The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(64)

A shadow fell into the room but I hardly noticed it. I just wanted it all to go away. The hospital, London, my memories, me.

The shadow came closer and I heard her ask softly, “Alfred, why are you crying?”

I said, “It works on everybody but me, Natalia. I can heal everybody but myself.”

She sat in the wooden chair beside the bed. She had changed into a long red cloak over a gray dress with one of those soft, high collars, and her earrings were fat diamonds about the size of green olives. Her reddish gold hair was loose and flowed over her shoulders. She looked like some medieval princess, beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Seeing her dressed like that, I realized Natalia was leaving.

“You are forgetting something,” she said.

“I can’t forget anything,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

“You are forgetting you saved the world.”

I didn’t say anything. I wondered why she had come back, but at the same time I knew why, though I couldn’t put it into words.

Then she did. “I’m leaving, Alfred.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Don’t.”

“I must.” She drew a deep breath. She was sitting very straight in the chair.

“But before I go,” she went on, “I wanted to pay homage to the master.”

She looked down at my snotty face.

“I’m not the master of anything,” I said.

“Alfred,” she answered softly. “Like my father, I have waited a very long time for your coming. My father would tell me stories of our ancestor Bedivere, how he betrayed the king by refusing his command to return the Sword to the waters from which it rose. I would spend hours imagining what the master would be like. Tall, handsome, brave, honest, chaste, modest, the knight of all knights—in short, everything that I believed my father to be.” She looked sideways at me, clearly not the guy she had pictured as the master of the Sword. “In fact, when I was still very young I told him that he might be the master, that perhaps it was his destiny to claim the Sword as his own, a fitting end to Bedivere’s shame.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me of the prophecy Merlin made before he departed the world of men, that the master would not come until the last male heir to the house of Bedivere had perished. My father believed that prophecy, Alfred. He believed it because he believed in the justice of it. It was the price we would pay for Bedivere’s failure, our atonement for his sin.”

I thought of Bennacio kneeling before Mogart, and I understood then why he had spread his arms in that way, as if saying, Here I am. Here I am.

“Oh, jeez,” I said. “Like I didn’t feel bad enough, Natalia. What am I supposed to do, huh? What do you want me to do? I was just, you know, helping out my uncle. I didn’t know my father and I sure didn’t know I had stolen the Sword of Kings for a black knight or an agent of darkness or whatever he was. I mean, what rational person believes in all this stuff, Merlin and King Arthur and magic swords and angels and prophecies—who believes in that kind of stuff these days? I don’t know what you want from me, Natalia. Can you tell me what I’m supposed to do? Somebody better tell me and they better do it quick, because I’m just about at the end of my rope here.”

She came to the bed, and her hair fell over my face. She whispered, “He is at peace, Alfred. His dream is fulfilled, and he is at peace. Now you be at peace.”

Then she kissed me on the forehead, and her hair was like the walls of a cathedral around me, a sanctuary, and she murmured into my ear, “Be at peace, Master Alfred.”

53

One afternoon, about a week before I was to be discharged, the door opened and a dark-suited man came into the room. Tall and stoop-shouldered, with a hound-dog face and very long earlobes, he reminded me of a sad-eyed Basset. He closed the door behind him as I pushed myself up in the bed, thinking, What now?

He didn’t say a word; he barely looked at me. He crossed the room and peeked through the curtains, then strode to the bathroom and looked in there. Then he opened the door and spoke softly to someone in the hallway. He stepped back and a woman came in next, dressed in a tailored pinstriped business suit with shiny black heels that made a clicking sound on the linoleum as she walked. Her bright blond hair was pulled into a tight bun on her head. She carried a bundle wrapped in white satin.

“Abigail?” I said.

“Alfred.” She smiled, and I was impressed by the excellent condition of her teeth. “How good of you to remember.”

She handed the bundle over to the hound-dog man and sat down beside my bed.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Pretty lousy,” I said. “Physically I’m doing okay; it’s the other departments that are bothering me.”

“You have been through a great deal,” she said.

There was an uncomfortable silence. I blurted out, “I don’t have it.”

“Don’t have what, dear?”

“You know what. I don’t have it. And I don’t know where it is, though I have a guess.”

“And where would that be?”

I bit my lip. Her smile didn’t leave her face and her blue eyes were glittering brightly.

“You don’t trust me,” she said calmly. “I don’t blame you, Alfred. We’ve done little to earn your trust. At any rate, you don’t need to tell me. I believe I already know. The gift has been returned to its giver.” I didn’t say anything and she lowered her voice. “The master claims the Sword and, in claiming it, understands that it can never be claimed.”