Excalibur

by Colin Thompson

  ‘Listen, men,’ said the chief sentry to his men the next morning. ‘If anyone asks us, we didn’t see a thing last night apart from a small tabby kitten that went by about three in the morning.’

  And by the next morning the two runaways had travelled round the far side of the lake and climbed up to a small cave halfway up the mountain that looked down over the water to the fabulous castle of Camelot.

  ‘One day all this will be mine again,’ said Brat. ‘Just like it used to be, only better.’

  ‘Can I take bag off head now,’ said Scraper, ‘and swallow gristle?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Brat.

  ‘I can’t get bukkit off foot,’ said Scraper. ‘Walking made it stuck on.’

  ‘Why was your foot in the bucket in the first place?’ said Brat.

  ‘Bukkit sleep on my foot to stop bukkit theefs stealing her,’ said Scraper.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Bukkit theefs come in night and kidsnaps bukkits, erryone noes that.’

  ‘Today we will rest,’ Brat announced. ‘And tomorrow we will begin to make plans.’

  ‘Ooh, I like them.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Plans,’ said Scraper. ‘Specially the red ones cos they got the sweetest, but be careful not swallow stones.’

  ‘That’s plums, you idiot.’

  ‘You make some tomorrow?’

  Brat walked into the shadows at the back of the cave and hit his head against a rock until he felt a bit less desperate.

  ‘You too, eh?’ said a voice in the darkness.

  ‘Who’s there?’ said Brat.

  ‘That depends,’ said the voice.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On who you are.’

  ‘I am the real King Arthur,’ said Brat. ‘Or I was until last week, when everyone ganged up on me and pretended I wasn’t and installed a fake puppet on the throne.’

  ‘I know,’ said the voice. ‘That puppet turned my dad into a jelly baby. Can you believe it, my dad, once the mighty King of Dragons, sworn enemy of all humans, has formed an alliance with that puppet.’

  ‘Are you a, umm, er, are you a dragon?’ said Brat, backing away from the darkness.

  ‘I am indeed,’ said the voice. ‘I am Bloat, son of Spikeweed, once the greatest Dragon King who ever lived, but now as noble as a baby rabbit in a nappy. Alliance with humans, I ask you. No offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Brat. ‘But listen. It seems to me that we are on the same side.’

  ‘But you’re a human,’ said Bloat, ‘and I’m a dragon. We’re supposed to be enemies.’

  ‘True,’ said Brat, ‘but it seems as if right now, we both want the same thing. I mean, if I was King again, I can assure you there would be no treaties with any dragons.’

  ‘I likes treaties,’ said Scraper. ‘Choccy-covered nuckles are best treaties. I likes them.’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Brat and Bloat at the same time.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’ said Bloat. ‘How are you going to get the throne back?’

  ‘I am going to do a revolution.’

  ‘Well, I know I said dragons making alliances with humans was against nature,’ said Bloat, ‘but maybe that’s exactly what you and I should do. You know, just until you got the throne back again, only temporary.’

  ‘Yes, temporary would be all right,’ said Brat, ‘just until I’m King again. Then we’d stop having the alliance and be enemies again.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bloat. ‘Man against dragon again, just like the good old days.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘ ’Cept you and me wouldn’t kill each other, would we?’ said Bloat.

  ‘Oh no, not you and me, but all the other humans and dragons would start fighting each other again,’ said Brat. ‘You and me could have like a little treaty just for us that no one else knows about.’

  ‘Can I have one?’ said Scraper.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A little treatie, chocolate one.’

  ‘SHUT UP.’

  ‘So where are your headquarters and your rebel army and all your weapons?’ said Bloat. ‘I mean, when’s it all going to happen?’

  ‘This is the headquarters. Here,’ said Brat.

  ‘And the army?’

  ‘We’re still recruiting.’

  ‘Weapons?’

  ‘Look at all these rocks,’ said Brat. ‘They’re my secret weapon.’

  ‘Secret?’

  ‘Yes, because the enemy won’t realise they’re weapons,’ said Brat. ‘They’ll think they’re just rocks.’

  ‘They are just rocks,’ said Bloat.

  ‘I know. Brilliant, isn’t it?’ said Brat. ‘And I’ve got a pointy stick.’

  In the end Brat was forced to admit that his pointy stick, which wasn’t actually pointy because he didn’t have anything to sharpen it with, was not so much a weapon as a walking stick he had used to help himself climb up to the cave. He explained that the revolution hadn’t actually started and that the only act of rebellion he had done was running away, which had probably made the Cook very cross, but not bothered anyone else at all.

  ‘Though if the Cook is angry, it means she’ll probably spit in the Royal Soup like she has every other time something has made her cross, which is at least once a day,’ said Brat.

  ‘Well, it’s a start,’ said Bloat encouragingly.

  ‘Yeah. I mean, it’s early days,’ said Brat. ‘We only ran away this morning.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ said Bloat. ‘A few hours and you’ve already got a stick.’

  ‘And a brain-dead idiot with a bucket.’

  ‘Well, things can only improve from now on. Can’t they?’ said Bloat, cheerfully.

  And he was cheerful. It was a strange feeling that he hadn’t been expecting. Like Brat, he had dreamt of rebellion and had run away. He hadn’t really thought much beyond that. He certainly hadn’t the faintest idea how he could change things back to how they used to be. In fact, all he had really thought was going to happen was that he would go up to the cave and hide there for a bit until he got hungry and his parents started to worry and then he’d go home again and pretend to his little brothers and sisters that he been away on a big secret mission. But now he had an ally who was a real rebel, so he could go on real secret missions.

  ‘Don’t suppose you brought any spare food with you, did you?’ he asked Brat.

  ‘No, sorry. I’ve just got a bag of gristle and a bag of oats for Scraper,’ said Brat.

  ‘Oh. It’s just that I’m getting a bit hungry,’ said Bloat and hurriedly added when he saw the two boys start to look anxious, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to eat you. We’re allies, remember?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brat nervously.

  ‘My mum says all lies are bad,’ said Scraper. ‘She says you have to tell the troof.’

  ‘SHUT UP.’

  ‘Well, you can have some of my gristle and then I reckon we should go down to the main road and do some highwayman stuff and get some money and food off people,’ said Brat. ‘And you can breathe fire at them if they won’t hand it over.’

  Bloat was excited and scared at the same time. His parents had told him that he wasn’t allowed to breathe fire at people, not since the treaty with the humans, so the most exciting things he had set fire to had been a clump of grass, a cockroach and his left foot. Not exactly thrilling, though it had brought tears to his eyes. It was obvious that fire-breathing took practice, unless you wanted to keep burning your feet.

  So the two incompetent rebels and their even more incompetent assistant went down to the bottom of the valley. Keeping themselves as well hidden as possible, they walked round the edge of Camelot’s vast lake until they reached the road and hid behind a big oak tree. Several carriages went by before they summoned up enough courage to leap out and hold one up.

  ‘STOP!’ shouted Brat, waving his stick. ‘Your money or your life.’

  ‘My life, my life?’ said the coachman from his
seat high up on the front of the carriage. ‘Whatcha going to do? Poke me with your stick?’

  ‘Yeah,’ shouted Brat, ‘the pointy end.’

  ‘It hasn’t got a pointy end,’ said the coachman. ‘And besides, I’ve got a gun.’

  ‘Umm, oh,’ said Brat, almost but not quite wetting himself. ‘Well, er, well, I’ve got a dragon.’

  At which Bloat leapt out from behind the tree, blowing flames. The bag of hay tied to the horse’s bridle caught fire.

  ‘Ooh, I’m really scared now,’ said the coachman. ‘Burning grass.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got another weapon,’ said Brat.

  ‘Oh yeah, what’s that then, a catapult?’

  ‘No, a big strong moron,’ said Brat as Scraper came out from behind the tree.

  As Scraper lumbered towards them, he tripped over a discarded turnip and went crashing into the coach, totally demolishing one of the back wheels. The coach teetered and then the whole thing went crashing over on its side. The coachman’s gun was thrown out of his hand and, by a wonderful piece of luck, was thrown into Brat’s hand.

  ‘OK,’ said Brat. ‘Like I said, your money or your life.’

  There were three passengers inside the coach and luckily none of them had guns, but they did have quite a lot of money and jewellery and a very big sack of delicious pig’s trotters and cabbages. They threw everything out and Scraper collected it all up while Bloat marched up and down blowing flames.

  ‘Why would you want my wife?’ said one of the passengers, who was rather deaf.

  ‘What?’ said Brat.

  ‘You said your money or your wife,’ said the passenger.

  ‘No. I said your…’ Brat began, but the passenger’s wife ran across and put her hand over his mouth.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve been waiting for an opportunity like this for years.’

  ‘Oh, oh,’ she shouted, raising her hands in the air. ‘Help, help, I am being abducted. What do you mean, you’ll kill me if I don’t help you tie everyone up?’

  Brat stood open-mouthed as the woman took the rope that had been holding the luggage on top of the coach and tied up the coachman and other passengers. When she’d blindfolded them, she took Brat aside.

  ‘I am the Lady Monaco d’Asparagus,’ she said. ‘If you ever need somewhere to hide, come to me at the Castle Asparagus.’

  ‘Oh, oh, woe is me,’ she shouted. ‘How could you be so cruel to a lady as to take me away into this deep dark forest?’ And she slipped away into the trees.

  Just as the highwaymen were about to follow her into the forest, a troop of soldiers came round the bend. Hearing the approaching horses, the coachman began shouting and the soldiers galloped towards the robbers at top speed.

  ‘Quick,’ shouted Brat, scrambling on to the young dragon’s back. ‘Quick, Bloat, fly us out of here.’

  A small dragon carrying a boy, a big idiot and a sack full of food and money does not soar into the sky like an eagle. Bloat lumbered down the road, flapping his wings like mad, but just could not get off the ground.

  ‘Come on, flap harder,’ Brat cried, but it was no good.

  Brat grabbed the sack and gave Scraper a kick so he fell off onto the road. That, and the sound of bullets whistling around their heads, was the extra impetus Bloat needed. He soared up into the air and away over the trees.

  ‘What about Scraper?’ he said when they reached the cave.

  ‘Plenty more where he came from,’ said Brat. ‘And look, we’ve got a gun, some gold and jewels and a lovely bag of food. Pretty good for a first attempt, I reckon.’

  ‘Maybe, and this is only a thought,’ said Bloat, ‘maybe we should kind of forget about the rebellion and just be highwaymen.’

  ‘We could, couldn’t we?’ said Brat. ‘I mean, robbing from the citizens of Avalon is rebellion anyway, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And that crazy lady who ran away has given me an idea,’ said Brat. ‘I think next time we should actually kidnap someone and hold them for ransom. That will really annoy everyone.’

  ‘Yeah, and we could roast them and send them back in a food hamper,’ said Bloat.

  ‘No, no. We collect lots of money for not roasting them. That’s the point. We threaten to roast them, but we don’t actually do it.’

  ‘Not even a little bit?’ said Bloat.

  ‘No,’ said Brat. ‘Unless, of course, they won’t pay us.’

  Meanwhile, apart from the Cook, no one had noticed that Brat had done a runner and if they had, no one would so much have missed him as they were happy to see the back of him. The Cook, of course, was furious, but with the incredible amount of extra work preparing for the coronation, she had no time to try to find the boy.

  No one at all noticed that Scraper had gone. He had cleaned the fingernails of the Sewer Cleaners while they were asleep and they had been completely unaware he was doing it. Even when their fingers became infected and began falling off, they still didn’t realise someone had been giving them a manicure every night. They just put it down to vicious bacteria.

  ‘Must be all the curries everyone’s eating,’ the Sewer Cleaners said as they literally worked their fingers to the bone.

  Upstairs in the daylight, a wonderful atmosphere of holiday happiness filled the castle. It was like Christmas Day, only all the time and not in a cold place, but somewhere warm like Australia where Christmas is very weird because it’s the middle of summer. Five hundred peasants from the surrounding villages had made lovely decorations that were strung all over the castle from the highest towers. No expense had been spared and most of the children were now bald because their hair had been woven into a huge banner welcoming everyone, except all the peasants and their bald children, to the coronation and great party.

  The peasants were not, however, being totally left out. On the top of each castle tower, a signaller stood with two flags and as events unfolded inside the castle the signallers spelt it out in semaphore.4 Semaphore is very slow at the best of times, even more so when the peasants watching the flags can’t read or spell. Most villages had a team of twenty-six peasants, each one knowing one letter of the alphabet. This meant that while time moved at its normal speed inside the castle, for those outside it was like a very, very, slow motion action replay. Here is an example:

  10am – Friday – King Arthur and his procession come out into the central courtyard of the castle.

  10.05am – Friday – The signallers on the towers report this with their flags.

  4pm – Friday – The peasants reading the flag messages know there is a King and his name is Art…

  5pm – Friday – hur.

  Then it got dark, so no one could see the flags until someone had the bright idea of setting them alight.

  7pm – Friday – The peasants now know that as well as there being a King called Arthur, the signallers are being treated in the sick bay for burns.

  The week before the coronation, Camelot had been testing carrier pigeons to tell everyone what was going on and it had been a popular idea with the peasants, who marvelled at the King’s kindness in sending them dinners that not only had a little paper napkin tied to their legs, but actually flew into the peasants’ houses and waited to be killed. Then they had tried carrier snails, which were a bit slow but also tasted delicious when they arrived six months after the coronation.

  ‘It be wonderful to feel such a part of everything,’ said many peasants. ‘To know that our wonderful King do want all us humble folks to be part of his corosomething.’

  It didn’t bother them that by the time they found out their beloved King had actually been crowned, all the leaves had fallen off the trees and there was snow on the ground. They felt the King cared and that was what mattered. Standing outside the castle looking up at the deserted towers for three months and losing several fingers and toes to frostbite was a small price to pay for being a part of the new countrywide harmony that was sweeping Avalon.

  Just
let any of them foreigners try and invade now, the peasants thought, and they’ll have us to deal with.

  The preparations for the great coronation went without a hitch. King Arthur’s new best friends, the dragons, were dressed in finest silk and gold braid by the castle’s costumiers. Strutting up and down in front of a big mirror looking magnificent quickly made Spikeweed and Primrose, King and Queen of the Dragons, forget any doubts they might have had about signing a peace treaty with humans.

  ‘This is the finest costume I have ever owned,’ said Spikeweed. ‘Something truly worthy of my Kingness.’

  ‘I think,’ said Primrose, ‘it’s the only costume you’ve ever owned unless you count the dead grass that used to get stuck in your ears.’

  ‘That wasn’t a costume,’ said Spikeweed. ‘It was an infestation. You know I always had a mouse problem.’

  ‘Anyway, you do look mighty handsome,’ said Primrose.

  ‘It’s a pity our eldest isn’t here,’ said Spikeweed.

  ‘Yes. I hope he’s not getting into any mischief, ’ said Primrose. ‘You know what a headstrong boy he is.’

  ‘Yes, but I doubt he’s off starting a revolution or anything ridiculous like that,’ said Spikeweed.

  For two days the two dragons flew back and forth carrying visiting dignitaries into the castle for the celebrations. As there were only two dragons, only the most important visitors were flown in.5 The not-quite-so-important visitors were taken across the lake by boat while everyone else had to ride over the line of bridges and islands.

  Meanwhile, upstairs King Arthur himself was going through the long process of getting ready to be crowned. He would have been quite happy to wear his everyday tights and shirts, but fancy tunic after fancy tunic and tights in every shade of mauve and purple were laid out before him, all clothes that Brat, the Pretender, had adored, but which the true King, who had grown up as a simple peasant who had heard of shoes but wasn’t sure they really existed, found garish and decadent.

  ‘Do I have to?’ said Arthur. ‘They’re all really flash and horrible.’