The Table of Less Valued Knights Read online

  ‘Sorry,’ said Humphrey. ‘I have to fight you, for the glory of God and King Arthur. Believe me, I’d rather not. But you’ve got to give the people what they want.’

  By the time Tony had saddled up his horse, a skinny, mangy creature which spent most of its life tethered to a post in his back garden, and he and Humphrey had made their way to the village green, quite a crowd had gathered to watch. The villagers were excited to have a real knight on their patch, taking on their very own outlaw. Still more thrilling was the news of a giant riding a monster, which attracted a throng of children, all desperate to have a turn on Jemima’s back.

  ‘Nobody’s frightened of me,’ said Conrad, lifting a six-year-old girl up onto the elephant, and walking Jemima around in a circle. ‘Why is nobody ever frightened of me?’

  To give the villagers a proper spectacle, Humphrey and Tony the Outlaw feigned a series of near misses and light clashes of shields before Humphrey finally tipped Tony – a poor sportsman at best – off his horse and into the churned-up grass, to a chorus of oohs and aahs from the assembled throng. Even though the result was a foregone conclusion, Elaine was relieved when it was over, with no more damage done than a dent to Tony’s black armour.

  Afterwards, Tony swore fealty to Humphrey, as was traditional, and vowed to devote his life to the good of humanity from then on. Humphrey embraced him, then sent him on his way, to whitewash his house and no doubt to plot further crimes.

  ‘Which will now all be committed in my name,’ Humphrey muttered to his squire.

  ‘It’s not a perfect system,’ said Conrad.

  ‘And we’re no closer to finding who kidnapped Sir Alistair,’ said Elaine.

  ‘On the contrary, we’re one man down,’ said Humphrey. He didn’t speculate as to how many men they had to go.

  Ten

  They pitched their tents in a meadow close to Too Small To Have A Name, relieved to be sleeping off the long journey at last. Elaine had a tent to herself, within screaming distance, as Conrad put it, of Humphrey and his squire’s – ‘That’s not exactly reassuring, Conrad,’ she said. Jemima slept in front of Elaine’s tent flap, though, which made her feel less vulnerable. Conrad and Humphrey shared a tent – ‘Within snoring distance,’ Elaine retorted later. (She assumed the giant-sized snorts she’d heard coming from their tent were from Conrad’s epic nose, but in fact they emanated from Humphrey, while Conrad snoozed as quietly as a baby lamb.)

  Conrad got up early the next day and went to buy them a meat pie for their breakfast, from a stall in the village that Tony the Outlaw had recommended. On the way back he passed a reasonably sanitary-looking midden and pinched a handful of vegetable scraps for Jemima. By the time he got back to camp, Elaine had emerged from her tent and was rubbing herbs on her teeth to clean them. There was no sign of Humphrey. Conrad went over to the tent and held the flap open so that sunlight shone directly into his master’s face. Humphrey dragged his head out of the glare and opened his eyes.

  ‘Good morning!’ said Conrad.

  ‘Morning? Since when do we get up in the morning?’

  Conrad lifted the tent flap further up, so that Humphrey’s face was in the sunbeam again. After a moment or two, Humphrey gave in and pushed himself up to a seated position. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve slept on a bedroll,’ he said. ‘Are you sure I didn’t lose that joust yesterday? Bloody hell.’

  He hauled himself out from under the blankets, feeling a familiar stab of pain in his right knee, which no longer pointed in the same direction as his left thanks to a Saracen with a long lance and a short temper who’d knocked him off his horse many years ago. That was only to be expected. What had started to bother him lately were the other, newer pains which had never troubled him as a younger man. His feet felt uneven on the ground and his shins protested as he walked. His back seemed to be made of one resisting piece that refused on any account to bend. He was sure that one of his shoulders had lodged itself inches higher than the other. And why did the joints of his fingers hurt? That didn’t even make sense.

  He splashed some water onto his face in an effort to make himself presentable, pulled on his leggings and shirt, and went outside into the unexpectedly warm caress of the day. Despite himself, he smiled. He’d forgotten how much he liked being out of doors.

  In the space beside the tents, Elaine was sitting on her saddlebag, holding a pewter plate with a slice of pie on it, which she was looking at with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  ‘What’s the matter? Isn’t it good?’ asked Conrad, who had taken half the pie for himself. He tended to lean towards quantity rather than quality when it came to food.

  ‘It’s delicious, thank you,’ said Elaine. There was no evidence to suggest that she’d actually tasted the pie. ‘Good morning, Sir Humphrey.’

  ‘Morning,’ said Humphrey, wondering what he’d done to be busted back to ‘Sir’. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Elaine. ‘It’s just …’ She paused, then carried on in a rush. ‘Excuse me if I’m speaking out of turn,’ she said. ‘Obviously, I’m not a knight. And you’re the one running the quest. But it seems to me, I’m not sure how efficient it is, to be going one by one to all the blacksmiths in Tuft, bribing them to tell us who they’ve made black armour for recently. If every village has a forge, it could take months to visit them all, and goodness knows what will have happened to Sir Alistair by the time we find him. If we find him. We don’t even know that the kidnapper used a forge to get the armour made. He might have a private armourer, a lot of the good families do. And there might be secret armourers who only service the criminal fraternity and aren’t to be found shoeing horses in little Tuft villages.’

  Humphrey and Conrad stared at her.

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ said Humphrey.

  ‘Not really,’ said Elaine.

  Humphrey took his slice of pie and sat down on the grass, which was still damp from dew.

  ‘I’m sorry that you’re not happy with my strategy,’ he said carefully. ‘Is there another approach that you’d like to suggest?’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to tread on any toes,’ said Elaine, ‘but I would imagine that the kidnapper targeted Sir Alistair either as an attack on my family, or as an attack on Sir Alistair or his family. Or, possibly, it has something to do with him being one of King Leo’s knights. Those are the main theories I’m working with. I think we’ve probably ruled out it being anything to do with my family, otherwise we’d have received a ransom demand, or a message of triumph at the very least. So, if it were my quest, which it sort of is, I would head either to King Leo’s castle, or to Sir Alistair’s family seat, to find out whether there is any kind of motive for the crime. But I don’t really know what I’m talking about.’

  Humphrey nodded slowly, chewing on his pie. There wasn’t a lot to chew, but it gave his mouth something to do while his brain worked. Conrad watched Humphrey’s face, trying and failing to read his mood.

  ‘Thank you for your thoughts,’ Humphrey said at last. ‘Given your concerns, what I propose is that we plot a course in the direction of Sir Alistair’s home town, but we continue to stop at the forges we pass on the way, in case they have any information that may be useful to us. If that’s acceptable to you?’

  Elaine nodded, but after a couple of nods her head started to go into a shake. ‘It’s just, I’m in an awful hurry to find him,’ she said.

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ said Humphrey.

  ‘We’re supposed to be getting married in less than a fortnight.’

  ‘I’m sure, under the circumstances, that the priest won’t mind postponing.’

  ‘And I don’t have unlimited funds. If you spend all our money on bribes, we’re not going to have any left for food.’

  ‘We can hunt for food,’ said Humphrey. ‘I brought my bow and arrows.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’ said Elaine reluctantly.

  ‘Trust me,’ said Humphrey.

  ‘Very well.’ But E
laine didn’t look happy. She handed her plate to Conrad and stood up. ‘You can have mine if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m not very hungry. I’m going to …’ She struggled to find an elegant turn of phrase. ‘Perform my ablutions. Please don’t come behind the tent.’

  ‘She’s not wrong, is she?’ said Conrad to Humphrey, as Elaine disappeared around the side of her tent.

  ‘No,’ said Humphrey, his eyes on the space where she had been a moment ago. ‘She’s not.’

  Eleven

  Despite Elaine’s misgivings, they continued to stop at all the forges along the road towards Sir Alistair’s home, which was located at the far end of Tuft. Apart from checking on the buyers of black armour, Humphrey knew that smiths had loud voices – not only in that they had to shout above the tumult of the forge, but also in the sense that with so many travellers stopping to have their horses seen to, news travelled fast from smithy to smithy. If there were any rumours about the identity of the Knight in Black, a forge would be a good place to pick them up. Unfortunately, what happened was that word of their quest preceded them on the forge grapevine, making the smiths more recalcitrant and forcing the cost of bribes up.

  They all hated visiting the forges, Humphrey included. Forges were stuffy, noisy and cramped, clouded with thick smoke that choked their eyes and throats and left their skin smeared with soot. But the more restless Conrad and Elaine became, the more Humphrey insisted on stopping at each and every forge, refusing to be in the wrong. Humphrey thought it was a bit rich for the two of them to complain; they weren’t the ones who had to fight duels with every black-armour-wearing miscreant in Tuft, sometimes several in a day. When Conrad moaned that he was getting blisters from having to chop down so many trees to make lances, Humphrey stripped to his britches to show them both the huge yellow and purple bruises he was covered in from having been knocked off his horse so many times. Whatever he might claim, fifteen years without a quest made even the best of knights quite rusty when it came to jousting.

  Meanwhile, although they still tried to ride incognito, they could hardly camouflage the individual who – to his vast irritation – was becoming known as Sir Humphrey’s monster-riding jester. They were assailed at every turn by people who wanted to see Jemima for themselves, or who had heard that touching her thick grey hide would cure any ailment. Others, knowing that there was a knight travelling with the famous monster, chased after the group with quests of their own, which they hoped to entice Humphrey to take on.

  ‘This,’ Humphrey told Elaine, ‘is why I don’t travel in armour. A knight’s work is never done. Rescuing damsels, fighting sorceresses, getting cats out of trees, opening tight jars. And all for honour, God’s least fungible reward.’

  And yet he was in no hurry to finish this quest. Back at Camelot, he’d got up late, eaten, drunk, gambled, caroused, got bored, got fat. That was his life. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed this: being on his horse, out in the world, with a sense of purpose for once. Even the fights were becoming exhilarating, as the more practice he got, the more often he won. As for having Elaine riding beside him – beautiful, funny, smart Elaine, who not only sang along with Conrad’s dirty travelling songs but made up extra verses – who wouldn’t want that to carry on for as long as possible? Of course, he reminded himself, she was betrothed. But perhaps, if it took him a long time to complete the quest … long enough for the kidnapper to tire of Sir Alistair … What, and so the kidnapper kills him? That’s your happy ending? He tried again. What if he never found Sir Alistair … So he stays locked up for ever, while you deflower his bride? There was no satisfactory answer. But for as long as he didn’t find Sir Alistair while still being able to demonstrate that he was looking, he felt that could enjoy being with Elaine without guilt.

  Elaine, however, was growing more desperate with every passing day. Finally, on the morning of the day that should have been her wedding, she stared into her breakfast bowl, nauseated by the congealed beans therein, as tears brimmed in her eyes.

  ‘We’re never going to find him,’ she said.

  ‘You need to be patient. These things take time,’ said Humphrey, aware of how lame he sounded.

  ‘Sir Alistair and I should be getting married right now.’ Her throat was cramped with the effort of not crying in front of them. ‘Instead I’m cold and damp and I haven’t slept properly for two weeks, and I’m in dirty clothes, sitting in a field with a disgraced ex-knight and a miniature giant, and we’re no closer to finding out what happened to the man who is supposed to be my husband, and if we don’t find him soon I may as well die.’

  She got up from the fireside and went into her tent, pulling the flap shut behind her. It wasn’t as effective as slamming a door, but the message was clear.

  She barely said another word all day. When Humphrey fought his duel, against a woman this time, who had hair cropped short and a surprisingly deft way with a lance, Elaine didn’t even watch, but chose that moment to go and refill their water skins at a nearby well. Humphrey, distracted by her absence, lost concentration, allowing the female outlaw to knock him from his horse, much to the delight of Conrad and the gathered crowd.

  That night, Elaine went to bed without any supper. Humphrey decided to turn in early too, after enduring a seemingly endless meal of uninspiring food – breakfast’s beans reheated, which were in turn last night’s beans reheated – and relentless mockery from his squire.

  Several hours later, however, he surfaced queasily from the depths of sleep to find himself being shaken by a determined hand.

  ‘Careful,’ he groaned, as the hand was gripping the very spot on his shoulder where the lady miscreant’s lance had hit.

  ‘Shh,’ whispered the voice of his awakener.

  Humphrey blinked in the darkness. The owner of the hand was Elaine.

  ‘What are you –’

  ‘Shh,’ she whispered again. ‘I think I heard something. Men. Near my tent.’

  Humphrey nodded. He emerged swiftly from his bedroll, pulled on his boots and a tunic over his long underwear, and buckled a sword over the top.

  They crept outside. There was no moon, but the stars were bright. Elaine’s long white nightgown, unlaced at the throat, stood out against the darkness.

  ‘Do you see anything?’ she said.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Humphrey, who had seen nothing other than Elaine.

  ‘It was coming from down the slope, near the river. I thought I heard voices.’

  Humphrey set off towards the riverbank. Elaine followed him, catching up and slipping her hand into the crook of his arm. He felt the heat of it like a burn.

  ‘Over here?’ he whispered, his voice a little shaky.

  ‘I think so,’ Elaine replied, moving even closer to him as they approached the river, its water glinting under the constellations. Humphrey caught the scent from her hair. She appeared to be wearing perfume, which was strange for the middle of the night. His heart beat hard in his chest and he tried to keep his mind on the brigands who might lie in wait.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ Elaine said to him. ‘I feel safe with you.’

  This stopped Humphrey for the slightest moment. There was something about the way Elaine said it that didn’t quite ring true. Then he decided he was being ridiculous. Why shouldn’t she feel safe with him? He was a knight. She was a damsel. That was the way things worked.

  ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,’ he said, ‘and if there is, I’ll deal with it.’

  Elaine responded with a squeeze of his arm. Humphrey scanned the darkness, looking for any sign of movement. Nothing. He crept forward. The slope became steeper close to the riverbank, and as Humphrey picked his way down he felt the sudden loss of Elaine’s hand, as she slipped and fell with a shriek.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Humphrey, dropping down beside her.

  ‘It’s my ankle,’ said Elaine, wincing. ‘I turned on it as I went down. I hope it’s not broken.’

  She lifted her nightgown
to rub her ankle, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Humphrey tried not to let his eyes stray towards the revealed skin. Then she said, ‘I think it may just be sprained. Do you mind checking?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘I’m sure you’ve handled plenty of broken bones before,’ said Elaine.

  Humphrey laughed nervously. ‘My own, as often as not.’

  He took hold of her ankle, telling himself there was nothing strange about this. He had done it for plenty of friends. He and Elaine were friends, weren’t they? Her leg was delicately boned and pale, her skin impossibly smooth. To his annoyance, his hands were trembling a little, and he hoped that she wouldn’t notice. Gently, he turned her bare foot first one way, then the other. It moved easily. He placed her foot back on the grass, taking just a moment too long to let it go.

  He worked hard to keep his voice steady. ‘It’s probably a sprain. How does it feel?’

  ‘A bit better,’ said Elaine. ‘It was probably just the shock of the fall. I’m sure the pain will pass. But do you mind if we wait here until I’m ready to walk on it again? I’m afraid to be alone in the dark.’

  Humphrey remembered how she had ridden all the way from Tuft to Camelot alone in the dark. ‘Take your time,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’

  She leaned towards him slightly, so that their arms were almost touching. Somehow it felt more intimate than a touch itself. He felt his mouth go dry.

  Maidens used to do this when he was young. Before he was dishonoured. Feign injury, feign catastrophe, feign anything to get close to him. But it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that Elaine would do. She was so preoccupied with finding her fiancé, she’d been mute with misery all day. Of course, she didn’t love Sir Alistair. He knew that. Was it possible …? He felt flustered, as if she were the knight and he were the maiden. He didn’t know what to do next.

  ‘I think they’re gone,’ he said, sticking to the script they had agreed on.