Shadowland (63 page)

 
   At eleven o'clock the king stood by the lake. By eleven-thirty his bones were aching and he sat on the wizard's hollow log, burning with hope and impatience. Fifteen minutes later he saw a great bubble burst on the surface of the lake. He stood up in the moonlight and went to the very shoreline. He rubbed his aching hands together. He sucked his teeth. He felt years younger already.

 
   At midnight something broke the surface of the water in the center of the lake. Terrified, the old king stepped backward just as the head of a beautiful young woman appeared. Her shoulders lifted from the water, then her whole upper body, as well as the neck and head of a horse. The old king backed up until he felt bushes pressing against him. The woman emerged entirely from the lake, dressed in a long white gown and astride a magnificent white charger. Her hair was golden-red; her face was beautiful as beautiful, and the king saw that she could indeed enchant armies. 'Come, my husband,' she said, and reached down to him a hand which, when he touched it, was as cold as if no blood ran there. With the strength of a giant, she pulled him up onto the saddle with her, and they went on the white horse to his castle. And that night, with the horse stabled outside, the king knew the delights of the marriage bed as thoroughly as any twenty-year-old prince.

 
   The next day they went north to Halvor's land, and met his army, which was going to kill them until the soldiers looked into the face of the queen. Instantly the soldiers dropped their weapons and swore their allegiance to the old king. Then they proceeded to Halvor's castle and found that Halvor had already escaped and fled farther north, to where only reindeer and wolves lived.

 
   That night, the old king knew again the joys of love. Though his bride was fish-cold to the touch, she had beauty to break his heart and swore she loved him. And the king again felt his youth restored as half his kingdom had been restored.

 
   On the second day, he and his bride and Halvor's army went south, where Bruno's soldiers fell to the ground and wept, welcoming them. Bruno himself fled farther south,to the land where alligators and giant lizards crawled over black rocks and slipped into stinking rivers.

 
   The king rode back to his palace dazed with happiness. In two days he had recaptured all his old kingdom and more, and he had an army to take any land he wished. Lester the Ambitious would fall in a day. His new bride gave him glances sweeter than maple sugar, and he knew that the wizard was mistaken about her ability to love.

 
   When the king and his wife and the joined armies had reached the palace, the king saw the wizard sitting on a broken pediment by the gates. 'Hail, great king,' said the wizard. 'Are you satisfied with your bargain?'

 
   'I am satisfied with everything, friend,' said the king, feeling very grand astride the great white horse. He and his nobles went inside to feast on beef and roast pig and gallons of ale; and during the feast the king saw with pride how his nobles, the bravest and strongest men in three lands, paid court to his queen; and saw how like a queen she treated the nobles, giving a word to this one and a smile to that one, but reserving the best of herself for him, so that all knew that her heart was his alone.

 
   When the king and queen left their guests to go to the royal bedroom, the king locked the door behind him and advanced toward his bride.

 
   'Hold a moment, your Majesty,' said the wizard, who was seated in a window casement.

 
   The king swore, and made to push the trespasser out of the window, but the wizard held up his hand and said, 'Since you are satisfied that I have kept my word, now I will ask you to keep yours.'

 
   'Take my hair . . . give me my beard . . . but leave!' bellowed the king. The queen, who had begun to disrobe, continued to do so.

 
   'It is done,' said the wizard, snapping his fingers, and a great agony overtook the king, an agony greater than any he had known, pain that threatened to split him apart and burn his eyes from his skull. He fell howling to his knees.

 
   Before the queen, who concluded her undressing as if nothing of any importance were happening, and before the wizard, who merely smiled as coldly as had Lester the Ambitious when the last of his relatives had been poisoned, the old king was transformed into a goat. The hairsof his head became coarse stubbly goat fur, and long goat whiskers sprouted from his chin. He bleated and kicked, but could not bleat and kick himself back into human form. The wizard joined the queen in the bed, the goat was sent down to the kitchen, and the entranced nobles continued their feast. Thus the wizard ended his many days with a beautiful wife, a great army, and the possession of kingdoms.

 
12

 
'And what's the point of that?' Tom asked, shivering on the pier.

 
   The magician smiled at him: smiled as coldly as the wizard in his story. 'Need I really say? Rose can never leave Shadowland. Kiss her all you want, Tom, but don't believe a word she says, for she has no idea of the truth.'

 
   'That's a terrible . . . ridiculous . . .
lie.'
Tom began to walk away from Collins down the pier.

 
   'I don't blame you for being angry with me,' the magician called out into the fog between them, 'but whatever you do, don't forget my warning. Don't take her too seriously.' Tom was now at the iron ladder. As he set his feet on the first rung, he heard the magician call, 'Our lives take many different turnings, Tom, and today's king is tomorrow's goat. Don't be fool enough to think it cannot happen to you.'

 
THREE

 
Two Betrayals

 
1

 
At night the fog still hung over the lake and in the forest swirled around the trees. The lights above the clearings were glowing yellowish disks. 'Let's not get separated,' Del said, and took his hand as they slowly made their way through the trees.

 
   When they came into the clearing of the sixth light, Coleman Collins was waiting for them. He sat in the owl chair, his legs crossed at the ankles.

 
   Tom swallowed, knowing that he would see Rose down in the funnel of trees before this part of the story was done.

 
   'The sorcerer's apprentices,' Collins said, turning his head to greet them. His voice was blurred. Both boys had seen the bottle clamped between his thighs. 'Just in time, yes, and wandering lone through the mists like orphans. Sit down in your accustomed places, boys, and attend. We have reached the next-to-last chapter of my unburdening, and the weather is appropriate.

 
2

 
'First of all, it was a foggy day when I deserted the armed forces of the United States. It was the first week of December, and the war had been over for three weeks. I was in England, waiting for my discharge papers. Speckle John had been discharged a week earlier, and was already in Paris. I could see no reason why I should not leave immediately, but for the strict interpretation the government puts on such things as premature departure from its service. At the time, I was not serving anyone, in fact. I was waiting out the period before my papers came in a country house which had been turned into a hospital and convalescent home — Surrey, this was — and I was more or less being kept out of sight. The patients there had been on what was called Blighty Leave, a term I suppose you boys are too young to understand. Nobody knew when the papers would come through. Some of the men had heard rumors that they might not be discharged, or demobbed, as the English soldiers said, for a year. Don't think these were idle rumors, either; some men were still in France eight months later.

 
   'I don't suppose you boys know Surrey? Physically, it is quite a beautiful county. Before the war and for the well-off, it must have been a sort of paradise. But the weather, at least while I was there, was miserable, cold and misty — the most expressive weather I've ever known, somehow speaking of blasted hopes and dead expectations. The English had lost nearly an entire generation of men, and in those villages in Surrey I think they felt the loss especially keenly. When Speckle John's letter came, I felt I simply had to get out.

 
   'So in the first week of December I just left, carrying only a hand valise with a few books and my razor and toothbrush. I walked two miles into the village, waited a couple of hours at the station, and caught the Charing Cross train. From the moment I walked through the gates of that house, I was a criminal and a fugitive, traveling on forged papers I'd had the foresight to buy on the black market just before we left France. The next day I took the boat train to Paris. The name on my false papers was Coleman Collins. I let the hunt for Lieutenant Charles Nightingale go on without me.

 
   'For there was a hunt, and that was the reason I had been sequestered away in Surrey. At dinner I told you boys about that day I did five magical cures in a row. Reckless, even stupid-certainly arrogant. I was
on fire
with impatience. Austria-Hungary had just surrendered after the Italian victory at Vittorio Veneto. Everybody knew that Germany was exhausted. Finished. I wanted
out.
So I let rip, boys, I let rip. Five in a row. Spuds-and-Guinness, the Irish nurse, thought the devil had appeared. Of course my display caused an uproar. Withers saw what I was doing, and after finishing up his own work, tore out faster than any Georgian has ever traveled before or since. To see the colonel, I was sure. I did not give a damn. Anyhow, to make a long story short, before I got to England, there were new rumors about me. Not just among a handful of Negro soldiers, but among the general public. Reports had begun to appear in the English and French papers.
Miracle on the Battlefield.
That sort of thing. First in one place, then in another. By the time I left Yorkshire, the English papers were conducting their own search for the 'miracle doctor.' If I had wanted that sort of thing, I could have had it in a minute, boys — if I had wanted to be a performing monkey the rest of my life. But what I wanted was in Paris, working on our act and looking for theater bookings. What I wanted had secrets and knowledge to make a faith healer look like a dogcatcher.

 
'I set foot again on French soil on December 5, 1918, hung-over, unshaven, in a cold rain. My phony papers had never been questioned, not even looked at twice. I didsee, after a few weeks in Paris, that a newspaper had managed to identify the 'miracle doctor' as one Lieutenant Charles Nightingale, who had unreasonably vanished from an English village shortly before his release from the army and was now AWOL. But by then the doings of Lieutenant Nightingale were no more important to me than those of General Pershing.

 
   'Speckle John was living in rooms in rue Vaugirard, and I took a room directly below him. You entered the building through huge wooden doors on the street and came into an open court surrounded on all sides by high gray brick walls. Smaller doors let onto staircases. To your right was the concierge's office; straight ahead, the stairs to Speckle John's rooms. This building was so rundown it was moldy, but to me it looked beautiful. Now I can almost see it before me. And so, I think, can you.'