‘Great. Well, your majesty, while you’re formulating this incredible plot to overpower the unsuspecting humans and gain world domination, could you drag your granny outside into the rain and wash her down? The smell is making my eyes water so badly I can hardly see a thing.’
Apart from the stupid red bump on top of your head, she thought.
Adam and Evel were only two of dozens of cockroaches that spied on the humans for Spikeweed. But because cockroaches have no scruples at all and are basically evil and even go and suck your toothbrush at night while you’re asleep,20 they will spy for anyone. As well as spying for King Spikeweed, the Camelot cockroaches spied on the dragons for Merlin, spied on Merlin and the King for Morgan le Fey and even spied on each other for each other. As long as there was cake involved they didn’t care who they spied on. In the case of the dragons, they had made an exception to the cake rule because, apart from the very rare Gateau Dragons of Patagonia, dragons do not have cake. However, by an amazing fluke, dragon’s earwax tastes exactly like cake, so they had made a deal with Spikeweed that in return for somewhere warm and cosy to sleep – his ear – and all the earwax they could eat, they would spy for him.
Romeo Crick knew nothing of the world upstairs or the luxury of having a bucket to cherish and call his own.
Living, as he did, deep in the sculleries below the main kitchens of Camelot, he knew very little of anywhere.
Romeo Crick was eleven years old, the same age as King Arthur. They were both slight, good-looking boys with blond hair and big blue eyes, but every tiny thing of their two lives could not have been more different.
Upstairs, the young King lived a life of total spoilt luxury. He not only had fresh mauve tights for every day of the week, he had fresh mauve tights for every hour of the day and a special mauve tights servant whose only job was to make sure his master had an endless supply of fresh mauve tights.
Below stairs, Romeo Crick had never even seen a pair of tights. All he had to cover his legs was a layer of mud. Nor did he get a new layer every day. The one application, scraped from the drains below the kitchens, had to last a whole month.
Romeo Crick had lived in the sculleries since he had been bought at a midden sale at the age of five.21 During the past six years he had washed and trimmed the stalks and leaves of more than seventy-five-thousand beetroots, for Romeo Crick was Camelot’s Beetroot Leaf Preparation Operative, though he did dream of the day he would be promoted to washing the actual beetroots and pass his job on to someone below him – if ever there was someone below him.
For this work Romeo was rewarded with a pallet of straw to sleep on, two potatoes and a knob of gristle each day. He was also given a slice of bacon every Christmas and would have been given another slice on his birthday, except he wasn’t, because no one knew when his birthday was.
Even the rats looked down on Romeo Crick, and they kept eating his bed.
Romeo came from a poor family in a poor village where luxuries such as beetroots were but a distant dream and shoes were a rumour that no one actually believed. The villagers were so poor that even the air belonged to someone else and many of them simply died because they couldn’t afford to breathe. When the infant Romeo had been washed up on the bank of the river in a wicked basket,22 most of the villagers thought he was a fish.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Molly Crick, who was to raise Romeo as her own. ‘It’s a little baby.’
‘No, no, ’tain’t possible,’ said the villagers. ‘It come out of the river so it must be a fish. Babies doesn’t come out of a river. A big bird brings babies.’
Molly unwrapped the baby and held him up in the air for all to see, but they still didn’t believe her.
‘’Tis a miracle,’ everyone said. ‘A fish that looks exactly like a baby.’
Then they spent two hours deciding the best way to cook a fish that looks like a baby until Molly’s husband, Unthank Crick, threatened to kill anyone who laid a hand or a filleting knife on his new son.
‘Anyone tries to dip him in batter,’ he warned, ‘and I’ll batter them.’
Molly and Unthank didn’t have any children, so they didn’t care if Romeo was a fish or a boy or a fish boy. They were going to raise him as their own.
After that the rest of the village tended to keep away from the Crick family. Even when the crops failed and everyone was forced to eat grass for every meal instead of just breakfast, Unthank Crick would allow no one near his precious child. There were murmurings that it was the fish boy who had brought the drought and made all the dandelions and turnips wither away, but Unthank was the biggest and strongest man in the village so Romeo was safe. Unthank was also the second-biggest and second-strongest person in the village as Molly Crick was a good head taller than her husband and could lift him over her head with one hand. It would be many years before Playstations, televisions, computers and electricity would be invented, and watching Molly Unthank lift her massive husband above her head and then juggle him and two potatoes was the village’s most popular Saturday night entertainment.
‘Must be wonderful to be so strong,’ said all the women, their eyes full of admiration.
‘Must be wonderful to own two whole potatoes,’ said all the men, their eyes full of envy.
Times were hard in the village and as the months passed they got harder. The Cricks were forced to eat their potatoes, and juggling with two lumps of mud and a slug just didn’t excite people the same way.
‘At least we can console ourselves with the fact that things can’t possibly get any worse,’ said the village headman as a crow flew off with the slug.
That night the evil Angry Knights of Twilight23 razed the village to the ground. They carried off all the women, thinking they were rather attractive sheep, killed all the men, thinking they were rather ugly sheep, made glue out of the children, ate the babies and knitted the kittens into doormats.
Only Romeo, Unthank and an old pig called Geoffrey survived, because they had all been bathing in the sewage pit during the attack.24
‘Oh well, at least we’ve still got each other and our health,’ said Unthank to Romeo after the Knights of Camelot had driven the Angry Knights of Twilight away. ‘And at least there’s no one left who would like to deep fry you.’
Unfortunately this was the last thing he said because seven seconds later a flock of dragons had burnt what was left of the village and Romeo’s father to the ground.
Romeo Crick and Geoffrey had survived because they had been sitting up to their necks in a puddle while everything around them turned to ashes. The puddle had not actually belonged to Romeo or Geoffrey, but as its owner had been killed by the Angry Knights of Twilight, they had moved in and claimed it for themselves.
‘Oh well, at least we’ve still got each other and our health,’ said Romeo to Geoffrey.
And our lovely puddle, thought Geoffrey.
Unfortunately this was the last thing Geoffrey thought because seven seconds later a bolt of lightning struck the pig between the shoulder blades.
It was the incredibly appetising smell of roast pork that had attracted the passing travellers who had rescued Romeo Crick. The travellers had not so much rescued the boy as stuff ed themselves full of roast pork before stuffing him into a sack, dragging him off and slipping him into someone’s midden sale while they weren’t looking. That had been the last time Romeo had seen the light of day.
The Cook from Camelot had paid five groats for Romeo Crick.
‘And that’s only because it is a very good sack,’ she said as she handed over the money without looking inside the sack, but hoping there might be a new turnip inside.
It wasn’t until she had got back to the kitchens of Camelot and turned the sack upside down to shake out any spiders that she’d realised Romeo was inside it. Her first reaction at not finding a turnip was to throw him into the moat.
However, by a wonderful coincidence, that was exactly what had happened to the miserable wretch who had been Camelot’s previous Beetroot Leaf
Preparation Operative. One of the cleaners had swept him up with the dirt. He had been so puny and half-starved that when she went through the dirt to salvage the nourishing bits to add to the soup – dead beetles, scabs and such – she hadn’t seen him. So he had, like so many kitchen boys before him, become Krakatoa the olm’s dinner.
Thus it was that Romeo Crick became the new Beetroot Leaf Preparation Operative and the first boy to actually think it was a great job. The glorious purpleness of the stalks was like poetry to his soul. After washing and polishing thirty thousand leaves it all seemed a bit less exciting. Beetroots just didn’t seem quite so magical any more.
Having survived three fires, it would appear that Romeo was luckier than everyone around him, but that wasn’t the case. There was another reason that Romeo had survived the fires, but it wasn’t until he was pushed into the kitchen ovens that he, or anyone, realised it.
The seventeen great ovens in the kitchens of Camelot were as tall as a man and as old as the castle itself. In fact, two of them were several hundred years older. They had been part of the castle that had stood in the place where Camelot now was. Apart from the two ovens, this ancient building had collapsed and, quite a huge number of years later, King Arthur’s ancestors had said, ‘Wow, look at that pile of stones, let’s build a castle.’
In the Derelict Years, as that time between castles came to be called, seven monks had lived in the two deserted ovens. They had remained there while Camelot had risen around them and would probably be there to this day if the new Cook hadn’t said, ‘I reckon those two brick tunnels would be great for cooking pizza.’
‘But what about the monks who live there?’ someone had said. ‘Are they not sort of sacred?’
The Cook did not believe in that sort of thing and shortly afterward invented Pizza Monkeretta, which has evolved into the modern Pizza Margherita.25
The seventeen ovens were heated with burning coals and gradually clinker formed on the bricks. It built up until so many bits kept falling into the food that the Cook could not get away with pretending they were black pepper and someone had to crawl into the red-hot furnaces to rake it all out. So the post of Official Clinker Raker was created. The wages were awful, the days were long, but the job did have one thing in its favour. Yes, the days were long, but there weren’t very many of them. No Official Clinker Raker had ever managed to clean all seventeen ovens before they had become clinker themselves. In fact, the largest number of ovens cleaned out by an Official Clinker Raker was about one-tenth of one.
‘We need to find a more efficient way of doing this,’ said the Cook as her assistant swept up the little pile of charcoal that had once been called Arnold Blight. ‘I mean, we’re running out of small boys.’
‘I know, Cook, we got a dozen new ones on Friday and that was the last of them.’
By an incredible coincidence the Cook’s eye fell on Romeo Crick, who had fallen asleep in the middle of a mountain of beetroot leaves. She picked up her eye, pushed it back into its socket and hauled Romeo up by the scruff of his neck.
‘HOW DARE YOU FALL ASLEEP ON THE JOB, YOU LITTLE WEASEL!’ she screamed into his ear.
Before Romeo could point out that he had actually only been allowed three minutes rest in the past week due to a huge influx of fresh beetroots, the Cook dragged him over to one of the ovens, shoved a rake into his hand and threw him inside.
‘CLEAN!’ the Cook roared.
So he did.
He walked to the back of the oven and began scraping. All around him, the floor, the walls and the arched roof glowed orange with the heat. Even though she was standing several metres away from the mouth of the oven, the Cook could feel her eyebrows melting. Yet Romeo Crick, deep in the heart of the inferno, was totally untouched. His clothes caught fire and fell off him, but he was unmarked. Not one single hair on his head was scorched. His skin glowed as gold as the fire, but he wasn’t even sweating.
After half an hour he had cleaned the entire oven and jumped out with a big smile on his face.
‘Is this a promotion?’ he said as the Cook gave him a beetroot leaf to cover himself with. ‘Do you want me to clean another one?’
Everyone gathered round him, touching his skin in disbelief. If they hadn’t seen it for themselves, no one would have believed it. They had all seen a small, skinny boy climb into a red-hot oven and climb out half an hour later without so much as a tiny red mark on him. Romeo Crick was fireproof.26
‘You know, ma’am,’ he said to Cook, ‘if you made me some pastry trousers I could cook them while I was cleaning.’
He then cleaned three more ovens before lunch, which made it a day Romeo would remember for the rest of his life.
‘Not the four ovens,’ he would say later, ‘but lunch. That was the first time in my life I ever had lunch. I had three pie crusts and a whole carrot all to myself.’
After that, Romeo Crick was treated like a hero. The Cook went to her Spare Kitchen Boy Cupboard and got a new child to become Camelot’s Beetroot Leaf Preparation Operative. Romeo’s bed was moved from his damp hole in the wall to a drawer in the bottom of a kitchen cabinet – not the rough cabinet where the old saucepan lids and cracked jam jars were stored, but the big dresser where the best knives and forks were kept. He had pie crusts for lunch every day after that and as many knobs of gristle as he wanted whenever he wanted. And so it was that the weedy child who had looked like a pencil on a diet gradually put on weight and grew stronger.
The Cook, who had never married or had children, began to look upon Romeo as her own son. Unfortunately adoption hadn’t been invented in those days, otherwise she would have taken him as her own child. Fortunately adoption hadn’t been invented in those days, otherwise she would have taken him as her own child and the poor boy’s name would have been changed from Romeo Crick to Romeo Bladder.
The Cook told her kitchen staff that under no circumstances were they to tell anyone above stairs about Romeo’s talent.
‘If this gets out, they’ll take him away from us,’ she said. ‘So if I find anyone has breathed a word, they will become casserole. Understood?’
Everyone nodded. They all remembered what had happened to Dym Trotter. No one wanted to follow in his footsteps, though they had to admit his footsteps had been delicious.
Of course, an incredible talent such as Romeo’s could not stay secret forever, no matter what the Cook said. It was a talent that would set him on a new career path, leading to fame, fortune, a pair of clean tights for every day of the week and big boots with very pointy toes. But for now, Romeo, with his very own drawer to sleep in, was happier than he had ever been in his life.
King Arthur’s Kingdom was called Avalon and it stretched as far as its borders in all directions. Camelot was at the very heart of the Kingdom. Originally a damp, windswept land full of miserable ignorant Celts, the great wizard Merlin had transformed it by magic so that in King Arthur’s time it was covered in endless beautiful mountains and valleys and flat bits with windy rivers and lush green fields full of strawberries and tomatoes that actually tasted of something.27 It was a truly beautiful and idyllic land where everyone lived in complete peace and harmony except for those people who didn’t. It was heaven on earth except, unlike heaven, you didn’t fall off if you went too close to the edge.28 Unfortunately when Merlin finally died some centuries later in 1927, the magic wore off and the land became, once again, a damp windswept place full of miserable ignorant Celts.
‘Oh great Royal Messengers,’ began the King. ‘Well, one says “great”, but of course I’m the only person who is really great, but then as you are my own messengers I hereby decree that you shall be called great while you are doing my messenging. Oh great Royal Messengers, I charge you – and when I say charge, I don’t mean you have to pay me anything – I mean, one hereby commands or orders you to search my glorious Kingdom for brave and fearless knights who will come to our aid.’
‘Indeed,’ said Merlin.
‘Of course, one is br
aver and fearlesser than any knight and one would love to go and fight the dragons oneself, but unfortunately that is not possible for technical reasons,’ the King continued.
He did not explain what the technical reasons were. Nor did anyone dare ask him, but they all knew. The King was a pathetic coward who was scared of paper bags and didn’t want to get his tights dirty.
‘May our blessings be with you, together with a packed lunch and thirty-five groats,’ said the King. ‘And for the Royal Messenger who finds the Brave Knight who completes this great quest, there will be a wonderful reward.’
He did not explain what the wonderful reward would be, but everyone knew. King Arthur’s wonderful rewards were usually a set of dinner plates depicting famous heroes of Avalon who were all King Arthur. They also got a tabard29 with ‘The Totally Incredible King Arthur Gave Me This’ embroidered on it. Most people who got the wonderful rewards sold them on YeBay, which was like eBay before computers and electricity and involved a lot of carrier pigeons. It could take months to place a bid, never mind actually buy or sell anything.
So the four Royal Messengers set off on their quest, galloping like the wind on their trusty steeds across the great drawbridge towards the seventh island. Four days later, they had managed to cross the other six islands and reached the mainland. It had been a particularly crowded time on the bridges and it had really slowed them down. The Royal Messengers had had to push at least fifty people into the moat simply to get by.
But at last they reached dry land and were ready to set off on their quest.
The first Royal Messenger, Sir Barkworth, rode East.
The second Royal Messenger, Lord Pleat of Perivale, who had picked the shortest straw, rode as slowly as he could towards Wales. Maybe, he thought, one of the others will find the Brave Knight before I get there so I can go home.
The third Royal Messenger, Sir Lamorak, rode forth and North at the same time.
And the fourth Royal Messenger, Sir Bedivere, rode West.
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