“Look, Bennacio, when my mom got sick she would get on me all the time about coming to see her at the hospital. She was all worried about me missing school or sleep or meals, but she was dying. There was no hope for her. But I didn’t care. I came every day anyway, for over a month, and I sat there for hours, even when she didn’t know I was sitting there.” All the memories came rushing back then, of Mom shrunken to the size of a pygmy in that hospital bed, bald from all the chemo, big black circles around her eyes. Her teeth seemed huge against her hollow cheeks and thinned lips. And the way she would whimper, Please, please, Alfred, make it go away. Make the pain go away.
“Maybe it was useless my being there. Maybe there was nothing I could do, but where else was I supposed to be? You say you don’t have a choice, but you think she does. Well, maybe she doesn’t have any more choice than you do. It’s kind of hypocritical, if you ask me, saying you don’t have a choice but she does.”
I don’t know if anything I was saying was making any sense. But he listened. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me, but he listened, I think.
“Okay,” I said. “That’s it. That’s about all I had.”
I walked out of the room, pulling the door closed behind me. Standing a couple of feet away was Natalia.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and walked hurriedly past her, muttering as I passed, “There’s no such thing as accidents.” I don’t know why I said that.
37
I went to my room and after a while—I don’t know how long, maybe a couple of hours—there was a knock on the door and Bennacio came in, still wearing that brown robe. He was carrying a long box. He sat beside me, setting the box down on the bed behind us.
“Kropp,” he said.
“Bennacio,” I said.
“I cannot take her.”
“Well,” I said. “You should.”
“One day, perhaps, you will have a child, and you will understand.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“Do not think too bitterly of me.”
“Okay,” I said, as if what I thought about Lord Bennacio, Last Knight of the Order of the Sacred Sword, really mattered. Bennacio was giving off some serious sadness sitting there beside me, as if an invisible cloak of sorrow was wrapped around his shoulders.
“That picture in your room,” I said. “Is it Saint Michael?”
“The Archangel Michael, yes.”
“You know, I was thinking about that. Mr. Samson talked about the master of the Sword and so did the Lady in my dream. Michael is the master of the Sword you’re waiting for, isn’t he?”
He slowly shook his head and smiled. I didn’t know what he meant by that. Was I right or wrong?
“When I was a boy of thirteen,” Bennacio said, “my father took me aside and told me that we were of the house of Bedivere. I had heard the story of the Sword, of course, but like you had always thought it merely a legend. My father took me to the head of the Order, Samson’s father, who had just moved to America. I saw the Sword and I believed. Upon his deathbed, my father told me of Bedivere’s failure.”
Bennacio sighed. “Bedivere was to cast the Sword into the lake—those were the direct orders from Arthur—but he chose to keep it instead, and our Order was created. Of all the knights, he loved his king the most, and from this love rose the belief that one day another master would return for the Sword.”
He sighed again, a longer, sadder sigh. “It is a particular burden, Alfred, to descend from the house of Bedivere. There have always been knights of our Order who saw what he did as a betrayal of his king’s trust. Many believed the Sword should be cast back into the waters from which it rose, thus removing any possibility of the Sword being used for ill. By my honor, as the last knight and the last son of Bedivere, if ever I retrieve the Sword, that is what I shall do. I will atone for his sin, though his sin was of the most peculiar kind, born of love.”
He picked up the box, laid it on his lap, and opened the lid. Inside, lying on the purple velvet lining, was a sword, thin and black-bladed. It looked like the same kind of sword he used the night I stole Excalibur. He held it up.
“This is the sword of my father. OIPEP recovered it when they stormed Mogart’s keep. On the day my father died, I swore upon this sword the ancient oath of our Order.”
He turned to me. “It may be my fate to fall to Mogart when the hour comes. If so, will you not make the same oath and take up this sword?”
“Gee, Bennacio,” I said. I was shocked. “That’s a big honor and I really appreciate your asking me, but I think you’ve got the wrong guy. Maybe you should ask Mike or Paul or one of those guys . . . Even that Abby woman would be a better choice. I think she might be the toughest one of the lot. Mike’s kind of scared of her, you can tell.”
“Those people, Kropp? They are arrogant and full of their own wisdom. They are fools.”
“Well, some people might say I’m not the ripest apple on the tree, Bennacio. You gotta know your limitations, and what you’re asking is way over my head. Basically, I’m a loser.”
He stared at me with a stern expression. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“Well, I lost the Sword, for one. But besides that, there’s nothing I’m good at. You know how most people have talents? Like some people are good at sports and others good at school—science and math and stuff like that? Well, I’m not very good at anything. I played football, but I wasn’t very good at it, and my grades are pretty mediocre. You know, I’m just . . . average.”
“Average,” he said.
“Yeah. Just your average, um, Kropp. Though I’ve been screwing up more than usual lately. The idea of me taking up your sword and being some kind of hero—well, that’s kind of ridiculous.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “But we fall only that we might rise, Alfred. All of us fall; all of us, as you say, screw up. Falling is not important. It is how we get up after the fall that’s important.”
He gave my shoulder a little pat. “And as for being a hero—who can say what valor dwells in the soul unless the test comes? A hero lives in every heart, Alfred, waiting for the dragon to come out.”
38
Bennacio took my hand and placed it on the flat part of the blade.