‘Twenty-five washerwomen?’ said King Arthur. ‘What a bit of luck! We’re up to our knees in dirty tights and bedclothes.’
‘I suspect, my lord, that they are not actually washerwomen but rebel soldiers who are planning to attack us,’ said Merlin.
‘Ah yes, I suppose I should have guessed. One could not imagine Mordred going within fifty metres of a washerwoman unless it was to feed her to sharks or chop off her head,’ said Arthur. ‘You’re sure it’s Mordred? I thought we had banished him and his parents to some remote rock in the far-north seas.’
‘We did, but he escaped.’
‘And his parents?’
‘Eaten.’
‘I imagine that you have a plan, good wizard?’ said King Arthur.
‘I do indeed, sire,’ Merlin replied.
‘Excellent,’ said Arthur. ‘Any chance we could get them to do the laundry first?’
‘I fear not, my lord,’ said Merlin. ‘I think it would be unwise to let them set foot on our island.’
‘Well, we could send someone out in a boat with the laundry,’ said Arthur.
‘As I said, my lord, I think you will find that the twenty-five washerwomen are not washerwomen at all,’ Merlin said. ‘I believe one of them is none other than the legendary sailor Captain Shortbread Silver and two others are the Clapshamshires, Prince Culvert and Princess Tracyvere.’
‘But what about the other twenty-three?’ said Arthur.
‘Well, I must admit, with their wild hair and matted beards they do look very much like washerwomen, but I am afraid they are just brigands from an Eastern European country and are all relatives of the Clapshamshires’ butler.’
‘OK,’ said the young King, finally accepting he would have to wear the same dirty underwear for another year.
‘And finally,’ Merlin added, ‘my spies on the south coast tell me that everyone’s favourite nasty little boy, Brat, who changed his name to Brassica and now calls himself Ruthra, together with the ever-delightful Princess Floridian and an assorted force of a couple of hundred evil pirates, cutthroats and brigands from the Diabolical Islands, are approaching Avalon on a massive raft that they plan to cut up into a fleet of narrow rafts to sail up the river to invade us with. Their ultimate plan, apart from stealing all our magnificent turnips, is to kill us all and restore Brat to the throne.’
‘Two hundred pirates? Isn’t that a bit of a worry?’ said Arthur.
‘Not really,’ said Merlin. ‘Though it’s interesting that both Brat and your evil cousin Mordred both hope to become King.’
‘And they are both coming here on rafts across Camelot’s beautiful lake,’ said Arthur.
‘Indeed they are,’ Merlin agreed
‘I imagine that you have a plan, good wizard?’ said Morgan le Fey.
‘I do indeed,’ Merlin replied, though he didn’t say what it was.
‘Smoke and mirrors?’ said King Arthur.
‘Mirrors and smoke?’ said Sir Lancelot.
Merlin smiled in an extremely enigmatic way that said yes and no and maybe all at the same time, which could have meant yes or no or maybe, or he hadn’t actually finalised his plan, or, possibly, not even thought of it yet.
Now mirrors were a secret only shared between wizards and the upper classes, a secret that was deliberately kept from common peasants in case they wasted all day staring at their own reflections and not working their fingers to the bone like peasants were meant to. It was bad enough that lots of them got the plague and died. Apart from the smell, the selfishness of plague-ridden peasants had delayed the latest turnip harvest by more than seven minutes. No, peasants were not to be educated in the ways of the mirror.
‘I mean,’ King Arthur’s mother had said years before, ‘who knows where that sort of thing might lead. They would spend hours standing in front of their own reflections squeezing their boils and then more hours wiping the mirrors clean again. No, let them eat cake is what I say, though I haven’t the faintest idea why.’
It was also quite rightly argued that most peasants were so ugly due to all sorts of Days of Yore plagues and diseases and hideousness caused by inbreeding that had they seen what they looked like, they would either go completely mad or scare themselves to death. Of course, lots of peasants did see their own reflections in calm water and they usually did go completely mad and think they were turnip monsters or scare themselves to death. This didn’t really matter because they were only peasants and it did have the added bonus of keeping the population down.46
Dragons were also completely unaware of such things as mirrors.
The room at the top of the high tower, where their observers told Spikeweed that Merlin and the royal family were, was a small, square-sided room with windows on all sides. As the first four dragons flew towards the windows, to their amazement, they could see four dragons looking back at them, and like them, they were breathing fire and looking seriously ferocious. It didn’t make sense because the entire world population of dragons had gathered in Spikeweed’s valley, ready for the battle.
So where had these four dragons come from? They were obviously traitors or else they would not be inside the castle. They must have sneaked away from the valley after the raiding party had left. Clearly they would have to die.
The plan had been to fly right up to the window, shoot vicious flames into the tower and veer away at the last moment, thus totally cooking any living thing inside the room. All four dragons decided to stick with the plan. First they would roast the traitor dragons in the room, then make a quick turn and come back for a second shot to roast any humans they could find.
Except the four dragons in the tower were not traitors – they were their own reflections. And the four mirrors that Merlin had put in each window reflected more than images – they reflected fire.
So four burning dragons crashed down on the pavers below with four very big terminal splats.
Assuming the first four had somehow been set on fire by Merlin and the humans, Spikeweed, watching everything from the hill behind his valley, sent another four dragons, which were also set on fire. So he sent another four and then another four. It was the same result every time – dead dragons.
‘Oh, I see – mirrors and smoke,’ said Arthur.
‘Exactly,’ said Merlin.
‘Doesn’t roast dragon smell good?’ said Sir Lancelot.
‘I was thinking the same thing,’ said Morgan le Fey.
So was everyone, and just in case the dragons were stupid enough to send any more raiders over, Merlin sent word to the kitchens for six porters to put saucepans on their heads for protection, go up to the castle courtyard and collect platefuls of roast dragon and take them to the big banqueting hall.
‘And just to rub salt into their wounds – the living dragons, that is, I don’t think the roast ones need any salt – we will hang a large banner off the front of the castle,’ said Merlin.
The castle sign-writer was summoned and he painted a huge banner, which they hung over the front of the castle. It read:
Thank you for sending over twelve lovely oven-ready
dragons. They are delicious. Yum. Yum. Got any more?
The banner was removed and replaced several times with the last one reading:
Enough already with the dragons, I think we’ve got
all we need right now. Yes, they are truly delicious.
Yum. Yum. But we’re running out of pickling salt and
barrels to store any more.
Spikeweed was beside himself and several other dragons were enraged. There had been sixty-four dragons at sunset. Now there were only eighteen. Twelve had been roasted and all the other visiting dragons had gone home in disgust except for one and that one was, of course, Spotty Oregano. Having been reunited with his one true love, there was no way he was leaving. The one thing that set Italian dragons apart from every other living animal was that they did know about mirrors.47 It hadn’t taken long for Spotty to realise what was going on in the tower.
His
first thought had been to tell Spikeweed. If Spotty had told him earlier, then eight dragons would still be alive, but he had kept quiet. Spotty hoped that Spikeweed would lead an attack on the tower and become part of the humans’ dinner, leaving the beloved, wonderful, adorable and perfect Primrose free to become his wife. Spotty had seen the look in her eyes when he had arrived and knew that she still carried a flame for him. Of course every dragon carried a flame, two in fact, that they could shoot out of their noses, but this was the flame of lost love that burned in her heart.
The trouble was that Spikeweed was a coward. It would take a lot of cunning to get him to join any attack on the castle.
‘You are giving up?’ he said to Spikeweed.
‘No, of course not.’
‘Ah, you are proving that you are the one true King of the Dragons,’ said Spotty. ‘You are leading the final great attack to prove once and for all to the whole world that dragons are the greatest living creatures on earth and that you, as their leader, are the greatest living King? My friend, I shall be honoured and happy to fly at your left side while your noble son, Prince Bloat, flies at your right.’
‘Ah well, yes, umm, normally …’ Spikeweed began, but Spotty Oregano cut him short.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Let us go immediately. The sun will begin to rise soon and we must claim our victory before dawn.’
‘Well, umm …’
‘Oh, my hero,’ said Primrose, guessing that Spotty had a plan that would ensure his survival, thus offering her the possibility of living happily ever after a mere few minutes away. ‘I will wait for your triumphant return as a true living legend.’
‘I also think,’ she added, ‘that all seven of our children should fly with you.’
‘Yes, yes,’ the children cried. ‘Kill, kill, kill!’
Spikeweed tip-toed back against a rock so that no one would be able to see that he was wetting himself. He had no choice and he knew it. He tried desperately to convince himself that a final attack would succeed, even though he knew he was more than likely about to fly to certain death.
‘Come on, Dad, we’re all behind you,’ said Bloat and his six siblings.
All the other dragons said they would go too, though Spotty suggested that Primrose should stay behind in case any humans decided to creep up and attack their valley while they were all away.
‘If that happens,’ he said, ‘you can set that big tree over there alight and we will rush back.’
So after dithering a bit more, everyone except Primrose lined up behind Spikeweed and took off to fly to Camelot. Spikeweed even got his ancient granny, Gorella, out of her cave, though it took two strong teenage dragons to get her into the air and keep her there because she stayed fast asleep. When Primrose insisted they take her, Spikeweed said it was a ridiculous idea.
‘There are two very good reasons why she should go,’ Primrose explained. ‘First of all, she will leak a constant stream of disgusting old dragon wee over Camelot and secondly, because she is very fat, you will be able to use her as a shield.’
There was no way that Primrose was going to start her new wonderful life with Spikeweed’s disgusting old granny there. Spikeweed realised that with the old lady leaking everywhere no one would notice that he was still wetting himself, so he agreed.
As they flew over the banner that Merlin had hung off the front battlements, Bloat swooped down and set it on fire. Then they were over the courtyard, the tower with the four dragons inside straight ahead.
‘FIRE!’ Spotty roared and everyone shot flames out of their noses.
Except Spotty, that is, who drifted quickly and silently off into the shadows. The firestorm was incredible, dragons fell like flies.48 As the two young dragons holding Gorella up approached the tower, they threw her forward and began to shoot their flames. They had planned to try and throw Gorella through the window even though she was fifty times too big, but their aim was rubbish and Gorella flew smack into the wall and slid to the ground without even waking up.49
Spikeweed turned for home, but all the dragons who had already gone home and had come back were blocking his way.
‘Word reached us before we got to the coast,’ the leading dragon called out, ‘and we decided we must return and join you in a last battle for glory.’
‘Yes, well …’ Spikeweed began, but it was obvious no one was going to let him leave now.
The others surrounded him, giving him no choice but to turn back towards the tower, where all together they shot one massive wall of fire. But even such an enormous conflagration was not enough to destroy the dragons inside the tower. The entire tower glowed red, its rock walls threatening to melt, but no matter what the attackers threw at them, the defenders threw exactly the same back. They circled round and round the tower and each time there were less of them as one by one they went crashing in flames to the ground.
As more and more toasted dragons landed on the sleeping Gorella, so did her dream become more and more wonderful.
Spikeweed tried to keep to the back, but it was no use because eventually there was no back to keep to. He was the back and finally he was the front too.
The last sound he heard was an endless loud scream and it was a while before he realised that he was making it. He crashed down in a spiral of flames, landing on his granny and setting her alight, which was a very good thing as the old dragon had more dangerous germs and bacteria living inside her than all the Extreme Isolation Wards in fifty-eight Highly Contagious Disease Hospitals.
If Gorella had not been burnt to a crisp, then history would have been entirely different. The bacteria and germs would have spread throughout Avalon and exctincted50 the entire population. They would have spread to other countries, covering the whole world and killing everything else until all that would be left would be Spotty Oregano, Primrose and billions of cockroaches, as dragons and roaches were the only things immune to the germs.
Luckily the fire killed ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine per cent of the germs and bacteria, so everyone was saved.51
After three more waves of attack, all the dragons were dead including Bloat.52 Gorella, who had been burnt to a crisp, was not actually dead. She just smelled a lot worse – boiled dragon wee with singed bristles.
Spotty Oregano had hidden in the shadows behind a spire on a tower on the opposite side of the courtyard. He watched Merlin and the other humans remove the mirrors from the window and then flew back to his one true love.
‘I think the humans will come looking to see if there are any of us dragons left,’ Primrose said. ‘We should leave Avalon.’
‘I don’t think they will stop at just searching around here,’ said Spotty.
‘So what do you think we should do?’
‘I think we should surrender to the humans and ask for their mercy,’ said Spotty. ‘After all, as far as we know, no humans were hurt in this ridiculous battle, so maybe they’ll be lenient.’
‘Or else we could just hide and hope they think we are extinct.’
‘Unless we are very lucky,’ Spotty replied, ‘we could be.’
‘We’ll deal with the last two dragons later,’ said Merlin. ‘I think they’ll keep their heads down for a bit. In the meantime we’ve got the other two lots of invaders to deal with.’
As the two rafts carrying Mordred and his small army of fake washerwomen drifted closer to Camelot, the sky suddenly lit up with fire. They didn’t know the dragons had been planning to attack Camelot, so their first thought was that somehow Merlin had got news of their own plans and sent dragons out to light up the sky and look for them.
Captain Shortbread Silver, who was sailing the first raft, pulled it into the darkest shadows at the back of a small island, tied up and clambered ashore. The crew of the second raft tied up behind him and everyone crouched beneath the dense bushes that covered the island.
‘We shall not be seen here,’ said the Captain, ‘and our rafts look like they’re part of the island.’
Of course wh
at they were seeing actually had nothing to do with Mordred and his crew at all. It was the dragons attacking Camelot and getting roasted. It took them a while to realise that the dragons seemed to be attacking each other.
‘We could use the chaos to slip quietly into the castle,’ said the Captain as the flames and chaos grew louder and louder.
‘WHAT?’ Mordred shouted. ‘The flames and the chaos are so loud I can’t hear a single word you’re saying.’
‘I SAID …’ the Captain started, but then he just waved for everyone to follow him.
They paddled across to the castle and were about to set their rafts adrift when Culvert stopped them.
‘Won’t we need those to get away again?’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ said Mordred. ‘We would only need the rafts to escape if our mission fails and of course it will not fail.’
‘But …’ Culvert began but stopped himself. But Tracyvere and I need the rafts to take us back to the mainland, he thought.
‘Why not keep the rafts here?’ Tracyvere said. ‘Then we could set our prisoners adrift and fire flaming arrows into the rafts when they are out in the middle of the lake, where they would all get eaten by the olms.’
‘Now that is a great idea,’ said Mordred.
So they hid the rafts in the bulrushes and crept towards the back door of the castle.
Their timing was not very good. When they were about five metres from the castle wall, an enormous burning dragon came crashing down and killed twelve fake washerwomen.
This meant that they had already lost fourteen raiders before they had even got inside the castle. The other deaths had been when they had been hiding the rafts and someone had said, ‘I wonder why they are called bulrushes?’ and had been trampled by a rampaging cow. Someone else was about to say, ‘Shouldn’t they be called cowrushes?’, but before he could he was trampled to death too.
They had actually lost sixteen people because Culvert and Tracyvere took advantage of the falling dragon to slip quietly back to the rafts. As far as they were concerned it was a wonderful stroke of luck. No one was going to pick through the dead bodies to count them, so it would be assumed that the Clapshamshires had been two of the victims. Culvert threw his hat into the embers just to aid the deception.
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