Excalibur Rising (6 page)

      “Make yourself at home,” Todd said, “but we would appreciate you staying in this room.  Violet doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s working.”
     He left the room, closing the door firmly behind him, as if to emphasize his last instruction.
     Mandretti settled down in one of chintz covered library chairs. “You don’t believe her, do you?” he said.
     “I don’t believe in visions,” Ryan said. “I believe in things I can touch and feel.  Everything I’ve brought you so far has been genuine, hasn’t it?  Everything has a provenance.  I’m protecting your reputation Mr. Mandretti.  I can’t authenticate dreams and visions and fairy tales.”
     “She’s done pretty well out of dreams and visions and fairy tales,” Mandretti said, looking around the room.
      “I don’t know,” said Ryan.  “There’s something strange about this house.  What’s with the wet paint, and telling us not to leave this room?”
     “She seems to know more than you do,” said Mandretti. “She managed to make you look like a fool.”
     Before Ryan could reply, his phone buzzed again. Veronica .  As soon as he answered, she lit into him.
     “What the hell have you got us into?” she asked.
     “I’m coming, “said Ryan. “I’m a tad later than I said, but I’m coming.”
     “Don’t come near here.  Don’t you dare.”
     “What?”
     “Don’t come near us,” she repeated.  “Whatever trouble you’re in, don’t bring it to this house.”
     “I’m not in trouble,” he protested.
     “Yeah, well,” she said. “What’s all this about a goblet?” His stomach seemed to be doing back flips, while his heart rose in his throat. He was unable to speak.
     “A thug.”  Veronica’s voice came to him from great distance.  “He looks like a hired thug. Hardly speaks any English, all he can say is he wants the goblet, whatever that is.”
     Ryan was stunned into silence.
     “A goblet, Marcus,” she said. “A man’s been here looking for a goblet.”
     He could find no words.
      “Veronica,” he managed to stutter, “I’m sorry__”
      “Oh don’t be sorry,” she hissed. “Just do something about it, before I call the police.  I’m assuming you don’t want me to call the police.  What did you do?  Did you steal the darned thing?”
     “No,” he said, “I don’t steal.  You know better than that.”
     “I don’t know anything about you,” she said. “You haven’t shown your face here in the last five years.  The girls have forgotten you even exist.”
      “Is Leanne getting married? “Ryan asked.
     “No, it’s Abby.”
     “But she’s___”
     “Old enough to get married.  They’re grown up, Marcus, and Erik is their father now.  So don’t come here.  Stay where you are and find a way to do something about that man. I swear that if he hurts my daughters, Erik will hunt him down and___”
     “No,” Ryan said. “Don’t involve Erik in this.  You don’t know what you’re getting into.  Can you hold on, just for a minute?  Hold on, please.”
     “Just for a minute,” she said.
     He turned to Mandretti.
     “Wife trouble?” Mandretti asked.
     “A man hanging around her house and asking her to give him the goblet, says he’s been sent by the one-eyed man.”
     “Ah.” Mandretti pulled out his cell phone.  “Give me the address.”
     Ryan gave him the address and turned back to speak into his own    phone.
      “Veronica, are you still there?”
     “I’m here.  Where else do you expect me to be?”
     “I’m getting you some protection.”
     “What’s that supposed to mean?”
     He thought about it for a moment. “Large men in black cars,” he said eventually.
      “What?”
     Mandretti looked up from his mumbled phone conversation. “Ten minutes,” he said.
      “They’ll be with you in ten minutes,” Ryan told her. “And believe me, they’ll look after you.”
      “Is that what it’s come to?” she asked. “Is that what Vegas has done to you? Large men in black cars?
      “Veronica, “he said, “I’m serious about this.  I have something that they want, but it’s me they want, not you, but they could use you or the girls to get at me.  If you don’t believe anything else I’m saying, please believe that these men will protect you. “
     He looked at Mandretti. “They’re on their way,” Mandretti said.     “They’ll take care of it. Does your wife speak Spanish?”
     “I thought it would be Italian.”
     “It’s Florida,” he said with an eloquent shrug of his shoulders.
     “Large Spanish speaking men,” Ryan said to Veronica.
     She was silent for a moment.
     “Veronica?”
     “I’m scared,” she said in a small voice.
     “Do you want me to come there?” he asked. “I have what they want.  I’ll give it to them.”
     He heard and ignored Mandretti’s hiss of disapproval.
     “No,” she said vehemently, “don’t come near us again.”
     The phone was dead in his hands.
     “Are your men any good?” he asked Mandretti.
     “Oh yeah,” Mandretti said with supreme confidence.  “No problemo.  But I think I’d better get some protection for this house as well.  If they don’t find you or the goblet in Marathon, they’re gonna come here.”
     Todd appeared in the doorway, or perhaps, Ryan thought, he had been standing there all the time. 
      “We have our own protection,” he said.  “We try to avoid large men in black cars.”  He looked at Mandretti. “I have printed out a contract.  You and I should agree on the terms while Violet makes her final decision.”
     Mandretti rose from the chair.
     “Mr. Mandretti,“ Ryan said, “will you___”
     He nodded his head. “If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.  Now quit worrying.  My people are good.  Nothing’s gonna happen to your kids, and they ain’t gonna let anyone hurt your ex. Unless you want them to,” he added.
     “No. God, no!”
      “Just joking with you,” he said, and he followed Todd out of the room.
     The weight of the night before hung heavily on Ryan’s shoulders.  He sat in the library chair and tried to clear his mind, but all he could see was the goblet falling from Peacock’s fingers and coming to rest in the midst of the red wine stain on the carpet.  He thought about his children; not children any longer; young women about whom he knew nothing. He thought about Veronica and her righteous anger.  She was right to be angry with him. She had married Erik and Ryan had reacted by giving up responsibility for his own kids.  Erik didn’t need Ryan’s money to raise them, so Ryan stopped paying child support.  The girls had been awkward and uncommunicative on the phone, so he had stopped phoning them.        He had been traveling to the far corners of the world, and he had forgotten birthdays and Christmases.  He had,in fact, abandoned them, and allowed them to become Erik’s children.  And now his latest gift to them was a hired killer, and a car full of Spanish Mafioso.

CHAPTER FOUR

     The one-eyed man sprinted across the platform at Victoria Station and flung himself aboard the London to Brighton commuter train.  As the train rattled past the row houses of London’s inner city and out into the leafy suburbs of Surrey, he made his way along the swaying train corridors looking into every compartment.  He was late. He should have identified his quarry before the man had boarded the train, but he had taken time on the telephone talking to his contact in Florida. Now they were in the middle of rush hour. The traffic had been heavy around the airport, and there were no gates to use, just a taxi with an unflappable driver who would not be hurried.
     “You should have taken the tube, mate,” the driver informed him, when he complained yet again about their slow progress through the choking traffic.  When the taxi finally came to a halt outside Victoria Station the one-eyed man was tempted to use his dagger.  Ending the driver’s miserable existence would take but a moment, and he would be inside the station before anyone would know what had happened.  He slipped his hand into his coat pocket enjoying the feel of the metal and the possibility of a small, secret, personal revenge.  He glanced around and saw them, just as he had been warned, cameras; cameras everywhere, and one aimed directly at him.  Things had changed since he was a boy here. How could the people of Britain live that way, he wondered, with cameras watching their every movement?  He would have to be careful. His mission was not yet accomplished.  He released the dagger and thrust a handful of paper money at the driver, and then he hurried to join the crowds pushing their way into the echoing vastness of the train station.
     On board the train he reached the end of the last corridor without finding his quarry. He had traveled almost the entire length of the train and found no sign of the man.  The way ahead was blocked by a locked door separating the everyday commuter from the first-class compartments.  Of course he should have thought of that, the man he was looking for would surely be in first-class.
     He felt the train slowing for its first stop. A muffled voice announced its arrival, weary commuters pushed past him, brief cases and umbrellas in hand.  He stepped down from the train and moved along the platform and pulled open the door to the first-class compartments.  Yes, this was where he would find him, in the cool quietness of padded seats and burnished woodwork.  
     The train pulled out of the station. The leafy suburbs gave way to open countryside, rolling hills, and a vast sky that held the promise of a cold ocean somewhere just ahead. 
      Maybe his quarry would give him useful information, and maybe he would not, but he would most certainly die. The one-eyed man reached into his pocket. No, not this dagger, the other one, the one he was going to leave behind just for fun. He wanted to set them a puzzle that could not be solved in their miserable little world of cameras and commuters
.

Violet Chambray
Key West
     Violet flung herself down among the tie-dyed cotton pillows on her bed.  She closed her eyes, opened them, closed them again, opened them again, and stared at the familiar damp stains on the ceiling.  She tried to concentrate on the idea of using Michael Mandretti’s money to fix the roof, and perhaps there would be enough to hire the exterminator they so badly needed.
     Last night she had told Todd and Maria that they might be able to pull it off. With a mixture of intuition, careful research, and a good deal of showmanship,  she might lead Mandretti to discover an old, long buried sword. Of course it would not be Excalibur because Excalibur had never existed, but it might be something sufficiently ancient and mysterious to satisfy Mandretti’s inner romantic. When Todd brought up the possibility of linking together a series of Wikipedia illustrations of early English kings, to create the possibility that the Great Sword of England had been in King John’s baggage, she knew she had found the bait to catch a big fish.
    The search for the sword was not what was troubling her.   It was not because of the sword that she was now shut away in her room frightened to close her eyes in case the feeling swept over her again.  The fragment of paper, the one that Ryan had handed to her, terrified her.  She had always had the gift, the ability to sense an object’s history simply by holding it in her hand and allowing her mind to interpret the shifting shapes of the past.  The goblet had spoken to her, or maybe holding it had helped her to recall something she had read.  The paper was different.  She recalled how it had felt in her fingers, not dead, and not like a newly made object without a history, but like a barrier.  The paper was alive but alien, the inked characters deliberately resistant to her probing. She had spoken words without knowing what they meant.  She had talked about a gate, a portal, time standing still.  The words were not her own, they had come from some other place. 
     The bedroom door crashed open and Todd strode into the room, with Maria behind him.
     “Nicely done,” said Todd.  “You really got him going. What are you going to do for an encore?”
     “What are you doing?” Violet asked. “You can’t come in here.  They’ll see you, and then what will they think.  You’re supposed to be my secretary, or assistant, or whatever.”
     “Well at least he doesn’t have to be the maid,” said Maria, plopping herself down on the corner of the bed and kicking off her shoes. “This uniform is hot, it’s nylon, it doesn’t breathe.  I don’t know how real maids manage.  And as for carrying that heavy tray around….”
     “It’s better than poncing around looking like I just stepped out of a Fred Astaire movie,” said Todd, scrabbling to unknot his striped Ascot. 
     “And you think all this spandex is comfortable?” said Violet, pulling at the spandex girdle that was allowing her to squeeze into the blue suit.
     “Well, you’re not exactly stock size,” said Todd, “and that’s all we had in wardrobe.  Any more of those chocolate croissants and that whole suit would have exploded.”
     He dropped down on the bed and sat companionably close to Maria.  “But you did good,” he said. “How much of it was real?”
     “All of it,” said Violet.
     Todd patted her hand. “If you say so,” he said. “I don’t think that professor was buying it, cynical bastard.  But you really went over the top and you know what Mom used to say, less is more.”
     “Mom’s not here any longer,” said Violet, “and it’s up to me.  We can’t keep this place going on your very occasional stage gigs___”
     “I try,” Todd interrupted.
    “I know you do,” said Violet, “which is more than I can say for Maria.”
     “You want me to be a waitress for real?” said Maria, who had entirely lost her Spanish accent.
     “No,” said Violet, “we’re going to make this work.  We’re going to find this damned sword and make a pile of money, and Todd can buy himself a theatre, and Maria can do whatever she likes.”
     “I want to paint,” said Maria.
     “Speaking of paint,” said Todd, “Ryan put his hand in the wet paint on the gazebo.”
      “Oh God,” said Violet, “what did you say?”
     “Something appropriately flaky,” said Todd.  “Mind the paint, or sorry about the paint, or something like that.  I really had no idea what to say.  It should have been dry.  I finished it at midnight.”
     “It looked really good,” Maria said encouragingly.  “Did you like what I did to the library?”
     “I haven’t seen it yet,” said Violet.  She pulled herself upright against the pillows.  “You’d both better get out of here,” she said.  “What if someone sees you?”
     “The professor has gone downtown,” said Maria, “and the Mafia boss is making threatening phone calls on his cell.”
      “Okay,” said Violet, “so we have a little time.  Did you get onto Carlton Lewis?”
      “That,” said Todd, “was a stroke of genius.”
      “Well, thank you,” said Violet in surprise.
     “Not your genius,” Todd said, “my genius.  How long ago was it that you met him?”
     “I don’t know,” said Violet. “Five years, six years.”
     “So there you are perched on your little barstool, and in comes this Englishman from a private yacht, and he happens to be looking for this sunken treasure and he has a map.”
     “He’d been looking in the wrong place for years,” said Violet.
     “But you found it for him.”
     Violet shrugged her shoulders.  “All I had to do was touch the map and I knew.”
     “You do know,” said Todd, looking her in the eye, “that not everyone can do what you do?  You do know that it’s fricking amazing the way you know these things?”
     “I suppose so,” said Violet.
      “I’m just worried he won’t remember you,” said Todd.  “I mean, it’s great that we looked him up and you could throw his name around like that, but I don’t know if it was a good idea to promise that you’d actually consult with him.”
      “He’ll remember me,” said Violet firmly.
      “Oh,” said Maria, “another one of your conquests.”
      “I suppose some men like women with a little meat on their bones,” Violet admitted.
     “That’s what I keep telling you,” said Maria.  “If I had boobs like yours I’d____”
     “Never mind about her boobs,” said Todd.
     “I’m just saying that she should relax and appreciate what nature has given her.  That gangster was really into her, and the professor was all eyes, he didn’t even know where to look first,” said Maria.
     “But he didn’t believe me,” said Violet.
     “One thing at a time,” said Maria.  “First the boobs, and then the brain.”
      “So,” said Todd, “if this Carlton Lewis guy remembers you, and if he comes up with something, are you really planning to go to England?”
      “What?” said Violet.
     “England,” Todd repeated. “Mandretti’s expecting you to go to England.  Do you even have a passport?”
     ‘Yes,” said Violet, “I have a passport.  I went up to Canada on that lost child thing with the Montreal Police.”
     “Do you even know where it is?” Maria asked, looking around the cluttered bedroom.
     “I’ll find it,” said Violet. “It’s what I do.”
      She closed her eyes and leaned back against the pillows.   “Do you think you could both go away and leave me alone,” she said. “Go back in to the library and see if Mandretti wants anything, keep him busy, and don’t let him see the rest of the house.”
     “I have lines to learn,” said Todd. “We have dress rehearsal tonight and they’re not in my head, they are simply not there.  That’s what happens when you have to spend all night mowing the lawn and painting the damned gazebo.”
     “It’ll all be worth it in the end,” said Violet.  “Go away.”
    “We’re going,” said Todd.  He leaned forward and touched Violet’s hand. “You done good,” he said. “Have a little nap and get your strength back, there’s a lot more for you to do.”
     Violet tried to relax and enjoy the gentle warmth of the sun as it filtered through the louvered windows.  The ceiling fan hummed softly moving the cool breeze from the ocean. Birds chirped and called in the bougainvillea bushes.  The house was quiet and, even with the knowledge that the Mafia boss was conducting his business from the library, she felt safe.  She was confident that, despite their teasing, neither Todd nor Maria would allow anyone to disturb her.
     She tried to put her brother and sister out of her mind.  When Alice and Nicholas Chambray had rescued her from life in a French convent she had expected to be an only child, and she had been bitterly disappointed to find that her new mother had already adopted two younger children, and she would have a brother and sister. Young as she was, she had realized that one day she would be responsible for them, and now she was.  Todd had a burning desire to be an actor, but no talent to match his desire, and Maria dreamed of a career in dress design.  It was Maria who had squeezed her into the constriction of the blue suit she was wearing, and the high heeled blue pumps that had made it impossible for her to walk with her usual relaxed stride. 
     She closed her eyes again and for a fleeting moment she saw a stone chamber and a nun in grey robes.  It was nothing, she told herself, she was probably dreaming of the convent of her childhood, although the nuns at St. Philomena’s wore black, not grey. She drifted into sleep, the vision of the stone chamber slipping away, seeming to melt in the warmth of the sun, and the gentle humming of the ceiling fan.
          Maria’s loud tapping on the door startled her into wakefulness.  As if the banging was not enough, Maria had resurrected her Spanish accent, calling for Miss Violet loudly enough to wake the dead.
      Violet’s mouth felt dry and she struggled to open her eyes because her liberal application of mascara had glued her eyelids to her cheeks.  Maria flung the door open and regarded her sister with an expression of disgust.
     “What you need is waterproof mascara,” she said.
     “What I need is for you to stop banging around,” Violet replied. “How long have I been asleep?”
     “Several hours,” said Maria.
     Violet sat up and rubbed her eyes.
     “No,” said Maria. “You’re making a mess.”
     “I know,” said Violet. “I’ll have to redo my whole face. Where is everyone?”
     “Mandretti is in the garden,” said Maria, “and the other one, the professor, who, by the way, is not bad looking____”
     “If you like the tall supercilious type,” said Violet.
    “He’s gone shopping,” Maria said.
     Violet swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I fell asleep with my shoes on,” she said.
     “And also your corset,” said Maria.
     Violet tugged at the firm elastic encasing her stomach.
      “Mon dieu,” she said, lapsing into the French of her childhood, “this thing is torture.”   
      “There is a reply from your boyfriend in England,” said Maria. 
     “Carlton?” said Violet. “He actually replied?”
     “He did,” said Maria.  “He sent an e-mail and I printed it out for you, being that you’re so utterly useless with computers.  It’s in the library.”
     “Where’s Todd?” Violet asked. “He’s supposed to be the secretary.  You’re supposed to be the maid.”
     “He’s practicing his make up for his dress rehearsal,” said Maria. “Don’t worry, no one saw me.  Do you want me to go and get it for you?”
     Violet swung her feet out of the bed and onto the floor.  “No,” she said, “I’ll come with you.  I have to try and wake myself up.  Are you sure they’re not in there?”
     “I told you,” said Maria, “the tall dishy one went into town, and the short scary one is in the gazebo, having a snooze.  He hasn’t complained, so I guess the paint is now dry.”
     Violet adjusted her corset as best she could, smoothed down her skirt and followed Maria down the hall and into the library.  The e-mail was lying on the desk, printed on heavy bond cream colored paper. 
     “That’s the expensive paper,” Violet complained.  “Why are you using that?  Don’t you understand, we have to cut corners, or we won’t have any money at all?”
     “If you plan to show the e-mail to anyone,” said Maria, “ don’t you think it should be on good paper?  You have to look successful if you plan to be successful.”
     “Good point,” said Violet.
      “Apparently,” said Maria, “your English boyfriend is as useless as you are with computers.  He seems to have written his letter by hand, and I suppose his secretary scanned it and sent it.  You two would suit each other just fine.”
     “He has a wife,” said Violet.
      As she picked up the paper the vision hit her hard and fast with the force of a physical blow.  She felt herself falling backwards and heard Maria screaming for help as Violet’s grasping hands dragged her down to the floor.
     For a brief moment Violet was unable to breathe.  She felt as though someone had stabbed her in the heart.  The library with its lime washed desk, and open sunlit windows faded from sight, replaced by a railway carriage with tufted blue upholstery, a luggage rack overhead, deep dark wooden paneling, and reverse lettering on the windows.
First Class Only.
        The floor of the carriage was grimy, sticky, perhaps it had not been cleaned properly, although one would expect special attention to be given to First Class.  No, not dirt, blood.  Whose blood?  Her blood?  No, his blood.  Who was he?
     Maria’s loud scream shattered the illusion.
    “Get off me,” Maria shouted.  “Get up Violet.  What’s the matter with you?”
     Violet drew in a deep shuddering breath and realized that she was lying on the floor of her own library and Maria was staggering to her feet and calling for Todd.
     “He’s dead,” said Violet filled with certain knowledge.
     “Shut up,” said Maria, “You almost broke my arm.  What kind of crazy stunt was that?  No one’s dead.  What’s the matter with you?”
     “Carlton’s dead,” said Violet.
     “No he’s not,” said Maria.
      Violet heard Todd’s voice coming from somewhere far away.
     “Let me handle this,” he said. “She’s having a vision.”
      “You mean for real?’’ said Maria.
     “I think so,” said Todd.
     He was kneeling beside her now, inexplicably wearing lipstick and eye shadow.  He eased the paper from her hand.
      “What is this?” he asked.
     “It’s from that guy in London,” said Maria. 
     “Wow,” said Todd, “he actually remembered her.”
      “He’s dead,” said Violet. “In a railway carriage.”
      “Are you sure?” said Todd.  He looked at the paper. “He just sent this message.  Look here’s the time stamp.  He’s fine.”