Sam and Guinevere wandered through the old ruins. Caliburn sniffed the air, scratched the grass, and played like an ordinary dog, but he didn’t find any sign of King Arthur’s first sword.
Sam took the retriever to the site of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere's purported tomb beneath the high altar of the Lady’s Chapel. A large plaque noted the burial site of the legendary king of Camelot and his queen.
He said to Caliburn, “What do you think, is it all pretend, or did the monks of Glastonbury really find King Arthur’s tomb?”
Caliburn sniffed some more, and pawed at the ground where King Arthur was meant to have been buried.
The dog mewled, and started to walk away in disinterest.
Sam looked at Guinevere, “I’ll take that as a no.”
Guinevere smiled. Sam thought she always looked beautiful when she smiled, and she smiled all the time.
She said, “I guess not.”
A moment later, Caliburn barked, and headed off at a run.
The dog crossed the road to Abbey House, a 19th century gentleman’s residence that now ran as a bed and breakfast.
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell’s gotten into him?”
Guinevere said, “I don’t know, but we’d better go find out.”
Caliburn stopped in the middle of a field directly in front of the Abbey House and started to dig with his paws, his tail wagging with almost as much enthusiasm.
Sam came up to him and gave him a good pat. “You found it?”
Caliburn barked, in an eager note of confirmation.
“Well done,” Guinevere said. Then, glancing at the large windows of the occupied bed and breakfast at the Abbey House, she said, “I think we’d better wait until nightfall before we go any further.”
Sam nodded. “I think you’re right. Come on, let’s find a hardware store and buy some shovels and a pry bar in case we get lucky. Then we’ll find somewhere to have dinner and wait until it gets dark.”
They waited until nine p.m. before they started to dig.
At ten-thirty, one of their shovels hit something made of stone. Sam went back to the Jaguar and retrieved a long, heavy, steel prybar.
It took another half an hour before he and Guinevere could muster enough leverage to remove the stone cover, and lay it on the side of the gravesite.
Sam shined his flashlight into the hole, just three feet deep.
Inside, were the bony remains of a single skeleton and the fractured shard of a single sword. There was no name on the tomb, and no shield, which would have been unusual during the time when burying an Anglo-Saxon king.
Guinevere said, “What do you think?”
Sam stared at the rusty weapon’s hilt. “It doesn’t look like much, but you’ve got to think, if it isn’t King Arthur’s first sword, Caliburn, then it’s one hell of a coincidence.”
“I agree. So, now what? Do we just take it?”
“Yeah, we didn’t come all this way to leave it here. That’s for sure.” Sam climbed down and removed the rusty hilt and shard of a sword. “I’m sorry King Arthur. I’m afraid the world needs your sword more than you right now, but if we make it through this alive, I promise to return her to you, all mended.”
“He’s been dead for nearly fifteen hundred years!” Guinevere said, “Come on, before someone comes!”
Sam climbed out of the pit.
He fixed his flashlight on the remnants of a badly weathered iron sword.
It really wasn’t much to look at. The hilt had no name on it, but a carefully defined snake engraving was wrapped around the hilt. At the very top, the snake’s head stood out emphatically, with two holes where the eyes appeared to be missing.
From the distance, a bright spotlight fixed on them.
A man shouted, “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing!”
Chapter Sixty-Four
Sam squinted through the beam of the man’s flashlight.
The man wore the dark robes of a monk, but in his right hand was a Walther P99 handgun. The same weapon used by the men who had attacked them at Powell’s back in Portland.
The man fixed his beam on the remnants of Caliburn in Sam’s hand. The weapon looked like nothing more than a rusty shard of iron, with a small hilt, but the stranger’s eyes went wide at the sight of it.
“So you’ve come for King Arthur’s sword, have you?”
“Is that what this rusty thing is?” Sam asked. “I was kind of expecting something more… I don’t know, grandiose or something? Nothing about this explains how it helped King Arthur defeat the Saxons.”
The stranger eyes filled with mirth. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? You’ve come here to the exact position, in the middle of a field nowhere near the location where King Arthur was said to have been buried, and just happened to stumble upon the greatest swords that ever existed.”
Sam shrugged. “What I can say, I’m just lucky.”
Guinevere faced their attacker. “What do you want with us?”
The robed man said, “Isn’t it obvious. I’m going to have to kill you and bury you with the sword you so desire.”
“Why?” She persisted, her voice showed an inflection of curiosity rather than fear. “What makes it so important to you?”
“Not me. I don’t want the god forsaken weapon. My job is to make sure you don’t unite both shards of Caliburn and condemn us all to hell.”
At the sound of his name, Caliburn jumped up from the grass in the distance, where he’d been sleeping, and ran toward their attacker.
The attacker instinctively turned the Walther P99 on the dog.
Sam shouted, “Caliburn no!”
The robed stranger stopped. His previously solemn face turned to joy. His lips beamed with pleasure. And the man said, “Caliburn! Is that you, old boy?”
Chapter Sixty-Five
Dexter pulled back his robes to reveal a hard face, filled with scars.
He leaned down and gave Caliburn a big hug. “I can’t believe you’re still alive!”
The man with the Arthurian relic and the woman looked at him with incredulity. “You know Caliburn?”
“Know him?” Dexter said. “Hell, I knew him before his treatment.”
Guinevere said, “He’s your dog?”
“No. He was originally Dr. Jim Patterson’s dog. Jim brought him onto the team for the first genetic modification program, using Merlin’s technology.”
The man with the dagger stepped closer, but Dexter aimed his handgun at him. “Not so fast. Who are you and how did you end up with our dog?”
“My name’s Sam Reilly.” He gestured toward his friend. “This is Guinevere Jenkins.”
Dexter studied the woman like a scientist might a specimen. It was the eyes. Liquid jade. And the crown of dark red hair that made him believe. “My god! You’re Patrick’s twin sister!”