Tales of the Once and Future King

by Anthony Marchetta

  “But how did you know Vorrex was your boar?” asked Lunwyn. “Or that Ettarona was a witch?”

  “We tracked the boar into the glade, but there the trail ended,” said Mauregal. “The boar went into the glade, no boar came out of it, and no boar was in it; therefore, the boar had changed into something else before coming out. Also, I had seen signs of mugwort being harvested lately in that very glade, and only Ettarona gathered our mugwort, and Sagredur pointed out the evidence that the Corona was the work of a witch… and everything made sense together.”

  “And how did you even leave the prison to do all this? I heard the King, I mean, Guillus, order you both to stay.”

  “I prayed to my Lord for help, and Christ nullified the hex for me by his grace,” replied Sir Sagredur.

  “And when I saw that his Christ could defeat the Corona, I implored Sir Sagredur to tell me how I could be free of it also,” said Mauregal, “and he…” he looked a question at the knight.

  “Baptised you,” said Sagredur.

  “Baptised me, with water from his saddlebag.”

  “Everything has worked out as well as could be,” Lunwyn said, seeming to sparkle with happiness. “But Sir Knight, is that still well water in your mug? You must have an ale with us!”

  But Sagredur shook his head glumly. “I cannot, for I have broken my word, and must do in penance what I offered freely to do in my oath.”

  “Penance?” said Mauregal.

  “The missionaries will tell you all about it,” said the knight.

  “But Sir Knight, what was your oath?” said Lunwyn. “What were the words, exactly?”

  “I vowed to drink naught but well-water till the day I should slay the boar troubling these parts.”

  “I see,” said Lunwyn thoughtfully. “But, do not Christians reckon the days as we do, starting and ending at midnight?”

  The knight looked at her blankly. “Yes. We follow the old Roman tradition.”

  “But,” said she, “I do believe that Ettarona gave you her metheglyn after midnight.”

  The knight furrowed his brows. Mauregal thought a moment, and opened his mouth as if to say something, only to start in surprise as his bride kicked his ankle.

  He was quick-witted enough to catch himself and say, “Why, yes, I think—yes, certainly, it was after midnight.” And his beautiful wife looked upon him approvingly.

  “And that means,” she concluded, “it was today when you drank strong beverage, which is also the day you slew the boar.”

  The knight’s eyes grew round as he realized the implication. “But then, my word was not broken! I am not forsworn!” A delighted grin broke forth upon his face.

  “Not a bit,” said Lunwyn.

  “Why then, I shall indeed have an ale!”

  And, indeed, he had several.

  The knight returned to Arthur’s court, and in due course the promised missionaries arrived, claiming the land of Palavel for the Cross with its inhabitants’ ready enthusiasm. Mauregal became a well-respected brewer, a deacon in the church, and he and Lunwyn had several children. Still later, embassages arrived from King Arthur inquiring after the state of the valley’s people, and inviting their king to come as a guest to Camelot.

  “We have no king,” said Mauregal, “and why on earth would we want one?”

  But it seemed boorish to scorn the courteous invitation, and after a short consideration all the people acclaimed Mauregal their nominal king. He balked at this, but at last agreed to it, so long as his only royal duty should be to visit Camelot at invitation. And that was all he ever did as King.

  Still, as the first of the valley’s converts and a man who figured large in this chapter of its history, Mauregal’s story was told to children before bedtime long after he died. And when the old church burned down one day, the people put up a new one with a statue of St. Mauregal in it. It was not twice life-size, and it was wood, not stone, and it didn’t really look like Mauregal; though he was by then far beyond being concerned about such matters.

  And a good thing, because the statue’s head also sported a crown, which would surely have upset him; and even more contrary to his sentiments-a halo. But then, everyone knew that saints did not have halos in real life, but only in art.

  CHAPTER 31

  Isabella Barlow was a thin, pale woman with blonde hair and blue eyes wearing a plain brown dress. Despite her situation it was clear that Isabella tried to take care of herself. Her hair and dress were clean and when they entered the room she was sitting up straight.

  Maddie recognized her from Brand’s description, but she still couldn’t quite believe it was her. “You are Lady Isabella Barlow, right?”

  “That is correct.” Isabella spoke in a delicate voice but nevertheless radiated an air of quiet assurance and regality. She spoke as if she was royalty. “And who might you be?”

  Lance stepped forward. “My name is Lance. This is Maddie. We were sent here by Elwood Brand to rescue you. Look, Lady Isabella, I don’t mean to be rude and I promise we’ll explain everything as we go, but we need to get out of here NOW.”

  Maddie was amazed at Isabella’s composure. She nodded once. “Lead the way.”

  On the way out of the tower Maddie and Lance explained the situation. When they were at the bottom of the stairs Isabella stopped and looked at them.

  “Thank you,” Isabella said, “what you have done for me is very brave.”

  Maddie smiled grimly. There was still a long road ahead, but it was hard not to be proud of hearing the thanks coming from someone who carried herself like a queen. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said, “why have they kept you alive? Why you and no one else from the town?”

  Isabella frowned. “Count Dima has told me he wants to marry me. But he cannot touch me.”

  “Why?”

  “I believe this has protected me.”

  She had a cross necklace, the cross hidden under her dress. She pulled it out.

  “The crucifix?” Lance reached out to touch it. “That isn’t right,” he shook his head, “vampires are only harmed by holy silver. But there hasn’t been holy silver for… where did you get this?”

  “It was Elwood’s,” she said, “a gift. It has been in his family for generations.”

  “You were lucky, then.”

  She curled a fist around the small artifact, smiling slightly. Even while hiding out in the woods, Brand had been protecting her. But just as quickly, it disappeared as Lance went to open the tower door and looked out at the street.

  “Okay,” she said. “Now what?”

  Lance and Maddie stared.

  Maddie thought for a moment and realized that they had never actually come up with a plan for hiding Isabella; even back in Brand’s forest court they had focused on getting Isabella and escaping the town, but completely missed every section in between. She looked at Lance.

  Lance looked deep in thought. Suddenly, he grabbed Isabella, pulling her toward him and pressing the gun against her head.

  “Lance, what are you doing?” said Maddie.

  “Being a guard,” Lance answered. “We need to split up. There’s no reason for us to be walking together, it looks suspicious.”

  Maddie looked ahead. “I’ll go and rejoin Fox.”

  “Yes,” Lance agreed, “Stay safe.”

  Isabella looked remarkably calm for someone who currently had a gun pressed against her temple by strangers. A guard was walking past and slowed a little. Lance looked at him.

  “News that invaders might have learned her location,” Lance explained, “Count Dima asked me to move her to a new location. And you know how he’ll get if I’m not prompt…”

  The guard nodded in understanding, quickening his pace again.

  “It’s not that much farther,” Maddie promised Isabella, before turning and walking away as quickly as possible.

  Though Lance didn’t know it yet, it had been a mistake to lock Cesar in the closet. When he woke up groggily, and his
eyes adjusted to the darkness, the first thing he did was bang his fists against the door.

  “Hey! HEY!”

  What Lance and Maddie had not realized was that the closet, being a place for the guards to keep their things, also kept weapons. The guard searched through the closet until he found a weapon suitable for breaking open a locked door: a double-bladed axe. With an angry howl he hacked at the door with as much strength as he could inside of such an enclosed space, tearing his shirt in the process. After a solid ten minutes of this he was finally able to body slam his way out of the closet and stumble into the street, shirt torn, no pants, no shoes, and shoulder bruised and bloody. It was, unsurprisingly, difficult to find people that would talk to him.

  There was a problem more pressing than his disturbing lack of clothing, however: Namely, why he would be kidnapped at all. What did these people want?

  Cesar thought back to their conversation. The girl had smiled at him, complimented him, seemed fascinated by his job, especially…

  “Isabella! The tower!”

  The streets were far emptier than normal due to the performance. It took Cesar a surprisingly short time to find the watchtower guards, for the very troubling reason that he found them before he reached the watchtower, walking out of a tavern.

  Cesar was almost apoplectic with rage. “Did you both leave?”

  They looked torn between being confused by his state of undress and intimidated by how angry he was. One of them asked:

  “Sir, you look a little… where are your pants?”

  “My pants are not important! Where’s Lady Isabella?”

  “I assume in the watchtower, Sir.”

  “Assume?”

  “We left it locked and bolted,” the other guard said, “We just wanted to see the show, and then Nikolai had the idea—”

  “Go check on her! Now!”

  “But sir—”

  “Look, you idiots,” he snapped, “Clearly there is a problem here, unless you thought I wanted to run through the streets half naked. So check on the prisoner.”

  The guard called Nikolai gulped. “Yes, Sir. Of course, Sir.”

  Both guards almost tripped over each other as they ran towards the watchtower. Cesar stood glaring at them for a moment before calling out, “And for God’s sake, get me some pants!”

  Though Lance never liked to admit he was ever more than supremely confident in everything he did, even he could feel the sweat dripping down his face as he marched Isabella through the town at gunpoint. The plan from here on was a very simple one: Get to the gate and wait for the King’s Men to finish performing, then jump on top of the wagon when they walk by. Lance had liked the idea from the start; it combined a sort of ostentatious braggadocio with cunning simplicity in a way that fit Lance’s style perfectly.

  Which was not, of course, to say that a billion different things couldn’t go wrong.

  Lance’s first mistake was thinking too much about what would happen next instead of what he happened to be doing now. The second mistake he made was a direct result of the first, as Lance was forced to stop short and look directly into the face of Count Dima.

  There was a long moment as Lance and the Count stared at each other. Dima cleared his throat.

  “Before I get extremely angry, I’m going to let you explain yourself first. It better be good.”

  Lance nodded seriously. This was the first time he’d seen the Count personally but it was hard to mistake Brand’s description. “It is good, Sir. We got reports of brigands in the city coming to kidnap the Lady.”

  The Count looked at Isabella and raised his eyebrows. “Kidnap the Lady, you say?”

  “Yes. No doubt sent by Elwood Brand and his men.”

  Count Dima narrowed his eyes. “Does the Captain of the Guard know about this?”

  “Absolutely, Sir. In fact he was the one who sent me to move her. To the prison.”

  “A bit of a roundabout route to be taking from the watchtower to the prison, isn’t it?”

  “I’m hoping to lose anyone that might be following,” Lance answered immediately.

  He was staring at him, and Lance held his gaze.

  “You don’t have to worry, Isabella,” Dima said. “No one will be taking you from me.”

  He leered at her, and Lance fought the urge to pull Isabella away; she turned her head as quickly as she could to try and get away from him. As soon as he pulled back, Isabella glared at him. Lance pushed roughly.

  “Come on, let’s move,” he said. “Count Dima, enjoy the performance.”

  As soon as they were out of earshot Lance bent down and whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry, my Lady, but it won’t be much longer.”

  “Do not apologize,” she answered. “Where is your friend?”

  “She’ll meet us at the gate,” Lance answered, and he hoped he was right.

  There was a ladder leading up to the top of the wall; as Lance hoped, the guards from the wall were all out listening to Fox’s story, saving him the trouble of coming up with an excuse to explain why he was holding Isabella at gunpoint. Lance climbed with one hand, the other pulling Isabella up with him. When they reached the top Lance put a hand over his eyes, scanning the length of the wall.

  “Come on Maddie, where are you?”

  “Not as far as you might think, actually.” Lance turned around. Cesar, dressed in a jacket two sizes too small and tight fitting pants, was holding Maddie at gunpoint.

  CHAPTER 32

  Fox knew he couldn’t delay much longer. One of the only flaws in the plan was that it was impossible for Fox to tell when or if Lance and Maddie had succeeded in finding Isabella and getting to the gate. “Kings of the Corona” was a long show; hopefully that had given Maddie and Lance plenty of time to accomplish their half of the plan. Fox was hoping to perhaps spot them walking at one point, but the logistics of the show made it impossible to check most of the time. He saw Count Dima talking to somebody in the distance, but it hadn’t caused him to leave. Fox could only hope that was a good sign. He walked over to Bennett, who had been doing a surprisingly passable job for somebody miming scenery and trying desperately to follow along in the background. “What do you think?” he whispered.

  “Difficult to say,” Bennett answered. “Go short. Maybe the children’s show you told me about earlier.”

  A decision had to be made, and Fox made it. “Okay, Ladies and Gentlemen. We’re going to have one more show for you today, a grand finale. This is called “Somebody’s Favorite Knight”, and it is a personal favorite of mine. We hope you enjoy it.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Somebody’s Favorite Knight by Jon Etter

  Do you have a brother or sister that everybody just adores? You know how annoying that is, right? Multiply that by a thousand and you know how it feels to be me. You see, I’m Sir Kay, King Arthur’s brother. Well, foster brother, but same difference.

  Don’t get me wrong—I love my brother. He’s just as nice and fair and kind as you’d want a brother to be (which is also a little aggravating because I always feel like kind of a jerk when I get envious of his power and popularity and everything). And he’s a great king. The best Britain’s ever had according to most people, and they’re probably right. Top ten at least, in my opinion. It was just kind of hard to go instantly from him serving me as my squire (and he wasn’t that good at it, by the way) to me serving him when he proved himself to be “Rightwise born King of all Britain,” or whatever the heck that stupid sword said he was.

  But I served him and served him well. I did everything I could as his knight to help defeat his opposition and unite Britain under his rule, and I was pretty good at it. At the time, I thought that, while he may be king, maybe I could be the greatest knight in the realm. Let him have the throne—I’d be the champion of the tournaments and hero of the battlefield! But no such luck—that jerk Lancelot du Blech! had to come along, show us all up, and become the “greatest” knight in the land and Arthur’s best friend.

&nbs
p; So where does that leave me? King Arthur’s seneschal. If you don’t know what that means (and honestly most don’t), that means I run Camelot. Sounds cool and important, right? It’s not. What I do is read reports from around the kingdom, supervise the castle servants, manage the accounts, order the groceries, and all the other boring day-to-day stuff of castle life. So while all the other knights are off defending innocents and slaying dragons, I’m stuck here haggling with the greengrocer over the price of turnips and making sure the pastry chef is sober enough to make tarts for the royal tea.

  I was feeling especially bitter about my lot in life one night during the nightly feast at the Round Table. See, Arthur had the table made round to show that all knights who served him were equal, which is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it’s a load of horse dung. Tell me that the knight stuck at the far end of the circle next to the servant’s entrance is really the equal of Gawain, who sits to Arthur’s right, and Lancelot, who sits on the other side of Queen Guinevere (he had the chance to sit to Arthur’s right but chose to sit next to the queen so he could more easily flirt with her, the creep!). Also, I know for a fact that Lancelot has extra cushions put on the seat of his chair so that he’s a little higher than the rest of us.

  Anyway, all the knights were taking turns bragging (and lying) about all the adventures they had had that day, and I was getting good and fed up with it all when Sir Bragsalot, as always, had to top everybody. “So I began my day by riding out to Bath to vanquish the dreaded giant that has been waylaying travellers along the king’s roads.”

  “Giant?” I said. “I read through a couple criminal complaints about an aggressive panhandler with an extremely ample belly, but—”

  “It was a giant,” Lancelot asserted. “And the battle was fierce, but in the end, he fell before my sword. That done, I immediately rode to Bristol—”

  “Pity. You should have actually bathed in Bath. I can smell you all the way from—”

  “—where a pack of brigands had terrorized the good people there. I tackled them single-handedly—”