"Well, of course I know it." Mom sounded amused. "I"m just surprised to hear you"ve actually read one of my books. You"ve always been so adamantly against all things medieval."
"I know," I said, straining to hear her over the din in the hallway. It would die down when everyone finally got into the caf. "I told you. I need to know for this report I"m writing. Just a couple things-"
"Well, Ellie, honey," Mom said. "I hardly think it"s fair for you to get help from an Arthurian scholar for your little report. What about all the other students who don"t have an Arthurian scholar at home to consult?"
"Mom," I nearly shouted. "Just answer the question."
"About the Order of the Bear? Well, it"s a group of people who believe King Arthur will rise again someday and-"
"-bring us out of the Dark Ages," I finished for her. "I know. But I mean...isn"t that kind of like believing in aliens, or something? I mean, they seem like a bunch of kooks-"
"The Order of the Bear is not made up of kooks, Ellie. It"s a highly respected and well-educated group of men and women," she said. "It"s a very elite organization, and extremely difficult to get into. Besides, there"s proof Arthur actually existed, and there"s no convincing proof-to me, anyway-that we"ve ever been visited by creatures from another planet. Whereas we can actually trace Arthur"s lineage. His father was Uther Pendragon, his mother Igraine, the wife of the Duke of Cornwall. Which, as you can imagine, was a bit of a difficulty, seeing as how she was married to a man who was not the father of her child with Uther. But Uther took care of that by slaying the duke in battle, and was able to marry Igraine and eventually make Arthur his legitimate heir-"
I sucked in my breath because this-slaying a guy in battle, then marrying his wife-sounded so familiar. Except, of course, Jean was just Will"s stepmom, not his real mom.
"But what about the parts like-like Mordred?" I asked. "And about Arthur having been surrounded by mystical beings like Merlin and the Lady of the Lake? I mean, that stuff can"t be true."
"Well," my mom said, "most likely some of it was. Mordred did kill Arthur, in the end, in a battle over the throne. And Merlin was probably a religious mystic or sage, not a wizard, of course. And as for the Lady of the Lake, well, now, she"s a character who has always been shrouded in mystery-"
"But Lancelot," I interrupted. "And Guinevere? They were real, too?"
"Of course, sweetie, though references to them appear much later than, say, references to other Arthurian characters, such as, oh, his dog, Cavall, for instance-"
I nearly dropped the phone.
"His...dog?"
"Yes, the legendary hunting dog of King Arthur, Cavall." My mother, warming to the subject-which was, after all, her favorite-began to lecture, something professors can"t help doing. "Cavall supposedly possessed a humanlike ability to read situations and people-"
Cavall. Cavalier.
No. No, it just wasn"t possible. It just wasn"t.
My throat had gone dry. But I managed to croak, "Did Arthur have a boat?"
"Well, of course, all great heroes had a boat. Arthur"s was the Prydwyn. He had many adventures at sea-" She seemed to remember she was speaking to her daughter and not one of her grad students, since she suddenly broke off and asked, "Ellie, are you all right? You"ve never been interested in this kind of thing. Are you coming down with something? Do you need me to come to school to pick you up? You know Daddy and I are going into D.C. tonight for that dinner with Dr. Montrose and his wife, right? I hope you"ll be all right alone. It says on the Weather Channel there"s supposed to be some kind of storm. You know where the flashlights are, don"t you, if the power goes out?"
Prydwyn. Pride Winn.
I remembered the way Will had chuckled the day before when he"d been explaining to me how he"d come up with such an odd name for his boat.
It had just popped into his head. And stuck there.
Like the name Cavalier for his dog.
And the fact that he liked listening to medieval music.
And thought he knew me.
From another life.
"I gotta go, Mom," I said, and hung up, even as she was asking, "What kind of report is this, anyway, Elaine? It sounds awfully detailed for a high school paper...."
Because I"d noticed that, hanging from the booth I was standing in, was a tattered Anne Arundel County phone book. I lifted it.
I didn"t do it because I expected to find anything. I did it to prove to myself that what I was thinking was completely insane. I did it because I knew it couldn"t be true. I just wanted proof of that fact. I did it to wipe from my memory the look on Mr. Morton"s face-that expression of dread I"d seen written across his craggy features when I"d told him about Lance and Jennifer.
I did it to dry up the sweat on my hands.
I turned to the W section.
Because the A in A. William Wagner"s name had to stand for something. It had never occurred to me to ask before, but now I wanted to know.
Generally, when a guy goes by his middle name, it"s because his first name is the same as his father"s. Will"s father"s name was probably Anthony. Or Andrew. Will probably didn"t like being called Andrew because having two Andrews or whatever in the family was too confusing- I found it almost at once. Wagner, Arthur, ADM, lived at Will"s address.
I stared disbelievingly down at the page.
Arthur. Will"s real name was Arthur.
And he had a dog named Cavalier, and a boat named Pride Winn.
And his best friend"s name was Lance.
And his girlfriend-now ex-was called Jennifer, which was English for Guinevere.
And his dad had married another man"s wife after her first husband had died, some said at Admiral Wagner"s own hand....
I dropped the phone book. I needed to get a grip. I was being ridiculous. It was all just a coincidence, the similarities between Will"s life and the life of the king I"d just heard about from my mom. Because Jean-that was what Will had said his stepmother"s name was-wasn"t Will"s mom, the way Igraine had been Arthur"s. Will"s mom had died when he was born, years ago. Will and Marco were stepbrothers, not blood relations. Not blood relations in any way.
See? What Mr. Morton was thinking wasn"t true. It couldn"t be. And it wasn"t.
I picked up my backpack and headed for the ladies" room. Once there, I ran cold water in the sink and splashed my face with it, then looked at my dripping face in the mirror above the line of sinks.
What on earth was I thinking? Did I really believe that Arthur-ancient king of England, founder of the Round Table-had been reborn at last and was living in Annapolis?
And did I really think that I, Elaine Harrison, was the Lady of Shalott, a woman who had killed herself over a guy like Lance?
That thought acted like a splash of cold water to my mind. First of all, okay, no way am I the reincarnation of a dope like Elaine.
And second of all, people-even legendary kings of England-don"t come back. These kinds of things do not happen. I mean, we live in an orderly world, and in an enlightened and educated age. We don"t have to make up myths and stories to explain things we don"t understand like they did in the old days, because we know now that there are scientific explanations for them.
Will Wagner was not a modern-day Arthur reborn.
And yet...
What if it were true?
I gripped the sides of the sink, staring at my reflection. What was happening to me? Was I really starting to believe something so completely unbelievable? How could I? I was the practical one. Nancy was the romantic, not me. I"m the daughter of educators. I can"t let myself believe in this kind of stuff.
And yet...
And yet seconds later I"d grabbed my backpack again and was hurrying back to the cla.s.sroom I"d been sitting in a few hours before. I needed, I knew, to speak to Mr. Morton, to find out if he really believed what I suspected he did, and whether that meant that he-or I-or the both of us-was crazy.
I didn"t know what I was going to say to him. That I knew? But what did I know? I didn"t know anything...
...except that I still couldn"t seem to get this buzzing sound out of my head.
But when I got to his cla.s.sroom, it wasn"t Mr. Morton who was at the chalkboard. It was Ms. Pavarti, the school vice princ.i.p.al.
"Yes?" she said, when she saw me. Every head in the room-people who had fifth period lunch, not fourth like me-had swiveled toward me, eyes raking me as I stood in the hallway, clutching my backpack and looking, I"m sure, like a giant freak, with water stains still down my shirtfront, my ponytail half falling down, and my eyes all huge.
"May I help you?" Ms. Pavarti asked politely.
"I-I"m looking for Mr. Morton," I stammered.
"Mr. Morton has gone home for the day," Ms. Pavarti said. "He wasn"t feeling well. Shouldn"t you be in cla.s.s? Or the lunchroom? Where"s your hall pa.s.s?"
I turned from her numbly.
Mr. Morton had gone home. Mr. Morton had gone home for the day.
Nice try, buddy. You aren"t getting out of this that easily.
"Excuse me." Ms. Pavarti had followed me out into the hall. "Young lady. I asked you a question. Where is your hall pa.s.s? What cla.s.s are you supposed to be in right now?"
I didn"t even glance back at her. I headed for the doors to the school.
"Stop!" Ms. Pavarti"s voice was loud in the empty hallway. I saw people in the administrative offices glance our way, curious about what was going on. "What is your name? Young lady! Don"t you walk away from me!"
Except that by that time, I wasn"t walking anymore. I was running.
And I didn"t stop running until I was off school property. Not that Ms. Pavarti had ever had a hope of catching me. I just couldn"t bring myself to slow down. It was almost like if I ran fast enough, it would turn out not to be true. My head would clear, and I"d realize what an idiot I was being, and it would all go back to normal.
Except that when I finally slowed down, I didn"t feel that way at all. That things were back to normal. If anything, they were worse. Because now, for the first time in my life, I was skipping school. I had left school grounds without permission.
I was truant.
I was a delinquent.
And the worst part of all?
I didn"t even care.
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.
Half an hour later, when the cab pulled up in front of the apartment complex, and I handed the driver almost half the money I"d had with me-eight dollars, leaving me with only that much to get back to school later-I still didn"t care.
I didn"t care about the fact that I was in a part of Annapolis I"d never been to before. I didn"t care that I had no idea how to get home, or money enough left to get me there anyway. I didn"t care about anything except that I"d found him-with the help of Information and another pay phone-and now I was going to get some answers that made sense.
I hoped.
I knew he was home. I could hear the TV blaring from behind the door I"d pounded on. Maybe he couldn"t hear me because the volume was turned up so loud. Maybe that"s why he took so long to answer.
But when he finally did pull the door open, I saw that it wasn"t that he hadn"t heard me. That"s not why it had taken him so long to answer the door at all. He hadn"t answered right away because he"d been looking through the peephole to see who was there.
And had grabbed an extremely large frying pan to hit me with, in case I turned out to be someone dangerous.
At least that"s what I a.s.sumed, since he lowered the frying pan as soon as he saw I was alone.
"Oh," Mr. Morton said. "It"s you."
He didn"t seem surprised. Resigned, is more like it.
"Go away," he said. "I"m busy." And he started to close the door.
But I was too fast for him. Before he could close the door all the way, I thrust my foot inside the doorway, the thick rubber on my Nike sole keeping the door from slamming shut in my face.