Children of the Knight (35 page)

W
ITHIN
The Hub, lunch was coming to a close, and the cleanup began. Since they did not want to pollute the environment where they lived and trained, nor, Arthur reminded them, did they want to make the city at large even trashier, a group of boys always collected all of the garbage into large leaf bags and tied them off. The bottles and cans were gathered for recycling, since money could be made there.

Every few days, groups of boys would load trash bags onto Radio Flyer wagons they’d brought from home, or shopping carts they’d found abandoned, and take everything to the nearest city dump. Arthur and Lance had it very well organized, and Arthur had put Mark and Jack in charge of making sure the operation was carried out.

Observing the cleanup, Arthur felt pleased. He felt good about this campaign, this crusade. Thus far, there were no signs of the splinters that had cracked open his original Camelot. Of course, that Camelot had endured for decades before it fell, and this one was only in its infancy. Still, the signs were positive.

Oh, Merlin,
he wondered
, if only you could be here to see what you have wrought, forsooth it has to have been put in place by you!
He’d decided some time back that only Merlin could be the explanation for his being here in this era with all the tools necessary for this campaign. Which often caused his mind to wonder why Merlin himself hadn’t appeared in the flesh.
Are you out there, old friend, watching and waiting? Testing me again?

Lance approached Arthur and bowed before speaking. “Arthur, before we begin our discussion time, can I ask you a question that’s been bugging me?”

“Ye may ask anything, Lance,” Arthur replied easily.

Lance frowned. “A couple of times I heard you say the name ‘Lancelot’, which sort of sounds like my name. Who was he?”

Arthur sighed heavily. “Lancelot was my best friend, and my most skilled knight. Like you, he was good and pure and indispensable to me. Your name is, I be certain, no coincidence.”

Lance digested that a moment before asking, “Well, what happened to him?”

Arthur’s eyes took on a faraway expression as he thought back to those long ago, painful times. “Ye mayst recall, Lance, when I spoke of my son attempting to overthrow me, I mentioned my best friend.”

Lance’s eyes bulged wide with shock. “He’s the one who hooked up with your wife?”

Arthur couldn’t help but smile at the boy’s choice of words.
What a world this is
, he mused. Then he nodded. “Yes, they fell in love, my Gwen and Lance, and it was their love—an act of treason under mine own laws—that brought Camelot to its knees.”

Lance nodded soberly. That was a sad story. It made him feel chilly inside, like he’d just swallowed something cold and unsatisfying. “Did you love her?”

Arthur nodded again. “I loved them both. That is what made it all so tragic.”

There was something in Arthur’s voice, a note of sad music that caught Lance’s heart and pulled it tighter in his chest. Arthur sounded so wistful, so momentarily lost that Lance desperately sought to comfort him. “Well don’t worry, Arthur,
I’ll
never betray you like they did!”

Arthur smiled and placed a hand on Lance’s broadening shoulder. The boy’s soft, eager face gazed up at him so earnestly that Arthur’s own heart lodged in his throat.
How I love this boy
! Should he say it, and envelop the child in a loving embrace, or might the others be jealous if he showed such favoritism? He hesitated, and the window of opportunity slipped away like the final traces of sunlight dissolving into night.

“Of that I doth be certain, Lance” was all he said instead.

The boy grinned, and Arthur stepped back from him, calling the assembly to order. He stood before his throne, Lance at his side, before an enormously swelling ocean of children. They spilled out into every tunnel. The little ones sat atop the shoulders of the big ones. More girls had joined in these past few days and were huddled around Reyna. Esteban and Darnell and Duc and Tai and many, many more of their homeboys were present.

Even Lance was in awe of their numbers. He had no idea any more, he realized, how many were here. Must be five or six hundred, he reasoned, with so many spreading into the tunnel spokes. They needed a bigger gathering place—that much was obvious.

But none of these matters troubled Arthur. It was time, he knew, time to move his crusade forward, time to embark upon their first quest—the quest to win the hearts of the people. He raised Excalibur high above his head for all to see. Lantern light bounced off its gleaming surface in rainbow-like waves. Mark gazed in wonder at Arthur and his sword, while Jack found his eyes drifting to Lance. Then Arthur spoke.

“In these past weeks, ye have all made great strides in the ways of knighthood.” His voice boomed through the tunnels for all to hear.

Lance couldn’t help himself. His heart began beating wildly. “Does this mean…?” he asked, his boyish voice barely a whisper.

Arthur glanced at the boy and nodded before turning to thunder at the crowd, “I have not knighted anyone for centuries. It hath been far too long!” He grinned at the sea of expectant faces, and the crowd erupted into clapping and stomping and hooting.

Arthur raised Excalibur over their heads to signal quiet. “Tonight,” he announced boldly. “It shalt be tonight.”

T
HE
Griffith Park Boys Camp had never hosted a gathering quite like this one. Unlike Arthur’s previous excursion to this venue, tonight no one present came for the purpose of violence or mayhem. Small lanterns sat on tables illuminating the trees and cabins with their dancing light. Other lanterns had been hung from scattered tree branches, casting yellowish glowing pools of light upon the proceedings.

Arthur stood regally atop the platform holding Excalibur before him, decked out in his finest tunic and pants, his hauberk and crown, his hair smooth and brushed, his beard trimmed and clean.

Lance stood before the platform, his own silky hair trailing past his shoulders, a band of shimmering gold encircling his head, his own tunic and pants spotless, his striking green eyes gazing at Arthur with wonder. A sword—Lance’s favorite sword, the one with which he’d bested Esteban—stuck out of a groove in the platform before Arthur, its hilt glimmering in the lantern light.

Behind Lance stood in a line, Mark, Jack, Lavern, Esteban, Darnell, Enrique, Reyna, Luis, Chris, Jaime, Tai, Duc, Sylvia and all the hundreds of children who had taken a leap of faith and joined the crusade, each of them with a chosen sword in hand, the line snaking around and back and through the park.

Arthur still did not know the actual number in attendance, but Lance suspected upward of five hundred, a daunting figure. In addition to the unusual act of knighting children, for the first time as king he would grant knighthood to females.
Oh, Merlin
, he cast a thought to the wind
, ye wouldst be so proud of me.
The moon cast its own glow upon the eager young faces awaiting their individual moment of triumph.

Arthur looked down at Lance, and his heart swelled with pride.
Ah, my son
, he thought, but did not say this. Rather, he waved a hand in front of him. Lance stepped onto the platform and knelt before his sword, before his king.

“Speak the oath, squire,” Arthur commanded, his voice carrying on the breeze.

Lance looked at Arthur solemnly and then bowed his head and placed both hands on the hilt of his sword. “I thank thee, Heavenly Father, for permitting unto me the use of this sword to repress the wicked and defend the downtrodden. You, who in thy infinite wisdom created the order of chivalry, and who planted goodness within my heart, doth charge thy humble servant here before thee to never use this sword to strike anyone unjustly. Grant me, Lord, the strength to be now and for all time, a warrior, not for might, but for right.”

Arthur grinned at Lance. He couldn’t help it. And neither could the boy, who raised his eyes and grinned back. Arthur lifted Excalibur and gently touched its tip first to Lance’s left shoulder and then to his right. “I hereby dub thee Sir Lance, Knight of the Table Round.”

Lance’s entire body shook, and he thought he might actually faint, so overwhelmed was he with pride and joy at this, the greatest moment of his life, and his grin broadened, lighting up his face with pure happiness. As Arthur withdrew Excalibur, Lance leaned forward and kissed the hilt of his own sword before taking it in his grasp and standing.

The newly minted knight turned and held the sword aloft for all to see. The line of expectant children broke into wild applause. Lance turned back to Arthur and bowed. Raising his head, boy and king exchanged a private look that bothered Mark, who was next in line. He, too, was ecstatic at this moment, but he deeply wished Arthur would look at him the way he looked at Lance. Jealousy crept into his heart, and he had to force it down.
Not tonight
, he told himself.

He pushed his feelings aside and knelt before Arthur, who smiled so warmly down at him that Mark forgot his ill will entirely. He stuck his own sword hilt-up within the platform’s groove and glanced over at Lance, who tossed him a grin and a wink. Mark grinned and felt guilty for his jealousy, shoving it back down into the darkest reaches of his soul. Lance was his friend, after all, and a good friend, at that.

Arthur and Mark locked eyes a moment. Mark’s milky white skin and glowing blue eyes shimmered in the lantern light, and the boy couldn’t help but smile. Then Arthur said, “Speak the oath, squire.” And Mark did exactly that. And so the process repeated itself. Over and over and over again, late into the night.

Thus passed a long, but fulfilling, experience, as each and every child stepped forward to swear the oath, and join the Table. For those cast off and unwanted kids, for those ex-gang members who sought a better life, for those abused and beaten and berated by their families, this was a night like no other, a night where they finally felt special, needed, and important. This night, every one of them knew in their hearts, would change their lives forever.