least in her mind. You had your left-wing ideologues and your right-wing ideologues, and each believed their playbook held all the answers to every human condition. But weren’t people so much more complex than that? Didn’t most of us fall within the gray area, and thus the solutions to specific human dramas could never come from a single playbook, but rather from a combination of both? Didn’t each of us need to be seen as an individual first and member of a group second?