"Oh, my God. Wait. Chico and Groucho?"
They nodded eagerly. "You do remember!"
"I thought ... I thought all of that was just some drug-induced hallucination."
"You disappeared one day, man. We never knew where you went."
"I'm not sure myself. I woke up in Thirtieth Street Station in Philadelphia. To this day I don't know how I got there. And that's when I decided to pull my act together."
"Geez." Chico looked at Groucho. "You think if the same thing happened to us, we'd have gotten our act together too?"
Groucho shrugged. "Could be. Philadelphia does weird shit to your head, man."
They pulled their newly-found third member of their group away even as a crowd started to gather around Arthur's fallen form. Gwen came to Arthur's side and dropped down next to him. She ripped off a piece from his surcoat and held it against the wound, and she looked up at the people standing around. "For God's sake, call an ambulance."
They stared at her. "You mean he's really hurt?"
"Get an ambulance, dammit!"
Three people ran off and one man stepped forward. He was a doctor and at that moment he didn't give a damn about malpractice suits. "I'm a doctor, miss. Maybe I can help."
He knelt at Arthur's side as Gwen pulled his helmet off. She gasped at the whiteness of his skin.
"Oh, God, Arthur."
He lifted a mailed hand to her cheek and stroked it, smiling sickly. "Gwen. Don't cry, my lovely Gwen. We gave them a real run for their money this time."
"Them? Who's them?"
"The fates. They have it out for me, you know. They hate happy endings, you know." He winced. "Now don't go crying for me, Gwen. It's unseemly."
Tears streamed down her face. "I don't want to lose you, Arthur," she sobbed. "I don't think I could go through waiting for you again for another fifteen centuries."
"You're not going to lose me," said Arthur. "I'll always be with you."
"I don't want poetic bullshit! I want you!"
He laughed. "That's my Gwen. Never could pull anything on her."
Merlin knelt down next to them. Gwen turned and said, "Merlin! Do something!"
And he said softly, "I'm a sorceror, child, not a doctor. A J 90
curse on him I could handle. Poison and blood wounds, that's something else again. It's out of my reach."
She stroked Arthur's cheek as the doctor worked furiously on the gash in Arthur's side.
"Merlin," said Arthur, and his voice sounded ghastly. "Promise you'll look after her."
Merlin nodded. There were no tears in his eyes, but they were glistening every so slightly.
"It's not fair, you know."
"Life isn't fair, Merlin. You taught me that."
"I know," sighed Merlin. "Just once I'd like to be wrong."
Moments later the ambulance pulled up, driving straight across the green. The crowd melted from its path as the paramedics came rushing out. Plasma had already been prepared.
And the paramedics ran into a problem, as it took three of them to lift the armored king onto the stretcher.
"My God," murmured one. "How the hell are we going to get this stuff off him?"
Merlin handed one of the paramedics a pair of wire cutters. "This'll do it. They're special.
Take the armor right off."
"Are you serious?"
"Trust me."
The paramedic shouted back to Merlin as he leaped into the ambulance. "You must be a Boy Scout, right?"
"Right," said Merlin.
Gwen started toward the ambulance. "I want to be with him!" she cried. But Merlin held her back. "It's going to be busy enough back there without another body to interfere."
She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around Merlin, sobbing piteously on his shoulder. "Oh, Merlin, I want to be with him!"
Uncertainly, he stroked her back gently. "You are, Gwen. You are."
"But you at least had him for one lifetime. I can't lose him after barely a year. I can't."
He held her close to him and let her cry. A single tear ran down his face as the ambulance roared off, siren screeching.
Directly outside the emergency ward of Lenox Hill Hospital, Arthur Pendragon, Son of Uther, King of the Britons, and mayor-elect of New York City, died.
Chaptre the Twentieth
Gwen DeVere sat out on the stretch of private beach outside the rented cottage. Getting a beachside cottage at this time of year in Avalon had been a snap. Avalon, a small resort community near Atlantic City, didn't get all that many people looking for that sort of accommodation in the dead of winter.
Gwen pulled her heavy sweater around her and looked out at the crashing waves. She exhaled her breath and watched the little puff of white steam hover in the air in front of her.
There was a crunch of a footfall on the sand behind her. She turned, looked up, and smiled.
"Hello, love," she said. "Enjoy your nap?"
Arthur sat down next to her and draped an arm around her shoulder. "Feeling quite refreshed, thank you."
They sat next to each other, basking in the warmth of each other's presence. Finally Arthur said, "I'm glad I came back."
"What, from your nap?"
"No, from the dead. This was certainly worth returning for."
"Arthur, I wish you'd stop putting it that way." She sighed. "I keep telling you, you were only dead for under a minute."
"Is that all?" He laughed.
"Look, they bring people back from the dead all the time. Your heart stopped and they got it started again."
"Simple as that." He shook his head. "I'll never understand how so many people consider magic too unbelievable, but they accept as commonplace things that I would have once considered inconceivable."
They stared out at the ocean for a while longer. Then Gwen rested her head on his shoulder.
"I like being married to you," she said.
"The local news people liked it too." He laughed. "Marrying me in my hospital bed. It must have looked delightful on the evening news."
"It did."
"You in your wedding dress, me in my gown with the string openings down the back. Very dignified."
"Look," she said in all seriousness, "I let you get away once. 1*11 be damned if I let you get away again."
She kissed him lightly. He smiled. "Let's run away," he said conspiratorially. "Right after I'm sworn in, I'll make Percy deputy mayor, and then we'll run off."
"You make it sound so tempting."
"It's meant to be."
"You can't. You know we can't. You have a destiny to fulfill."
"Oh, bugger destiny. You're starting to sound like Merlin." He lay back on the sand. "I suppose we'll have to return to it all soon. Merlin. Percy. Ronnie."
"Chico, Groucho, and Moe-sorry, Harpo-have vanished," said Gwen. "The last anyone's heard from them is a postcard of Philadelphia City Hall with a little note saying, 'Wish we were here.* She laughed. "Maybe they're going to stop being the Marx Brothers and become one large W. C. Fields."
She curled up next to Arthur as they lay back on the sand. "I did so many things wrong the first time around, Gwen," said Arthur after a time. "I had so many expectations to which no one could live up. I've been given a second chance-hell, a third chance. I desperately don't want to make a muddle of it."
"You won't," she said confidently. "You're Arthur. You're my husband, and you're a good man, and you'll always do what's right. Even if it's wrong."
"Thank you." He shivered slightly. "Getting chilly. Want to go in?"
"We could. There's an old movie on TV 1 always wanted to see. A Bing Crosby film."
"I don't know the fellow, but I'm game."
"Good. It's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court."
He stared at her. "Let's stay out here a while longer."
"But you said you were getting chilly."
"Then," he pulled her close to him, "we'll just have to find some way to keep warm."