by Liam Perrin
Sir Thomas
the Hesitant
and the
Table of
Less Valued Knights
LIAM PERRIN
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 Liam Perrin
Cover art © Can Stock Photo Inc. / caraman
All rights reserved
For Kelly & Abby
My love and my joy.
With special thanks to:
Steve the Diagnosticator, Chris the Cognoscente, Amy the Ameliorant, and Lee the Longstanding
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter I: My Kingdom for a Horse
Chapter II: The Peacock
Chapter III: Family
Chapter IV: A Misplaced Stone
Chapter V: The Silver Wolf
Chapter VI: The Weeping Giantess
Chapter VII: The Healer's Gift
Chapter VIII: The Back of the Line
Chapter IX: Wedding Gifts
Chapter X: Can't Spell "Tryout" without "Trout"
Chapter XI: The Black Knight
Chapter XII: The Gauntlet of Smashing Success
Chapter XIII: After All That
Chapter XIV: Doubt & Redoubt
Chapter XV: Machinations
Chapter XVI: The Undercroft
Chapter XVII: A Day in the Life
Chapter XVIII: The Sloppy Pants Gang
Chapter XIX: A Song & Two Letters
Chapter XX: The Wedding of King Arthur & Princess Guinevere
Chapter XXI: William
Chapter XXII: Middlings
Chapter XXIII: The Farmer Rebellion
Chapter XXIV: Charming Disarmaments
Chapter XXV: A Hero by any Other Name
Chapter XXVI: The Spoils
Chapter XXVII: Somnia Salvebis
Epilogue
About the Author
PREFACE
One of the last paragraphs in one of the last volumes of The Merlin Continuation of the Old French Arthurian Post Vulgate by Lacy & Asher reads:
Know that there were three kinds of tables there. The first was the Round Table. King Arthur was companion and lord of this one. The second table was called the Table of Errant Companions, those who went seeking adventure and waited to become companions of the Round Table. Those of the third table were those who never left court and did not go on quests or in search of adventures, either because of illness or because they had not enough courage. These knights were called the less valued knights.
I shall now set the record straight.
Liam Xavier Perrin, LVK
March 7, 1990
Somnia Salvebis
FOREWORD
Dear Reader,
My name is Liam Bartholomew Perrin. My father was Liam Horatio Perrin, and my grandfather was Liam Xavier. This book comes to you by way of my late grandfather, LXP. Dad (Liam Horatio) knew he was dying two winters ago, and one of the last things he gave me was a plain, dented lockbox with my grandfather's monogram.
Dad said, "Here," and shoved it at me. "I wouldn't open it if I were you.
"Your grandfather was a crazy, old coot," he said.
The lockbox sat on my desk for weeks next to a picture of the two of them on a fishing trip when Pop-pop was young and Dad was a boy. In the picture, Dad holds a sixteen inch bass by the gills. Both he and the fish look grim. Pop-pop has his hand on Dad's shoulder. Pop-pop is beaming.
The lockbox sat on my desk unopened for so long because there was no key to go with it. I would pick it up from time to time and think about Pop-pop while I tipped the box, listening to the contents shift inside. I ruined two letter openers and a butter knife trying to jimmy it open.
Finally I took it to a friend's, set it up on a stump out back, and shot a hole in it with his revolver. I holstered the gun and retrieved the target to discover that I now had a plain, dented, locked box with a hole in it. I took the box to a locksmith
Inside were stacks of scribbled notes and clippings, a partial manuscript with a bullet hole ripped through it, a scrap of wood, and a ring.
The ring is silver and stone-less. It bears the letters "LVK" and a crest. Above the crest is the word Somnia, and below it, Salvebis. The scrap of wood is cut from something larger. A phrase is carved crudely into the scrap. It reads: "Bane was here."
I took the box and its contents home, brewed a pot of coffee, and read my grandfather's story.
It was clever. It was fun. It was unfinished. Most intriguing of all, Pop-pop seemed to think it was true. He'd been a part of something, and he wanted the truth finally told. Apart from the ring and a handful of newspaper clippings, it would have been easy to believe Pop-pop was losing it. But there it was: that ring.
I've spent the last two years finishing LXP's story. It's a story about a secret society, but not the kind you usually read about or see on TV. This is a kind that's more overlooked than secret, per se. It's the story of the young man who set the bar for all of them: Sir Thomas the Hesitant. The setting is Camelot, but the story is not, for instance, about how Sir Thomas and Sir Philip the Disadvantaged rescued Percival and the Holy Grail, or how Ox the Monosyllabic and Dedric the Diplopian foiled Morgan's plot and saved both Gawain and the Green Knight. It's not about Arthur, Guinevere, or Merlin, although they are all part of Thomas's tale.
It's the story of what made Thomas who he was. At its heart, it's the story of a young man growing up and learning what it means to be a hero, a true hero, in a world that doesn't always make sense. His heart and his deeds inspired an order that spanned centuries and long outlived those whom it initially served. It inspired me to finish my grandfather's work, and I hope it inspires you too.
I dedicate this work to my late grandfather, Liam Xavier Perrin, the last Less Valued Knight.
Liam Bartholomew Perrin
February 5, 2008
INTRODUCTION
"I really don't think this is a good idea," says a person.
"Nonsense, you'll be fine," replies another.
People have been speaking those phrases at each other for as long as they’ve been speaking. Neanderthal women encouraged their mates this way when they wanted them to taste-test a new brightly colored berry or when their Neanderthal family had outgrown their starter cave and needed to move into a swanky new cave presently occupied by a T-Rex or a big, nasty, pre-historic cave bear.
The phrases reportedly constitute the exchange between Adam and Eve when God showed up asking what had happened to His apple tree. In fact, those two phrases form the gist of the sacred documents of several of the world's major religions:
Supplicant: "I really don't think this is a good idea."
Deity: "Nonsense, you'll be fine."
It can be shown that the encourager is correct roughly forty-eight percent of the time and incorrect equally as often. The remaining four percent depend on semantics: Encouragers tend to employ much more flexible definitions of the word "fine".
Just about midway through history between King Saul handing David a helmet and pointing him at Goliath ("You'll be fine!") and the crew of Apollo 13 strapping themselves to a rocket pointed at the Moon, all the young men in what was more or less Britain were packing up and heading for knightly tryouts at King Arthur's place. One young man in particular, Thomas of Fogbottom, soon to be called The Hesitant, turned to his mother and said, "I really don't think this is a good idea, Mum."
To which she replied, "Nonsense, you'll be fine."
Like every other case where those fateful phrases have been spoken at each other, Th
omas had about a fifty-fifty chance of being fine. Plus or minus two percent. And depending on what you mean by "fine".
But lest we get ahead of ourselves: Thomas hasn't protested yet, and his mother, at this moment, would in fact advise Thomas against the idea she'll shortly embrace. At this moment, all is well. Or, at least, as well as can be expected. The land is dying. The ground lies fallow. The livestock languish. Thomas's family has been eating a kind of bread made from things you would be surprised to know a person can eat. Suffice it to say Thomas's mother is rather creative in the kitchen, though "creative" isn't the word Thomas would use.
There's an evil Baron around the bend and up the hill who owns these lands and has storehouses full of real grain. He could open those storehouses and feed the people who work his fields. He hasn't. And no one's asked. He's rather scary in a throw-you-in-the-dungeon-and-let-you-think-about-how-good-you-really-have-it sort of way. He's got a strong sense of boundaries, meaning there's a line on one side of which there's everything that's his, and on the other side there's everything that's anyone else's. He respects that line, and makes sure his people respect it too. The problem is all the stuff anyone would want is on his side of the line.
There's a point, however, where even an evil Baron isn't scary enough to keep a man's empty stomach looking at things objectively. The stomach looks at the Baron, then looks at the swelling storehouses and says to the man, "Go for it. You'll be fine."
Someone who is not Thomas is going to head up that hill soon to talk to the Baron, but here we're getting ahead of ourselves again. At this moment, Thomas is standing in the Baron's stable with his eyes closed and his arm outstretched. He's supposed to be using that shovel and wheelbarrow over there to collect all the... Let's call it "fertilizer". But Thomas has a dream, and being a dream and doing what dreams do, it tends to take Thomas away from the practical tasks essential to a community's well-being. Instead it whispers to him of grander ways of tending to said well-being – ways that involve more accolades for Thomas and less direct contact with fertilizer.
Thomas dreams of being a hero, and in Thomas's time, where Thomas lives, this means being a knight. He's got his eyes closed and his hand outstretched because he recently heard a story that described how one of these hero-knights came by his noble and loyal steed. The steed, said the story, chose the knight, not the other way around. Thomas is waiting to see which noble and loyal steed will choose him.
CHAPTER I
My Kingdom for a Horse
Even with his eyes shut tight, the day was bright enough that Thomas could make out forms shifting and moving around him. His ears picked up little sounds his brain normally ignored: his breath, straw sliding under hooves, leather creaking. Thomas, hand stretched out before him, began to slowly turn.
"Noble steed and loyal friend," he said. "At the start and at the end..." Thomas took a deep breath, shut his eyes tighter, and whispered, "Choose me."
There was a nicker and then clearly the sounds of a horse walking straight toward him. Thomas's heart pounded. A head nudged his one raised hand and snorted. He smiled and opened his eyes.
When Thomas imagined a horse, certain images came to mind. He imagined trotting through town, galloping through forests, flashing between trees, hurtling creeks and crevices, knocking armed enemies flat. The animal under Thomas's hand might've handled the trotting through town part adequately, years ago, but it was doubtful.
Thomas slumped and his smile slid sideways. "Booker," he said.
Booker was aging, gray, and not the kind of animal any artist was ever going to paint underneath a knight. He was small for a horse, carried a big belly, and always seemed to have something coming out of his disproportionate nostrils. Flies love horses in general, but Booker was special. Flies loved Booker the way seagulls love the beach.
"Booker, this is serious. You're messing it up." Thomas patted him on the shoulder. When he turned to lead him to a stall, he spotted his brother in the doorway. Thomas froze.
William Immanuel Farmer. A year older, a head taller, and a species apart. Life for William just seemed to work. Mum and Dad loved him, girls adored him, everyone wanted to be his friend. He worked the same stables as Thomas, but always seemed to be clean. On the rare occasion when he wasn't clean, even the dirt on him was somehow endearing.
William put down a bucket and began to clap.
"Good show. At the start and at the end, eh? I know something you're going to get in the end if you don't get all these horses back in their stalls."
Thomas's face went bright red. He hated when it did that.
At the sound of William's voice, Solstice whinnied and went to him. Solstice was the opposite of Booker. Solstice was big and strong and snow white. He looked like he stepped out of the painting into which Booker would never be painted. This was the horse Thomas had hoped would move under his hand. But Solstice was beautiful, and everything beautiful loved William.
"What were you doing anyway?"
"Nothing," said Thomas, and tried to mean it. Most of the Farmer family didn't go in much for dreams, despite the fact that William was theirs.
William sized him up. "Alright then, if it's that way. But you're going to get us all in trouble with the Baron if you keep messing around. Dad will have your hide." He led Solstice to his stall. "So cut it out."
"Why are you dressed like that? Are we going to Mass?"
William had on a full-length brown robe, with a hood. Full-length robes weren't for working stables. Full-length robes, as far as Thomas could tell, were for impressing God, your neighbors, and girls. And not necessarily in that order.
"We're not going anywhere," said William, and clammed up.
While Thomas hated talking about Thomas, William loved talking about William. Failure to immediately divulge his plans with the merest prodding was, for William, unheard of, and made Thomas dreadfully curious.
"Well, then, where are we not going?"
William looked up the hill. "Nowhere."
Thomas looked up the hill too, then quickly back at William. "You're not."
"I am."
"You can't!"
"I have to. We're starving Thomas. All of us. Look at the fields. Someone has to do something. The Baron has to see that. He has to care about something."
"Oh he cares alright, cares about his treasure. He'll throw you in the dungeon William. He's not like us. The fields are proof of that. He doesn't care."
William just kept looking up the hill.
Thomas tried another tack. "What do Mum and Dad think?"
William didn't reply.
Thomas waited, and William still didn't say anything. He just looked at his foot and kicked the dirt a little. Which, when you grow up with someone, get beat up by them fairly regularly, and get tricked into bad bets that result in you doing their chores for a week more often than you care to admit is practically the same as just coming out and saying it:
"You didn't tell them," said Thomas now both shocked and fascinated.
William continued to say nothing which confirmed to Thomas he was right.
"I have to tell them," said Thomas.
"You won't."
"I will," said Thomas. William was beginning to scare him.
"It doesn't matter. I have to try."
Thomas shot a look up the hill at the Baron's keep, as if it were a wild beast you had to keep your eye on. "Don't do it William." And then Thomas used a word seldom spoken between brothers.
"Please," said Thomas, "don't do it."
They looked at each other. Thomas knew saying "please" meant admitting he cared – a dangerous thing for a boy his age to do.
William hugged him and walked off toward the castle.
Thomas watched him go. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. What did William think was going to happen? Did he think he could charm the Baron?
He's going to get himself killed.
The thought settled on Thomas with a cold chill. Frantic, he rounded up the remaining
horses and raced down the hill toward their home on the other side of the village.
§
Brown fields. Skinny, dizzy cattle. Small, scraggly weeds. It all flew by in a blur. Thomas leapt a low wooden fence and picked up his pace on the hard-packed road that ran from the Baron's hilltop fortress to the village below.
More brown. Less cattle. More weeds. One of the last cows opened its mouth to say "moo" at him, but all that came out was a pathetic sort of "muh." And then he was careening through town.
Like the fields, town was mainly a blur of brown. Unlike the fields, it required a lot of dodging. The inhabitants of the town had a much wider vocabulary than the cows, and they used it to tell Thomas exactly what they thought of him as he bounced off brown carts, startled brown mules, and panicked brown-clothed people who dropped their brown bundles in the brown dirt.
Thomas tossed out apologies and tried his best to cause as little havoc as possible as he dashed up alleys and down side streets.
He rounded the final bend, prepared for a final sprint out of town, and stopped dead in his tracks when he spotted the peacock.
CHAPTER II
The Peacock
Many people suspect the village of Fogbottom gets its name from the way the fog settles, especially in winter, at the feet of its surrounding hills and ridges. Others suppose this idea is correct, because they haven't been able to come up with anything better. Suffice it to say there isn't much that is terribly unusual about Fogbottom, and there certainly aren't any peacocks roaming about.
There was a pink-footed goose that got into Old Lady Applebutter's fruit cellar one Christmas. He didn't come out the way he went in.
In any case, the only reference Thomas had for a peacock was a collection of bright, mismatched feathers and an illustration carried by a traveling merchant who had wandered into town a few years ago. The merchant had also carried a frond as long as William. He said he'd received it as a gift from the one and only Uther Pendragon as thanks for locating a rare and exquisite gift for a lady friend. Uther, of course, had got it straight from the tail of a cockatrice, right before the lizard-bird caught sight of its reflection in Uther's smooth and polished shield and consequently turned itself to stone.