The Chalice of Hope (Adventures in Otherworld Book 1)

by Michael Kerr

  “Come,” Sir Havalot said to them. “It is time for you to meet the Lord Sylvester. He will be most pleased to have such unusual guests at his table.

  The doors must have been soundproofed, for when another page opened them, the din of talking, laughter, singing and music hit them like a shock wave.

  As they walked in, everyone in the great room turned in their direction. Sam could understand why. Fig, Speedy, Gorf and Pook looked so different. It was in all probability the first time that these people had seen little green fairies with wings and pointy ears, or anything as spectacular as a giant troll-come-goblin, and a live Teddy bear.

  “My Looorrrd Sylvester,” Sir Havalot shouted theatrically. “May I present to you a band of travellers who have come from a faraway land? They have ventured through the Royal Preserve of the Dragon on foot to visit the court of Chimera to have an audience with you, before continuing on their way.”

  “Step forward, strangers,” Lord Sylvester said. “Take seats at my table, and pray tell me of all you have seen and done. For no one in my kingdom has been farther than the place where dragons dwell. And only knights under training go there.”

  Sam took an instant dislike to their host. He had shifty eyes, a short stubbly beard, and the false smile of a hungry hyena. He was very small, as round as a beer barrel, and wore a pleated and ruffled black and red tunic with large shoulder pads, and a frilly ruff made up of several folds of starched linen around his neck. Apart from the small crown of gold on his shaven head, Sam thought he looked very much like pictures she had seen of the beefeaters that guarded the Tower of London.

  “Let us eat as we talk,” Lord Sylvester said.

  The food would have fed an army, but Pook was disappointed to find that there were no pancakes.

  “I am told that you are proficient with the bow, troll,” Lord Sylvester said.

  “I rarely miss what I aim at,” Gorf replied, talking with his mouth full of fried goose liver.

  Sylvester gave him a sly grin. “It will be important that you don’t tomorrow, for a lot will depend on you shooting straight and true.”

  Gorf smiled. That must mean a fabulous prize was at stake. Though in reality there was nothing Gorf could think of that he wanted or needed. He lived for the day, and was enjoying his time with the others.

  After they had told Sylvester of their adventures, but not about the chalice, he clapped his hands, and the group that were playing music on instruments that Sam thought were similar to a recorder, harp and mandolin, stopped and went off behind a curtain.

  “Send on the jester,” Sylvester shouted. “I wish to be amused.”

  With a fanfare of trumpets from a gallery running all around the room high above them, a little man in a tight fitting tunic patterned with black and white diamonds rode out into the room on the back of an enormous pink and black spotted pig. The pig was fitted with a saddle and reins, and did two circuits of the hall, while the jester performed acrobatics, turning around in the saddle to face backwards, then standing up on one leg, before bringing the grunting porker to a stop in front of Sylvester’s table, where he gave the lord a sweeping bow, and made the trained pig kneel down and grunt loudly.

  “Bravo,” Sylvester said. “That was truly entertaining. What is your name?”

  “Pintello, my Lord. And my assistant is an old ham who works for truffles.”

  Sylvester laughed. He thought this new jester had promise. The last one had been decidedly unfunny, and had been hanged in the courtyard.

  “And what else do you do, Pintello, besides ride a pet pig?”

  “I can do magic tricks to astound you, sing like an angel, tell the most hilarious stories you are ever likely to hear, and pull the most amazing faces. And I am also known to be a liar.”

  “Show me a trick, then. But be warned; if you make me look foolish, you shall at very least go home without your tasty looking assistant, whose head will be served up on a platter with an apple in its mouth.”

  Pintello approached the table and looked directly at Tommy.

  Tommy stopped eating. There was something about the court jester that frightened him a little. He looked very much like Punch. Had the same sort of hat with bells on, and red cheeks, and a long nose and chin. And his eyes looked like marbles made of black glass.

  “You, young sir. What is your name?”

  “Me?” Tommy said.

  “Yes, you.”

  “Er...Tommy.”

  “You don’t sound too sure about that. Would you like to try again?”

  Tommy felt himself blushing. Everyone in the room was looking at him and laughing. He was being made to feel a fool, by a fool.

  “Very well, Tommy. I am about to make you disappear in front of everyone’s eyes. Do you think that that is possible?”

  “I hope not,” Tommy said.

  “Have no fear. You will be amazed when you cease to be here. Now watch very closely,” Pintello said to his audience, as he reached into a pouch that was hanging from a cord around his waist and removed his hand closed in a fist.

  Everyone stared intently at the jester’s raised hand. He opened it quickly and closed his eyes as, with a loud pop, a sun-bright flash of light filled the room. For a second or two, all but Pintello was blinded. When they could see again, Tommy was gone from his chair, and in his place sat a small white mouse.

  The knights and courtiers clapped and cheered, for they had never before been entertained so well by a jester.

  “Tommy!” Sam exclaimed, looking down at the plump rodent. “Very clever,” she said to Pintello. “Now turn him back...Please.”

  There was no time for Pintello to do anything. One of the castle’s cats – a large, one-eyed individual, striped like a tiger, and having only half a tail, since it had attempted to steal fish from the kitchen and not been quick enough to fully escape the meat cleaver blade that a chef struck it with – leapt up onto the chair and grasped the mouse in its mouth. There was a shrill squeak, followed by a crunching of small bones, and the cat swallowed the mouse and ran off.

  “It ate Tommy!” Pook said, and began to cry.

  “The boy was a guest,” Lord Sylvester said to Pintello, his face dark with anger. “Return him at once, or you shall be hung in a cage from the highest tower of the castle until your bones are picked clean by vultures.”

  Ben looked at the seat Tommy had been sitting on. There were a few spots of the mouse’s blood on it. He didn’t believe for a second that the fool could bring Frog back. His pal was now a chewed-up mouse in the stomach of a fat cat.

  Pintello smiled. If anything, the trick had been improved by the unforeseen eating of the mouse. Everyone believed that he had not just made the boy disappear, but had also turned him into a mouse, that was now dead. But he knew better. Magic was trickery, used to make an audience believe that the impossible had been performed. What they did not know was, that after arriving at the castle the day before, he had examined the banquet hall, and with his assistant – a dwarf who answered to the name of Turquin – had cut out a hatch in the floor of the raised platform, under the table that Lord Sylvester and his party sat at. The trapdoor was hard to see in the gloom, and could be opened from beneath, to swing down silently on well-oiled hinges.

  All tricks depended on split-second timing and distraction if they were to fool everybody. Pintello had used an exploding powder to blind them. The powder had been sold to him by an old man who mixed secret ingredients to create colourful effects and explosions. Pintello had put a small amount of the black powder into a rice-paper bag, with a touch-paper attached to it that he lit by striking two slivers of flint together and making a spark. It was not easy, and had taken a lot of practise to master. Now, he could put his hand into his pouch, light the touch paper, take out the bag, and release it just as the powder was turned into a bright ball of fire. He always wore a flesh-coloured leather glove to protect his hand from being badly burned in the event of something going wrong. But that evening everything had
gone perfectly. As the powder ignited and exploded, Turquin had dropped the trapdoor in front of where Tommy was sitting, to pull him down under the platform, before placing the mouse on the chair and bolting the trapdoor back in place. No one saw or heard a thing.

  Tommy was too shocked to scream. He didn’t know what had happened.

  “Shush!” Turquin whispered. “It’s just a trick. We need to move quickly, to make you appear somewhere else and amaze the Lord Sylvester and his guests.”

  “But you have no right to―”

  “Please, help us,” Turquin said. “If Sylvester is not amused by Pintello, he will have him taken to the dungeons to be tortured, or perhaps feed him to the meat-eating fish that live in the moat. You have come to no harm by being made to disappear.”

  “Okay,” Tommy said, not wanting to be responsible for the jester being hurt or killed. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Follow me,” Turquin said, and crawled off towards the back of the platform, to where heavy maroon curtains hung down to the floor behind it.

  Tommy followed the dwarf on his hands and knees. He could hear voices above them, and wondered what the others thought to his being made to vanish.

  Turquin led him behind the curtain to the corner of the room, and up a small spiral stairway set into the wall to the gallery above.

  Pintello heard his assistant cough, which was the signal.

  “My Lord Sylvester, knights of the realm, and all other illustrious guests,” Pintello said. “Look up to the balcony, and you will see that I have returned the boy alive and well, no worse for wear after being changed into a mouse and eaten by a cat.”

  There was a loud gasp of amazement as Tommy appeared and waved to the people below.

  “Amazing,” Sylvester said. “Are you a sorcerer, jester?”

  “No, my lord,” Pintello said. “Just a wandering fool who uses trickery to make things appear to be what they are not.”

  “Then you shall stay at the castle and entertain me once every sevenday. I shall pay you handsomely, and you shall live in a fine apartment, with all the trappings befitting your skills.”

  It was very late when Sam and the others got back to their quarters. Tommy told them what had actually happened, and they all laughed.

  “We thought you’d been turned into a mouse and ended up as cat food,” Ben said.

  “That jester is a clever magician,” Fig said.

  “He’d better be,” Sam said. “I think Sylvester has horrible things done to anyone who doesn’t please him. If Pintello has an off night, it could be his last.”

  “We should leave as soon as the tournament is over tomorrow,” Ben said.

  They all agreed on that. None of them felt safe at the castle. And if they had known just how much terrible danger would present itself at the tournament, they would have sneaked away that very instant.

  ― CHAPTER ELEVEN ―

  THE TOURNAMENT

  When Peter arrived at break of day, Gorf was wide awake, and had been all night. Sitting at the open window, he had polished his bow with goose fat from the kitchen, and used an oilstone to put an edge on the tips of his arrows. He was looking forward to the archery competition, and supposed that it would entail shooting at paper or cloth targets pinned to bails of straw. He could not imagine anyone being more accurate than him. It was the one thing he was very, very good at.

  After the feast, when they had returned to their rooms, Gorf had spent a lot of time looking up at the night sky. It was made up of blurred, dark colours, and he could not see the moons or any stars. It was unlike any heavens he had ever seen. Every day that passed was full of new surprises.

  “Wear this under your tunic,” Peter said to Gorf, handing him a steel breastplate.

  “Why would I need to?” Gorf asked the page.

  “Because the tournament is about life and death. It isn’t a game.”

  “But I am only taking part in the archery competition. Do you suppose that some of the other archers are such bad shots that I might be struck by a stray arrow?”

  “It’s because they are such good shots that you may be hit, and not by accident.”

  Gorf frowned. “I don’t understand. Why―”

  “Ah, I see you are up and dressed, ready for the big day,” Sir Havalot said, bursting into the room. “Come now, Peter, help me into my armour. I am making my final joust today, before hanging up my weapons and retiring from combat.”

  Gorf saw the worried expression on Peter’s face, and so kept himself between Sir Havalot and the breastplate, which he had put down on a table. After the knight and page left, he took off his jerkin, and Ben and Tommy buckled the leather straps, while Gorf held the cumbersome body armour in place. When he refastened his top, it was almost impossible to tell he was wearing anything underneath it.

  After breakfast, they went out into the courtyard.

  “Just follow us,” Peter shouted to them as he ran along behind Sir Havalot, who was riding a large grey mare that wore almost as much armour as the old knight.

  They made their way to where a great many people had gathered at the tented pavilion. At the sides and behind the main tent were smaller ones, where tradesmen sold their wares. Some offered food and beer, while others peddled weapons, jewellery, rugs, and even small souvenir ornaments of knights and the castle. Farther back still, men were selling trinkets from the backs of horse drawn carts.

  “Just like a car boot sale,” Ben said. “And I can smell onions frying. Where’s the hot-dog stand?”

  “The jousting is about to begin,” Peter said, appearing through the crowd. “I have to go and help Sir Havalot back onto his horse.”

  They went with him to a small tent.

  “Time to mount-up, sire,” Peter said.

  Once the knight had climbed up the steps and was astride his horse, Peter took a long lance from a rack and handed it to Sir Havelot. It was striped red and white like a barbershop pole, and had a lethal looking steel point at the end.

  “Who am I up against?” Sir Havalot asked, pushing his left forearm through the leather loops on the back of a large shield. “I seem to have forgotten.”

  “Sir Gilbert, the Black Knight,” Peter said, pulling down the long, pointed visor of the old man’s helmet, almost chopping the waxed ends of his handlebar moustache off.

  Sir Havalot rode over to the main pavilion, bowed to Lord Sylvester, who was sitting on a throne under the shade of the big tent, then proceeded to one end of a long, railed fence, where the grass had been worn away from the ground on either side. The other knight also bowed, and took his place at the far end, on the other side of the waist-high rail.

  Sir Gilbert was not named the Black Knight for nothing. His armour, helmet, lance, shield and horse were all a shiny black.

  With both horses snorting and biting at the bit, ready to charge, Lord Sylvester dropped a gauntlet on to the ground, which was the signal for the jousting to begin.

  With a thundering of hooves, the two knights dug spurs into their horses’ flanks and lowered the lances, aiming them over the rail at each other’s chests as they drew close.

  The crowd gasped as the black knight’s lance hit Sir Havalot’s shield, to shatter on impact as it rocked the old man back in the saddle.

  With a replacement lance in hand, Sir Gilbert charged again, as did Sir Havalot. This time, both lances made contact and broke with loud cracks.

  Sir Havalot was knocked off his horse and crashed to the ground.

  “My money is on the Black Knight,” Tommy said to the others. “I think Havalot’s had his lot.”

  The Black Knight wheeled his horse around and dismounted. He strode towards his fallen adversary, now with a mace in one hand and a shield in the other. The mace was a heavy metal ball, covered in sharp spikes and linked to a wooden handle by a short length of chain. He swung the weapon back, up, over and down, aiming it at Sir Havalot’s helmet.

  Sir Havalot was winded from the fall, and thought that a few o
f his ribs had been cracked. He lay still and watched the other knight approach through the slits in his visor. And only when the head of the mace was rushing down, did he bring his shield up, roll sideways and climb to his knees.

  Sir Gilbert staggered forward, pulled by the weight of the mace as it pounded into the shield. When he turned, Havalot was already on his feet, and had drawn his broadsword.

  “Methinks there is no fool like an old fool,” Sir Gilbert said, casting aside his mace, taking off his helmet and drawing his own sword. “You can hardly lift that cumbersome lump of rusting steel, much less fight with it. Yield now, and I will let you live to retire and take up embroidery or some other safe labour.”

  “Gadzooks! You impertinent dolt,” Sir Havalot said. “You are not fit to polish my armour, let alone meet me in combat. Take your chance, if you can do more than pick your teeth with that dull-bladed pig sticker.”

  Sir Gilbert held his sword two-handed, raised it aloft and swished the air with it in a sideways figure-of-eight as he advanced.

  Sir Havalot picked his moment, ducked under the blade and head-butted the young knight in his broad, clean-shaven face, catching him full force in the mouth with the pointed visor of his helmet.

  Sir Gilbert fell back, spraying blood and pieces of broken teeth. His sword flew out of his hands to pinwheel through the air and stick in the ground several feet away.

  “Well, so much for a good fight,” Sir Havalot said, putting one foot on the fallen knight’s chest. “You were not worthy of my time and effort. Yield, and I will be about my business.”

  “I will not yield to the oldest, feeblest knight in the realm,” Sir Gilbert spluttered, cutting his tongue on the sharp stumps of his teeth.

  “Would it not be better to live and fight another day, than die where you lay?”

  “No. I have my pride to consider,” Sir Gilbert said.

  “Is that your last word on the matter?”

  “Yes.”

  “So be it,” Sir Havalot said, and without hesitation swung his sword and lopped off his defeated opponent’s head.