The Broken Sword (11 page)

At the end of the evening everyone bowed graciously and clasped Hal's hand. Some embraced him; others made a point of rubbing his back or chest or hair.

"I feel like the family dog," Hal said after the guests left.

"They were waiting all evening to do that," Antonia told him. "To touch a man who has been saved by a miracle is great good luck."

Olazabal offered Antonia's bedroom to Hal for the night, but Hal insisted on sleeping on the divan in the parlor. It was made of wood, but Mrs. Olazabal covered it with thick wool blankets so that it was reasonably comfortable, although too narrow to accommodate Hal's body. He squirmed, shifting from one side to the other, trying to keep his limbs from going numb, for most of the night. At last he got up and moved the mass of blankets onto the floor beside the fire and sat there, poking the embers with a stick.

"I see you also cannot sleep." Antonia pulled a tattered robe closer over her nightgown and sat down beside him.

Hal looked into the fire, remembering his dream on the ship, in which he had sat in a place of honor with the ghost-knights of the Round Table. It had not really been a dream, he knew, but a memory of another life.

The first time he experienced the dream, three years before, he had been awake. Even so, he had dismissed it. The idea of his having lived before had been too outlandish for Hal to believe. But little by little, he had been shown the truth.

He had once been privileged to serve a great king who, rather than compromise his soul, had refused the cup of immortality. Yet there had been a prophecy that Arthur of Britain would come again, and so his knights waited at their Round Table, their spirits thin as air, while one of their number, whose name had been Galahad, returned to the world of men to wait for his king's return.

"Galahad!" the knights called, their voices an echo of the far distant past, inaudible to any ears but Galahad's own, while moondust swirled around him in the Siege Perilous of the ancient hall at Camelot.

Hal looked up with a start. Antonia was staring at him. "Am I disturbing your private thoughts?"

"No, nothing like that. I was just..." He shrugged.

"Excuse me if I seem to pry," she said tentatively. "But you said you have no family in Tangier."

"That's right," Hal said.

"Then your business is there?"

Hal shook his head.

"Your home?" she asked.

He held up his palms. "Hotel room."

"I am sorry," Antonia said quietly. She looked around the shabby room. "A home is important. Family, children, parents..." A tear coursed down her cheek.

"Hey, it's okay," Hal said. "I've gotten used to it."

"Yes, yes." She brushed the tear away. "I apologize. I have not been good company for you," she said huskily, and rose. "We go early to the passport office. Then you can go back to Tangier."

"Right," he mumbled. Back to Tangier. To kill a man.

For the cup.

Again.

T
wo hours later they
were in Antonia's ancient lime-green Fiat.

Her tears had sprung up again as they ate breakfast. Antonia hugged her parents fiercely at the door, then began to sob loudly as she started up the car. A fresh torrent of noisy sobs burst out of the woman as they crested a hill overlooking the seacoast village they had left. Hal thought the Portuguese had to be the most emotional people he'd ever met.

"Is there something bothering you, Antonia?" he asked politely.

She blew her nose. "My home, my home," she wailed.

He looked behind them. "Just how far is it to the passport office?" .

"Twelve kilometers." She honked noisily into her handkerchief.

"Twelve..." He stifled a laugh. "Not to be nosy, but do you go through this every day?" Antonia answered with a fresh wail. Hal decided not to press her on the subject.

She seemed to calm down somewhat over the next couple of miles, until the Fiat's engine sputtered and died in the middle of a flock of geese.

"My car!" she moaned. "Not my car!" Her voice had a hysterical edge to it.

Hal leaped out. Anyone who reacted to leaving for work in the morning the way Antonia did might well go off the deep end over a stalled engine. "Relax," he said. "I'll have a look at it. I'm a mechanic."

He opened the hood. Steam shot up in a cloud. When it cleared, Antonia was standing beside him.

"It's no big deal," Hal said. "Leaky radiator, that's all. It'll start up again in a couple of minutes. We can get a patch for it at the next town."

"You say you are a car mechanic?" she asked.

"At your service."

"Deo gracias,"
she murmured, closing her eyes rapturously and making the sign of the cross.

"Uh... yeah."

Antonia's eyes were brimming again. Hal bent over the engine with feigned interest before she decided to kiss his feet and declare a miracle.

"It is a miracle," she said.

Hal wiped his forehead. "Antonia, it's a cracked radiator, not the Shroud of Turin, okay?"

"Dona Theresa—the
bruxa
—said that someone would come to help me. That is you, Senhor Hal."

"And if it weren't me, it'd be the next guy who drove by. Anybody could do this, believe me."

"No, the miracle is not with my car," she said. "Dona Theresa was speaking about my plan. You have come to help me with my plan."

"Your plan to get to work?"

"No. I have already quit my job. Today I will travel to England."

He looked up from the engine. "What?"

"And I will remain there." Her eyes began to well with tears.

Hal replaced the radiator cap quickly. "Maybe you'd better tell me while we're on the road. Mind if I drive?"

She blew her nose and shook her head. Gratefully Hal led her to the passenger seat and hopped behind the wheel. The Fiat started up immediately. After a few minutes he spotted a sign that said
Faro 8 k.
He gunned the engine. He figured that the faster he drove, the less time he would have to spend listening to Antonia cry. "Okay, go ahead," he said, pushing the car to its limit. "Did you tell your parents you're moving out?"

She shook her head. "That is what makes it all so sad. But there is no other way. You see, I am married. But secretly. Papa does not know."

"Does he know the guy? I mean, your husband?"

"He hates Franco." Antonia hiccupped loudly. "He used to love him. Franco was like his own son. He grew up on the fishing boats with my father. It was my father himself who announced our engagement. But Franco could not remain a fisherman. He is a thinker, Franco." She tapped her forehead with meaning. "A scholar. One day he will be a great man."

"What did he do?" Hal asked. "To make your father hate him?"

"He went to accounting school."

"Ah," Hal said.

"In the Algarve. The English sector. For a man from my village, this is like treason. We have hated the English for centuries. But it was an Englishman, not a Portuguese, who offered Franco a chance to do bookkeeping for his business. When Franco did well, the Englishman lent him the money to go to school," she said hotly. "Yet still my father will not forgive Franco for leaving the village. He says his daughter would never be given to an Englishman's slave in marriage." She wept into her hands.

"But you married him anyway."

Antonia nodded. "Two months ago. I told my parents I had to go to Lisbon for the passport office. But I met Franco instead. To become his wife."

"Why didn't you go to England then?"

"Franco was still a student. I have some savings, but he would not allow me to support us. But now he has a good job in a big company in London."

"An accounting firm?"

"No, a sporting goods store. He is the manager," she said proudly. "It is one of the Englishman's businesses."

"Sounds like this guy's taking pretty good care of Franco."

"He is a good man. Were it not for him, Franco and I might have grown old thinking the way my father does."

"Your father's a good man, too, Antonia," Hal said. "He saved my life."

That had been a mistake. Antonia burst into tears and wailed annoyingly for the next five miles. By the time they reached the passport office at Faro, the Fiat had broken down twice more. Hal couldn't wait to get out.

"Well, thanks for the lift," he said breezily. As a second thought, he took some bills out of his wallet and held them out to her. "Here, I'd like you to have—"

"You are coming with me, no? After your passport is replaced?"

Hal cleared his throat. "Well, actually, I hadn't planned—"

"But Dona Theresa said you would come." She looked suddenly frail, like a wounded child.

She
is
a child, Hal thought. A little girl running away from home. "Antonia," he said gently, "maybe you'd better reconsider this trip. I don't think you really want to leave your parents."

"But I must," she cried. "I am..." She looked at the ground. "I am with child."

Oh, great, he thought. A pregnant little girl running away from home in a jalopy that wasn't going to make it through town without breaking down. "I can't," he said at last. "I've got to get back to Tangier."

"Why?" she demanded.

"To... Never mind." He waved the bills at her again. "Take the money. Please." He looked over the car dubiously. "And stay on the main roads."

She pushed his hand away. "Perhaps it was another whom Dona Theresa meant." Her lip quivered.

"Yeah," Hal said. "That's got to be it."

He went into the passport office feeling like a heel.

An hour later he emerged with a new passport and the disheartening news that the only rental car in town had crashed into a tree the previous night. The Faro passport office had, however, provided him with a map. The nearest ferry to Tangier was a hundred and six miles away.

Hal thrust his hands in his pockets. He was crossing the street when a green Fiat swerved wildly to avoid hitting him.

"What the hell were you looking at?" Hal shouted from the gutter where he had flung himself. Then he recognized the car and its sobbing driver.

"Deo, forgive me!" Antonia wailed. "I was not watching..." Her tears suddenly stopped. "Senhor Hal, it is you."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"I will take you to the rental car office, okay?" she offered helpfully.

"There is no rental car."

"Oh?" Her face broke into a broad smile. She looked a lot prettier when she wasn't crying, Hal thought.

"I can take you to the next town," she offered. "Of course, if you would rather go to England..."

Hal rolled his eyes.

"Please, Senhor." She clasped his hands prayerfully, her tears already dripping off her chin. "You have no family in Tangier, no work, no home. I beg of you. My unborn baby begs of you—"

"Enough! Enough!" He threw up his hands. "All right, I'll go."

Antonia shrieked, weeping rapturously. "Oh, Senhor Hal—"

"On two conditions," he said. "One, we stop at a garage. We need to get the radiator fixed."

She nodded, wiping her nose delicately.

"Two, you have to promise me not to cry until we reach your husband. For any reason. Understand?"

The hanky stopped in mid-blot. "Okay," she squeaked.

With a grunt, Hal got in the Fiat. "I mean it," he said. "If you let loose with so much as a sniffle, I'm out of here."

F
ive days and twenty-six
breakdowns later, they arrived in London. Antonia's husband wept for joy when he saw them, which came as no big surprise to Hal.

"How can I thank you?" Franco effused tearfully. "You would like a jogging suit, perhaps? No charge."

"That's okay," Hal said. "I'm not doing a lot of jogging these days."

"But I must repay you," Franco wailed, stricken.

"I'll take a cup of coffee," Hal said.

Franco sprang into action like a man possessed, fiddling with an old percolator while Antonia filled him in on the perils of their motor trip, extolling Hal's genius with a wrench while sobbing intermittently about her lost family in Portugal. Hal decided to absent himself from the commotion by browsing through a copy of the
Observer
on the kitchen table.

"You must stay with us for as long as you like," Franco said. "If you need work, perhaps I can help—"

"It's June twenty-third," Hal said, noticing the date on the newspaper.

"What did you say?"

Hal didn't answer. On page three was a small article about a village called Wilson-on-Hamble on the border between Dorset and Somerset counties.

It read:
ghost riders tonight? villagers expectant.

Residents of Wilson-on-Hamble are gearing up for an age-old phenomenon: the midnight ride of King Arthur's knights. The village is one of several area communities that claim to be the location of Camelot. On this night each year, according to long-term residents of the hamlet, the ghosts of the ancient knights leave the ruins atop what is now Cadbury Tor to gallop their steeds through the countryside in search of their king who, legend has it, is destined to reappear one day.

Many villagers claim to have heard the ghostly horses. In 1958, a team sent by the London Museum made a tape recording of the village's Front Street between 7 and 9 P.M., when the residents traditionally remain inside their homes to clear the way for the fast-moving ghost riders. Although the recording did pick up noises which "somewhat resembled" a muffled pounding of horses' hooves, the results were inconclusive, according to museum officials, since the sounds may have come from a nearby riding stable.

Nevertheless, the denizens of Wilson-on-Hamble will keep watch once again this evening, perpetuating one of the oddest of Arthurian traditions.

"The twenty-third, yes," Franco said, checking a calendar on the wall. "St. John's Eve, it says. In Portugal, it would be the festival of—"

"Can I get to Dorset on the train?"

"Dorset! But you must stay with us!" Antonia exclaimed. "At least for supper. After such a long trip—"

"Maybe I'll come by this way again. I'll stay then. Promise." He left hurriedly, before Antonia started blubbering.