Read The Call of Destiny (The Return of Arthur Book 1) for Free Online

worker, as
well as being a wife to the man she had loved since she was twelve, and a
mother to their only child, eleven months old Keir.
    ‘The little darling,’ she
said, her pretty face glowing with happiness as she stroked the baby’s tiny
cheeks with the tips of her fingers.
    ‘You know something? He looks
like you,’ she told Hector, who was about to point out the logical fallacy when
he caught the look in Merlin’s eye and thought better of it.
    Merlin beckoned his friends to
the kitchen table. Husband and wife sat opposite hi m, Hector with his arm
round Elizabeth whilst she cradled baby Arthur. ‘I want you both to promise me
something. When Arthur is ready to hear it, you must tell him he is adopted.’
    Hector liked to have the whys
and wherefores of everything. ‘How will we know when he’s ready?’
    ‘When the time comes, you will
know. But whatever happens, you must tell him before his thirteenth birthday.
Do I have your promise?’ Merlin was looking at Elizabeth.
    ‘I suppose so,’ she said.
‘Though why you men always want everything so cut and dried I shall never
know.’
    Merlin was content. ‘You will
make him a fine mother.’ ‘Will he want to know who . . . they are?’ She
could not bring
    herself to use the word
“parents”, for in her own mind Arthur was already her child, and she had no
intention of sharing him with anyone.
    ‘One day he will,’ said
Merlin. ‘Who are they?’ asked Hector.
    Merlin smiled, knowing his
friend as well as he did. ‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that now.’
    Hector sighed, frustrated.
‘It’s just that I like to have everything clear.’
    ‘I know,’ said Merlin. He reached across and
patted Hector’s shoulder affectionately. ‘Patience, my friend. Everything will
be clear in time.’
    As Elizabeth rocked the
sleeping child, her whole body was flooded by a wave of tenderness so powerful
that she almost fainted. When her head cleared, she said, looking down at him,
‘My son is special.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Merlin. ‘Why us?’
she asked.
    ‘It is written,’ said Merlin enigmatically.
    For a full minute they did not
speak. The bracket clock on the mantelpiece ticked self-importantly, the damp
logs hissed and snapped in the flames. ‘On the sixteenth of January,’ said
Merlin, breaking the silence, ‘is the next full moon. I will tell you what you
must do.’
    Whenthe night of the full moon
came, the outside temperature was below zero. Hector stood at the kitchen door
that led to the back garden. ‘Be reasonable, Elizabeth, it’s far too cold.’
    She clasped the baby to her
bosom. ‘We gave Merlin our word.’
    To Hector it simply did not
make sense, and if a thing didn’t make sense, you shouldn’t do it. ‘It’s
freezing out there. You want the boy to catch pneumonia?’
    ‘We must do as Merlin told us.
Don’t ask me why. I just know it,’ said Elizabeth, beginning to remove the
baby’s clothes.
    ‘Are you out of your mind,
girl? The poor mite will catch his death!’
    ‘Stand aside, Hector.’ She
spoke quietly but with such authority that he moved away from the door, though
still protesting.
    ‘This is madness. I’ll tell
Merlin we did what he wanted us to do. He’ll never know we didn’t.’
    ‘He’ll know,’ insisted Elizabeth.
    Hector shook his head in bewilderment. ‘It
doesn’t make sense.’
    ‘Some things don’t.’ With that
she opened the door and went out to the garden followed by Hector, muttering
angrily. The night sky was overcast, the moon and stars nowhere to be seen.
Elizabeth held the naked baby high, and Hector, shrugging his shoulders in
defeat, found himself speaking aloud the words that Merlin said would come to
him.
    ‘We offer you your son,
Arthur, who has come again. We shall love him as our own; we shall prepare him
as far as we are able. It is written that he will be wise and courageous and
will perform great deeds. It is written that he will know much happiness, and
much sadness