Children of the Knight (19 page)

Could this man somehow, impossibly, really
be
Arthur? Could those stories of old
really
be true? She considered this possibility but a moment before shaking her head. No, it wasn’t possible. She’d sooner believe he was some kind of alien from outer space. And yet….

She sighed, feeling the sudden weight of what she knew and the even greater weight of what she didn’t know pressing in on her like a giant vise. And yet, what of Lance? Could he be in any danger? Not, she thought, not from the man himself, but possibly from how his ultimate plans played out. A new Round Table? She clearly needed to know more. She needed to find out where this Arthur holed up and exactly what he was planning.

Yawning with fatigue, she rose to enter her bedroom, tired, but unlikely to sleep well this night. At least tomorrow was Saturday, she thought as she entered her bathroom to brush her teeth. Gazing at her bewildered expression in the mirror, Arthur’s parting words returned to haunt her: “Do you love
who
you teach?”
I used to know the answer
, she realized,
but now I’m not so sure
.

A
S
A
RTHUR
entered the central chamber, now officially christened “The Hub” by Reyna, and dismounted Llamrei, Lavern ran forward to grab his arm.

“Sire, come quick.” He began pulling him toward one of the sleeping tunnels. Concerned, Arthur flicked his gaze quickly toward the silent Lance, who eyed the exchange from the weapons rack.

“Lance, see to Llamrei, please,” Arthur commanded and hurriedly followed after Lavern.

Lance watched them retreat into the tunnel and glowered sullenly. “I guess now I’m stable boy too.” Sighing with frustration, he strode to Llamrei and grabbed her reins. “Come on, girl, let’s get you settled in for the night.” The tired horse whinnied and nuzzled Lance’s face gently. “Well, at least you haven’t forgotten me.” His steps heavy with fatigue, he led the horse away to be unsaddled and fed.

As Arthur approached a large group of his boys gathered in a circle around something he could not see, Enrique broke away from the others and stepped forward. “Mark is sick, Arthur.”

Arthur nodded to Lavern and Enrique, then pressed past them into the center of the circle. Jack knelt beside Mark, who lay on one of the futon-like bedrolls covered with a blanket, his tunic drenched with sweat, shivering and shaking and writhing in pain.

Concern instantly enveloped the king. “What hath befallen Mark?”

From his kneeling position, hands on Mark’s chest to hold him down, Jack turned a distraught expression up to his king. “Withdrawal, Arthur.”

Puzzled, Arthur knelt beside Jack to gaze down at Mark’s tortured face. The grimace of pain was obvious, but the boy also writhed and moaned and bucked, and yet there did not appear to be anything physically wrong with him. “Withdrawal?”

“He’s hooked on junk.” Jack’s voice almost stuck on the word, his tone guilt-ridden.

Arthur frowned uncomprehendingly.

“The heroin, remember, Arthur?” Jack explained tightly, frustrated. “It’s a nasty ass drug.” He pulled one of Mark’s arms out from under the blanket to display the ugly, purplish needle tracks. “I’ve tried to get him to stop, Arthur,” Jack went on, the guilt within him compressing his chest with despair. “I kept telling him that shit—sorry, that stuff would kill him.” Then he looked shamefully to the floor. “He’s been using, Arthur, even since we come to live with you. I’m sorry. I shoulda told you.”

Arthur merely squeezed the boy’s shoulder gently. He recalled seeing Mark purchase drugs on Hollywood Boulevard and now sadly studied the boy’s pale white arm riddled with holes.

Jack met the king’s eyes imploringly. “Please, Arthur, he’s my best friend. We gotta do something!” His entire body stiffened with fear. Mark’s drug habit had always been a wedge between them, but Jack had never seen the boy who meant more to him than anyone in the world as bad off as he was right now. It had been too long between fixes, and Mark had no more of the drug left to satisfy his body’s overpowering need.

“What must we do for him?” Arthur asked uncertainly.

“I don’t know, Arthur.” Jack knew he probably looked as stricken and weak and helpless as he felt, but he didn’t care. His only concern was the boy he loved. “I guess we could let ’im sweat it out, but that’s risky, man. There’s other drugs that can help him, ’cept I heard they get you hooked too.” Jack began to tear up, turning his pooling eyes from Mark’s pallid face back to Arthur’s concerned expression. “I don’t want him to die, Arthur!”

“Step aside, please, Jack,” Arthur said softly, again resting a calming hand on the boy’s broad shoulder. Jack rose to his feet unsteadily, his chest tight, his breaths short and panicky, and Arthur sat carefully beside Mark, cradling the boy’s head in his arms while Mark continued to shake and shiver and moan in agony, his delicate features twisted into a grimace of suffering framed with beads of rolling sweat. His eyes opened and he flung his gaze wildly about the chamber finally settling on Jack looming above him.

“Get me some shit, man! I need it!” The voice sounded harsh, almost demonic, not the voice of the ever-so-gentle boy who’d stolen Jack’s heart without even knowing it.

Jack’s tears dropped onto Mark’s blanket, his chest tightened, his heart pounded with pain, and he shook his head sadly. “I can’t, man.”

“You fucking asshole!” Mark shrieked at the top of his lungs. “It’s killing me!”

Jack flinched at Mark’s words. He knew it was the drugs, but Mark had never talked to him like that before, had never been anything but sweet and loving, even when he’d been high on the streets. And it hurt. Those words scorched his heart and trapped his very breath in his throat.

Mark screamed and howled with pain, writhing and twisting within Arthur’s iron grip, fighting to escape, unable to control himself. Arthur said nothing. He merely held the struggling boy in place until the writhing settled into gentle squirming and quiet moaning. Mark’s face and body flamed with fever, and sweat poured forth like rain.

Arthur removed one gauntlet and placed his bare hand to the boy’s forehead. He nearly yanked it back from the extreme heat. Then he looked up at the circle of concerned faces gazing down at him.

“Fetch me a bowl of water and many loose pieces of cloth. I doth also require drinking water separate from the other.”

Several boys instantly ran to comply with the request.

Jack remained, wide, wet eyes fixed fearfully on the red and feverish face of his friend. “What’re you gonna do?”

Arthur offered a half smile of reassurance. The cause of Mark’s condition was new to him, but not the boy’s pain and suffering. He’d dealt with more than his share in Britain. “Stay with him, pray for him, help him through the pain. The rest of thee retire to thy beds. The hour grows late, and we have a great destiny awaiting us tomorrow night.”

Jack stepped over Mark’s prone figure and sat on his other side, swiping away tears, heart resolute. “I’m staying with him too.”

Arthur merely nodded, knowing Jack would never abandon his friend in an hour of need. As several boys returned with the items Arthur requested, the others gradually dispersed, murmuring amongst themselves. Their echoing footsteps faded, and finally only Arthur and Jack remained. Arthur dipped a piece of cloth into the basin of water and gently mopped the sweat from Mark’s brow while Jack took the feverish boy’s hand and gripped it tightly.

“Fear not, young Mark,” Arthur assured him in a calm, soothing voice. “What thou hast done to thyself shalt, with thy strength and God’s help, be this night undone, and thy life will once more belong to thee.” Gently, he wrapped the blanket more securely around Mark, laid a cool, damp cloth across the sleeping boy’s forehead, and continued to mop his grimacing face gently.

As the night wore on, Jack’s anxiety and fear gradually wore him down. He laid himself beside his beloved, never letting go of his friend’s hand, and finally allowed his own heart to rest as he drifted off into a fitful sleep.

Arthur continued to rest Mark’s head in his lap and to hold the boy securely when he became agitated, to prevent Mark from flinging himself around and risking injury. Periodically, he dribbled a bit of drinking water between Mark’s lips, but otherwise he merely sat, cradled, mopped rivulets of sweat from Mark’s pale, pinched face, and prayed, his head bowed reverently.

For his part, Lance had stayed away. He still felt… he wasn’t quite sure what he felt, but somehow it seemed there was a sudden gap between him and Arthur, a gap he didn’t understand, a gap that twisted up his stomach like a cramp. He tossed and turned in his bedroll, sleep eluding him.

Finally, knowing resistance was futile, he rose quietly so as to not wake little Chris slumbering peacefully, as always, right beside him. He slipped a baggy tunic over his shivering bare torso and crept silently into the tunnel, where he knew he’d find Arthur… and Mark. He stopped and crouched low when they came into view. He didn’t want Arthur to see him.
Why not?
He didn’t even know. He just sat and observed the man sitting beneath a soft pool of lantern light gently cradling and ministering to… someone else.

Someone who
wasn’t
him.

Loneliness almost drowned him.

Arthur gazed empathetically at Mark’s face as he toweled off the sweat. “There doth be many addictions, young Mark, to which a man may find himself enslaved. Most be of our own choosing, but some doth be put upon us by chance. Have no fear, young one. Despite thy past, thou dost always have a future here, with us.”

Lance listened to those words, and knew Arthur meant them sincerely, just as he’d meant them when he’d assured Lance of his allegiance, when he’d cradled Lance in his arms and willingly soaked up his pain.
I am part of something great
, he told himself with a silent sigh,
and Arthur is the greatest man I’ve ever known, so why do I suddenly feel so… empty? So alone again….

Uncertainty raking across his heart like claws, Lance propped himself up against the wall. His thoughts drifted back to the aching pain of his childhood, to who he used to be, to
what
he used to be, and to who he’d become since Arthur appeared.

Jack had called himself a slut boy for what he’d done out on the street. But how was Lance any better, any more pure? Hadn’t he allowed that man to… use him…
that
way, for years, without fighting back? Wasn’t he a worse slut boy than Jack could ever be? Did that word even apply to boys?

Self-loathing clamped onto his wildly beating heart as he gazed through blurring tears at Arthur, with Mark wrapped in his arms. Did he even
deserve
somebody that good? Him, a weak little slut boy who’d never fought back and never done anything worthwhile in his whole life? He didn’t know why, but the loneliness returned in full, threatened to suffocate him with its smothering totality, and he began to cry softly and achingly, gradually crying himself into a restless sleep.