Tales of the Once and Future King

by Anthony Marchetta

  “Tied the other one behind your back again, did you?” I asked.

  “All thirty of them.”

  “Thirty? By yourself? Really?”

  “Yes. Thirty.”

  “Well,” I sighed, “you never have been that good at math. Anything beyond ten, and you can’t count them on your fingers. Plus you had one hand behind your back, so it was really, what, six? Seven?”

  “As I was saying,” Lancelot continued, clearly annoyed, “I handily—”

  “Single-handily.”

  “—defeated the lot of blackguards and delivered them to the bailiff there before riding south to Exeter and—”

  “Okay! Hold up!” I cried. “You seriously want us to believe that in one single day you rode from Camelot to Bath to Bristol to Exeter and still made it back to Camelot in time for dinner?”

  “No, I also swung by Northampton and Oxford to—”

  “Oh, come on! There’s no way—”

  “Well, if you tire of my tales of keeping the peace in the kingdom,” Sir Lancelot-a-Boils said, all smug, “perhaps you can regale us with some tales of your day’s adventures. Did you save us all from the terror of unmade beds? Draw the magical shovel from the stone proving yourself rightwise born lord of the royal stables before scooping all the poop? Perhaps you threw together a truly heroic stew?”

  The rest of the table erupted with laughter. “Good Sir Kitchen Knight, grab your sword!” that pig Gawain cried, spitting little bits of apple into his bushy red beard as he did so. “The kingdom is in peril! This mutton is slightly overcooked!”

  “Yes, to the kitchen, Sir Potpan, posthaste!” Bors shouted. “There’s a soufflé that might fall! Save us!”

  Then everyone else got in on the act. I tried to laugh it all off, but it really ticked me off. Right after dinner, I went to my room and sat down to go over the daily reports from across the kingdom, but I couldn’t concentrate. The other knights are right, I thought. They’re out there defending the kingdom and what am I doing? Pushing papers and bullying servants! I shoved the papers off my desk and threw my quill to the ground in disgust.

  A knock on my door made me start. Arthur stood there in the doorway. “Bad time to chat, big brother?”

  I sighed. “No, it’s fine. What do you need? Are we out of port? I knew we were running low, but that crooked wine merchant has been just—”

  “No, as always, we all have everything we need, thanks to you,” Arthur said, putting his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let what the other knights said get to you. What you do is important. I couldn’t rule effectively if you didn’t go through the reports from the kingdom and tell me what needed my attention, and I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything if things didn’t run smoothly around Camelot. I can only do my job because you do yours so well.”

  It was nice of him to say and I thanked him for it, but the thought that I wasn’t a real knight, just a “kitchen knight,” nagged at me. After a mostly sleepless night, I knew I had to do something, so I wrote up instructions for the castle staff. The next morning, I put on my chainmail armor, grabbed my sword, handed the instructions to the head butler, and set out on horseback to seek an adventure worthy of a knight of the Round Table.

  Now, at this point in my life, I had been seneschal for about five years and had forgotten how hard it is to actually find adventure. Unless someone comes to you and says, “Hey, there’s a troll under that bridge over there trying to eat people,” adventuring can be a pretty tedious business. After riding a few hours, I came across a balding farmer fixing the hitch on his hay wagon. His face was bruised and his clothes torn as if he had recently been in a scuffle.

  “You look as though you have been attacked,” I called. “Tell me, good peasant, which way the varlet went and I, Sir Kay, a knight of Camelot, will bring him to justice.”

  “No worries,” the man said. “‘E already took care of ‘im!”

  “What? Who?” I asked.

  “Lansinglot, it were. Jumped roight in and give ‘im what for! Lord, never ‘ave oi seen sich a devil in a foight! Strong ‘e were! And tall! Oi mean, oi ‘eard ‘e were tall but—”

  “He wears lifts in his boots, you know,” I said.

  “What? Really?” the farmer asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Out of his boots and armor, he’s about six inches shorter. Has to sit on a stack of bibles at the breakfast table to eat his eggs in the morning.”

  “Is that roight? Wahl, ‘e sure looks big! And when ‘e jumped in and—”

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted. “I really must be off to protect the king’s subjects.”

  “A’roight then. But when ye see Lansinglot be sure an—”

  I didn’t catch the rest of what he said as I rode off. In time I came upon a rundown, dingy wayside inn. It looked exactly like the sort of place that criminals might congregate and conspire. I hopped down from my horse and approached the door when suddenly it swung open and a middle-aged barmaid stepped out. “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key!” she cried as what I assumed to be the local sheriff and his bailiffs led out a group of ten men who would have looked extremely dangerous if it weren’t for the fact that they were battered, bloodied, and tied up. “Oh, is you from Camelot, then?” she asked, looking me up and down.

  “I am.”

  “Well, ya’s too late. Sir Lancelot done ‘em all up fer ya.” She got a dreamy look on her face and sighed. “‘E’s an ‘andsome ‘un, ‘e is…”

  “He wears make-up.”

  “‘E does not!”

  “Yep. About an inch thick to cover up all the pimps and warts and boils. Very unfortunate skin.”

  “I don’t believe ya,” she said, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Suit yourself,” I said, climbing back into the saddle. “I’ll give your regards old spotty bottom when I see him.”

  Frustrated, I rode on, hoping against hope that some heroic deed would present itself, when suddenly I heard it: a lady’s cry for help and the roar of a bloodthirsty beast. Throwing all caution to the wind, I put my spurs to my horse and galloped at breakneck speed into the forest, ducking under branches and dodging past trees until I came to a clearing in which a beautiful maiden stood tied to a post. I leapt from my horse and rushed to her side.

  “You are safe now, fair one,” I said, cutting the rope that bound her hands to the post. “For, I, Sir Kay of Camelot, have—”

  “Well, that’s done!” a voice boomed behind me. I turned to see Lancelot strutting into the clearing with what looked like an ox-sized snakehead tucked under his arm. “I’ve slain both the beast and his master.”

  “My hero!” the lady declared, rushing to Lancelot and wrapping her arms around the jerk.

  For the love of Pete! I thought.

  “Oh, morning, Kay,” Lancelot said, as if he just noticed me there. “What brings you out this morning? Good deal on pork somewhere around here?”

  “Something like that,” I grumbed, heading back into the woods.

  “Can’t wait to try it at tonight’s feast!” he called after me.

  “I hope you choke on it, lousy show-off,” I muttered.

  At that point, I gave up. It was clear—I wasn’t cut out for adventure anymore. Maybe I had been a real knight once upon a time, but now I was nothing more than the head housekeeper in the biggest house in Britain, and that’s all I’d ever be for the rest of my life.

  Not wanting to go back to the main road and risk meeting more fans of Sir Lancypants, I trudged through the woods, feeling sorry for myself. It was a nice, quiet walk, the only sounds being the tweets of birds from above and the chirping of insects all around.

  In the early afternoon, I came upon a small cottage by the side of a small path that looked like it saw very little traffic. My horse needing a rest and myself needing a drink, I stopped and knocked on the door. There was no answer, but a small girl with dark hair and dark eyes came around the side of the house. “Excuse, me, but may I have a drink from your well?” I as
ked. “I’m terribly parched.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “Are you a knight?”

  “Yes,” I said cranking up the bucket that hung over their well. “Sir Kay of Camelot.”

  She rushed over to me and grabbed my arm. Her face, I could now tell, was streaked with tears. “Thank goodness you’ve come! I need your help!”

  “You sure?” I asked, taking a sip from the dipper in the bucket. “If you wait a little while, Lancelot will probably show up and—”

  “No! That’s just it! I need you to find and save Lancelot!”

  How could this be? I wondered. There’s no way he could have gotten here and— Then I remembered his claims from the night before. Maybe he’s not as full of cow manure as I thought! I dropped the bucket and knelt down on one knee before her. “What do you mean? What’s befallen Lancelot?”

  “I was just playing with him behind the cottage—”

  “You were playing with Lancelot?”

  “Yes, and then he caught this little mouse and started batting it around—”

  “Lancelot was batting at a mouse?”

  “Yes, and then—”

  “Lancelot, the knight?”

  “Lancelot, my little black kitten,” she said.

  “Of course,” I sighed, rubbing my now aching forehead, “your kitten. Named Lancelot.”

  “After my favorite knight, Sir Lancelot,” she said, shredding the last vestiges of my dignity. “So he was playing with the mouse and then it got away and he chased it. I ran after him, but then he went down into the ravine. Papa says I’m never to go down there—it’s too steep and dangerous—but Papa’s gone to town and I have to save my poor little kitten! Oh, please, Sir Ray—”

  “Sir Kay.”

  “Won’t you please help me!”

  I wanted to say “To heck with Lancelot!” (which would have been gratifying on several different levels), but then I looked into her teary, pleading eyes. It wasn’t a grand quest nor was it likely to impress anyone at the Round Table, but I was a knight and here was a girl who needed help and that’s what we knights are supposed to do: help people. “Of course, my lady,” I said. “Take me to the ravine, and I will save the poor, pathetic, helpless little Lancelot from certain doom.”

  (I must admit, it felt extremely satisfying to say that.)

  The little girl led me a short ways through the woods to the edge of a rocky ravine. I told her to wait back by the cottage and then slowly, carefully made my way down, whistling and calling, “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty! Here, little Lancelot!” as I went. The girl’s father had been right to warn her away from the ravine—it was a steep, perilous climb down, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make my way back up.

  Reaching the bottom, I looked for some sign of a little black cat. To the east was a long, straight stretch. Seeing nothing but dirt, rocks, and withered grass, I headed to the west, where the gorge took a turn to north. As I rounded the corner, something crunched under my foot. It was a skull, a small one, probably a squirrel or rat. Near it were other skulls and bones ranging in size from mouse to deer, all of them picked clean and bleached white by the sun.

  I drew my sword and continued to follow the bend. The gorge grew wider to reveal the remnants of a campsite—two rotting wagons, a couple of tattered tents, an immense stew pot sitting in the ash-filled center of a disused fire pit ringed with stones—with the mouth of a dark cave gaping behind it. Every inch of ground was strewn with bones, including, over by the cave, human ones.

  As I wondered what creature could possibly be responsible for all this death, a quiet little meow drew my attention to a pile of rocks near the cave entrance. There, clambering on top of it, was a fluffy black kitten. Little Lancelot! I was about to call his name when suddenly the rocks flew apart and a small man with saggy, leathery, scabby skin hanging from his long, bony arms and legs snatched up the kitten in his hideously long, talon-like fingers. “Eats!” the creature hissed through pointy, crooked teeth as it raised the kitten up to its mouth.

  My first instinct was to charge at the fiend and hack it to pieces, but then I recognized it from Merlin’s lessons on magical creatures: a spriggan. Insatiable appetite, stone-covered clothes to better ambush prey, inhumanly strong, almost impossible to beat when grappling, able to grow to gigantic proportions when threatened, and (because all of that wasn’t terrifying enough) impervious to all metal weapons. I looked at my sword then, realizing it was utterly useless, sheathed it in its scabbard.

  I’m not too ashamed to admit that I was terrified just then and my first instinct was to sneak off, hoping that the spriggan would be too preoccupied munching on the kitten to notice me. I turned to do just that then stopped. No, I thought. I’m a knight of Camelot, sworn to protect King Arthur’s subjects and, I suppose, their pets. I will not flee!

  But what was I to do? The spriggan was an unbeatable foe! Even a great knight like Gawain-heck, even the greatest knight, Lancelot (ugh!)-might not be able to defeat the creature. What chance could I possibly have against it? Me, Sir Kay, a kitchen knight? And then I realized that was the answer. Only a kitchen knight could stop this monster.

  “Excuse, me,” I said pleasantly, walking toward the spriggan. It turned, jagged jaws still gaping as it fixed its crimson eyes on me. “But are you about to eat that kitten?”

  “More eats!” the spriggan hissed. The creature started to swell, its saggy flesh growing taut, expanding and expanding until it towered over me—at least eight feet tall, it was—its skin barely holding together over knotted muscles and the cloak that before had covered its whole body hanging half-way down its chest like a rock-studded napkin. “A knight it is!”

  “What? Oh, the armor? No, I just came from a fancy dress party. I’m a chef.”

  The spriggan cocked its head. “What ‘chef’ is?”

  “I make food.”

  “Yus,” the spriggan grinned a hideous grin. “Kit-cat make food. You make food. Both I eat.”

  “No, you don’t understand. I make food taste better,” I explained, happy to see that the spriggan seemed as dumb or dumber than I had hoped.

  “No think so. Kit-cat more nommy than person.”

  “What I mean is that I can make the cat taste better. And be more food.”

  “Yus, more food you be. Kit-cat I eat then you I eat. More food you be than just kit-cat.”

  “No. Try to pay attention. How many meals would this cat be for you?”

  “One,” the spriggan grunted.

  “What if I told you I could turn it into six meals?”

  The spriggan’s eyes widened and it began to drool. “Six more kit-cats you have?”

  “Actually, I’d only need five more to make six, but let’s not worry about basic math right now. No, I don’t have more cats, but I could make a stew out of this cat, which would turn it into six meals and make the cat even more tender, juicy, and tasty.”

  The creature licked its lips with a long green-gray tongue. “Do! Stew you make!”

  “Now, if I do,” I asked, “will you spare my life?”

  It shook its head vigorously. “No. You I eat next.”

  “Well, would you at least wait a while longer before you eat me?”

  The spriggan nodded. “Yus. If full, you for later I save.”

  “You’re a shrewd negotiator. You have a deal.” The spriggan looked quite pleased with itself. I walked over to the campsite’s abandoned pot. It was a heavy iron cauldron big enough to hold two or three pigs and a full complement of vegetables. Its immense lid lay in the dirt near one of the ramshackle wagons. “First, I need you to fill this pot with water. Is there water nearby?”

  “Yus,” it said, hoisting up the immense pot as if it were an easter basket. It pointed one of its wicked talon-like finger-tips at me. I was pretty sure it could poke straight through my head without any effort at all, an assumption supported by several nearby skulls with holes in the front and back. “I fill. Try to run and catch you and eat you first I
will.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” I smiled and reached out for little Lancelot. “Here, I’ll just hold onto the little kit-cat while you-”

  But the spriggan just loped swiftly off, pot in one hand and tiny mewling kitten in the other. If I had had any intention of trying to escape with the cat while the spriggan was gone, that plan would have been shot. Fortunately, I hadn’t.

  By the time the spriggan came back with water sloshing this way and that out of the pot (which took much less time than I expected), I had a nice roaring fire going in the abandoned fire pit. “Put the pot right there in the fire,” I told the creature, which did as I asked. “Now we need to find some plants.”

  “Plants? Plants I no eat. Plants not made of meat like kit-cats and chefs.”

  “No, but some plants-we call them herbs-make meat extra tasty. And some plants-we call them vegetables-can be delicious when cooked. In fact, we can make them taste like the kit-cat by boiling them together and making a stew.”

  “Yus! More kit-cat tasting!” the spriggan cried. He held Lancelot, who hissed and clawed, over the pot. “Kit-cat we boil!”

  “Whoa! Wait!” I jumped between the pot and the spriggan. “No! We boil the kit-cat last. It will, uh, make everything taste the most like kit-cat.”

  “Yus! Most kit-cat taste!”

  “Okay. Come with me and we’ll find plants for the stew. But first, could you maybe get smaller again?”

  “Smaller?” the spriggan asked, suspicious.

  “Yeah. You’re awfully scary when you’re this big, so that’s likely to distract me when we look for the vegetables, plus your shadow might hide some especially good herbs we could use. I’m sure you’re just as strong when small.”

  “Yus. And much more fast!”

  “Even better for killing me if I try to run then. So if you could just—”

  “Yus,” it agreed, followed by a horrible prolonged farty noise, like twenty Sir Bagdemagduses after haggis night and a stench fouler than an uncleaned stable in August. As the noise grew louder and louder and the smell ranker and ranker, the spriggan shrank until it barely came up to my armpits.