Page 50 of American Queen (New Camelot Trilogy 1)
Ash does love to surround himself with laughter, I think, peeling myself away from the bookshelf to go sit down across from Merlin.
“You’re not in trouble,” he says finally, a smile still on his face. There’s warmth in his eyes—real warmth—although I still detect the same wariness from our past encounters.
But I’m not seven or sixteen or twenty any more. The wariness doesn’t upset me like it used to. “Then what do you want to talk about?”
“I want to tell you a story,” he says, folding his hands in his lap. “It won’t take very long to tell, and you may not care that much about it, but I think it’s an important story for you to hear.”
I consider this for a minute. I would be well within my rights to demand that he leave. I could even leave myself. I don’t have to sit here and listen to a man who’s been nothing but rude and terrifying to me since I was a child. But I can’t help it, I am intrigued by the idea of Merlin telling me a story. I teach literature, after all, stories are what I deal with, what I think in.
“Okay,” I finally concede. “Tell me.” As if on cue, the clouds move across the sun again and the room brightens with weak sunshine.
“Once upon a time…” Merlin starts slowly, irony twisting his mouth a little “…there was a man who fell in love with a married woman.”
“That’s a little different than the usual beginning,” I cut in.
“It’s more common than you’d think,” he replies. “David and Bathsheba? Tristan and Isolde? Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne?”
“Those are not very happy stories,” I point out.
“I never said this would be a happy story. Only a common one,” Merlin responds, leaning back a little in his chair. “Now, back to our man and woman. This is a common story, and so this man tried all the common ways of getting the woman to notice him. He flirted, he pleaded, he tried to impress her daily. They worked in the same place, you see, and so he could be relentless in wooing her, just as his own love for her felt unmercifully relentless to him. But she loved her husband, and even if she didn’t, she was the kind of person who didn’t believe in breaking marriage vows.”
“Good for her.”
He nods. “I agree. It was difficult to resist this man, though, especially as the years dragged on. He was handsome and powerful and he wanted her, even when she was pregnant with her husband’s child. It’s a flattering feeling to be desired by the President of the United States, which I’m sure you know.”
I can’t hide my surprise. “The man was a president?”
Merlin looks me straight in the face. “A president your family knows very well. President Penley Luther. Your grandfather’s running mate.”
I must look like a mask of shock, but I can’t help it. Grandfather only had glowing things to say about President Luther—really, everyone only had glowing things to say about him. It’s hard to imagine the hero of the American economy and international diplomacy chasing after a married woman.
“You have to remember,” Merlin says, “that Luther was a bit of a playboy. And he was divorced. To him it seemed natural that she would want him, and Luther never ignored nature for morality’s sake, at least in his personal life.”
“So what happened?
”
Merlin looks down at his hands for a moment. “What usually happens in these cases, although it didn’t happen in the usual way. There was an economic summit hosted by the United Kingdom at a secluded estate in Wales. Luther brought this woman along, since she was his senior advisor, just as I am to Maxen now. The summit was brief but busy, and on the last night, the people gathered there had a small party. Lots of drinks. Warm fires in the chilly spring night. You get the picture.
“The night grew late, and everyone went to bed but Luther, who stayed up by the fireplace in the central hall, drinking and looking into the flames. He was so absorbed that he didn’t notice the caretaker and his wife clearing away the empty glasses, or their little boy helping them. Finally, the little boy walked up to him and touched his arm. ‘Do you want help back to your room?’ the boy asked.
“‘I do want to go to bed, but not to my own,’ Luther said. He was too drunk to care that he was talking to a child. But this child was more observant than other children. ‘I can take you to her room,’ the boy offered quietly. The man didn’t answer, but it was obvious he was gripped with some kind of indecision.
“‘I can take you around the outside and through the balcony door,’ the boy said. ‘No one would see you then.’ Luther looked up, his eyes growing clearer, and then he stood and followed the boy.”
I find I’m leaning forward in my chair. I make myself sit back. “What happened then? Did he go to her room? Did she kick him out?”
“No. She welcomed him inside and locked the balcony door behind him.”
“But she resisted him for years! Why give in now?”
Merlin shrugs. “The human heart is a mystery. Perhaps she loved him as ardently as he loved her and couldn’t bear to hold herself back any longer. Perhaps it was the alcohol or the seclusion. Perhaps he wore her down. I do know that she and her husband separated shortly after—perhaps they’d already agreed to the separation and she didn’t see her marriage as an obstacle any more. But what is certain is that they spent the night together—and several more after that. And that winter, she had a baby.”
I search all my memories of President Luther, all of the stories I’ve heard from Grandpa. “I don’t remember Luther having any children though.”
“No children that he claimed.” There’s a fleeting look of sadness in Merlin’s eyes. “The woman, she died in childbirth. It’s rare in this day and age, but it happened. An amniotic embolism. At the time of her death, she and her husband were in the middle of divorce proceedings and the husband knew the child wasn’t his. Luther, for all his public peccadillos, knew it would be politically dicey to claim the baby as his when the child’s conception was shrouded in a cloud of adultery and unseemliness. So the baby was absorbed into the system and put into foster care. Her husband kept their little girl—still a toddler—and Luther went on living his life, although I’ve heard he was never quite the same after her death.”
I think of that woman, perishing before she could hold her own child. Was she alone? Was there anyone to comfort her as she labored, to hold her as she died? “This is awful.”
