The Table of Less Valued Knights Read online

  ‘Yes. I would be beloved and gracious and wear a massive crown with so many jewels on it that nobody could look at it directly, like the sun. I would recline on satin pillows while naked men fed me raspberries with all the bugs picked out. Have you ever noticed how many bugs there are in raspberries?’

  ‘Billions,’ said Conrad solemnly.

  ‘Yes. I hate bugs. They really spoil raspberries. Well, there’d be no bugs for Queen Elaine. And I would have ten – no – seventeen ladies-in-waiting just to do my braids. People would come from miles around to see them. I mean the braids. The ladies-in-waiting, of course, would have been chosen for their remarkable lack of beauty. I would have a table of knights that would be the envy of Camelot, and it would be triangular in shape. I would sit at the apex. My library would be three times the size of that of Constantinople, and I would have read every book. Twice. My wisdom would be renowned the world over. I would dance every night and bestow alms on the poor, not at the same time. I would bring peace to all humanity.’

  ‘What about taxes?’ said Martha.

  ‘Taxes?’ said Elaine.

  ‘I’ve noticed that there are a lot of decisions to be made about taxes. Being king is a full-time administrative position, you have no idea what it’s like. When my – when the last King of Puddock became ill and couldn’t rule any more, an entire council of elders got together just to do his job. People think ruling’s glamorous but it’s a nightmare.’

  ‘Do you have a sense of humour, Marcus?’ said Conrad.

  ‘There’s nothing funny about taxes,’ said Martha.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Elaine. ‘Which is why I would abolish them.’

  ‘A woman of the people,’ said Humphrey.

  ‘You’d be a much better queen than I would,’ said Martha.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, shave your beard off, put you in a dress …’ said Conrad.

  The others laughed at this, but Martha’s heart thumped in her chest.

  Thirty-One

  It took several days for Sir Dorian to prepare for the quest to find Martha. His squire, a plump, cheerful lad by name of Silas, was despatched to oil, sand and polish his second-best suit of armour, alongside his third best, in case the second best became damaged during the adventure ahead. (Sir Dorian was saving his best suit of armour for a special occasion, such as when he would return, triumphant, with Martha, and King Arthur would promote him to some position of prominence in his court.) His page, Keith, a quiet boy just shy of ten years, was charged with gathering provisions and packing, with great difficulty, Sir Dorian’s pavilion, bed, folding table, chair, lamps and portable stove, all of which were loaded into a cart that would be driven by Keith and Silas at a careful distance from Sir Dorian, so as not to spoil the effect of the solitary knight errant on his lonesome quest. The fact that he was riding alongside Edwin did threaten to get in the way of this image, but that could not be helped. Edwin was the bearer of the Pentecost quest, and insisted on accompanying Dorian on the journey, no matter how often the knight assured him that he could stay behind and wait in the safety of Camelot.

  Edwin, for his part, was sick with disappointment at the knight he’d been assigned. He’d been hoping for one of the famous ones, Lancelot or Galahad, or even one of the second-tier knights like Sir Bors. Who’d ever heard of Sir Dorian?

  Though he would never have admitted as much, even to himself, Edwin was jealous. Ever since boyhood, he had wanted to be a Knight of the Round Table. As a child, nothing excited him more than when Tuft Castle hosted tournaments, and all the knights would arrive on their huge stallions, gleaming in their elaborate armour, colourful pennants flying. They would bow to him (and Leo) before enacting the incredible feats of skill, courage and dexterity that were the jousts. (He wasn’t such a fan of the melees, as the churning mud would spatter his best clothes.) His favourite childhood game was Knights. Usually he played with his brother, but Leo always made him lose, which wasn’t fair, so sometimes he’d play with the son of a local lord, who liked dressing up as a princess. This boy – Edwin couldn’t remember his name, just that in princess mode he liked to be called Gwendoline – would pretend to have been captured by a dragon or a giant or an evil uncle, and Edwin would fight his way past whatever dangers they imagined with his wooden sword and rescue him. Then, as he recalled it, one day Gwendoline was simply gone. There was no explanation, and his absence was never discussed, at least not in Edwin’s presence. As children do, Edwin soon forgot about him, but looking back on it now, he wondered if the kid had been removed for his own protection. Tuft wasn’t a place for boys who wore dresses.

  Anyway, back when his father was still alive, Edwin had once confided in him his wish to be a Knight of the Round Table. When his father had stopped laughing, he’d said that being a knight required certain properties – intelligence, integrity, hand–eye coordination, the ability to sleep out of doors without freaking out about bats – none of which Edwin had. Besides, the King said, there was no way he was sending a son of his to Camelot when they had perfectly good knights at their own court. But Tuft knights didn’t have a special table and they didn’t go on quests. Being a knight in his father’s castle was just a fancy way of being one of his dad’s guards, or, later, one of Leo’s, which was unthinkable. So Edwin had given up his dream. And now that he was finally on a quest, the knight was getting all of the glory, and he – the King! (Prince Consort, sniggered Leo in his mind) – was riding behind.

  In order to find Martha, Sir Dorian had told Edwin that they would need the assistance of the Lady of the Lake, who had arcane supernatural knowledge which would help Edwin trace the Queen’s whereabouts. (Although Sir Dorian hadn’t said that she would ‘help Edwin’. He had said she would ‘help me’, which Edwin found infuriating.) As plans went, this sounded straightforward enough. Except, as it turned out, there was no such thing as the Lake. There were lakes, in which the Lady might or might not be, as took her fancy. So, in fact, what they were doing was riding between bodies of water, hanging around for a bit until they were sure that no Lady was going to turn up, and then riding on.

  Even this might have been tolerable if Sir Dorian hadn’t been distracted by extra quests every five minutes. But once word got out that there was a knight errant about, it seemed like every Tom, Dick and Harry was waylaying them to ask for Sir Dorian’s help, and when Edwin said Tom, Dick and Harry, what he meant was Thomasina, Dilys and Harriet.

  Just hours after leaving Camelot, riding south towards Puddock to see if they could pick up Martha’s trail, they passed a village churchyard where a young damsel in a golden dress lay on the ground beside a fresh grave, weeping piteously. Sir Dorian reined in his horse.

  ‘Fair maiden,’ he said, ‘I am Sir Dorian of the Round Table. May I be of some assistance?’

  The damsel scrambled to her feet, furiously wiping her eyes. She smoothed the creases of her dress and dropped a low curtsey, allowing both Sir Dorian and Edwin a good look down her bodice. It was a bodice worth looking down.

  ‘Isadora Duquesne,’ she said in a low, thrilling voice.

  ‘I’m Edwin, King of Puddock,’ said Edwin.

  ‘Puddock doesn’t have a king,’ Isadora said. She turned her attentions to Sir Dorian. ‘Good Sir Dorian, I need to be avenged on behalf of my beloved, taken from me by a fellow named Barnabas, an unworthy type living in a village not three miles from here. If only you could help me!’

  ‘Fear not,’ said Sir Dorian, ‘I will give you all the help that is within my power to give. Pray lead me to this villain.’

  Isadora curtseyed again, then began wending her way along a narrow path in quite the wrong direction from where they’d intended to go. Sir Dorian followed, seemingly forgetting about Edwin.

  ‘But aren’t we supposed to be going to Puddock?’ Edwin complained as he scrambled to catch up with the knight.

  ‘All in good time,’ said Sir Dorian without turning round.

  ‘No use protesting,’ called Silas from the cart, w
hich he and Keith were struggling to manoeuvre along the tiny path. ‘This is the way it always is.’

  When they reached Barnabas’s home – a decent-sized place, if you weren’t used to castles – Sir Dorian lowered the visor on his helmet, took a lance from his squire, and smashed down the door. A young man with thick brown hair ran out. He had obviously been having a meal, and when he heard his front door explode he had forgotten to put down his half-eaten bread roll. Apart from the breadcrumbs in his beard, he was a well-turned-out individual, and Edwin felt both excited and slightly sad that Sir Dorian was going to kill him.

  ‘Miscreant!’ said Sir Dorian, drawing his sword. ‘You have dishonoured this lady!’

  ‘Which lady?’ Barnabas spotted Isadora. ‘Oh, it’s you. I might have known.’

  ‘You have slain the lover of this good maid,’ said Sir Dorian, ‘and so I must –’

  ‘What? Wait, wait,’ said Barnabas, white-faced. He turned to Isadora. ‘Simon’s dead?’

  Isadora flushed. ‘I never said he was dead.’

  ‘But the knight …’ said Barnabas.

  Isadora shook her head. Barnabas suddenly realised that he was still holding the bread roll, looked around for somewhere to put it down, couldn’t see anywhere, was unwilling to toss it to the ground, so, with a slightly foolish look of resignation, hung onto it.

  ‘You were weeping on a grave,’ said Sir Dorian to Isadora.

  ‘Not on Simon’s grave,’ said Isadora, a little defensively. ‘It was just a comfortable place to lie.’

  ‘Was it the graveyard on the road from Camelot, by any chance?’ said Barnabas. ‘You and your obsession with knights!’

  ‘You said that this gentleman had taken your lover away,’ Sir Dorian said sternly to Isadora.

  ‘He did!’ said Isadora. ‘And he’s no gentleman.’

  ‘Is this true?’ said Sir Dorian to Barnabas.

  ‘I am a gentleman,’ Barnabas bristled. ‘But as for the rest of it, I suppose, in the loosest possible sense, one could say that I took him away. Simon had got dull as swill, spending all his time mooning after Dora, and all I did was persuade him to come out and get a drink or two –’

  ‘Or three,’ said Isadora.

  ‘– down at the tavern, and she’s got her petticoat in a twist about it.’

  ‘So he’s not dead,’ said Sir Dorian.

  ‘He’s not even hurt,’ said Barnabas. ‘Nothing worse than a hangover, anyway.’

  ‘We were supposed to be spending the evening with my mother,’ said Isadora.

  From Edwin’s point of view, it was pretty embarrassing that Sir Dorian had made a detour off an important quest for a king (prince consort) for such a trifling matter, but Sir Dorian laughed.

  ‘Joust to make it worth my while?’ he said.

  ‘Oh all right,’ said Barnabas, ‘but don’t get me in the stomach, I’ve only just eaten.’

  Barnabas, who seemed an amiable, slightly bookish type, never stood a chance. It was over in seconds. All the same, Sir Dorian did a lap of honour around the village green as if he’d just defeated the Minotaur. Edwin thought that would be the end of it, but Isadora insisted on thanking Sir Dorian for defending her honour – as she put it – by inviting him to dinner with her family. Sir Dorian was squeezed between Isadora and her mother, a sapphire-eyed beauty who must have been a child bride. Edwin, meanwhile, was seated at the far end of the table, next to Isadora’s seven-year-old brother whose only topic of conversation was horses, and a profoundly deaf great-aunt. On the subject of deafness, Edwin was too far away to overhear Sir Dorian’s conversation (and far too bored to listen to his neighbours) so he didn’t know what pretext it was that took Sir Dorian and Isadora away from the table midway through the meal, though he could guess why both of them were pink-cheeked when they returned some time later.

  And so it continued. Edwin had never seen so many damsels in distress in his life, though in his opinion a lot of them weren’t particularly distressed. Like Isadora, most had had some kind of lovers’ tiff and wanted a knight to fight for their supposed honour. It seemed to Edwin that fighting for the honour of these damsels was a clear case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted – bolted into the field of a welcoming stallion. While he usually didn’t object to a damsel of that ilk – far from it – these ones only had eyes for Sir Dorian. And Sir Dorian was incapable of saying no. ‘Always do ladies, damsels, and gentle women succour,’ he’d say cheerfully, and, ‘Be for all ladies and fight their quarrels.’ Since this was part of the Knights’ Code, apparently, Sir Dorian claimed that he was obliged to take on every single one of these so-called quests. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d say to Edwin with an exaggerated sigh, ‘but there’s nothing I can do.’ He didn’t look very sorry as he picked up his jousting lance to knock yet another toothless philanderer off his nag. He looked even less sorry when he came back from being thanked by the damsel, who insisted on offering him something for his trouble, not money of course, perhaps a bite to eat, why don’t you follow me into the larder and help me get something off this high shelf, oops, the door has closed …

  So progress was slow. Still, at least it gave Edwin time to think of all the tortures and indignities he would inflict on Martha when he finally caught up with her. If she wasn’t in distress when she ran away she’d certainly be in distress after he found her. The longer it took, the more ‘succour’ Sir Dorian gave the damsels they met, the more baroque Edwin’s imagination got. His errant – in every sense of the word – wife would pay for every second of boredom and embarrassment that Sir Dorian was subjecting him to. After all, if it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t even be on this miserable quest. It was only fair. And Edwin prided himself on being fair.

  Thirty-Two

  As the days passed, the heat of the summer grew. The air was thick with it, a terrible, invisible blanket they were forced to push through. Elaine appeared to be suffering most, emerging from her tent late and unrested, sweating greenly on top of her horse, picking listlessly at her food when they stopped for meals, and offering little by way of conversation. Humphrey worried that she might be ill, but she brushed off his concern.

  ‘It’s this weather,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it. I can’t wait for it to break.’ She glowered at the blue sky, which stubbornly refused to produce even one small cloud.

  ‘We could reduce our hours in the saddle,’ suggested Humphrey. ‘Only ride first thing in the morning and then late evening before it gets dark. Stay in the shade in the heat of the day.’

  ‘No!’ said Elaine. ‘We’ve got to press on. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’

  Humphrey agreed, even though the temperature was driving him mad too. And Conrad and the boy. The only one of the group unaffected was Jemima, who seemed in her element, though when they stopped to drink she’d suck up half a river with her trunk and squirt the rest over her head. Conrad, caught in the spray, didn’t object at all.

  Spending time in the infernal heat of the forges interrogating blacksmiths was a particular ordeal. Humphrey found himself plotting routes that, while broadly following Leila’s instructions, avoided villages and towns as much as possible. Devoid of knights in black armour, Elaine turned to Leila more and more, hoping that the sword would be able to tell her where her fiancé was.

  ‘Where is Sir Alistair?’ she’d ask Leila, but when Martha spun the sword, she just went round and round and round until Martha had to put a boot down to stop her.

  After one of these disappointments, Elaine burst into tears. When Humphrey tried to comfort her, she shouted at him, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. My father was right, I should have got a real knight!’

  Humphrey turned and walked away, over to the fire pit where Conrad was peeling carrots, while Jemima loitered nearby, hoping for scraps.

  ‘I used to be better at this,’ he said to his squire.

  Before Conrad could respond, Martha wandered over. ‘Better at what?’

  ‘Well, the o
ld days were the glory days,’ said Humphrey, perking up at the sight of a receptive audience. ‘You’ve heard of the Questing Beast, I’ll bet? Turned out to be just a big stray cat. You should have seen King Pellinore’s face …’

  The pair drifted away from Conrad, who wielded his peeling knife with new irritation.

  Later, after the sun had dipped beneath the horizon and the sky was turning from indigo to black, Elaine took Humphrey aside to apologise for her harsh words.

  ‘I don’t want another knight,’ she said, resting her hand on his shoulder for emphasis.

  ‘It’s fine, I’d already forgotten about it,’ Humphrey said, shrugging her off, but the ghost of her touch lingered for hours.

  The heat barely dropped that night. Martha, wedged between Humphrey and Conrad, stopped even trying to sleep. She missed the way Deborah used to fan her during heatwaves at the castle. Bored and uncomfortable, she slipped out of the tent, onto the expanse of heath where they’d set up camp. The air was a little fresher outside, though there wasn’t so much as the hint of a breeze. She sat on a log next to the embers of the campfire and looked up at the stars scattered in fistfuls across the sky. She could take Silver and run away, she realised. But where would she go? Leila was strapped to Humphrey’s hip even at night. Leaving would mean leaving the sword, leaving Humphrey – though why should this matter? Staying with these people was her best chance of finding Jasper. Whether she liked them or not was irrelevant.

  ‘You’re still here.’

  Martha looked up. Humphrey had followed her out of the tent. He was wearing only the long underwear he slept in. Black hair curled all the way down his broad chest and crept beneath the waistband of his underwear to whatever lay below. Martha found herself thinking of the book she’d looked at the night before her wedding, and felt a renewed surge of disgust, but this time tinged with a strange, slightly frightening curiosity.

  ‘I was just trying to cool down a bit,’ she said.