‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Me neither.’
The pathetic voice belonged to the one being they had left behind on the other island. Bloat was still trapped under the fireproof net and the more he struggled, the more entangled he became. He hadn’t been forgotten, but it was generally agreed, especially by his parents, who had been sent for to reclaim their errant son, that he was a gullible and not very bright young dragon who, unlike Princess Floridian and Brat, was not an evil creature. He had been a naughty boy and needed to be taught a lesson.
‘I think,’ said his father, Spikeweed, King of the Dragons, ‘that we’ll leave him there for a few days. It’s raining, so if he opens his mouth he’ll have enough to drink and a couple of days without food will certainly not do him any harm.’
‘But he is my little boy,’ said his mother, Primrose. ‘I can’t bear the idea of him being all alone out there on that island.’
‘He isn’t alone,’ said Spikeweed. ‘He’s got the flattened remains of potato boy to keep him company and the rats and cockroaches that will be eating potato boy.’
The bits of Scraper that were sticking out from under the big rock were not only company, they were breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bloat might not have been able to free himself from the net to fly away, but he did manage to wriggle around enough to nibble away at the bits of Scraper he could see.
Of course, this meant that by the time his father went to free him, he had actually put on weight, not lost it.
‘Still,’ said Spikeweed, ‘It’s good to see you doing some recycling.’
When they got back to the Valley of the Dragons, Bloat turned over a new leaf. Actually he was so keen to make a new start, he turned over an entire tree and three bushes, a total of seventeen thousand, five hundred and seventy-seven new leaves. Actually less than a thousand of the leaves were new, the rest had been there for ages. He changed his name to Ambrose and began pressing flowers, which normally requires the one thing dragons do not have – thumbs – but Ambrose developed a system that most flower-pressing dragons still use to this day. He sat on them.61 The only downside to this was that quite oft en flowers got stuck to Ambrose’s bottom and the sight of a teenage dragon wandering about with a bouquet on his behind meant he got teased a lot.
‘I am an artist. I am above such childish humour,’ he would say and walk off to the nearest meadow to spend the day writing poetry, another thing that was difficult to do without thumbs. He could make up poems easily enough, but he couldn’t write them down. His parents gave him a talking parrot to remember his creations, but it kept getting confused and muddling them up.
Ambrose got very few of his poems published apart from a couple in Ye Parrot Fancyers Gazette who were very enthusiastic and made him their arts columnist even though he knew nothing at all about columns.
Meanwhile, Brat and Princess Floridian, both shackled round the ankles and thrown into a small boat, were rowed back to shore behind the two main boats by two soldiers.
Ahead of them Arthur stood proudly at the helm of the first boat holding Excalibur high in the air so that everyone waiting on the shore could see it as they approached.
You might think, as did everyone who was watching, that a boy as young and slender as King Arthur would hardly be able to lift a sword as large and magnificent as Excalibur, but as it had shown by refusing to leave the enchanted rock for anyone but the King, the sword itself was filled with magic. Thus, for Arthur it became as light as a feather.
Crouched together in the back of their small boat, Princess Floridian and Brat seethed with anger. This was the lowest point of their lives and they consoled themselves with that fact.
‘No matter what happens from now on,’ said Brat, ‘nothing can be worse than today has been.’
‘Maybe, but that is no consolation,’ said the Princess. ‘I want revenge. I want super-enemy-crippling-totally-overwhelming-completely-annihilating revenge. I want to grind all of them into tiny little piles of dust and for them to know who did it and I want them to wish they were all dead, but they’re not. They’re all just screaming in pain and begging over and over again for us to stop the pain, but it won’t ever stop because I want them to know forever they are the losers and we won.’
‘Yeah,’ said Brat. ‘All that what you said. I want that too.’
‘First of all we need to escape,’ said the Princess. ‘And we need to do it before they get us locked down in the kitchens.’
She threw herself on her back and began groaning and wailing in pain.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Brat.
‘What’s the matter?’ said the two soldiers who had stopped rowing and come to see.
‘I think I am dying,’ Princess Floridian cried. ‘A pain more terrible than death is eating me all up.’
‘Where?’ said Soldier Number One.
The Princess arched her back and screamed.
‘I am possessed by an evil spirit,’ she cried. ‘It possessed me many weeks ago and now we are to be enslaved in the dungeons of Camelot, it is trying to kill me so it can escape before we are locked up.’
‘Was it the evil spirit that turned you wicked?’ said Soldier Number Two.
Brilliant, thought the Princess.
‘It was. It was,’ she cried. ‘Please help me, good sir, to drive it out before it kills me.’
‘What can we do?’ said the soldiers.
‘I fear it is too late,’ the Princess sobbed.
‘Oh no, your highness,’ said Soldier Number One. ‘There must be something we can do.’
‘Pull the boat ashore on the nearest island,’ said the Princess. ‘And lay me on soft grass that I may die close to the earth and not adrift in a cursed boat.’
The two soldiers rowed towards a small island which was wonderfully conveniently hidden from the two boats ahead by another bigger island. As one of the soldiers bent down to lay the Princess on the ground, she threw her legs over his head and crossed her feet, pulling the chain on her shackles around his neck.
‘My lady,’ said the soldier, ‘take care or you may choke me.’
‘Oh really,’ said Princess Floridian. ‘What, like this?’
Brat, who had finally realised that the Princess was not actually possessed by an evil spirit, though he did believe in that sort of thing, threw himself at the second soldier, who tripped and fell in the lake. The Princess, having killed her soldier, was about to leap into the water to strangle the other one too when the water frothed and boiled and the very hungry Giant Olm saved her the trouble.
‘Wow,’ said Brat. ‘You are amazing. I can’t believe I’m going to marry you.’
‘I wouldn’t count on that happening,’ said the Princess.
They pulled the boat further ashore and hid it under a bush before throwing the first soldier into the water, where the Giant Olm’s three hungry children disposed of him.
‘The first thing we need to do is get these shackles off our ankles,’ said the Princess. ‘Then we will use the boat to make our escape down the river.’
‘What river?’
‘Do you not know that at the far end of Camelot’s lake there is a river that flows many miles through Avalon until it reaches the sea?’
‘Well actually,’ said Brat, ‘I didn’t even know the lake had a far end. Until I escaped from the kitchens, I had never been anywhere except Camelot where I was taken as a newborn baby and swapped with King Arthur. When I was the King, I was having too great a time to want to go anywhere else and when I was thrown into the kitchens I was not allowed outside at all until Scraper helped me escape.’
The Princess was right, though, at the far end of the lake, a river – the River Stycks – led to the sea. It was no ordinary river that anyone could simply sail up and possibly invade Camelot. It was an enchanted river with a magical non-return valve invented by Merlin that only allowed boats to travel away from the lake, not towards it. Strange half-visible River Sprites guarded it in case inv
aders came with their own wizards who could undo Merlin’s spell, but none of this was a problem to the two runaways as they wanted to leave, not invade.
‘Not yet anyway,’ said Princess Floridian. ‘We’ll do the invading later. First we need to get away and gather our forces.’
‘Yeah,’ said Brat. ‘Gather our forces.’
But first they needed to break free of their chains. They could, of course, row the boat without breaking their bonds, but as the Princess pointed out, if they were followed and forced to abandon their boat and flee overland, only being able to take tiny baby steps could possibly be a bit of a drawback.
‘You know, like we would be drawn back to the castle dungeons.’
‘We need a blacksmith,’ said Brat.
‘Indeed.’
The island they were on was little more than a big rock. It had a small patch of grass, two bushes, a tree, a tiny beach made of four hundred and thirty-seven pebbles and an empty bottle that had washed up on the beach. It did not have a blacksmith’s shop, just a secondhand coracle shop that was closed.
However, a short row away was the Island of Blacksmiths where all the armour was made.
‘We need to get there before anyone realises we are missing,’ said the Princess as they pushed the boat into the water.
‘Do you think we should go and rescue Bloat?’ said Brat.
‘No, he’s been pretty useless.’
‘I know, but I just thought it might be handy to have a dragon with us.’
‘Forget him,’ said the Princess. ‘When we’ve escaped, we’ll get a better one. We’ll get a grown-up one that doesn’t burn its toes every time it breathes fire and definitely one that doesn’t keep setting everyone’s farts alight.’
Brat’s eyes watered when he remembered that.
‘Hello, hello, children, what have we got here?’ said the first blacksmith when they reached the Island of Blacksmiths.
‘Umm…’ the Princess began.
‘Now listen to me, my good man. We were at a party, you know, one of those wonderful parties for Lords and Ladies and royal people like us, well, no, of course you wouldn’t know. Well, anyway, everyone thought it would be a jolly super joke to put shackles on each other and pretend we were dangerous criminals,’ said Brat in one of those stupid voices people who think they are very important use,62 ‘and then some idiot chappie was sitting on the toilet and the keys fell out of their pocket, don’tcha know, and so our dear mother sent us here to see you to cut these sort of shackly things off.’
Princess Floridian stared at the young boy in admiration. Up to that point she had thought he was a very great number of groats short of a quite small gold coin, but suddenly he seemed a lot brighter.
‘See those lights in the distance,’ Brat continued, pointing towards the two boats that were taking King Arthur and everyone back to the castle. ‘Our parents are in those boats and they are bringing money to pay you with. Well, I say bringing money, but of course our mother never touches such filthy stuff. I mean her butler will be here soon with a purse of gold coinage.’
‘But they are rowing away from here,’ said the blacksmith.
‘Well, yes, of course, that’s because my mother forgot her purse. She grabbed the wrong handbag when we set off and is going back for the right one,’ said Brat without pausing for a second’s thought.
‘Fair enough,’ said the blacksmith. ‘Fancy dress party was it, you both dressed in muddy clothes like two peasants?’
‘Indeed,’ said Brat. ‘Surely you’ve heard of the Grand Annual Peasants Ball where us nobles and toffs dress up as peasants and get drunk and do peasanty things?’
‘Oh, yes of course,’ said the blacksmith, who had heard of no such thing, but didn’t want to appear ignorant, ‘and all the peasants dress up as toffs and nobles.’
‘No they don’t,’ said Brat. ‘That’s a completely different ball.’
‘So what do the peasants dress up as at this one?’
‘Peasants.’
‘Could you please remove our shackles immediately?’ said Princess Floridian. ‘I am due to be presented to our wonderful King Arthur and need to hurry back to the palace.’
‘Well, I was thinking it might be a good idea to wait until your mother’s man arrives with the money,’ said the blacksmith.
‘Oh no,’ said Brat, ‘please don’t wait until our parents get here. Our father is in the boat and he will go crazy if he finds out what happened. He thinks we are here to save a poor little puppy that has its head stuck in an iron grating.’
‘Well, I’m not sure,’ said the blacksmith.
‘I will tell my mother there were five puppies and that it took you a very long time and she has to pay you double,’ said Brat.
Just to help things along, the Princess began to cry.
‘Oh, all right,’ said the blacksmith.
It only took five minutes and then the two children were free.
‘I see the boats have arrived at Camelot,’ said the blacksmith. ‘Let us wait until they come back.’
‘I have a better idea,’ said Brat. ‘Why don’t we take you back in our boat to the castle, then you won’t have to wait so long.’
‘Indeed. I’ll send my son with you. I have twenty pairs of steel underpants to make by the morrow,’ said the blacksmith. ‘Rampart, go with these two to Camelot and collect fifteen groats from their mother.’
‘How will I get back again?’ said Rampart.
‘Because you helped us without our parents finding out,’ said Brat, ‘we will reward you with this boat. I don’t suppose you have a couple of small swords we could borrow for the journey? I hear there are pirates abroad on the lake.’
‘Take these,’ said the blacksmith, handing them two swords he had made that very morning, ‘and you better take these stabbing daggers too, just in case.’
‘And maybe a few sandwiches, for we have missed our dinner,’ said Brat.
Princess Floridian gazed open-mouthed at her companion. She could not believe how he had changed. One minute he had been the spoilt, petulant eleven-year-old brat he had been named after, and the next he was acting as if he really was a royal Prince and at least ten years older than his true age.
Of course she hadn’t known him when he had been the King and used to ordering people around all the time. And boy, had he been bossy then. So he’d had plenty of practice, but now it was different. Now he seemed to have an air of maturity that he had been completely devoid of as the King. It was hard to say what was bringing this change about. Maybe it was the thought of being shackled in the kitchens that had made him grow up so suddenly or maybe it was the idea of possibly marrying the incredibly beautiful Princess Floridian in a few years’ time. Whatever it was, the Princess liked it. She even thought that she might possibly even perhaps maybe consider marrying him in ten years or so, unless she met someone else, which of course was not only possible, but extremely likely considering how gorgeous she was.
Whatever, she thought. Though methinks you will need a new name from this night on.
The three of them got back into the boat and began to row towards Camelot. Once they were hidden by another island, Brat ordered Rampart to stop rowing.
‘Now here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘We have three choices.’
Rampart, who looked about two years older than Brat and two years younger than Princess Floridian, was about twice the size of both of them added together. Yet he was the only one of the three of them not holding a sword in one hand and a stabbing dagger in the other.
‘Choices?’ said Rampart.
‘Yes,’ said the soon-to-be-renamed Brat. ‘We can either invite you to jump overboard and swim for it, or we can set you ashore on that island there, or we can kill you.’
‘Can I decide?’ said Rampart.
‘OK,’ said Brat. ‘What’s it to be?’
‘Well, first of all,’ said Rampart, ‘may I ask you a question?’
‘You may.’
; ‘If I was to say I think you may be the two highwaymen that everyone has been talking about, would you say I could be right?’
‘You could be.’
‘In that case,’ said Rampart. ‘There is a fourth choice.’
‘Which is?’
‘I will join you and we will run away together,’ said Rampart.
‘And where do you suggest we run away to?’ said Princess Floridian. ‘The King will have spies and soldiers scouring the whole of Avalon to find us.’
‘I would suggest we travel by night and make our escape down the River Stycks that flows many miles through Avalon until it reaches the sea.’
‘And know you this river?’ said the Princess.
‘I do indeed, my lady. For my father and I have travelled down it many time delivering swords and shields and iron underpants to the towns that lie along its route.’
‘And why would you want to join us?’ said Brat.
‘Indeed,’ said Rampart. ‘Why would I want to leave a life of drudgery in my father’s foundry pumping the bellows from dawn to dusk with never a word of thanks and naught but a potato and a sheep’s knee for my dinner? Why indeed?’
‘Fair enough,’ said Brat. ‘Welcome, good Rampart.’
‘Welcome indeed,’ said Princess Floridian. ‘We will begin our journey this very night, for I cannot imagine there will be much more time before they all realise we have escaped.’
As she spoke a loud roar rolled across the water and a giant flame shot up in the air like a great searchlight, telling the runaways that their escape had finally been noticed. Silhouetted in its light, the Vampires of Camelot spread out across the lake searching for the runaways by the light cast by the flame. Rampart pulled in to the nearest island and tore some branches from a large bush, which he wove together over the top of the boat.
‘Thus they will think us no more than a fallen tree floating in the water,’ he said. ‘It’s an old smuggler’s trick my father taught me when we were carrying contraband turnips downriver to Tintagel.’
‘It will mean we can travel in broad daylight too,’ he added.
Brat and the Princess knew they had made a good choice allowing the young blacksmith to join them. They had guile and evil cunning, but Rampart was practical. They would have never thought of something as simple as a few branches to disguise their boat. They would have tried to whip up a magic invisibility spell which, considering neither of them were wizards, would have been completely pointless.
Excalibur Page 11