I told him, you bet, I could drive a car, but I had just started and didn’t have much experience. That didn’t seem to bother him. I helped him get dressed and he leaned on me as we walked to the parking lot. He directed me to a brand-new silver Mercedes parked near the exit.
“This is your car?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Cool car.”
I helped him into the passenger seat. After I slid behind the wheel, he handed me the keys.
“This is a really nice car, Bennacio,” I said. “You sure it’s okay if I drive it?”
“Did you not say in the room you could drive?”
“Sure, but I only got my learner’s permit six months ago and I don’t have that much experience behind the wheel.”
He gave a little wave of his hand, a gesture that struck me as very European. “We must use the instruments given us, Kropp.”
“Oh,” I said. “You bet.”
The engine purred to life and I felt my scalp tingle. If things weren’t so serious, I would have been thrilled.
Bennacio directed me to the interstate. I asked him where we were going, thinking I was just giving him a quick lift to the airport, but all he said was “North,” which was the opposite direction of Knoxville’s airport. I didn’t know where we were going, only that somehow I was along for the ride. I kept checking the rearview mirror, but didn’t see anything suspicious, just cars and big semis. What would a suspicious car look like anyway? Since I didn’t know, all the cars around us started to look suspicious. It’s hard enough being a novice driver tooling down the interstate in heavy traffic; try adding covert pursuit by quasi-medieval bad guys to the list.
I was about an hour out of the city when Bennacio asked, “Why did you take the Sword?”
“That was my uncle’s idea,” I said. “Well, I guess it was his idea by way of Mr. Myers’s—I mean Mogart’s idea.”
“And why did your uncle take it?”
“Mogart gave him five hundred thousand dollars.”
“So you took it for money.” He said the word “money” like it was dirty.
“No. Not the money, really. I’m not greedy, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Then why?”
“Look, Bennacio, I didn’t know who Mr. Samson really was or what the Sword really was. How could I? I was just helping out Uncle Farrell. Plus he threatened to send me back to foster care if I said no. I told him we shouldn’t. I told him I had a bad feeling about it and it was wrong, but he’s my uncle. I’m a kid. And I ended up in foster care anyway.”
But I was just making excuses. Once you’re about ten, maybe eleven tops, “I’m just a kid” doesn’t cut it when it comes to your core ideas like the difference between right and wrong.
We didn’t say anything for a while. He was staring at the road, not looking at me.
“Where am I taking you, Bennacio?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. I glanced over at him. He was still staring at the road.
“How are you going to find Mogart and the Sword once you get to Europe?”
He didn’t answer. I took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. Then I tried again.
“Mr. Samson told me you guys were all descended from the original Knights of the Round Table,” I said. “Which one did you come from?”
He waited before answering. Maybe he wasn’t allowed to tell.
“Bedivere,” he said finally.
“Hey, wasn’t he the one who found the Holy Grail?”
“No, Galahad found the Grail.”
“Oh. I’ve been watching this movie, Excalibur. You ever seen it?”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve seen it about fifty times. But a couple of parts have been confusing me. Like at the end Percival takes the Sword and throws it into this big lake and the Lady grabs it.”
“Arthur did not give the Sword to Percival. The Sword was given to Bedivere.”
“Well, in the movie it’s Percival.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. I cleared my throat.
“So . . . the Sword belongs to you?” I asked.
“The Sword belongs to no man.” He sighed. “Upon the fields of Salisbury Plain, Arthur fell, mortally wounded, in the last battle against the armies of Mordred. Before he drew his last breath, Arthur entrusted the Sword to my forebear, Bedivere, who was meant to return it to the waters from which it came, lest the very calamity which has now happened should befall it.”
“Well, in the movie it was Percival and he did throw it into the lake. So if that’s true, how did Samson end up with it?”
He said, “It is a movie, Kropp.”
“Did Arthur really die?”
“All men die.”
“Mr. Samson said you guys were keeping the Sword until its master comes to claim it. Who’s the master if Arthur’s dead?”
“The master is the one who claims it,” Bennacio said.
“And who would that be?” I asked.
“The master of the Sword,” he said.
“Do you know who that is?” I asked.
“I do not need to know.”
“How come?”
“The Sword knows,” he said. “The Sword chose Arthur.”
“How does a sword choose somebody?”
He didn’t say anything.
“How do you know the Sword didn’t choose Mogart?” I asked.
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, I guess to let me know he was still angry at me or he didn’t feel like talking or his side still hurt.
I pulled off the interstate around noon to get some gas and something to eat. All I’d had that day was half a bagel, and Bennacio hadn’t even touched his breakfast.
I paid for my gas and bought two corn dogs, a bag of chips, and a couple of fountain drinks. Back in the car, I handed one of the corn dogs to Bennacio.
“What is this?” he asked.
“A corn dog.”
“A corn dog?”
“It’s a wiener wrapped in corn bread.”
“Why is it skewered?”
“It’s a kind of handle.”
He looked at the corn dog suspiciously. I pulled to the far side of the building and parked near the air hose.
“What are you doing, Kropp?”
“I need to check your side. Pull up your shirt, Bennacio.”
“My side is fine. We need to keep driving.”
I just looked at him. He sighed, laid the corn dog still in its yellow wrapping on his lap, and lifted up his shirt. I pulled the dressing aside and saw the wound had already closed. I’m no doctor, but it looked almost healed.
“Let’s go, Kropp,” Bennacio said crisply, pulling down his shirt.
I got back on the interstate. Bennacio didn’t eat his corn dog; it lay on his lap for another twenty miles as he stared out his window.
“Your corn dog’s getting cold,” I told him. He ignored me. I reached over, took it off his lap, pulled off the wrapping, and ate it. It occurred to me I hadn’t seen Bennacio eat since the restaurant the night before.
“Maybe I should have asked before I bought you the corn dog,” I said. “But I figured, who doesn’t like corn dogs?”
“I am not hungry.”
“You gotta eat, Bennacio. Tell me what you want and I’ll stop again.”
“No, no. Keep driving.”
“Where am I going, exactly?”
“Canada.”
I looked over at him. “Canada?”
He sighed. “To Halifax, in Nova Scotia. I have friends there.”
“Jeez, Bennacio, I had no idea I was driving you all the way to Canada! Wouldn’t it have been easier just to fly to Spain?”
“The airports will be watched.”
“Won’t they be in Halifax too? I mean, wouldn’t they think of that?”
I wondered where exactly Halifax was in Nova Scotia. I wondered where Nova Scotia was. I didn’t ask him, though. He had a way of talking to me that sounded like he didn’t want to talk to me, like he was just being polite.
“Who are these friends in Halifax? The what-do-ya-call-’ems, OIPEP guys?”
“OIPEP is not my friend,” he said.
“Then what is it? What does OIPEP stand for, anyway?” He didn’t say anything, so my mind tried to fill in the blanks: Organization of Interested Parties in Evolutionary Psychiatry. But that didn’t make any sense.
“The knights were not the only ones who knew of the Sword’s existence,” Bennacio said. “We were its protectors, Kropp, but the Sword itself has many friends.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good. It’s good to have friends. I left my best friend behind in Salina, where I grew up. His name is Nick. So what happens once we get to Halifax? Are you crossing the Atlantic by boat?”
He didn’t say anything.
“What?” I asked. “Too slow? You guys probably have supersonic jets or something at your disposal.”
After driving in silence a while—that seemed to be the method Bennacio preferred—we hit some rain. Bennacio sipped his fountain drink, holding the tip of the straw against his lower lip with his upper, the straw pressing against his chin, not sucking but delicately drawing up the soda into his mouth. There was the gentle hissing of the rain and Bennacio slurping his drink, and those were the only two sounds for miles. It started to get to me.
“I was wondering,” I said, “who Mr. Samson was descended from.”
Bennacio sighed. “Lancelot,” he said wearily.
I decided not to worry if I was bugging him. I was getting tired of his Old World superior act and the way he talked to me like I was a little kid or somebody with a mental condition. And I was getting sleepy. And though it was a truly awesome car, I wasn’t used to driving long distances. I wasn’t used to driving, period.
“That’s the guy who stole Guinevere from King Arthur,” I said, like Bennacio might not know that little detail. “I guess none of this would have happened if he had controlled himself. Are you married, Bennacio?”
“No. Many of us marry in secret or not at all, thus our numbers have dwindled over the years.”
“How come?”
“Remember, Kropp, we are sworn to protect the Sword. To love another, to be bound by blood to another, that is to invite blackmail—or worse, betrayal. You mention Lancelot. Samson himself never wed because he could not bear the thought of endangering another human being.”
“There was something else I was wondering,” I said. “How did Mogart know about the Sword in the first place?”
“All Knights of the Sacred Order know.”
I looked over at him. He was staring at the rain smacking against the glass and his face was expressionless.
“Mogart was a knight?”
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“Samson expelled him.” He sighed. “Mogart did not take banishment well, as one might imagine.”
“Then why did Mr. Samson expel him?”
Bennacio hesitated before answering. “That was between Samson and Mogart.” He glanced over at me and then looked away. “It was only a matter of time until a man like Mogart appeared among us. We were fortunate over the centuries, but the ancient bloodlines became diluted over time. Our blood intermingled with that of lesser men, our valor has been tarnished by the desires of this world. The voices of the angels have faded and into the void the voice of corruption rushes.”
“What angels?”
“There were some in my Order, Kropp, who believed the Sword is actually the blade of the Archangel Michael, given to Arthur to unite mankind.”
I remembered Mr. Samson telling me that the Sword was not made by human hands.
“That didn’t turn out too good, did it?” I asked.
“It is certainly not the first time we have disappointed heaven,” Bennacio answered.