THE HAUNTED KINGDOM 3 by CHARLES E.J. MOULTON (best books to read now txt) 📖

on the boy’s face as he waited for a response.
Alexander smiled and ruffled the teenager’s hair. Lancelot was let go. He straightened out his purple cape and had it going swinging back over his shoulders. He felt he had gotten away from being teased again. The two boys went giggling over to the table of food and picked up a chicken leg each and began to eat. Erica came over from the fireplace and reprimanded the boys, who just shook their heads. As all this was going on, Belinda and Zelat came in.
“Good morrow to you all” Alexander cried out over the small room.
Steven, Morgana, Zedrick and a few others responded loudly. The others seemed to busy with food and wine to actually swallow before speaking, but they answered as well.
Sieglinde came up and gave her husband a kiss on the mouth. “Hello, my dear!”
Alex smiled, let his hand travel down to her waist and further toward her behind.
She shook her head.
“Not here” she reprimanded.
Belinda walked over to Steven and at once began conversing with Zelat and him about something.
Patricia and Patrick had sat by the fireplace until now and talked loudly about the taste of the wine when Alex walked up with his wife and interrupted them.
“Aren’t people a little wee bit drunk for this time of day?”
He was greeted with a kiss by both.
“Good morning, Papa!”
Zedrick walked up to Alex and gave him a silver cup of red wine. Alexander looked into the cup and smelled it. He looked at Zeddy, who walked away smiling. Sieglinde held her husband’s right hand whilst talking toward the other direction with Morgana. There was a lively atmosphere in this room. It felt like a homecoming feast. “I shall have to speak to the senate about my family’s drinking habits before work.”
Patsy gave her father a half-smile. “There is nothing like a bit of Prosperanian wine to start off the day, father!” Alexander shrugged and gazed at his children, mystified.
“Aaayyy don’t know ... there is something in works here.”
Sieglinde turned to Alexander again, holding up her hand to Morgana who had been in the middle of a sentence. “Did you think of reminding Rolf of the peacock tonight?”
Alexander shook his head. “I did not have to. He told me himself. I don’t know who told him.”
”Geena, most probably.”
Alexander put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Darling, I think it was unwise to have me come here so early, I mean what will I do know for almost two hours? My knees hurt.”
Sieglinde kissed him again on the mouth. “We wanted you to be here before the crowds.”
”I have been here among the crowds so often and not once has something happened.”
”Sweetheart” Sieglinde said. “See those boys over there?”
She pointed toward Lance and Fabian, now tasting the wine but interrupted by Erica.
“What about them?”
”They were the ones who you must thank after seeing what we have for you.”
Alex raised his left eyebrow and started to chuckle. He looked back at his wife.
“Thank them? What ever for? For tripping over my feet?”
Sieglinde sighed. “Can’t you just once listen to me?”
Alex put his hands around her waist. “I always do.”
She smiled, expressing a mixture of relief, irritation and sympathy. “Honeybuns,” she said, softly and femininely, “we have a big surprise for you.”
Alexander at once grew silent. Sieglinde took a long look at her king, caressed his cheek, kissed it and walked to the middle of the room. She clapped her hands three times with her firm motherly palms and after three more times the room grew quiet.
Matron spoke.
“Thank you” she said and looked over at Alex. “This man” she indicated at his majesty “just complained about being dragged here so early. But he does not know what we have for him.”
There was a cheer among the assembled, which quickly died down.
“I told him what these youngster here” she said and indicated at Fabian and Lancelot who were secretly sharing a mug of wine quickly taken away again by Erica “found at whilst in the army camp last spring.” She turned to Lance, the oldest of the two. “Lancelot Winsletenna, please tell us your story and that of your cousin’s discovery.”
Alexander looked at his grandson, who took a few steps forward prompted by his mother. Erica seemed the perfect hen mother, eager in her Hispanic beauty to see her son shine. There was much Hispanic handsomeness in Lance. Patrick was standing an inch away from Erica and his rugged features had been transported to the next generation. It was obvious what the two handsome parents had given Lance, if nothing else: good looks.
Typically juvenile, the boy scratched his leg and tried to remain calm in the midst of his shyness and began speaking.
“Well, grandfather. You know how I and Fabian were almost pushed into going on this riding tutorship outside town.”
Alexander nodded. “I know. I was the one who pushed you.”
There was laughter among the assembled.
“Well, we loved it the first day. We came back from the first day riveted.”
Fabian’s dark voice came bellowing across the room. “Tell about Shauna.”
Lance turned to Fabian and held up his hand. “I was getting to that. Let me tell the story.”
”Sorry.”
Fabian took another grape and put his hand in front of his mouth.
Slight giggles were heard. Sieglinde glanced at her husband who seemed transfixed.
He senses that some big surprise was on the way. He sensed what, but felt it too farfetched to believe. An old memory was coming back. An old hope of something lost.
“Well,” Lance continued, “the trick riding tutor was a former Celtic gypsy named Shauna Fairweather and she was only nineteen and so not much older than us. She had already won The Olympic Contenstant Crown in Rome in 1427, only sixteen at the time.” A half smile emerged on his face and it was obvious that Lance was in love. “Both Fabby and I had sort of fallen in love.” The boy turned red and began to snigger and turned to his mother. “I can’t do this, Mother.”
Erica held up her right hand and waved it at him. “You got yourself into this, boy.” Her Hispanic accent was charming and still there after all these years in Clurafar. “Now get yourself out. I never asked you to fall in love with an older woman.”
Morgana started to laugh her bellowing and very bouncy laugh.
Patricia cried: “Bravo, Hispania!”
Erica threw her left hand into the air, closed her eyes and said: “Una mujer madura tiene que enseñarle niños.”
Patricia, who spoke the language enough to understand it, answered this with a smile: “Entiendo perfectamente.” Meanwhile, Lance calmly stood there and waited for the laughter to die down.
When it did, he continued.
”Well, as you know and might gather from all this hoo-hah, Grandfather, Shauna and I fell in love. We didn’t have much time for each other. We were trick riding four hours every morning, competing two hours and then learning the skills of stable work for the rest of the day after weaponry on horseback. But in the evenings Shauna and I would ... you know.” He sighed. “Fabby already has his fiancée so I was given permission to keep to myself and Shauna. Besides, he had enough friends at the camp already.”
Lance made a pause and looked at the king, who seemed touched by this story but very keen on finding out its purpose.
“Two days before the course ended Shauna and I walked the stables. We had been together most of free time and felt we knew each other rather well now. She had offered to show me more of the stables.”
Erica started laughing.
Lance turned sardonically to his mother and play acted laughter. “Hah-hah-hah.”
She turned to Patrick, who seemed willing to calm his wife down. “Ella deseó probablemente demostrarle la visión.”
“Shh, Rica” Pat said. Lance turned to his majesty again.
“I had heard so much about your stories and your tales of your travels to save us back in hell.” These words stopped all noise in the room and a dead quiet arose. “You told me so much about your horse that he seemed like a friend to me.” He brushed it off. “Well, that is secondary. But we had this stable watchman who had spent his entire life in these stables who showed us around. He knew every horse by its name and birth and race and he told us stories, Grandfather, of how these horses had ended up here, if they were wounded or if they had special skills.”
Lance smiled in a way now that Alexander, who almost knew now what the boy was getting at, had to let that tear in his left eye, roll down his cheek.
“There was one horse that seemed so beautiful. The man called him Mercutio and he was born on September 24th 1425. He had only ridden now for one and a half years and was good enough to do training with recruits and young soldiers. He fit the description so perfectly that it seemed uncanny that there was no connection. There just had to be.”
Fabian walked over, calm and macho as ever, throwing his blond hair across his shoulders.
”Lance told me about this and, as you know, the stories touched me as well. I saw the horse and together with Shauna we decided to talk to Erica about it. We knew that this had to be a carnation of the horse that took you through the haunted kingdom. That horse was just a production of Lucinda’s illusion and of course disappeared when we entered the real world.”
Lance continued. “We had all been in hell and we knew that we would never have made it if you hadn’t been there. But you hadn’t made it without Mercutio.”
Alexander was crying now, not much but just enough to make it obvious how touched he was.
Fabian made an effort to continue.
“After completing the course we told Lance’s mother and she looked at the horse.”
”After a few visits in May, Belinda came along and she saw the horse. She had seen the horse closer than all of us, next to you, Grandfather and she swore that this horse was the horse. His mane had the same colour and faded into a lighter brown toward the back. The tail was unusually long just as she remembered and the eyelashes on the horse stuck out by being longer than on usual stallions.”
”The date, as well, Grandfather” Fabian continued. “This horse was born in that stable on the day after our return from the haunted kingdom. There had to be a connection.”
Erica and Maria walked up and took their son’s hands. It was haunting and beautiful to see these four individuals together at this occasion.
“We knew” Maria continued “a witchdoctor from the old lands that came and did a few sessions with the horse to find its spiritual origin. We had already bought the horse in Belinda’s name.” Belinda walked up and embraced Maria. “We kept it there thinking of a time to give it to you.”
Belinda continued. “We wanted to be sure, you see, Father. We knew that losing the only friend that had taken you through this endeavour was painful. We didn’t want to give you a horse that might be the one and then leave with a mystery.”
”We didn’t want to stir up old painful problems.”
Erica went on. ”The witchdoctor must’ve done four sessions with the