The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp 1)

They had closed the door behind them and I hesitated for a second before going in. Was I supposed to knock? Maybe Bennacio’s wave didn’t mean Come on in, Kropp. Maybe it meant Stay in the car or forfeit your life! Then I smelled bread fresh from the oven and my stomach decided for me; I hadn’t eaten anything since the corn dog.

I opened the door after a quick little knock, a sort of compromise between knocking and not knocking, and stepped inside.

The front parlor was empty, but I could hear voices coming from down the hall, which also seemed to be where the bread smell was coming from. I stepped into the parlor. A small fire was going in here, and in one corner was a little wooden stand where a candle was burning. There was a picture displayed there of a guy about my age, with long blond hair and large, bright blue eyes, wearing a purple tunic and looking grimly at the camera, a silver headband across his forehead. A single white rose lay in front of the picture. It was some kind of shrine, I guessed, and I was sure without knowing exactly how I was sure that I was looking at a picture of one of Mr. Samson’s knights.

“Kropp.”

Bennacio was standing in the entry. I pointed at the picture.

“A knight?” I asked.

He nodded. “Windimar.”

“This is his house?”

“This is the house of his mother. We shall stay here for the night.”

“I thought we were in a hurry.”

“We are, but even knights must eat and rest, and I desire her counsel. Miriam is a soothsayer, Kropp.”

“Really? Wow. What’s a soothsayer?”

“She has the gift of sight.”

“You mean she can see the future?”

He didn’t answer. I followed him down the hall to the kitchen, where a large oak table took up most of the space. The table was one of those sturdy, rough-hewn jobs, with thick legs and a top about five inches thick. It was covered with steaming dishes: a stew in an earthenware bowl, pots of potatoes and vegetables, fruit in a big wooden bowl, and five loaves of freshly baked bread on a cutting board in the shape of a fish.

Windimar’s mother moved around the table, setting out the plates and these huge mugs that reminded me of pirate movies and grog. I stood there because Bennacio was standing, feeling big and awkward, like I was taking up too much space, light-headed from hunger, and nervous for some reason. Maybe it was because nobody was talking and she had a grim look on her face as she set out the plates. She was wearing a black full-length dress and her steel gray hair was pulled into a bun so tight, it looked painful. Her eyes were the same bright sky blue as her son’s, her nose perfectly straight, her lips slightly oversized for someone her age, and the only wrinkles I saw were around the corners of her eyes, which were swollen slightly, I guessed from crying.

She set places for two, one on either side of the table. Bennacio sat down at one and, relieved, I sat at the other. He muttered something that sounded like Latin over the food and we set in while she stood at the sink washing up the cookery.

It was one of the best meals I ever had. The stew was beef-based, very thick and hot, the bread so buttery, it practically dissolved on my tongue, and even my drink had substance to it, kind of sweet-tasting, like honey, warm like hot apple cider, but not apple-based . . . I don’t know what the heck it was, but it was good.

Miriam stacked the pots in the d

rainer to dry and sat down next to Bennacio. They spoke in low voices in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded not quite French and not quite Spanish and it definitely wasn’t German. Maybe it was Latin or whatever language they spoke in Arthur’s day, like Celtic.

I was on my third helping of stew and second loaf of bread when their conversation got intense; I guessed they were having an argument about something and I guessed too that the something was me, because she kept glancing at me and at one point jabbed a finger in my direction. I was pretty uncomfortable, them talking about me while I sat right in front of them, and I think Bennacio knew that, because he switched to English.

“Do not forget,” he said to her. “Without him I would not be here.”

She answered in a thick accent, “And you forget, Lord Bennacio, without him my son would be here.”

So it was about me taking the Sword, which got the knights, including her son, killed. I dropped my spoon into the bowl. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

“Windimar did not die for anything Kropp did; he perished keeping a vow he made to heaven, Miriam.”

“Yet his vow would not have been put to the test if not for him.” Again she jabbed her finger at me.

“Perhaps. At last to our generation the test has come, whether born of the divine or the diabolical who can say? Yet we must take comfort, Miriam, in the fact that heaven has used odder instruments.”

“He is an instrument of destruction,” she spat back at him. “At the critical hour he will fail you, Bennacio. He will stand aside while you fall.”

“Now that just isn’t true!” I said. “Ma’am.” I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. “I screwed up, big time, but ever since I’ve been trying to do the right thing. Maybe you don’t know this, but Mogart killed my uncle. Maybe it’s true I’m partly responsible for all this mess, for the Sword being lost and all the knights . . . and what happened to the knights. So that’s, um, true, and the only way I can make up for it is by helping Bennacio here.”

“No,” she said. “I have seen it. You will fail him, and the last knight will fall.” Her eyes narrowed and somehow the room narrowed too. She was staring at me at the other end of a long, darkening tunnel, her crooked finger pointed at my nose. “And you too shall perish, Alfred Kropp, alone in the dark, where neither day breaks nor night falls. The Dark One will pierce your heart and—upon his command—you will die.”