‘Ah, well, sir, your name is legend,’ said Sir Bedivere, who could flatter the back and front legs off a whole field of donkeys. ‘And what brings you to Avalon?’
‘I am freshly returned from foreign parts, where I lanced a lot of Heathen Goths and slayed Vlad the Inhaler himself,’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘Vlad the Inhaler?’
‘Yes. He is the son of Vlad the Impaler, who I also lanced a lot, and he has a bad sinus problem,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘Or rather, I should say he had a bad sinus problem. Breathing no longer causes him any difficulty. And I am here,’ Sir Lancelot continued, ‘to try and win the hand of the King’s sister, Morgan le Fey.’
‘Indeed sir, well, I may be able to help you there,’ said Sir Bedivere, proving yet again that fortune favours the selfish and greedy.
‘You know the lady?’
‘Indeed, sir,’ lied Sir Bedivere, unless seeing her from a window as she crossed the courtyard qualified as knowing.
‘And is her beauty as enchanting as it is said to be?’
‘There are not words enough to describe it,’ said Sir Bedivere.
‘So she’s hot stuff then, eh?’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘My lord, so hot she could boil a kettle if you sat it down on the other side of the room,’ said Sir Bedivere. ‘And when she sings or simply just speaks, why, nightingales feel so inadequate they beat their heads against trees and are struck dumb.’
‘Wow. And you can introduce me to her?’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘If ’tis so, I should be forever in your debt.’
Not so much forever, thought Sir Bedivere, only until you have rewarded me with your entire wealth.
‘I think that the Lady Morgan le Fey is away at present,’ said Sir Bedivere, who still fancied a week of peace and quiet at the inn sitting in the sunshine listening to the singing of the birds and the clinking of Sir Lancelot’s bag of gold, which he had just noticed.
‘That is a fine bag, Sir Lancelot,’ he said.
‘Indeed it is, for it was given to me by none other than Leonardo da Vinci,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘He used to keep his pencils in it.’
‘It must be priceless.’
‘Indeed. There are three hundred gold sovereigns inside it, yet I believe the bag itself is worth ten times that amount,’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘Oh my goodness,’ said Sir Bedivere, beginning to dribble uncontrollably.
Barnakle had seen his master drool in the presence of wealth many, many times before and always carried a big hankie for such occasions. With one quick flick of his wrist he cleared his master’s chin before Lancelot noticed.
‘But see here, my good and helpful friend,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘let me make you a present of it. This priceless bag and its contents are mere trifles compared to the treasure of my Lady Morgan le Fey, whose heart I hope to win with your selfless help.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ said Sir Bedivere with all his fingers and toes crossed behind his back.
‘I insist,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘It is the least I can do.’
Oh wow, there’s more? thought Sir Bedivere. The sheer weight of the bag and its gold in his hands made him so weak with delight that he would have fallen over if Barnakle hadn’t propped him up.
Who’s the coolest knight in the whole world? he thought. And who’s going to be the richest knight in the whole world and the most popular knight in Camelot?
Ooh, I wonder who it could be?
Oh, of course, it’s moi, the great rich and famous Sir Bedivere of Bedivere.
Yeah, I TOTALLY RULE!
He didn’t answer the bit about who was the most popular knight, because he didn’t really care about that. As long as he got all the cash, people could dislike him as much as they liked.
‘I believe, Sir Lancelot,’ he said, ‘that the angel of whom we speak is due to return to Camelot in five days’ time.’
‘Excellent,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘We shall rest here until then and feast on the finest venison and wines which it will be my honour and delight to provide you with.’
‘As you wish, my lord,’ said Sir Bedivere. ‘I was on my way to a dark cold monastery to purge my soul in a cold dungeon wearing nothing but a horse-hair shirt and eating naught but gravel for a week, but for you, my lord, I shall sacrifice my penance and be your guest.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘You are a good and true friend and I shall give thanks to the gods by throwing a bag of gold down the Well of Thanksgiving at the back of this very inn.’
Sir Bedivere gave a barely discernible nod to Barnakle, who went out to the stables and put on his wellies. It would not be the first time he had gone down a wishing well to relieve it of its contents and no doubt it would not be the last.
IMPORTANT NOTE
The Leonardo da Vinci referred to in this chapter was not THE famous Leonardo da Vinci, the great artist and inventor. Nor was it his even more famous descendant, Leonardo da Vinci, who won the 2007 series of Transylvania Waters’s Got Talent with his brilliant song ‘I’m In The Mood For Blood’. This was an earlier ancestor called Leonardo da Vinci, who was very famous for his wonderful handbags.
‘You know how you keep banging on about being the King of the Dragons?’ said Primrose.
‘Well, I am. I am Spikeweed, King of the Dragons,’ said Spikeweed.
‘As you are forever saying,’ said Primrose. ‘Trouble is, you are also King of the smallest Kingdom of anything, with a total population of five.’
‘Hey, it’s quality, not quantity, that counts,’ said Spikeweed.
‘Oh yes, of course, try telling that to those feeble Italian dragons,’ said Primrose. ‘If they realised there was only five of us, they’d be here tomorrow morning and have us conquered before morning tea.’
‘Um, er, not necessarily,’ said Spikeweed, but he knew his wife was right. ‘And another thing.’
‘What?’
‘What’s tea?’
‘Never mind all that,’ said Primrose. ‘The point I was trying to make is that we need to increase our population.’
‘And how are we going to do that?’
‘Duh,’ said Primrose, pointing up at the three big trees that stood outside the cave.
At the top of each tree was a brand new dragon’s nest. ‘I’ve already started,’ she continued. ‘I’m going to sit on two eggs and the kids are going to sit on the two other nests. If you hadn’t burnt down all the other trees we could have hauled your old granny up and sat her on another clutch.’
And then for the first, and probably last, time in his life, Spikeweed had an idea that was not totally useless. It was in fact, a good, though extremely revolutionary, idea.
‘Why do we have our eggs in the tops of trees?’ he said.
‘Well, that’s where we build our nests, stupid,’ said Primrose.
‘Why?’
‘So they are safe from predators, of course.’
‘What predators?’
‘Dinosaurs, of course,’ said Primrose.
‘You mean all the huge animals that we roasted into extinction?’ said Spikeweed.
‘Exactly.’
‘Extinction? Extinction? Ring a bell?’ said Spikeweed. ‘So how many dinosaurs are there left?’
‘Well, probably, um…’ Primrose began.
‘None.’
‘Yes.’
‘So we could actually build our nests on the ground?’ said Spikeweed.
‘Of course not,’ said Primrose.
‘Why not?’
‘Because we build them in the tops of trees.’
‘Why?’
‘So they are safe from predators, of course.’
‘What predators?’
‘Dinosaurs,’ said Primrose. ‘Oh.’
‘Yes.’
‘Um.’
‘And another thing,’ said Spikeweed. ‘The nest is only there to stop the eggs falling out and if the nest is on the ground, they can’t fall out. So we don’t actually need to build a nest at all. We could just scrape a
little dent in the ground to stop them rolling away.’
‘Wow,’ said Primrose, seeing her husband in a whole new light, which was hardly surprising because it was dawn and the sun had just come up.
‘Here’s a thought,’ Spikeweed continued. ‘Why not just lay some eggs in the back of the cave and while I lift my granny off the ground, you could roll them underneath her.’
Primrose was almost speechless. She was amazed at how she had misjudged her husband. Sure, it had taken his tiny brain about thirty-five years to come up with one good idea, but it was a seriously good idea.
‘You really are the King of the Dragons,’ she said, fluttering her lovely eyelashes at him.
‘I call it Speed-Breeding,’ said Spikeweed proudly.
Dragon eggs take anywhere from one week to seventeen years to hatch out depending on the circumstances. Being placed beneath a very old dragon where the temperature was always a constant 51 degrees and the atmosphere a steady 115 per cent moisture content, due to regular leaking, can make a dragon egg hatch out in as few as eight days.
So it was that within one month, Spikeweed was King of a population of twenty-three, no, hold on, twenty-seven, no, wait, thirty-two, no, there’s another one…
‘Can we come down now?’ Bloat shouted down from the top of his tree.
‘Yes, I’m really, really bored,’ shouted Depressyng from the top of hers.
‘Me too,’ said Primrose.
As the Gorella incubator was doing so well, the three dragons up in the trees pushed their eggs out of their nests and sent them crashing down to the ground, where the thirty-three, no, thirty-nine, hold on, forty-seven baby dragons ate them for breakfast.
Although Lady Petaluna was an honest child, Morgan le Fey found it hard to believe that Romeo Crick really was fireproof. So she decided to go and see for herself. Lady Petaluna had told her that the Cook was extremely protective of the boy, barely letting him out of her sight, so she would have to go in disguise so as not to arouse any suspicion.
‘You are quite sure that this is what a common serving wench wears?’ said Morgan le Fey as Lady Petaluna tied the last strips of torn rag round her ankle. She had been surrounded by servants her whole life. She knew they spoke funny and had peculiar skin conditions, but she had never paid much attention to their dress code.
‘Yes, my lady,’ said Lady Petaluna, ‘though there is still a problem with your smell.’
‘I don’t have a smell,’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘Princesses do not smell.’
‘That’s the problem. Serving wenches do.’
‘Oh, and I suppose I’d be right in thinking it’s not a particularly nice smell.’
‘That depends who you are and what you compare it to, my lady.’
‘Meaning?’
‘If you were a flea and you lived on a pig’s bottom, you would probably think it was a delicate and rather sweet smell,’ said Lady Petaluna.
‘And if you were a princess?’
‘You might want to throw up a lot.’
Lady Petaluna went off to find a bottle of cabbage water with a dead rat in it. She was right about the throwing-up bit. Morgan le Fey did it a lot.
‘Has it got rose petals in it?’ she said.
‘Yes, my lady. I put them in to make the smell less vomit-making.’
‘I hate the smell of roses.’
But even when Lady Petaluna went outside and took the rose petals out of the bottle it didn’t really help.
‘I’m not sure I can go through with this,’ said Morgan le Fey as she barfed for the seventh time. ‘If I’m like this now, I can’t imagine how I’ll feel when you actually open the bottle.’
But Morgan le Fey was not one to give up so she stuff ed daisies up each nostril46 while Lady Petaluna poured the contents of the bottle onto the rags Morgan was wearing.
‘OK, let’s go,’ she said, holding her breath as much as she could.
The dungeons were very close to the kitchens so Morgan le Fey decided they should go there first. If the Cook discovered they had taken Romeo Crick and came after them, the dungeons would be the perfect place to lie low. The Cook would never think to look there.
Morgan le Fey was fascinated by what she saw below stairs. Living in her privileged world she had never seen anything like it.
‘Though it is a lot like upstairs, but without daylight or windows or fresh air or cleanliness,’ she said, ‘or flowers or birds or smiling or washing.’
Because no one ever went to this part of the castle, she decided it was safe to reveal who she was to Clynk the jailer.
‘I guarantee,’ Morgan le Fey told Clynk, ‘that before the year’s end I shall get you and the prisoners set free.’
‘Even Lord Resydue the Baby-Eater of Londinium?’ said Clynk. ‘Surely not him?’
‘But if he is left here, then you will have to remain too,’ said Morgan le Fey.
‘That is true,’ said Clynk. ‘Unless I use Plan B.’
‘Plan B?’
‘It is better you do not know what Plan B is, my lady.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘Though at a guess I would say it probably involves a certain person changing from a breathing situation to a no-longer-breathing situation.’
‘You are as wise as you are beautiful, my lady,’ said Clynk.
They left the dungeons and went up the back stairs to the kitchens.
‘Everyone is all right except the Cook,’ said Lady Petaluna. ‘If she asks who you are, tell her you’re the new servant girl from the Attic of a Thousand Nanas. She hates the nanas so she never speaks to any of them and would never go up there to check.’
‘And if she asks me why I’m here, what should I say?’ said Morgan le Fey.
‘Tell her you have been sent down to fetch the weekly gristle allowance.’
Of course, the first person they bumped into was the Cook.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded of Morgan le Fey. ‘And what are you doing in my kitchen?’
‘If it please you, ma’am,’ said Morgan le Fey, curtsying, ‘I be Blossom Scroggins, one of the new maids in the Attic of a Thousand Nanas.’
‘I hate them nanas,’ said the Cook, ‘sitting up there in their attic being so high and mighty, while us honest working folk are stuck down here in the steam and the darkness. They should put them down here and give us the bright sunny attics. I mean, all they’re doin’ is waitin’ around to die. They could do that anywhere.’
‘Them’s exactly the words my mother uses,’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘She says them nanas is a no-good bunch of scroungers and they should be made to go out and dig for coal, is what she says.’
‘Your mother sounds like a smart woman,’ said the Cook, putting her arm round Morgan le Fey’s shoulder. ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing working for them useless old biddies?’
‘’Tis where I was sent, ma’am,’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘I warn’t gived no choice.’
‘Maybe I knows your mother,’ said the Cook. ‘What’s her name and what’s her occupation?’
‘She be called Gladys Scroggins, if it please you, ma’am, and she be a washerwoman,’ said Morgan le Fey.
It may seem surprising that, coming from her sheltered background, Morgan le Fey could act so convincingly but, by an amazing piece of good luck, she owned a children’s book called Gladys Scroggins in Wonderland, which told the story of a washerwoman and her magic bucket. She knew that the Cook would not have read the book, because the lower classes couldn’t read on account of it being illegal for them to do so in those days.
‘I think I might have met her, you know,’ said the Cook. ‘Now you be sure to give her my regards when you see her next and here’s a nice pig’s knuckle for you, my dear.’
‘Oh, thank you, ma’am.’
‘And you be welcome here whenever you feels like it, my dear,’ added the Cook. ‘And any time you feel you need to get away from them old biddies upstairs, you just come and see old Cookie.’
‘Than
k you, ma’am,’ said Morgan le Fey. ‘Maybe I could get a job down here, helpin’s you?’
‘That be a great idea,’ said the Cook. ‘I been thinking I should be getting an apprentice to teach all my recipes to and I think you might be just the girl for the job.’
‘I’m sure I should, ma’am. For I do so love the cookin’ and potatoes and things like that,’ said Morgan le Fey.
‘I has a good feelin’ about this,’ said the Cook.
‘So does I,’ said Morgan le Fey. More than you could imagine, she thought. For not only would she be in the same place as Romeo Crick and so be able to get to know the boy without raising any suspicions, she might even learn how to make beetroot soup and how to get the skin of roast boar as crispy as a winter frost.
‘Oh, my lady,’ said Lady Petaluna, as soon as they left the kitchens, ‘you were brilliant. Why, I almost believed you were Blossom Scroggins myself.’
Every day for the next week Morgan le Fey, disguised as Blossom Scroggins, worked as the Cook’s apprentice. On the fifth day the Cook introduced her to Romeo Crick.
‘You know,’ she said to Morgan le Fey, ‘I looks upon young Romeo here as the son I never had and I’m beginning to look upon you as a daughter.’
‘But I already has a mum, ma’am.’
‘And brothers and sisters too, no doubt?’ said the Cook.
‘Yes, ma’am, sixteen of them if it please you,’ said Morgan le Fey.
‘Sixteen? My goodness me,’ said the Cook. ‘And here’s me with not a one. Now I’m sure your mother wouldn’t mind if I took you as my own daughter. I mean, with seventeen of you she probably wouldn’t even notice.’
‘That be true, ma’am. She can only count up to one.’
‘Then it’s settled,’ said the Cook. ‘You shall be my daughter and a big sister to my poor orphaned son Romeo.’
‘A sister?’ said Romeo. ‘I never had one of them, nor a brother, as I can remember.’
‘You must have been awful lonely,’ said Morgan le Fey.
‘Oh no, I had Geoffrey,’ said Romeo. ‘As good a friend as a boy ever had.’
‘And what happened to him then?’
‘He got struck by lightning,’ said Romeo. ‘And eated.’
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