Camelot

by Colin Thompson

  ‘Indeed so, my lady.’

  ‘Can you take me down to the dungeons?’

  ‘Oh, my lady!’ Lady Petaluna cried. ‘How could someone as fine and beautiful as you even think of going to so vile a place?’

  ‘I shall disguise myself as a common serving wench and you shall take me down to the dungeons and then to the kitchens that I may see this Romeo Crick for myself.’

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  Of the four messengers the King had sent out, Sir Barkworth was the most useless.

  Sir Barkworth Barkworth de Vere Rissole Rustington of Barkworth the Younger, to give him his full title, had more letters in his name than brain cells in his head. He was one of the Cloudy Knights, which meant he was like a night when clouds cover the sky and there is nothing to see. He was an example of the ridiculous tradition, still carried on today, that says if your father was a lord then, no matter how stupid and useless you are, you are a lord too. He had all the right qualifications – no chin, very large ears and he spoke in a silly voice that had nothing to do with the way words were actually spelt.35

  Sir Barkworth Barkworth de Vere Rissole Rustington of Barkworth the Younger had inherited the title from his father, Barkworth Barkworth de Vere Rissole Rustington of Barkworth the Little Bit Older, who had in turn won the title as a consolation prize in a raffle, apart from the Sir bit, which Barkworth the Younger had earned when he had removed a splinter from King Arthur’s big toe. It had been a really agonising splinter and Barkworth the Younger had managed to remove it painlessly by using an anaesthetic – a sudden bang from behind on the King’s head that had made him unconscious. When the King came round and discovered his foot wasn’t hurting any more, though he did have a bit of a headache, he was so grateful he knighted Rissole on the spot and gave him seventy-six groats a year for life and a complete set of dinner plates featuring the famous heroes of Avalon.

  The Barkworth Barkworth de Vere Rissole Rustingtons of Barkworth have two claims to fame that are still with us today. Most people know that the sandwich was named after its inventor, the Earl of Sandwich, but few know the the rissole was named after Sir Barkworth. The family’s second claim to fame is that the phrase ‘barking mad’ is named after them too.

  Being a deeply committed coward, before being volunteered to be a Royal Messenger Sir Barkworth had been the Court Coat Holder. This involved hiding behind a very large rock or tree and holding everyone’s coats while they fought their battles. He was so good at this job that even the King’s enemies would get him to hold their coats too.36

  Lords generally address each other as My Lord So and So, especially when they are speaking to Lord Saughandsaugh of Cricklewood, but none of them could bring themselves to talk to Sir Barkworth like that. He was just too stupid. So to everyone, even the humblest kitchen servant, he was known as Woof-Woof.

  ‘I say, Woof-Woof, old chip, trim my toenails, would you? There’s a good fellow,’ the other knights would say in the same tone of voice they used when asking their dogs to fetch a stick. And, even though he was not clever enough to be called ‘stupid’, Sir Barkworth had a happy nature that was exactly the same as the dog who had just fetched the stick. So he always did whatever they asked.37

  King Arthur liked to surround himself with people like Sir Barkworth because they made him feel extremely clever.

  But no one was sure why the King had chosen Sir Barkworth to be a Royal Messenger. A more useless person to send out on a quest was hard to imagine. There were days when it took him until lunchtime to find the door out of his own bedroom. These were the good days, when he had actually managed to find his bedroom the night before and not had to sleep in a damp corridor with only his manservant as a pillow. This meant that, quite often, by the time he got to the castle dining hall, he had missed breakfast and lunch, and by the time he found his seat he had missed dinner too. There was a joke around Camelot that if anyone wanted to lose weight they simply had to go on the Barkworth Diet.

  Yet for all his failings, Sir Barkworth was one of those people who life has blessed. No matter what happened to him, he always landed on his feet. This was easily explained by the fact that his feet were a lot heavier than his head, which was fairly empty. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his heavy feet and his big heart, he would probably have risen into the air and floated away, though of course with his endless good luck, he would have drifted down to earth in a field of chocolate-covered strawberries.

  When he had crossed the final bridge to the mainland Sir Barkworth took out his orders and read them several times. They said:

  ‘Right, which way’s East?’ he said, looking for a signpost.

  There was a single signpost and it said: ‘The North’.

  However, there was not one which said ‘The East’.38

  ‘Um, tricky,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘This needs some thought.’

  Thinking was not one of Sir Barkworth’s friends. In fact they barely knew each other and were seldom in the same room together. On the few occasions they were, Sir Barkworth was in the far corner while thinking headed for the door. If they did meet it usually ended in a headache and tears.

  Luckily Barkworth had his squire, Nymrod, to look after him. Had he not, his lordship would have got lost before he even found his horse. You would imagine that the last thing a young squire would want after leaving squire school was to work for an idiot like Sir Barkworth. But Nymrod was not your average squire. He had been the brightest pupil at squire school, certainly bright enough to realise that being very clever could place him in extreme danger. After all, the bravest knights always had first choice of the new squires, and obviously the bravest knights were famous for being the bravest by exposing themselves to the greatest dangers. On the other hand, a stupid knight would never be trusted with anything important so would be far less likely to get into any trouble. This was proved by the fact that very few brave and fearless knights lived much past thirty, but there were quite a few stupid and cowardly knights who were well over eighty.39

  So Nymrod acted as dumb as possible in the hope he would end up with the most useless knight of all. He made sure he got every single question on every single test completely wrong, including the one where you had to write your name. On that line he wrote: No thanks, I’ve got one already.

  And it had worked perfectly. When all the knights had chosen their squires, Nymrod was the only one left. Sir Barkworth had been the last to choose on account of having got himself trapped in the toilet and having taken three days to find the door, quite an achievement in a room only two metres square. Nymrod knew that the greatest danger he or his master would be likely to face would be pricking their fingers collecting wild roses for one of the Court Ladies.

  Sir Barkworth got out a pencil and a piece of paper and tried to draw a diagram.

  ‘Oh no, the pencil’s run out.’

  Nymrod took the pencil and turned it so the sharpened end was pointing at the paper.

  ‘Try it now, master,’ he said.

  ‘Wow, brilliant. Right, now leave this to me,’ said Sir Barkworth, unwisely.

  But a squire always has to do what his master commands so Nymrod sat down beside the moat while Sir Barkworth scribbled and calculated and chewed his pencil and tried to think and failed and scribbled some more. Then Sir Barkworth climbed back on his horse, adjusted his head so it pointed directly in front and rode straight into the moat.

  ‘Who put that there?’ he said as he and the horse scrambled out onto dry land before the olms could get them.

  ‘I think, master, that although you probably did some brilliant calculations, you did make one tiny mistake,’ said Nymrod.

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘I doubled checked all my sums. Where do you suppose I could have gone wrong?’

  ‘I think, master, that you probably should have sat on your horse facing the end with the head on rather than the one with the tail.’

  ‘Ah, yes, you could be right,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘Jolly complic
ated things, horses, aren’t they?’

  ‘Indeed they are, master,’ said Nymrod as they finally set off towards The East.

  By then it was getting dark so fifty metres down the road they stopped for the night. They did not take rooms in an inn. There wasn’t one. They did not put up a tent. They didn’t have one. They simply stopped in the middle of the road and fell asleep in their saddles.

  It rained during the night and it rained on the knight.

  ‘Gosh, that was handy,’ said Sir Barkworth when they woke up. ‘Won’t have to waste time having a wash.’

  ‘Indeed, master,’ said Nymrod as he wrung Sir Barkworth out.

  As they left the valley and rode into new and exciting bits of Avalon, Sir Barkworth wondered if and when he would ever see his home again.40

  ‘I wonder, master,’ said Nymrod, ‘if we shall ever see our homes again.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never actually seen your home, so probably not,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘And to tell the truth, I can’t remember what mine looks like. Got a door, I think, and a bit of a roof and some window thingies. And if memory serves, think there might be a couple of sprogs and of course my beloved, um, er, hairy thing, barks a lot?’

  ‘A dog?’

  ‘No, no, the um, the good lady wife, yes, er, Lady Barkworth. What were you saying?’

  ‘Nothing, my lord.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  They rode on in silence until they came to a field of sheep, which Sir Barkworth insisted on greeting one by one.

  ‘Fine fellows,’ he said as they continued their journey.

  That night they did stop at a wayside inn – The Pickle and Coughdrop – where, as luck would have it, there were four Brave Knights also in residence.

  ‘I say, you chaps,’ said Sir Barkworth, ‘I am by way of sort of being a Royal Messenger, sent by the King no less, and I am looking for a Brave Knight to battle some big lizardy things. Any chance you chaps might be sort of interested?’

  ‘How much?’ said the first Brave Knight.

  ‘Quite a lot, actually,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘In fact, to be honest, incredibly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dangerous. Incredibly dangerous.’

  ‘No problem,’ said the second Brave Knight. ‘Dangerous is my middle name.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said the third Brave Knight. ‘It’s Kevin.’

  ‘I meant, how much would we get paid?’ said the first Brave Knight.

  ‘Ah, well now,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘The prize is a jewel beyond price, the hand of the King’s sister, Morgan le Fey, in marriage.’

  Like everyone in Avalon, the Brave Knights had heard about the legendary beauty of Morgan le Fey. Unfortunately they had also heard about the legendary independence of Morgan le Fey. So they knew there was no way she would marry any of them unless she actually wanted to. The King might be offering her hand, but there was no way he had the power to offer the rest of her to go with it.

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ said the first Brave Knight. ‘Normally yes. I mean, any one of us, or even all of us, would be only too happy to come to the aid of our glorious King Arthur and have the chance of marrying his beautiful sister, but…’

  ‘Master, have you told them that there’s a set of dinner plates depicting famous heroes of Avalon and a lovely tabard as well as the princess?’ said Nymrod, omitting to mention the gold that was on offer in case the opportunity came to reward himself with it.

  ‘Oh yes, absolutely, gorgeous stuff,’ said Sir Barkworth.

  ‘Well, you do indeed paint a tempting picture,’ said the first Brave Knight, with the other three nodding in agreement. ‘But I fear we are already on a great quest.’

  ‘Mind you, if you’re still stuck when we’ve finished questing,’ said the third Brave Knight, ‘do look us up again, by all means.’

  ‘Great quest?’ said Sir Barkworth.

  ‘Oh yes, extremely great,’ said the fourth Brave Knight, ‘and unfortunately also top secret.’

  ‘Rightio, jolly good,’ said Sir Barkworth.

  ‘But I say, old chip,’ said the first Brave Knight, ‘there is something you could do for us before you go, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Indeed, old chap, just name it.’

  ‘Just give my toenails a quick trim, would you?’ said the Brave Knight, pulling off his boots.

  The next morning, with his trusty squire by his side, Sir Barkworth set off, not surprisingly in the wrong direction. Because he had a bit of toenail clipping in his left eye, which forced him to keep it closed, he rode in circles all day until, as night fell, they came to an inn.

  ‘This looks like a nice place,’ said Sir Barkworth.

  ‘It is indeed, my lord,’ said Nymrod.

  ‘Oh, you have stayed here before?’

  ‘Indeed, my lord, and so did you, last night.’

  ‘Ah. Well, yes, it is a nice place and we will stay here tonight as well.’

  To make sure he wouldn’t make the same mistake again, the next morning Sir Barkworth closed his left eye and set off in the opposite direction. And it worked. After a long day’s ride they reached a magnificent castle.

  ‘I say, Nymrod, that’s a magnificent castle,’ said Sir Barkworth.

  ‘Indeed, my lord.’

  ‘Methinks it may be paradise,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘For I have seen it in my dreams.’

  ‘In your dreams, sire?’

  ‘Absolutely, for how else could I have seen it?’

  ‘It is Camelot, my lord,’ said Nymrod.

  ‘Really? I never knew there were two castles with that name.’

  ‘There aren’t, my lord.’

  And so it was that the first Royal Messenger failed in his quest, though having managed to have such a long conversation without falling off his horses did prove his motor skills were getting better every day.

  When Arthur became King, he did indeed banish his mother to the Island of Shallot, which he renamed the Island of Vegetables as he had promised. King Arthur then told Merlin to search the castle for the ugliest, smelliest old crone he could find and that she was to be sent to the Island of Vegetables as Igraine’s servant.

  Sewyr lived in a crack in the wall of Camelot’s main sewer. Her family had lived there for seventeen generations, since they had been granted the right to do so by one of Arthur’s ancestors. Sewyr had been named in honour of her home. Now that the drains were blocked and overflowing, her family had been forced to move out and had taken up temporary residence in a broken gristle storage bin in the castle tip. All except Sewyr’s grandfather, who said he was too old for change and instead stayed in the drain, coming up for air every fifteen minutes.

  Merlin had held auditions and Sewyr had stood out as the winner. She had out-smelled and out-uglied all the others. The fact that she still had one tooth had gone against her, but it was a lovely shade of green and the frothy dribble that came out of her nose every time she spoke had won the day. She had been put into a big sack and ferried across to the Island of Vegetables.

  To call it an island was to flatter it. The Island of Vegetables was little more than a rock shaped, remarkably, like a big potato. To call the castle on it a castle was to flatter it too. It was more like a garden shed with a couple of half-hearted towers, seven windows and a mould-covered door that had once been the side of a cattle stall on Noah’s Ark.

  ‘I’ll teach the Queen to be such a horrid mummy,’ Arthur said. ‘Let her eat nothing but gruel with a goat’s hoof in it, and use the same hoof I had to use for all those years. And let her eat the gruel from a really rough wooden bowl that has been eaten away by so many woodworms that she only has five minutes before the gruel leaks out all over the table and let her spoon be made of rusty iron with sharp bits and, and…’

  ‘Sire, surely you would not punish the lady who gave you life with such cruelty?’ said Merlin.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Arthur. ‘Don’t give her a rusty spoon. Give her a piece of the finest silver c
utlery for her watery gruel.’

  ‘Indeed, sire.’

  ‘But make it a fork.’

  ‘Sire, there are many at court who would say your mother has a heart of gold.’

  ‘Yes, her heart is gold like a hard-boiled egg,’ said Arthur. ‘Dry with the texture of sawdust.’

  Merlin knew there was no changing the boy’s mind and if he was honest with himself, he hated the old Queen too.

  ‘But to show that I am not totally heartless,’ Arthur added, ‘we shall give my mother a servant who reflects her importance as the mother of the King.’

  ‘So I should send Sewyr back to her drain?’ said Merlin.

  ‘Not likely,’ said Arthur. ‘No, we shall give her an important title. We hereby name her Lady Sewyr of the Slime.’

  ‘Your majesty’s generosity,’ said Merlin in a sarcastic voice that went completely over the King’s head, ‘is only exceeded by your personal kindness.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Arthur. ‘Maybe I’m being too nice. I know niceness is one of my weaknesses. I think that is why my subjects love me so much.’

  Change love to loathe and you’re absolutely right, thought Merlin.

  ‘Oh, woe is me,’ Queen Igraine cried. ‘That I should end my life so. After all I did for that ungrateful boy.’

  ‘Maybe, my lady,’ Lady Sewyr of the Slime dribbled, ‘if you were to write down all the things you did for your son and send it to him, he might change his mind.’

  ‘It’s worth a try, I suppose,’ said the Queen. ‘Bring me paper and a quill that I may write.’

  ‘Paper?’

  The only paper Sewyr knew had fallen out of the holes above her head in the drains. It had been soft and crumpled with perforations and full of extreme unpleasantness.

  ‘Umm, well now. I’ll see what I can find,’ said Sewyr and went off to rummage through the castle cupboards.

  There were only two cupboards as it was a very small castle. One was full of dried gruel and the other was empty apart from a goat’s hoof. Nor was there any wallpaper in any of the rooms, but for all her grossness, Sewyr was a resourceful person. She went down to the kitchen and got a sharp knife.