‘True,’ said Merlin. ‘But I have a terrible premonition that our King is not long for this world.’
If he hadn’t known better, Merlin would have sworn that Arthur was not the son of the great Uther-Pendragon but some changeling, and the real Arthur had been spirited away. He never spoke of this to a single soul, but it was forever in the back of his mind, except on a full moon, when it came to the front of his mind and kept him awake.
Only one other person suspected this had happened and she had good reason. Mouldgrace the Royal Midwife, who had been attending the Queen as she gave birth to Arthur, had popped out to the toilet just after Arthur was born, and when she returned to the Queen’s boudoir, she had seen a large black eagle fly out of the window with a bundle of rags in its beak.
That’s funny, she thought. It’s Tuesday and they don’t usually collect the laundry until Friday. And they usually send an old washerwoman with a basket, not a big black bird.
Mouldgrace was not the brightest carrot in the bunch and it wasn’t until she mentioned the eagle to Merlin a few weeks later that their secret suspicions were aroused. But they kept them secret. Merlin, because he knew that a day would come when the information would be of great importance, and Mouldgrace, because she had short-term, mid-term and long-term memory loss and had already forgotten whatever it was they had been talking about.
‘Except I think it had something to do with sausages,’ she said later.
The day after Arthur’s birth, Nana Agnys was delivered to Camelot. She knew from the start that something wasn’t right about her charge, but hey, she was the nana to a prince. She wasn’t going to rock the boat.
Once a month on the full moon, when for some strange reason he couldn’t sleep, King Uther-Pendragon would visit Merlin in the long, dark hours of night and, as the two old friends shared a mug of royal cocoa, he would say, ‘How could I have fathered such a petulant little brat?’
Merlin thought about telling the King of his suspicions, but never did. He wasn’t sure one way or the other and life was complicated enough without adding any stuff that might not be true. Nor did he mention his premonition about the King’s soon-to-be-dead situation.
‘Fear not, sire,’ he would say. ‘When you have passed over the River Styx to the Land Beyond Valhalla, I shall look after the boy.’
‘It’s not the idiot boy that needs looking after,’ Uther-Pendragon said. ‘It’s my Kingdom.’
‘Fear not, sire,’ Merlin reassured him. ‘You are the King and Avalon is your Kingdom. When your idiot son becomes monarch I will make sure this wonderful land does not become an Idiotdom.’
‘You are a good and faithful servant,’ said the King. ‘Avalon will be safe in your hands.’
‘I only live to serve, your majesty,’ said Merlin, who actually only lived to serve Merlin.
That had been the last time Merlin and Uther-Pendragon had drunk cocoa together. Before the next full moon arrived, the great King had died.
He was shot in battle by a second cousin of Nana Agnys, poisoned by a toffee made by Nana Agnys, cut down by a mighty sword that Nana Agnys had been polishing that very morning, bitten by an angry tiger which had once had a very painful thorn removed from its foot by Nana Agnys, knocked down by a runaway team of thirteen horses pulling a mighty war chariot, who were half-crazed from eating fermented straw fed to them by a stable boy who had once had afternoon tea with Nana Agnys, struck by lightning on his lovely silver bracelet (a birthday present from Nana Agnys), cut his finger on a very toxic mushroom that had been growing on a discarded boot that had once been worn by someone who looked remarkably like Nana Agnys, fell off a high castle battlement onto thirty-seven really sharp spikes that Nana Agnys had been meaning to put out for the Camelot Castle Cleanup because they were infected with anthrax, but hadn’t actually got round to doing, was seriously frightened by a very big spider which was actually a distant relation of Nana Agnys, and suffocated by not taking a breath while he was reading the longest sentence in this story, all within the space of twenty-seven minutes.
Merlin’s fear had been confirmed when a big black crow has crossed the chapel window at midday.
The simple fact of a big black crow flying past the chapel window was not normally seen as an omen of oncoming danger. In fact, Avalon was overrun with crows. But this particular big black crow had been trailing a white banner behind it emblazoned with the words ‘The King’s a Goner’.
‘Gonna what?’ said the young Arthur when Merlin told him of the omen.
‘No, sire…’ Merlin began to explain.
‘And what’s an omen, is it one of those flat yellow things?’
‘Flat yellow things, sire?’ said Merlin. ‘Do you mean the sun?’
‘No, no, stupid. The flat yellow things people have for breakfast. With that delicious-smelling bacon,’ snapped Arthur.
‘Oh, an omelette?’
‘Yes. Is it like one of them?’
‘No, sire.’
‘So the King’s not gonna have some breakfast?’
‘No, sire,’ said Merlin. ‘In truth, I fear it means the King has had his last breakfast.’
‘Gosh,’ said Arthur. ‘So you mean he’s going on a diet?’
‘Almost right,’ said Merlin. ‘It is diet, but without the “t” at the end.’
‘Oh yes, I can understand that,’ said Arthur. ‘I prefer coffee at breakfast too.’
Merlin thought that by the time he managed to get the boy to understand exactly what was happening, the Earth would have crashed into the Sun and the entire solar system would have vanished in a puff of dust. So, like always, he agreed with the last thing Arthur said and then left the room to find a peasant to bang his head against.
By the time he returned, the great King Uther-Pendragon was dead, the complete idiot boy Arthur was King and the Dark Ages had begun.
Whenever Merlin talked to Arthur, the conversation always went in a strange, surreal direction, so he tried to spend as little time with the boy as possible. The trouble was that now that Arthur was King, contact would be unavoidable. Thoughts of revolution, running away and murder began to grow in Merlin’s mind, but his promise to Uther-Pendragon and his knowledge that Avalon must survive no matter what made him determined to do as much as he could to keep the new King under control.
Merlin was the most magical person in the Kingdom, the only true wizard, though his talents in that direction were not so much based on him being a mystical superhero as the fact that he was the owner of the only copy of The Wizard’s Big Book of Spells.10 Where this book had come from, no one knew. The first spell he had cast when he had got the book was to make every other copy of the book turn into a small pair of socks.
The Wizard’s Big Book of Spells was a treasure trove of magic, from a spell to turn a cow into a raspberry to seventy-three spells on how to make various things invisible. One of them nearly cost Merlin his power because it made the book itself invisible and Merlin had a terrible time trying to find it again. Luckily there was a undo button inside the front cover. And although the book’s owner could make a beautiful eight-horned flying unicorn out of nothing more than a mug of pond weed, two warts and a Welsh miner’s helmet with a lamp on, there wasn’t one single spell that would allow Merlin to make young King Arthur wise or modest or nice.
Even with Merlin’s awesome powers stretched to their limit, the future for Avalon did not look good.
It was happening again.
It was the ninth time in ten days and King Arthur was furious. This, of course, was exactly why they were doing it.
‘Nana!’ roared King Arthur at the top of his voice, but no one came.
This was because King Arthur’s voice was not very tall, so even when it stood on tiptoe it only sounded like an undernourished three-year-old girl having a tantrum. Not only that, but the toilet that Arthur was sitting on was in the Gruelling Tower, one of the most remote parts of the castle, where very few people ever went. There were lots of bits of C
amelot that no one ever visited, either because they were too cold or too haunted or because the decor was really bad.11
The Gruelling Tower, where the King was sitting, was all three. He was the only living person to have been there since Lord Minivere deVere had been frightened out of his skin by the ghost of his granny, who wasn’t actually dead, while he had been sitting on the exact same toilet. That had been over a hundred years ago, but bits of Lord Minivere’s skin were still stuck to the wall.
The ‘it’ that was happening again was bubbles. They were coming up through the drains and exploding in the toilet bowl. The smell was horrible and the King recognised it immediately.
Whichever toilet the King sat on it happened.
He had assumed that the dragons were doing it to everyone, but they weren’t. It was just him. He had tried using different toilets – that was why he had gone up to the Gruelling Tower in the first place – but it hadn’t made any difference. Somehow the dragons managed to blow their bubbles up into whichever of Camelot’s two hundred and fifty-three toilets he was sitting on.
‘Nana!’ the King shouted again, but once again there was no response.
He tried to stamp his feet on the ground, but his legs were too short so all he could do was bash his heels against the toilet bowl. Unfortunately he had forgotten he was wearing his toad-stomping boots, the ones with the steel plates down the back, and the toilet shattered, dumping him on the floor in a big puddle.
In the years since the toilet had been last used, the toilet paper had been carried off by mice. It was only now that the King realised this. He went through his pockets, even though he knew he was far too important to carry anything in them. In fact, he thought that because he was the greatest King in the world, he was far too important to have anything as common as a pocket in his clothes, and yet there they were – three of them. He made a mental note to have the seamstress who had put them there sent to L’île de Pain Grillé,12 where he had decided he would send all his enemies to visit the Burning Salamander, but right now he had more pressing matters. Except there was nothing to do the ‘pressing’ with. He looked around the tiny room, but there was no paper anywhere.
It fact the only thing he could use was the bits of Lord Minivere deVere’s skin – and even that kept tearing as he peeled it off the walls.
So after he had marched back down to the occupied parts of Camelot, in an even sulkier mood than normal, he had to have four baths in puppy’s tears before he felt clean again.
‘Even the spiders were laughing at me,’ he complained.
‘Surely not, sire,’ said Merlin, who knew which side his bread was buttered on.13
‘Oh yes they were,’ sulked the King.
‘Oh no, sire, no one laughs at you,’ said Merlin. ‘Everyone loves you. They say you are the greatest King ever, far greater than your father.’
‘You are such a crawler,’ said Arthur. ‘Do they really say I’m greater than my father?’
‘Indeed, sire,’ Merlin lied. ‘And you have a much nicer name.’
‘Well, yes, that’s true. I mean, King Arthur sounds magnificent, doesn’t it?’
‘Verily, sire.’
‘And Daddy’s name was just silly. I mean, who ever heard of anyone called Uther-Pendragon,’ said the King. ‘For goodness sake, he couldn’t even spell Other properly.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And who was the main Pendragon anyway, if Daddy was the Other one?’
‘Quite so.’
‘And Pendragon? What sort of name is that? Was Daddy a dragon who had a pen? I don’t think so,’ said Arthur. ‘I mean, dragons haven’t got any thumbs so they couldn’t even pick up a pen, never mind write a letter with one.’
‘Indeed, sire. Your great insights and wisdom only confirm that you are the greatest King of all time,’ said Merlin, adding the bit of flattery that he knew would make Arthur pink with joy. ‘And, as all the ladies agree, you have the handsomest legs in all the Kingdom.’
Whenever the boy got angry or upset, Merlin suggested some nice new clothes to show off his perfection. This always sent Arthur rushing to the nearest mirror to admire himself and so calmed him down.
‘Yes, I do, don’t I?’ said King Arthur.
‘Without a doubt, sire,’ said Merlin, wondering how much more of this self-important, nasty little boy he could take.
‘One14 thinks,’ said the King, ‘one thinks the Embroidery Ladies of Camelot shall make one a new velvet tunic with flowers of diamonds to celebrate this wonderful day, and the Royal Portrait Painters shall record it for all to see.’
‘What day is that, sire?’ said Merlin.
‘Why, Thursday, the day that is named after me,’ said the King. ‘Though of course it should really be called Arthursday.’
‘So true, sire.’
New clothes always put the boy in a good mood so everyone made sure he got them several times a day. As he fantasised about a new tunic more splendid than any other tunic ever made, he remembered the pocket problem. That put him in a bad mood again, and the bad mood made him remember why he had discovered the pockets in the first place, and that meant he had to go and have another bath and, having had five baths in less than an hour, his skin went wrinkly and that put him in a class one bad mood, which was the sort of mood where he threw things out of the window. Today’s mood was so bad that it wasn’t until he had chucked sixteen kittens, a small chair, and four turtle doves in a pear tree out into the moat that he began to calm down. Of course, the turtle doves didn’t so much fall into the moat as fly away.15 Fortunately Merlin managed to distract the King so he didn’t notice, otherwise it would have been yet another of those days.
Most people have some special talent. Admittedly it might be for something fairly modest like peeling an orange really, really fast without squirting any of the juice in your eye. Most kings’ talents usually involve killing more people than anyone else. After all, this is how their ancestors became king in the first place.
King Arthur’s greatest talent, the one thing he did better than anyone else at Camelot, was sulking with a side-order of foot stamping. Although his ancestors had been good at the killing and conquering stuff, after he was born and his parents saw what an idiot he was, they made very sure he did not inherit or learn a single warrior-like trait.
‘Can you imagine it?’ King Uther-Pendragon had said. ‘He’d kill people because they were prettier than him or had shapelier legs or didn’t like mauve.’
So the great Merlin had cast a spell over Arthur to keep him as meek and mild and lazy and vain as a Persian cat. ‘But without the killing small defence-less animals bit that cats do all the time,’ King Uther-Pendragon had requested.
Merlin cast the spell and thus it was that after Uther-Pendragon died and Arthur became King, it was Merlin who ran things, though he always made sure Arthur thought he was in charge.
Thus it was ever so, thought Merlin, who had actually been running things for a very, very, very, very long time.
The sulking was an unwanted side effect of Merlin’s control spells, but he reckoned it was a small price to pay.
‘Roarin’ thumbs.’
‘What?’
‘Thumbs. If we had thumbs,’ said Spikeweed, ‘we would be the ones in charge. It’d be us in that castle, not stuck here in these caves in this horrible bleak valley surrounded by even more horrible bleak mountains where even the grass won’t grow.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said his wife, Primrose, who had heard it all a thousand times before.
‘Stands to reason, doesn’t it?’ Spikeweed continued. ‘I mean, we’re a hundred times stronger than humans. We’re much bigger and ancienter. We’re better looking and we have enormous brains. And answer me this – out of dragons and humans, only one species can breathe fire. Who’s that then? For goodness sake, how can you breathe fire and not be in charge? I’ll tell you how. Roarin’ thumbs. It’s all down to the roarin’ opposable digit.’
‘Do you need to
swear so much?’ asked Primrose.
‘Of course I do,’ said Spikeweed. ‘It’s one of the things dragons do better than any other species. No, it isn’t, is it? Even roarin’ humans swear more than we do.
‘And,’ he added, ‘on top of all that, they can’t even roarin’ fly. Chuck a human off a castle wall and what do they do, soar away with the grace of an eagle? I don’t think so. More like soar away with the grace of a lump of mud.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Primrose. ‘We all know. There’s no justice in the world.’
‘Too right,’ Spikeweed whinged. ‘Too right.’
‘But no one ever said there was,’ said Primrose. ‘There was no promise of fair play. You can’t get your money back.’
‘Oh yes, rub it in, why don’t you?’ said Spikeweed. ‘You try picking up small gold coins when you haven’t got thumbs.’
He then proceeded to shout the fourteen-thousand-and-fifty-seven swear words that every dragon learns as soon as they hatch. It made him feel a bit better to know that even though humans swore a lot more than dragons, they didn’t have nearly so many bad words to use.
‘Why don’t we make ourselves false thumbs?’ said their son, Bloat.
‘Because, stupid, to do that would require a manual dexterity that we lack because we haven’t got thumbs,’ said Spikeweed. ‘I’m going outside to burn a puppy.’
‘It’s your own stupid fault there’s no grass, you know,’ Primrose shouted after him. ‘If you didn’t keep burning everything we’d have lovely green trees and soft grass and flowers and butterflies and all that sort of stuff, everywhere, not just charcoal-covered rocks.’
‘I hate butterflies,’ Spikeweed muttered as he left.
Spikeweed was the King of the Dragons. He was to dragons what Arthur was to humans except he wasn’t vain, spoilt or stupid like Arthur.16 Also, unlike Arthur, who was often happy in the same way a stupid bouncy labrador puppy is happy, Spikeweed was in a bad mood every minute of every day, awake or asleep. It wasn’t always about thumbs, though it usually was about not being in charge.
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