The Table of Less Valued Knights Page 11

  ‘If you want to rescue your brother you must come and receive this sword from me. It’s regulations.’

  ‘Is there someone else I can talk to?’

  ‘If you put your complaint in writing I’ll raise it with the –’

  ‘Forget it! I’ll get in the damn boat!’

  Martha picked her way over to the jetty. She climbed gingerly into the boat, untied it, sat down and picked up the algae-stained oars. ‘This had better be worth it,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a very good magic sword,’ said the Locum of the Lake/Pond. Martha felt the pull of the sword again, though she was loath to admit it.

  ‘And if I wield this sword,’ she said, trying to figure out how to make the boat go in the direction of the Locum rather than round in a small circle, ‘I’ll rescue my brother?’

  ‘Not definitely. Pull harder with the right.’

  ‘Not definitely?’

  ‘Good acts one way. How Evil responds is up to Evil. I know it’s not ideal, but it took us years to negotiate that contract.’

  ‘I am on the side of good, though?’

  ‘I can’t confirm it. Evil often thinks it’s the good one and that Good is evil, and as for Sorcery, we’re inscrutable. If you stick your oar in and push with it, you’ll go in reverse.’

  Martha concentrated on the boat for a while. Every time she lifted the oars out of the water, cold pond water dripped down from the blades and up her sleeves. Every so often the Locum of the Lake/Pond would make observations like ‘Have you never been in a boat before?’ and ‘Could you get a move on, please, I have a Chalice of Chastity to deliver before my shift is up’, which didn’t help with Martha’s mood at all.

  ‘These oars are giving me splinters,’ said Martha.

  ‘Put on some gloves?’

  ‘You’re not helping.’

  ‘I’m not here to help.’

  ‘You don’t say. Surely I’m close enough, now?’

  ‘Not even almost.’

  ‘What if I don’t want to rescue my brother?’

  ‘Martha,’ said the Locum of the Lake/Pond, her voice suddenly serious. ‘We have done a bit of research, you know. We don’t give these swords to just anybody.’

  Martha focused all of her will on moving the boat in the right direction, as the rain clouds she had spotted earlier began to deliver their load. Finally she drew up alongside the Locum, dropped the oars and wiped her sweaty forehead on the back of her wrist. She signed and dated the form the Locum gave her, and then, at long last, she took possession of the sword. As soon as she touched it a thrill ran up her arm. She closed her hand around the hilt and felt the perfect rightness of the way it filled her palm. She gave it an experimental swoosh. It was a good swoosh, though it made the boat rock alarmingly.

  ‘I’ve got to give you this as well, or I won’t get my bonus,’ said the Locum, tossing a sword belt with a plain leather scabbard into the boat at Martha’s feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Martha.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said the Locum, a little sulkily, as the murky water of the pond swallowed her.

  Twenty-Five

  Forgetting that she had planned to have lunch, Martha remounted Silver and guided him back towards the road. But she didn’t know which way to turn. Jasper was still alive. How was it possible? His bones had been on display in a glass case in the castle chapel for the last six years. They were decoratively arranged around a sentimental watercolour of the boy in his prime, which had been framed with the precious stones that gave Jasper his name. Then again, she supposed the bones could have been anybody’s. Jasper’s squire had arranged for the flesh to be boiled off them before sending them home, so none of them had ever seen the body. But if they weren’t Jasper’s bones, whose were they? There was no way of asking the squire, because he, too, had been killed, not long after Jasper’s death. Martha shook her head. Apparently there was no such thing as Jasper’s death. So where was he? What had happened to him? And why had he never come home?

  Martha tried to feel joy and relief in the fact that her brother was still alive, and of course she did feel those things. But she also felt a deep, terrible sense of disturbance. Death was not the worst fate that could befall a person, far from it. Her father was better off dead than alive in the state he had been in. And she remembered a story she had heard as a child, which had given her nightmares, about Elaine of Corbenic, the mother of Galahad. Until Lancelot rescued her, she was trapped by a sorceress’s spell for years in a bath of boiling water, consumed in endless, hopeless agony. What if Jasper was in a similar predicament? Did she really have the ability to rescue him, even with a magic sword? She drew the sword again for a moment, looked at its beautiful, gleaming blade. She had no idea what to do with a sword, she had never even held one before. She had to hope that the sword knew what it was doing.

  As for where to look for Jasper, she had no idea. He had been in the far north when he died – when he disappeared – or so she had been told. In reality he could have been anywhere. And that was six years ago. Who was to say that he hadn’t moved since then? Curse that damned bitch in the pond! Why couldn’t she have told her where to find him? Martha should have commanded her, as Queen –

  Martha stopped. She wasn’t Queen. If Jasper was alive, he was the King. She was just a princess, same as she had always been. When she found Jasper, he would take his rightful throne and she would … Go back to a life of putting rosettes on marrows? And of being married to Edwin? No. Martha would find him, she would rescue him, she would send him home, but she was not going back to that.

  Which didn’t solve the problem of where her brother was. Martha had nothing, no clues, no way to even begin tracking him down.

  Except what had the pond woman said? That the purpose of the sword was to help Martha find her brother. Not just save him. Find him.

  Martha dismounted from Silver and removed the sword from its scabbard. She placed it on a flat piece of ground, put her hand on the hilt, and then spun it as fast as it would turn. The direction in which the sword pointed when it stopped? That was the way she would go.

  Twenty-Six

  It turned out that you couldn’t spin a sword on any old piece of ground, because clumps of grass or sticking-out stones tended to get in the way, so every time she came to a suitable piece of flat rock or earth, Martha stopped to check for directions. The sword appeared to be pretty keen on heading north-west, more or less back the way she’d come from, guiding Martha away from the crossing to France. Instead they travelled through Puddock and across the border into Tuft – a hefty amount of her gold being confiscated at the customs post on the way in.

  At first it was an uneventful journey, though Martha had a feeling of disquiet, having no way of knowing whether the sword was taking her closer to her brother or just in random directions.

  Then, late one night, she had gone to the dining room of an inn. The inn was slightly off the path designated by the sword, but it was pouring with rain, and if she’d carried on in the direction the sword had wanted her to travel she’d have been riding for at least another two hours before reaching shelter. She decided to pick up the path in the morning, and headed for the nearest village, a rather bleak place where the houses were still black with soot from the last time marauders had tried to burn it down, which, had they succeeded, would probably have been an improvement. The inn was called the Dipsomaniac Camel, and she supposed that the sign might have been of a camel, but she had never seen a camel, and neither, she was fairly certain, had the sign painter.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, the inn’s dining hall was still busy, perhaps because the sleeping quarters were outside up a flight of steps and nobody was ready to head out into the pouring rain.

  Martha took a seat at the end of a long, thickly hewn wooden table, and the barmaid brought her a sour ale and a trencher of stale bread and rancid butter. A few seats down from her was a man dressed as a knight, surrounded by a circle of onlookers. Martha couldn’t believe
that he was a real knight; it seemed more likely that he had stolen his colours, possibly from a corpse. The flesh of his blotchy, purple face seemed to be melting away from the bone like bad tallow, his desultory pieces of armour were rusty and unmatched, his teeth outnumbered the hairs on his head, his eyes outnumbered his teeth, and he both looked and smelt as if he’d been rolling in a midden. To Martha’s astonishment, the supposed knight’s audience – which was considerable – was hanging on his every word.

  ‘I’ve reason to believe that she’s in the vicinity,’ he told the group. ‘Possibly being held in this very village.’

  ‘What would the Queen of Puddock be doing in a cesspit like this?’ called out a stocky man with a greasy cowlick of hair half obscuring one eye.

  Martha’s hand flew to her sword’s hilt, and she’d half started out of her chair before she remembered that she was in disguise. She sat back down and took a deep breath to steady herself.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked a scrubby-faced boy who was sitting across from her, and who didn’t look old enough to be in a tavern, let alone making his way so steadily through the tankards of ale littered around his trencher.

  ‘Sir Gordon Pencuddy. He’s a knight. I’m his squire.’

  ‘He really is a knight?’

  ‘Of a sort. He is of the Table of Less Valued Knights.’

  ‘And what is it he’s saying about the Queen of Puddock?’ Martha managed to choke out.

  ‘That silly wench? Haven’t you heard? She’s gone and got herself kidnapped. This is why they shouldn’t let women rule. Sir Gordon and I are trying to track her down.’

  ‘Succeeding, thank you!’ called Sir Gordon, while some people cheered and others hooted their derision. ‘The reward is as good as mine.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll give you a reward once you weasel her out!’ shouted a lanky, lantern-jawed man at the far end of the table.

  ‘That skinny piece? I’d sooner ride a weasel,’ said Sir Gordon.

  ‘He would and all!’ said the man with the cowlick.

  ‘Though there’s no need to look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire,’ said the knight.

  The gathered crowd laughed.

  ‘There’s a reward?’ said Martha to the squire.

  ‘Well, the new King with the giant teeth went up to see Arthur in Camelot,’ said the squire.

  ‘You mean the Prince Consort,’ muttered Martha.

  ‘Arthur gave him his very own Knight of the Round Table to go running around looking for his bitch. That Knight’s reward will be virtue, of course. But Sir Gordon reckons if he finds her first, this King will have to give us a real reward. If he doesn’t, he’ll just refuse to hand her over. I’m sure he can find some use for her. It’s not every Less Valued Knight who can boast of tupping a queen, even a minor and scrawny one.’

  ‘She’d die first,’ said Martha.

  ‘Or during. Or after, I have no doubt,’ said the squire. ‘The King won’t hold onto her for long, now she’s been kidnapped and sullied. He’ll keep her until she’s spawned an heir, and then my guess is she’ll meet with an unfortunate accident, leaving him to rule as Regent.’

  Martha felt her insides heave. She knew he was right. If she’d ever considered heading home to Puddock – and on several miserable, sleepless nights, she had – this made her determined never to return.

  ‘What makes you think she’s here?’ she asked Sir Gordon.

  ‘I can’t reveal my sources,’ said the Knight, ‘but they are very reliable.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ the squire told Martha. ‘He’s checking every village from here to Cornwall. She’s got to be somewhere. It’s basically a lucky dip.’

  ‘I’d give her a lucky dip!’ said the lanky wit from the crowd.

  ‘Well,’ said Martha, standing up, her heart pounding madly in her chest, ‘it’s been delightful meeting all of you fellow men, but I’ve got a long ride in the morning.’

  ‘You know, you look a bit like the Queen,’ said Sir Gordon, squinting at Martha. ‘Are you sure you’re not her brother?’

  ‘Her brother is dead,’ said Martha.

  ‘Seriously, though.’ The knight took a shiny, newly minted coin out of a pouch at his belt and held it up. ‘Spitting image, apart from that caterpillar on your lip.’

  ‘Very funny,’ said Martha, forcing herself to laugh. ‘I wish I had half her money. Goodnight, everyone.’

  She forced herself not to run until she was out of the inn. Then she raced to the stables, mounted Silver, and rode away as fast as she could.

  Twenty-Seven

  From then on, Martha travelled with one hand on her sword, for reassurance. She tried to avoid people as much as possible, buying herself a bedroll so that, when the weather was good, she could sleep under trees rather than in inns. Instead of frequenting markets, she attempted to gather her food from the wild as much as possible, though that proved harder than storybooks would have her believe. She was hungry all the time.

  A few days after the encounter at the Dipsomaniac Camel, Martha was riding through a small wood bordering an area of heathland in the centre of Tuft. The wood was fairly dense but not particularly brambly, with minimal immediate threat of carnivores, bandits or stinging nettles, so she decided to stop to pick berries for breakfast. After what felt like hours, she had managed, triumphantly, to gather a small palmful of green wild strawberries, which, though she pretended to herself to find them delicious, were tongue-shrivellingly bitter. At least there probably weren’t enough of them to give her the runs. Defecating, it turned out, was far from the highlight of this horseback adventure, especially as she hadn’t thought to pack a spade, and the sword managed to shirk digging activities by developing a stubborn weight and unwieldiness when brought into proximity with dirt.

  After she’d eaten her berries and remounted, she picked her way through the trees, trying, and mostly succeeding, not to let low branches smack her in the face. It was slow going, so she decided to cut across the heathland, even though there was more chance of running into other people on open ground.

  She was just turning towards the heath when her sword erupted out of her scabbard and, with Martha clinging to the hilt, smacked her horse hard on the rump. Silver reared and bolted out of the woods. Martha screamed and tried to pull on the reins with her unsworded hand, while the sword itself led the charge, dragging Martha, horse and all, towards a group of travellers: a man, a woman, and what appeared to be a giant, riding on – if the drawings she’d seen in the castle library were to be believed – an elephant.

  ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!’ begged Martha, as the sword swung at one of the travellers – she didn’t know which, because she had her eyes shut, her arm juddered painfully as her blade clashed against what must be her opponent’s sword with resounding metallic clangs.

  I’m going to die, she suddenly thought, with perfect clarity. What a ridiculous way to go.

  And then the fear took over once again.

  PART THREE

  Twenty-Eight

  Humphrey knocked the boy from his horse and jumped down after him, fighting his way forward while the boy parried his blows surprisingly expertly for someone who had his eyes shut.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ shouted the boy, in a high, girlish voice. ‘Stop hitting me!’

  ‘I’m not hitting you,’ said Humphrey, grunting with the effort of the fight. ‘You don’t “hit” with swords. And anyway, you tried to kill me. You’re not in a position to make demands.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to!’ wailed the boy.

  ‘To me it looked a lot like you meant to.’

  The boy was now staggering backwards under the weight of Humphrey’s assault, the knight swinging his blade harder and faster to try to deal the mortal blow. Still, somehow, the boy managed to fend him off, even though he hadn’t opened his eyes so much as a crack.

  ‘Humphrey’s going to kill him,’ Elaine said to Conrad in a horrified voice. She had never seen anyone d
ie, and had no wish to, especially not a terrified child.

  ‘I expect so,’ said Conrad, with an attempt at casualness. He had never seen anyone die either, but, as both a squire and a giant, he thought it was the kind of thing he should take in his stride. He didn’t feel like he was taking it in his stride – in fact he felt a cold, sick terror, and an urgent desire to urinate – but maybe that came with practice.

  ‘Can’t you do something about it?’ said Elaine.

  ‘Why should I?’ said Conrad. ‘The boy started it!’ Which was true enough. Quite apart from that, the last thing he wanted to do was climb down from the safety of Jemima’s back and enter the fray.

  ‘He’s a child!’ insisted Elaine.

  ‘He must be as old as I am.’

  ‘He’s frightened!’

  ‘Well then, he shouldn’t have attacked a knight!’

  This was undeniable. But Elaine couldn’t sit doing nothing while this scared kid was hacked to pieces, even if he had started the fight.

  ‘Humphrey, leave him alone!’ she shouted.

  ‘If I stop, he’ll kill me,’ Humphrey shouted back.

  ‘No, I won’t!’ said the boy. But still his sword fought on, repelling Humphrey’s every stroke.

  Conrad and Elaine had both seen duels at tournaments, but this was different. It was ugly and brutal, devoid of the courtly flourishes knights added to entertain the crowd. It was a workmanlike, determined push towards death. Not knowing what else to do, Elaine jumped down off her horse and leapt onto Humphrey’s back, putting her hands over his eyes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ yelled Humphrey. ‘Do you want to get us both killed?’

  He tried to shake her off, still waving his sword, now ineffectually, at his opponent. The boy, finally released from the onslaught, turned and began to run. But the blade of his sword got tangled in the undergrowth, and he tripped and went flying, dropping his sword as he fell. He lay winded in the grass, whimpering and trying to find the strength to crawl away.