Author: Our Man in Redmond

All his life William had wanted to be a musician. H.e had a natural affinity for the trumpet, and by the time he reached young adulthood he had gotten pretty good at it.

Then the war came along and William volunteered. He figured that as a trumpeter, he had a good chance of becoming a bugler, which would lessen his chances of having to do any actual fighting. His three primary jobs, as he saw it, would be to get up before everyone else, go to bed after everyone else, and have everyone else in his company mad at him for making them get up and go to sleep.

For a while he was right. He learned all the bugle calls he needed to know, and while he did a little combat training, most of his time was spent hanging around with the other buglers and doing odd administrative tasks for the officers.

His luck didn’t last forever, though. During the very first actual combat mission his company went on William managed to end up someplace he wasn’t supposed to be and was captured by the enemy. Had he been paying attention during his basic training instead of goldbricking he might have avoided this fate, but that would have made for a different story.

William was bound and taken to the enemy commander. Now something I deliberately didn’t mention earlier was that this was not one of your modern wars with Geneva conventions and other protections for prisoners. This was literally “take no prisoners” warfare. Prisoners were considered to be only a source of amusement, and once the amusement was ended, they were just another mouth to feed, so long as they were alive.

“Well, well, what have we here?” the enemy commander sneered as William was thrown as his feet. He grabbed William by the front of his shirt and saw the bugle at his side. “A bugler, eh?”

“Yes sir,” William manged to croak. “Please, sir, spare my life. I have not taken up arms against you, and in fact I became a bugler just so I would not have to kill anyone.”

The enemy chief threw William to the ground contemptuously. He then grabbed the bugle and ripped it from William’s belt. “Do you see this?” he roared. “This is a weapon of war.” He threw the bugle to the ground beside William, then drew his sword. “You may not have killed any of us, but you have called on your countrymen to do so.”

And that was the end of William.

Words and deeds can be weapons just as surely as swords and arrows.

“And that’s why beavers have flat tails,” Kelly concluded. The other boys around the campfire hooted, laughed and applauded appreciatively.

“How about you, Cap?” one of the boys asked the scoutmaster as the noise died down. “You got a story for us?”

Cap poked at the embers at the edge of the campfire with the stick he’d used to roast marshmallows. “Naah,” he said, “I don’t think you guys are going to want to hear my story.”

“Aw, c’mon,” some of the boys in the troop chorused. “You gotta.” “C’mon, tell us!” A few of the older boys held back. They’d heard Cap’s stories on other campouts, and they had an idea of what was coming.

“Well, OK,” Cap said as he tossed the stick into the fire, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you. I was going to avoid making you have to hear about . . . the neocons.“

Joey, a tenderfoot with red hair and freckles, laughed. “What’s a neocon?” he asked naively. “Is that like a leprechaun?” Some of the other boys laughed with him.

Even Cap smiled a little. “Leprechaun. That’s good. Maybe in some ways. They said the leprechauns had a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Maybe the neocons were the ones to steal the gold to put it there.

“No, a neocon is something different. I guess maybe it’s kind of like . . . um, a vampire.” That brought the boys to attention. Not even ham and eggs go together like campfires and creatures of the night. “Except instead of blood, neocons suck people’s souls and turn them into neocons.” By this time Cap had assumed a low, menacing tone of voice perfectly suited for scaring teenaged boys in the dark.

“How do they do that?” Pete asked, wide-eyed.

“They find young, smart people and promise them everything they could ever ask for. Money, power, girls, you name it. They give them a little and then promise them more if they’ll only give up a little more of their soul until they don’t have any left, and then they’re neocons too and they’ll do anything the other neocons ask.”

A few of the boys thought the money and girls sounded pretty good, but there was something in Cap’s tone that said: Don’t even think about it.

“Now it was bad enough when there were only a few neocons around and they could only create more neocons one at a time,” Cap continued. “But then some of them started taking over the TV, and the radio, and then they even took over most of the government. The president was a neocon, and people looked up to him, and they started giving him money and power and losing their souls too, and they didn’t even know it.

“You know you can kill a werewolf with a silver bullet, and you can kill a vampire by putting a stake through its heart. But you know what? You can’t kill a neocon. You can lock them up sometimes but then other neocons come to rescue them. The only way you can get rid of a neocon — ” Cap paused to look around the circle. He had everyone’s attention now. ” — is with the truth. Neocons tell people lies to get them to give away their souls, and if you can catch someone early enough before too much of their soul is gone, sometimes you can stop them from turning into a neocon. Some of those people arm themselves with the truth and become neocon hunters themselves.

“But there are a lot of people out there who don’t want to hear the truth because the neocons make their lies sound so nice. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

“What happened to the president?” one of the scouts asked.

“The president? Oh yeah, the president. Like I said, the neocons took over most of the government, the radio, the TV, the newspapers, and were doing their best to turn everyone into neocons. The thing is, though, eventually people started to realize that the neocons were doing things like taking money away from poor people and keeping it themselves. They polluted the water and air to poison people’s bodies.  They used TV and radio to poison people’s minds. They kept people in a constant state of fear and told them the only way they could be safe was to let the neocons protect them. Eventually people got tired of being poor and sick and afraid, I guess. They starting locking enough of the neocons away that the rest went into hiding. Some people thought that was the end of them, but I’m here to tell you, they’re out there, ready to spring into action someday and turn more people into neocons.

“So watch out if someone offers you things that are too good to be true, or if they offer you everything you could ever want, because they might be trying to steal your soul.” The last three words were delivered slowly, blood-chillingly. For a moment or two the only sounds were the crackle of the dying campfire and the insect and bird calls of a night in a dark forest.

“Well, that’s that then,” Cap said cheerily. “Time for taps. Lights out.”

“Um, Cap,” Kelly asked hesitantly, “Do you mind if we don’t put the lights out . . . you know, right away?” The other boys nodded in silent, wide-eyed agreement. Somewhere in the darkness, an owl called.

Once upon a time there was a city. It was a very beautiful city and people from all over the kingdom admired it greatly.

One day the people of the city, as people in cities occasionally do, voted on a mayor. This mayor was a college boy who had promised, among other things, that if he were elected mayor he would protect the city. Once he was in office he began to appoint his friends to positions of power and influence within the city, but this was something that people just expected the mayor to do so no one really said anything or thought much about it.

Then suddenly one morning in the late summer, a pack of ravenous wolves attacked a farm on the edge of the city and killed a number of the lambs and chickens. The people were alarmed. “What shall we do?” they asked themselves. “How could this happen?”

“Don’t worry,” the mayor said. “I said I’d protect you, and I will.”

He had the city engineers built a series of watchtowers on the perimeter of the city and hired people to man the towers. They were instructed that if they should ever see wolves coming toward the city, they should cry “WOLF!” as loud as they could and the citizens would come out and fight the wolves before they ever got to the city.

This seemed like a good arrangement, and the people readily agreed. For a while, they felt safer.

Still, as time went on, people began to notice odd things happening. For instance, one of the mayor’s best friends was caught stealing money from the city treasury. There was an outcry and an investigation was promised, but just before the investigation one of the watchmen cried, “WOLF! WOLF! Off in the mountains!” Of course everyone dropped what they were doing and went off to look for the wolf, but none was ever found. They returned to the city only to find that the evidence had disappeared, and nothing was ever said of the theft or the investigation again.

Then there was the time that the mayor tried to get someone supremely unqualified appointed to be on the Board of Weights and Measures. There was a great deal of outcry and public debate, but just as it looked bad for the nominee, the cry was heard — “WOLF! WOLF! Out on the plain!” Of course everyone went to look for the wolves, but they didn’t find them, and when they returned they found that the rest of the board had voted in their absence to install the mayor’s nominee.

One day the citizens gathered together to choose their mayor again. There was quite a bit of heated discussion about the mayor and whether he had protected them like he had promised; but in the end he was re-elected. Then it was discovered that some citizens had voted twice and others had not been allowed to vote at all. Once again there was an outcry, but just as the investigation was beginning they heard the cry of “WOLF! WOLF! Down by the river!!” They went out to find the wolf, but once again they didn’t find them, and nothing ever came of looking into the vote.

People began to notice a pattern. Every time the mayor or one of his friends was in trouble, the cry of WOLF! would go up, everyone would go looking for the wolves, no one would find any, and the distraction would serve as cover for the perpetrator. Soon it began to be a joke. A dark joke to be sure, but a joke. People in other cities began to comment. The city, which had once been greatly admired, wasn’t quite so admired any more.

One night a group of citizens got together and decided to do something about it. The next day, they said, they were going to go hold the mayor accountable for his actions, and not listen to any cries of WOLF! until either the mayor was out of office or an effective guard system was implemented. They went to sleep that night determined to take action.

The next morning the city awoke to an amazing and terrifying sight. Wolves were patrolling the city’s streets, watching everyone with evil yellow eyes and growling at anyone who looked like they were even thinking about causing trouble. The guards were still there in the towers, but now they were watching the city, not the surrounding countryside.

And from his mayoral offices, the mayor looked out over the city and smiled a thin smile. “Wolf,” he said quietly to himself.

It was a typical West Texas summer. That is to say, relentlessly hot. The rancher had been looking for a new ranch hand for months, but there were no takers. I’m getting too old for this, he thought to himself as he went about the day-to-day chores of running a cattle ranch.

Then, one day he saw a dust cloud on the horizon. In between his duties, he watched as the cloud grew nearer. It was being kicked up by a cowboy riding toward him. Finally he stopped and watched as the cowboy approached.

“I hear you’re looking for help,” the cowboy said by way of introduction.

“Maybe,” the rancher replied in typical West Texas fashion. “What’s your qualifications?”

The stranger looked him in the eye. “I can sleep when the wind blows,” he said.

The rancher waited a moment. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Just what I said,” the stranger replied. “I can sleep when the wind blows. Now are you looking for help or am I wasting my time here?” The stranger took a pull from a canteen at his side.

There was something about the cowboy that impressed the rancher. Maybe it was how he looked on a horse. Maybe it was an air of honesty about him, or his odd answer to the question. Whatever it was, it was enough to make him say, “Okay, you’re on. Let’s get to work.”

The rancher showed his new hand around the place, and after a few days the rancher felt comfortable enough to leave the ranch in the cowboy’s hands while he took off to what passed for the big city to do some errands that he’d been putting off because he hadn’t been able to leave the ranch.

The rancher stayed in town overnight, and was planning to stay a second night when, late in the afternoon, he saw clouds on the horizon. They weren’t just any clouds, either. They were tall, and they were black, and they were ugly. They spelled trouble to anyone who had ever seen them before.

The rancher hopped into his pickup, hit the gas and high-tailed it back to the ranch. He arrived at about the same time the winds did. It wasn’t a tornado, but it was close. The wind howled around him as he struggled to reach the ranch house.

He rushed into the ranch house and found his hand sound asleep. The rancher kicked at the soles of the cowboy’s boots. “Get up!” he yelled. “There’s a storm out there!”

The cowboy turned over and opened a bleary eye. “I know,” he said. “I told you, I can sleep when the wind blows.” And he rolled over and went back to sleep.

The rancher was furious. He determined to fire the cowboy, but first there was plenty to do. He grabbed a hammer and some nails to put up the storm windows, but then realized that they’d already gone up.

He rushed out toward the barn. The animals were all nervous because of the noise, but secure.

The hay had been covered by a tarp and staked down so it wouldn’t blow away.

The machinery was even stowed in the shed.

Everywhere the rancher looked, his hand had already prepared for the storm. It was then he realized that the only job qualification he’d given was, in fact, the only one he’d needed. He was prepared, so he could sleep when the wind blew.

Arthur was of course surprised at Ragnell’s request, and had Sir Gawain protested he would have asked her for a different favor. But Sir Gawain finally found his voice and said, “It shall be as she wishes. Fetch a priest. We shall be wed here and now.”

Surely the wedding of Ragnell and Sir Gawain was the most unusual ever to be seen at Carlisle. A priest was hastily summoned, and to his credit he performed the ceremony, although it seemed to take much less time than usual. The banquet that was to have celebrated Arthur’s victory over the dark knight was quickly repurposed as a wedding feast, but strangely, no one seemed to have an appetite for it except for Ragnell — now Lady Ragnell, since she was married to a knight — who ate and drank with great gusto, ripping the joints from the roast pig and downing two glasses of mead. She belched loudly and rubbed her hands on her already-grubby skins.

The other knights mumbled unfelt congratulations that sounded more like expressions of sympathy, and made their exits one by one. At least Sir Gawain and Lady Ragnell made their way to the nuptial chamber, which had up until a few hours ago been Sir Gawain’s bachelor quarters.

Gawain shut the door behind them, then stood at parade rest while Lady Ragnell surveyed her new home.

“Well, husband,” she croaked, sidling up to Gawain in a grotesque travesty of a flirt.

“Well . . . wife,” he answered stiffly.

Ragnell drew away from him. “What kind of a groom does not kiss his bride?” she growled. “Am I to be shamed on my wedding night? I chose you for my husband because I sensed an aura of chivalry about you. I had a feeling that you of all the knights of the Round Table would be sensitive to the feelings of one such as I.” She turned her head and said, a bit more softly, “Perhaps I was mistaken.”

“If you please, milady,” Gawain said, keeping his stance, “allow me to speak freely.”

She stopped speaking but did not face him.

“I am told that when a woman marries, she has certain expectations. I don’t know if all men do, but . . . but I did. I had always thought I would marry into nobility, with great ceremony. If you will pardon me for saying so, this is not at all as I had imagined it.” He crossed over to where she was standing and faced her, although her head was down and she did not look at him. “I believe I can be a good husband to you. But please, let me take some time to get used to the idea.”

Gawain took her chin in his hand, closed his eyes, stopped his breath, and kissed his wife on the lips. He expected a dry kiss, smelling of mead and decay, backed by a toothless mouth. But as he kissed his bride, he found her lips warm, the kiss full and smelling of hyacinth. To his surprise he held the kiss, then deepened it, and held it still more.

When he finally drew back and opened his eyes Gawain was amazed at what he saw. Gone was the caricature of a woman with a body shaped like a barrel with shoulders. In her place stood a woman about his age and height, with deep green eyes, hair the color of dark honey, red full lips, soft, warm skin and a fine, slender figure. The greasy, smelly skins were replaced by a gown of silk and cotton, as green as her eyes and accented with emeralds of an even darker green. She looked down at her arms in amazement, then threw them around Gawain and kissed his neck.

“Oh, my husband, you have broken the spell!” she cried in a pleasant alto that was as unlike her former voice as a bullfrog’s is unlike a nightingale’s. “My brother — the dark knight — the one Arthur defeated — he placed a spell on me to make me the horrid creature you saw. Your kiss has freed me from the prison of that body!”

She kissed him again full on the lips, then stepped back. “But only half,” she said sorrowfully.

“Half?” Gawain echoed, still not quite recovered from the shock.

“Yes, half. For you see, I can only be as I am now half the time. The rest of the time I am doomed to appear as you saw me when we were wed.”

“But . . . uh, when? Which half?”

“That is for you to decide. You must choose whether I am to be a hag during the day, and as I am now at night; or a beauty during the day and a horror by night.” She then stopped and looked at him expectantly, as if to say: You must choose now.

Gawain’s mind was racing. Why couldn’t she have been a dragon? He could handle dragons. What should he do? Should he have her hideous during the day, and sensual and womanly at night; or should he have a wife that others would see and admire during the day, only to lock her away with the other terrors of the darkness?

He struggled with the decision, and as his mind raced, weighing the pros and cons, he heard a voice rise over the confusion. It was the voice of Arthur, recounting the defeat of the dark knight. What was it Arthur had said that led to the knight’s downfall?

What is it that a woman truly wants above all else?

Only this: To be sovereign unto herself.

And then another voice echoed in his head: his own, as he took the oath he had sworn before Arthur when he became a knight of the Round Table:

I swear to always do ladies, gentlewomen and widows succor.

I swear I shall never force ladies, gentlewomen or widows.

“Let it be as you will,” Gawain said.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“It is your decision,” Gawain said. “You are the captain of your own destiny. You shall choose for yourself.”

As the words left his mouth Gawain thought he could hear singing. Had he been with Arthur in Inglewood he would have recognized the music as the fairy choir Arthur heard when he first met Ragnell. As he watched, it seemed as though he saw the two forms of his wife, one superimposed on the other; and then slowly, the voices and the image of the hag disappeared.

“That’s it!” Ragnell cried. “Oh, my husband, my love, you have broken the spell entirely! I was under geas not to tell anyone how to free me from the spell, but you have done it.” And she embraced him, and they kissed, and one thing led to another.

No one saw them for four days. The court jester later said that the only reason they emerged then was because Sir Lionel went up to Gawain’s quarters to find out if his bride had eaten him. From that time forward Sir Gawain’s wife was known not as Lady Ragnell, but Lady Nell, and no man and wife were ever happier.

You will note that I did not begin my tale with “Once upon a time.” I wish I could end it with “and they lived happily ever after,” but I’m afraid that was not to be. Oh, they were as happy as man and wife ever were, but they were only together for five years. And while Gawain married several times during his lifetime, he never loved anyone as deeply or as well as Lady Nell.

Arthur rode on, heedless of the mists and darkness gathering about him. He had begun his journey a defeated man; now he had regained the bearing of a king, and rode to meet his challenge.

At length he came to within sight of the great black keep, and there, blocking the road, larger than life, was the dark knight, with his tabard so black it hurt the eyes and a sword almost as big as Arthur was tall.

Arthur dismounted from his horse. “Hail, sir Knight,” he said.

“Arthur Pendragon of the Britons,” the dark knight fairly sneered. “You are a man of your word.” The knight shifted his hold on the sword to a two-handed battle grip.

“As I shall hold you to yours,” said Arthur. “You told me that if I would defeat you, I was to come dressed as I am, armed only with the answer to your riddle.” He held out his empty arms. “You see, I have not brought so much as a dagger with me.”

The knight raised the sword above his head, readying a killing blow.

Arthur pointed directly at the dark knight. “What is it that a woman truly wants above all else?” he intoned.

The dark knight held his position.

“Only this:” Arthur continued. “To be sovereign unto herself, and to be the captain of her own destiny.“

The dark knight held his position, but began to tremble ever so slightly. The trembling changed to a shaking, accompanied by a high-pitched whine, and Arthur raised his arm just as the dark knight exploded into a million ebony shards that looked like they would cut him to ribbons, but which quickly faded away like morning dew. So too did the mist and the darkness, the black castle and the ebony landscape gradually fading to nothingness, until Arthur was left standing on the plains on Inglewood, blinking at the bright noonday sun.

He remounted his horse, turned and rode for Carlisle, but he did not travel far before his way was blocked again, this time by the misshapen hag he had encountered on the way to his meeting with the dark knight.

“Hail, milady,” Arthur said to her.

“Hail Arthur, King of the Britons, who yet lives,” the hag croaked, a strange satisfaction in her voice.

“That I do,” he said, “and all thanks to you. Now, I believe I owe you a favor.”

“All in good time,” she replied, “all in good time. You shall yet know what I will ask of you, but I must ask it at Carlisle, in the presence of your knights.”

“Very well,” he said and made to continue riding, “I shall meet you there.”

She stood her ground. “How very unchivalrous of you,” she chided. “You would leave a woman to walk when your horse could easily carry two?”

“Yes, of course,” Arthur replied with little enthusiasm, for she was as correct as she was repulsive. He helped her up onto his horse, placing her behind the saddle, calming the nervous animal as he did so. Once she was seated, he mounted for the ride to Carlisle.

“You have saved my life,” he said as they rode toward the castle. “What should I call my benefactor?”

She was silent for a moment, then said simply, “I am called Ragnell.”

“Very well, Ragnell,” he replied. “Thank you.”

They rode on toward the castle, the silence punctuated by the clip-clop, clip-clop of the hooves of Arthur’s horse and a labored breathing from Ragnell. Fortunately for Arthur the wind was in their faces, so with some effort he was able to avoid her odor, and indeed he did his best to pretend he was riding alone.

Word of their coming preceded them. At the earliest approach to Carlisle Arthur told a young squire to ride on ahead with news of his victory, and to have a feast made ready in celebration. Fanfares cascaded from ranks of trumpets as they passed. People cheered as they rode by, and stared in amazement at Arthur’s passenger. The whispers circulated among the crowd. Was it an ogre? Was it a troll? What on earth was that behind their king?

At length they reached the gates of the castle. Arthur dismounted, then helped Ragnell down and a page led the horse away to be fed and rested. Arthur ordered up lavers to wash the dirt of the road from his face; with Ragnell, however, the washing seemed to make little difference.

At last the two of them entered the assembly hall. There, in an impressive line, stood Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, with the famous table itself behind them. Servants scurried to and fro, preparing soups and sauces and trenchers and roasts and ale and other victuals for the celebratory feast.

Arthur began by telling his knights he had survived, to thunderous applause. He recounted the story of how Ragnell had saved his life by giving him the answer to the dark knight’s riddle, told them of the dark knight’s defeat, and then finished by introducing them to the woman who had saved his life.

“This is Ragnell,” he said. The knights of the Round Table, chivalrous to a man, said nothing of their lord’s benefactor’s appearance. “In return for her service I have promised her any one thing it is within my power to grant. She has said she would only tell me what she requires here, in front of you.

He then turned to Ragnell. “Milady?”

Arthur had spoken in a well-projected voice, an asset for a king in any case and necessary in the great cavernous assembly hall at Carlisle. Ragnell looked the line of knights over, then matched Arthur’s voice in volume and force.

“Which of you men would die for your king?” she thundered.

There was a great sssssssching as the knights drew their swords from their scabbards and held them at the ready in a salute to their sovereign.

“I expected no less,” she continued. “But now, which of you would marry for him?”

The knights held their salute, but looked at one another, at Ragnell and at Arthur, confused.

“Your king has promised me any one thing it is within his power to grant,” she said. “And I ask him now for a husband. Arthur Pendragon, King of the Britons, I would have the hand of the bravest and most chivalrous of your knights in marriage.”

The knights were used to discipline in battle, but this was something new and unexpected. Looks of worry began to set in. Arthur too did his best to maintain his composure, and gravely nodded in response to her request. He said nothing as Ragnell began to pace before the knights. No, pacing is not the right word; she stalked, as an animal might patrol its territory. She looked over some of the knights the way a chef in the market might inspect a butchered hog; others she eyed like a young girl sizing up a village swain. She inspected one man, now another, reached the end of the row, turned again, and continued to inspect them for what seemed like an eternity to the assembled knights.

Finally she stopped at one of the youngest of the knights, gave him an especially careful going over, then turned to Arthur. “Yes, this one,” she announced. “This is the one I would have for my husband.”

The tension in the room shifted, and there, beside Ragnell, Sir Gawain could be seen to swallow hard.

Like most of the noblemen of his day, King Arthur was a huntsman. He didn’t hunt so much for food — he had others who did that for him — as for the companionship, for the challenge, and for the sharpening of his skills. On one particular day, the challenge was certainly there, but the companionship was not. The truth is, on this day Arthur was more interested in solitude than anything else. He was using the time alone to reflect — and to see if he could still drop a stag.

So far his skills had not served him well. He had been out since the early morning, and all he had to show for his effort was a quiver with a single arrow left in it. He was feeling a bit frustrated, and deep in thought, and barely noticed the change in his surroundings until the change had overtaken him. The day was clear and sunny, but the sun cast no shadows, and the air felt still and heavy. Darkness seemed to permeate the air, though the sun shone brightly. It was as if he was in the middle of a dense forest, except that in this part of Inglewood there were no trees. And strangest of all, a mist began to swirl out of the ground, even though he was nowhere near a stream or lake and the weather was hot, not cool.

Suddenly he heard a rustling behind him, and his hunter’s mind took over as a stag bounded past his left shoulder and toward the mists ahead of them. He reached for the quiver on his back, grabbed the lone arrow out of it, notched it, drew back the string, and let the arrow fly. It sailed straight toward where the stag was bound . . . when all of the sudden, a sword flew out of the mist and knocked the arrow out of the air.

Arthur looked up in surprise to see a man, larger than himself, rise out of the mist. The man wore a helmet with full visor, a shirt of mail and a black tabard. To call it “black” would not be to do it justice; the tabard was of such a deep black that Arthur was sure he could see into the depths of it. The man, a noble by his bearing, wore a shirt and breeches that, while not as black as the tabard, stood out in the darkness that had enveloped the world. Behind the dark knight rose a castle, the likes of which Arthur had never seen before. He would have sworn to anyone who would listen that he was in Inglewood, a part of his realm, but there he was, looking at the castle, and presumably, its lord.

“Good sir, I –” Arthur began, and stopped as he found the point of the knight’s sword pressed up against his Adam’s apple.

“Arthur Pendragon,” the knight intoned from beneath the visor. “I know who you are. But I do not know why you are poaching on my land.”

“I apologize, good sir,” Arthur explained. “I had no intent to trespass on the land of another.”

“Perhaps,” the dark knight said. “Unfortunately, the law does not recognize intent. You do know the law, do you not? You wrote much of it. You are trespassing on my land, and poaching my game at that, and for that your life is forfeit at my will.”

“That is the law,” Arthur said, somehow maintaining his composure. “But good sir, would you kill an unarmed man?” Arthur cast his bow upon the ground. “As you can see I have nothing with which to defend myself but an empty quiver, and that is poor defense against a sword.”

The dark lord put just a bit more pressure on Arthur’s Adam’s apple, as if to make a point. “What does that matter to me, when I am aggrieved?”

“My men will not take kindly to it,” Arthur replied. “Killing an unarmed man is one thing. Killing their king . . . they will come to find you.”

“And who is to say that if I present them with your head, that they will not swear allegiance to him who defeated you?” The black knight laughed a mirthless laugh. “But I am a fair man, and will give you a chance to defend yourself. What do you hold to be holy?”

“The name of our Lord Jesus,” Arthur said.

“Then swear upon the Name of your Lord Jesus that you will return in a week and a day, and if you would defeat me, come dressed as you are now, armed only with an answer to this riddle that will satisfy most of those who hear it:

“What is it that a woman truly wants above all else?“

Arthur was not used to defeat, and though he seemed defeated at that moment, he reasoned that a week and a day alive might give him a chance to reverse his fortune. “I swear by the name of Our Lord, I shall return as you say.”

The black knight lowered his sword and pointed behind Arthur with his left hand. “Go then!” Arthur heard the mocking laugh as he rode through the mist toward the light and the men he had left behind.

All the way back to Arthur’s summer residence at Carlisle he discussed the matter with his knights. “It comes to this,” he said. “On the one hand, I have sworn to return, and if I return of my own free will, and do not have the answer to his question, my life is forfeit. On the other, it should be an easy task to find an answer to the question of what a woman truly wants that will satisfy most of those who hear it. All we have to do is ask all the woman we can meet with in the next week, and reach a consensus.”

The other knights agreed that this was a good plan, and they rode to the corners of Arthur’s realm to find an answer.

An answer was not easy in coming, however.

“Beauty!” one woman would say. “A woman desires more than anything to be beautiful.”

“Who needs beauty when you can have brains?” another would say.

“What a woman truly wants is a man,” replied another.

“As many man as she can get!” said yet another to ribald laughter from the other women present, and blushes from the men.

“Children!” said a woman who had four children clinging to her. “A woman desires children.”

“She desires grandchildren! They are just as fun and much less responsibility.” This provoked more laughter.

Wealth, music, a pleasant voice . . . each woman had her own idea of what a woman truly wanted above all else, and none was able to argue her point to the satisfaction of even a majority present, much less most of those who heard it.

After a week, Arthur called his knights back and stood before them.

“I am a stranger to failure,” he said, “but it seems I have failed to find an answer to the riddle. And so, men, this will likely be goodbye.” His men protested, volunteered to go in his stead, to fight for him, but he would have none of it. He had sworn an oath, and his honor would not let him break it. He made arrangements for his succession, said a tearful goodbye, and once again rode for Inglewood, alone.

As he rode, his mood was as dark as the mists that once again swirled up around him. But before he could get to where he would meet the dark knight, he was brought out of his reverie by the sound of singing. He thought for a moment he could see the Fair Folk dancing and singing on the path ahead of him, but then he turned away for a second . . .

And there, in the center of where he thought he had seen the Fairies dancing, was a woman. But she was a grotesque caricature of a woman indeed! Her face was wrinkled and pitted, with a misshapen nose, lips that closed on a toothless maw and two eyes of different sizes, both of which were too large by half from what they should have been. Her hair was matted and filled with dirt, moss and leaves. She was built like a barrel with shoulders, with dirty arms and breasts that would have been a load for a horse. She wore a pelt of animal skins, matted and greasy. And the smell . . . the smell was a combination of musk, rancid grease, unwashed flesh and decay.

“Hail Arthur, King of the Britons!” the hag said in a voice that grated upon the ears.

“Hail,” Arthur said, and motioned to his horse to go around her. She stepped in his way again.

“What is it that a woman truly wants above all else?” she croaked.

Arthur brought his horse to a stop. “You know of my quest?” he asked.

“Aye,” she said. “And not only that, I know the answer you seek. One that will satisfy most of those who hear it, if not all.”

“Then tell me!” he said. “Tell me and I shall reward you greatly.”

She cocked her head and looked at him with one overgrown eye. “Will you give me whatever it is I ask of you?”

“That depends a great deal,” Arthur said. “What would you ask of me?”

“All in good time,” she replied. “I guarantee you, what I ask will be in your power to grant me, and will be worth your while.”

There was a moment’s silence. “Oh come! Come!” she snapped. “Surely anything that is within your power to grant me should be worth your life!”

There was another moment’s silence. “Very well,” he said. “Any one thing that is within my power to grant you, I shall do so if your answer spares my life. I swear it.”

“Done,” she said. “Come here, and you shall know the answer.”

Arthur dismounted from his horse. The sight and smell of the woman conspired with his eyes and nose to cause his stomach to rebel, but by sheer power of will he forced it to obey as he approached her. He struggled to listen as she whispered the answer into his ear.

TO BE CONTINUED

It was a beautiful day in the jungle.

It was one of those days where the scent of the air, the calls of the birds, the buzzing of the insects abd the voices of the animals all combined to make a symphony of perfection.

It was one of those days that makes you feel good.

In fact it was making Lion feel better than good. Lion was feeling royal, and he decided he was going to go out and hobnob with his subjects. So he preened his mane just so, and he made sure that every hair on his body was just in place, and then he started struttin’ down the road like he owned it. Which, if you’re the King of the Jungle, I guess maybe you do.

So as he was struttin’ down the road, all of the sudden he met up with Giraffe. And no sooner did he meet Giraffe than he asked her, point blank, “Who’s the King of the Jungle?”

Giraffe froze in her tracks. This was not the behavior you expected from Lion. You expected to be chased or ignored, but not stopped on the road and asked questions.

“Ahhhhhh,” Giraffe finally stammered uncertainly, “you are?”

“You got that right,” Lion replied, and he struck a kingly pose, with all four paws on the ground and his head lifted nobly in the air, eyes firmly closed.

Giraffe wasn’t sure what was going on here, but she was smart enough to recognize that when a lion is acting oddly and he gives you a head start by closing his eyes and striking a pose, maybe it’s time to run for it. And that’s what she did, taking off down a side path as fast as her long legs would gallop.

Lion dropped his pose and it was almost as if Giraffe had never been there at all. He just went back to struttin’ down the road feeling all royal.

It wasn’t long before Lion came across two hyenas in the middle of the road, squabbling over who got to pick the best bits off a scrap of meat they had scavenged. They looked up, and just as they saw Lion he asked them, “Who’s the king of the jungle?”

The hyenas looked at each other, then at Lion, then at their meal, then at Lion again. Lions will sometimes try to steal a carcass from a hyena, and the hyenas thought they were on familiar ground here. They backed away from their meal, keeping their eyes on Lion.

He advanced, but paid no attention to the meat. “I said, who’s the King of the Jungle?”

The two hyenas broke out into a nervous laugh and finally replied, “You are, yeah, you are, you!”

“Boo yeah,” said Lion, and struck another pose, this one more royal than the first.

The hyenas, like Giraffe, weren’t sure to make of this, but they knew whatever it was, it involved getting away from a Lion who was acting more strangely than usual. They hightailed it down another side path while Lion was busy posing.

When he was done with his pose Lion started down the road again, struttin’ and feeling mighty fine that he was getting so much quality time with his subjects.

Then, as he turned a bend in the path, he saw Elephant’s tail, which was busy keeping flies off the backside of Elephant. He could just barely see the other end of Elephant grabbing a tuft of grass for a snack.

“Who’s the King of the Jungle?” Lion called out.

Elephant paid no attention to Lion, chewing his grass and then reaching down for another trunkful.

Hmmmm, thought Lion. I guess he didn’t notice me. Lion went around to the other side of Elephant and called out again, “Who’s the King of the Jungle?”

Elephant still just chewed his grass and didn’t say anything.

Lion looked at Elephant’s big ears, which were flat against his head, and thought, “Hmmm, I wonder if what we have here is a deaf Elephant.” So Lion went over to Elephant’s ear, raised the flap, and called out, right into Elephant’s ear, “Who’s the King of the Jungle???“

Elephant replied by grabbing Lion around the midsection with his trunk, lifting him up into the air and WHAM! throwing him to the ground and WHAM! lifting him up and throwing him down on the other side and WHAM! again and WHAM! WHAM! again and again. Then Elephant started down the path, careful as he passed to step on Lion’s mane — not hard, but just enough to add a little insult to the injury.

Lion lay there in a daze, watching Elephant’s tail disappear down the path, and just before Elephant was completely out of sight, he found enough breath to call out, “If you didn’t know the answer you could have just said so!!”

February 3, 1943, early in the morning

The USAT Dorchester had seen better days.

Once a luxury liner ferrying wealthy passengers up and down the US Atlantic coast, it was pressed into duty during World War II as a troop transport. The men on board felt anything but pampered. Despite the freezing Arctic air outside, belowdecks it was stifling hot. Most of the men slept in their shorts, disobeying direct orders to sleep in uniform with their lifejackets on.

No doubt Captain Danielson, the Dorchester‘s skipper, was aware of the infractions, but certainly he had some sympathy for the men, and in any case there was little he could do. The Dorchester and her Coast Guard escorts were entering a section of the Atlantic known as Torpedo Alley. He could only pray that they would make it through to dawn, when the Dorchester would be within 100 miles of their destination — Greenland — and fighter cover could escort the ship and its cargo safely into port.

Another captain was traveling those waters that night. Running silent beneath the dark waters of the North Atlantic, Captain Wächter of the German submarine U-223 tracked the Dorchester through his periscope. As long as they kept their engines off there was little chance they would be detected in the dark water until it was too late. Quietly he gave the order for the torpedo officers to ready their weapons, and on his call of “Feuer,” five torpedoes sped toward the Dorchester.

An explosion reverbrated throughout the Dorchester. The engines died and the lights went out. One hundred of the 902 men aboard were killed instantly. Panic set in as ice-cold water flooded the ship. Those who had disobeyed the order to sleep in their lifejackets now found themselves in pitch black, without their clothes or any way to find them. Many perished below decks.

Four of the officers who had obeyed Captain Danielson’s orders rushed up to the deck. These four had met at Harvard while preparing for their assignments as chaplains. Lt. George Fox had served in World War I as an assistant in the medical corps, then re-enlisted as a Methodist chaplain when war broke out against the Axis. Lt. Clark Polling was the son of a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church who followed in his father’s footsteps as a chaplain. Lt. John Washington was a former gang leader who took up holy orders in the Roman Catholic Church. And Lt. Alexander Goode, a rabbi, had started his service in the National Guard, then enlisted in the Regular Army.

The four men had hit it off in Chaplain’s School and had stayed together, discussing their religions, praying together and comforting the frightened soldiers who had been farm boys and drugstore clerks just weeks before. Their skills had been put to the test aboard the Dorchester when seasickness and an uncertain future in combat were thrown into the mix. Now the four men did their best to keep order on deck, help the soldiers into lifeboats and pass out the lifejackets that hadn’t already been assigned. The lifejackets were scant help against water that was barely above freezing — anyone who’s ever watched Titanic can tell you what happens when you fall into 34-degree water — but not to have a jacket meant certain death. At least with a lifejacket there was a chance of being rescued by the Coast Guard vessels hurrying to the scene of the attack.

The Dorchester was sinking fast. The lifeboats were overcrowded, and as the water rose toward the deck, the last lifejackets were handed out. Then the four chaplains looked at one another, coming to silent agreement on what they needed to do, and gave their own lifejackets to four men standing nearby, even though it eliminated their own hopes for survival.

Less than 30 minutes elapsed between the time the Dorchester was torpedoed and the time it finally slipped below the surface of the Atlantic. Of the 902 men aboard when it was torpedoed, 230 men survived. Some of the survivors later said that the last thing they saw before the ship went down was the four chaplains, arms linked, leaning into each other for strength, praying and singing.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven . . . “

“Nearer, my God, to thee . . . “

“Shema Yisrael, Adonai elohainu, Adonai ehad . . . “

One survivor called it “The finest thing I have ever seen this side of Heaven.”

In 1948 Congress passed a special bill authorizing a postage stamp commemorating the Four Chaplains, bypassing the law that normally requires a person to be dead for ten years before their likeness can appear on a stamp. In 1960 Congress created a Congressional Medal of Valor, a singular honor awarded to the next of kin of the four men. There is a Chapel of the Four Chaplains at Temple University in Philadelphia. But surely the greatest memorial to the heroism of Reverend Fox, Reverend Polling, Rabbi Goode and Father John Washington is the lives of the men they helped save that night, and the lives of their descendants.