Fiddler Fair (anthology)

But this time the images were harder to ignore.

He saw himself taking the sword and gathering his fighters to his side—all of his friends from the docks, the ones who’d bitched along with him about what a mess the world was in. He watched himself making an army out of them, and sending them out into the streets to clean up the filth there. He saw himself as the leader of a new corps of vigilantes who tracked down the pushers, the perverts, the thugs and the punks and gave them all a taste of what they had coming to them.

He saw his army making the city safe for people to live in, saw them taking back the night from the Powers of Evil.

He saw more people flocking to his banner and his cause, saw him carrying his crusade from city to city, until a joyous public threw the House of Hanover out of Buckingham Palace and installed him on the throne, and a ten- year-old child could carry a gold bar across the length of the island and never fear a robber or a molester.

Or try this one, if that doesn’t suit you!

This time he saw himself crossing to Ireland, confronting the leadership of every feuding party there, and defeating them, one by one, in challenge-combat. He saw himself bringing peace to a land that had been torn by strife for so long that there wasn’t an Irish child alive that didn’t know what a knee-capper was. He saw the last British Tommy leaving the island with a smile on his face and a shamrock in his lapel, withdrawing in good order since order itself had been restored. He saw plenty coming back to the land, prosperity, saw Ireland taking a major role in the nations of the world, and “Irish honor” becoming a byword for “trust.” Oh, this was cruel, throwing a vision like that in his face! He wasn’t for British Rule, but the IRA was as bad as the PLO by his lights—and there wasn’t anything he could do about either.

Until now.

Or here—widen your horizons, lift your eyes ­beyond your own sordid universe!

This time he started as before, carried the sword to Ireland and restored peace there, and went on—on to the Continent, to Eastern Europe, taking command of the UN forces there and forcing a real and lasting peace by the strength of his arm. Oh, there was slaughter, but it wasn’t a slaughter of the ­innocents but of the bastards that drove the fights, and in the end that same ten-year-old child could start in Galway and end in Sarejevo, and no one would so much as dirty the lace on her collar or offer her an unkind word.

The sword released him, then, and he sat ­blinking on his shabby second-hand bed, in his dingy rented room, still holding his aching toes in both hands. It all seemed so tawdry, this little world of his, and all he had to do to earn a greater and brighter one was to reach out his hand.

He looked down at the sword at the side of his bed, and the metal winked smugly up at him. “You really think you have me now, don’t you,” he said bitterly to it.

It said nothing. It didn’t have to answer.

But he had answers enough for all the temptations in his own mind. Because now he remembered Arthur—and Guinevere, and Lancelot and Agravaine and Morgaine.

And Mordred.

Oh yes. He had no doubt that there would be a Mordred out there, somewhere, waiting for him the moment he took up the sword. He hadn’t been any too careful, AIDS notwithstanding, and there could be any number of bastards scattered from his seed. Hell, there would be a Mordred even if it wasn’t his son. For every Warrior of the Light there was a Warrior of the Dark; he’d seen that quite, quite clearly. For every Great Friend there was always the Great Betrayer—hadn’t Peter betrayed Christ by denying him? For every Great Love there was the Great Loss.

It would not be the easy parade of victories the sword showed him; he was older and far, far wiser than the boy-Arthur who’d taken Excalibur the last time. He was not to be dazzled by dreams. The most likely of the scenarios to succeed was the first—some bloke in New York had done something like that, called his lads the “Guardian Angels”—and even he hadn’t succeeded in cleaning up more than a drop or two of the filth in one city, let alone hundreds.

That scenario would only last as long as it took some punk’s parents to sue him. What good would a sword be in court, eh? What would he do, slice the judge’s head off?

And this was the age of the tabloids, of smut-papers. They’d love him for a while, then they’d decide to bring him down. If they’d had a time with Charles and Di, what would they do with him—and Guinevere, and Lancelot— and Mordred?

 For Mordred and Morgaine were surely here, and they might even have got a head start on him. They could be waiting for him to appear, waiting with hired thugs to take him out.

For that matter, Mordred might be a lawyer, ready for him at this very moment with briefs and briefcase, and he’d wind up committed to the loony asylum before he got two steps! Or he might be a smut reporter, good at digging up dirt. His own, real past wouldn’t make a pretty sight on paper.

Oh no. Oh, no.

“I don’t think so, my lad,” he said, and before the sword could pull any clever tricks, he reached down, and slammed it home in the sheath.

Three hours and six aspirins later, he walked into the nearest pawn shop with a long bundle wrapped in old newspapers under his arm. He handed it across the counter to the wizened old East Indian who kept the place.

The old boy unwrapped the papers, and peered at the sword without a hint of surprise. God alone knew he’d probably seen stranger things pass across his counter. He slid it out of its sheath and examined the steel before slamming it back home. Only then did he squint through the grill at Michael.

“It’s mild steel. Maybe antique, maybe not, no way of telling. Five quid,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it,” said the Pendragon.