"Nay, no hero!" protested Dinadan, in modest confusion. "Only a fumbling beginner, sir—but at your service."
"At my service, d'ye say? Then do I bequeath to you, here and now, the high quest of the Saracen Beast, even as my lamented uncle bequeathed it to me twenty weary years ago. It is all yours, my worthy and trusty Sir Dinadan. So mount now, and follow the Saracen Beast through thick and thin, even as it has been followed by the mighty King Gort, Sir Cockrum, Duke Ironsides, and Duke Peveral, not to mention myself. Up and after it, noble youth!"
His embarrassment and confusion vastly increased by the bequest and the old knight's rising vehemence, Sir Dinadan was fairly flabbergasted.
"Gramercy, gramercy!" he stammered. "But who am I— full young and untried—to follow those illustrious princes and noble questers? And were I worthy even, I'd think shame to leave Your Honor alone and unhorsed in this forest."
"You are too modest, my boy," said Sir Nigel. "As for my position at the moment, think nothing of it. It will mend. I have a squire and grooms and spare horses somewhere back along the way, who frequently lose touch but always catch up to me sooner or later. So mount and spur now, I pray you!"
"But, sir, I am in no manner prepared or provisioned for this high adventure," poor Dinadan protested. "I was but riding at random in the hope of meeting some knight-errant less secure in the saddle than myself, and thereby obtaining the means—his arms and harness and horse—of recovering my chestnut hackney and my man Kedge. In fact, sir, I am operating on a shoestring, and at the moment, in greater need of quick money than of glory."
"You shall have both, my boy," said Sir Nigel. "Ill be in Camelot tomorrow, and shall release your man and hackney, and make generous provision for them, without delay, as I am a true knight. As for quick money, here are five silver crowns to enrich your pouch. And here is one of the two flasks I always carry on my sword-belt. As for victuals for today and tomorrow, my runaway charger carries two saddlebags stuffed with the very best, to which you are welcome. You have but to follow in his tracks to overtake him, or more likely, to meet him on his way back; for it is his habit, upon such occasions, to turn about and retrace his steps when he realizes I am not still on his back. In either case, snatch the saddlebags."
He pushed Dinadan gently yet strongly toward the latter's charger, and even boosted him into the saddle.
"Now I shall rest easy, my noble young friend, in the knowledge that I have relayed this high quest into such worthy and capable hands as your own," he added.
So, feeling that further protest would sound discourteous and ungrateful, Dinadan rode off on the quest of the Beast. He followed the trail of the runaway horse without difficulty, and had gone only a mile before sounds of movement in the leafy obscurity near him caused him to draw rein. The disturbance increased swiftly; and a large black horse, saddled and accoutered, burst suddenly into view and came galloping straight at him. A collision was narrowly avoided by quick footwork on the part of his dapple-gray; and in the moment of the black's passing, Dinadan made a long arm and snatched the coupled saddlebags. He went forward again, keeping to the double track of the runaway's going and coming with hardly a check, until he reached a patch of moist ground whereon Sir Nigel's horse had snubbed to a stop and reversed himself. It was all as easy to read as inked words on parchment.
"Now I shall have only the tracks of the Beast itself to guide me," Dinadan muttered.
Looking down from his high saddle, he saw nothing traceable leading onward from the gouges of iron-shod hooves. So he dismounted and peered closer, and still failed to find anything to his purpose.
"But what am I looking for?" he asked himself. "What do I know of this Saracen Beast and the kind of tracks it makes?"
He sat down on a convenient tussock of fern, and racked his brains. He had heard of the Saracen Beast before his meeting with Sir Nigel, but always incidentally and never with his full attention. Now he ransacked his memory for particulars concerning that high and exclusive quest and its exclusive object, neither of which had ever made a very strong appeal to the popular taste, evidently. He removed his helmet and gauntlets and clasped his bare head in bare hands. When and what had he first heard of it?
Hah, he had it! He was a mere toddler when a wandering bard had sung of it, and many more marvels, in his ancestral hall. The bard had called it the Saracen Beast. By his telling, it had been brought to Britain by a great traveler in a remote age, and had escaped from its cage and into impenetrable mountainy forests. He had clutched his nurse's skirts at the bard's description of that monster, and he shivered slightly even now at the memory. How had it gone?
"The head and neck of a great serpent, the body of an Afric leopard but twice as great and long, and the legs and hooves of a hart, and a noise in its belly as of thirty couples of hounds questing." That was it. But between the episode of the bard, and the meeting with good Sir Nigel, he had heard, or harkened to, only such talk of the Saracen Beast as had given him the impression that its pursuit offered little of knightly fame and even less of monetary reward. But now he, Dinadan, was pledged to it and embarked upon it, so there was nothing for him to do about it but his honest best.
Dinadan sighed, arose from the ferny tussock, hung his casque on the saddle and renewed his search afoot for the trail of the Saracen Beast. His tall dapple-gray Garry followed him with a polite show of interest.
He was rewarded sooner than he had expected.
"What's this!" he cried, staring at a cloven hoof-print in a patch of mud. "This is it—or the track of a royal hart of ten points, anyway."
He advanced again, scrutinizing the ground and finding further prints of cleft hooves in moist spots every here and there; and Garry followed close, snuffling inquiringly at his shoulder. So they soon came to a spring of clear water under a bank of flowering Maythorn and bramble; and by the depth of the hoof-prints in the soft margin thereof, Dinadan knew that his quarry had drunk its fill here. Now the sun was behind the westward forest and the leafy twilight was dimming; so Dinadan decided to pass the night beside the spring. He unbitted and unsaddled Garry, who straightway sank his muzzle to the water. He followed the horse's example, though the weight of his armor all but bogged him down. After extricating himself from the mud, he unarmed from neck to heels—a difficult task lacking squirish help. Then, after a swig at the flask which Sir Nigel had given him, he opened one of the saddlebags that he had snatched from the runaway's saddlebow. Here was superior fare, in truth! Here was a tart of jam and rich pastry which he shared, bite and bite about, with nuzzling Garry. Here was a pigeon pie, of which the horse got only the pastry. They went fifty-fifty on the currant buns, but the knight had all of the roast chicken, and the charger all of a large barley loaf.
* * *
Dinadan slept soundly on fern and moss, but was early awake and astir. For breakfast, he and Garry shared what remained in the first saddlebag. Then (after a pull on the flask) he saddled and bitted Garry, but instead of rearming himself, he resumed the belt only, with his sword and a dagger convenient on his left hip and his wallet and Sir Nigel's flask to balance them. He placed all the rest— helmet, the back- and breastplates, shoulder pieces, thigh pieces, greaves, and the rest—upon and about the great saddle. But he slung his shield at his own back and shouldered his war-spear. So he resumed the quest of the strange Saracen Beast on his own feet, with the tall horse and all his protective harness clanking after. Though he went lightly now, he still went slowly, searching for big cloven hoof-prints. The ground became higher and dryer and the prints so few and so far between that he just about lost interest in them before the morning was half gone. He sat down on a mossy boulder to reflect and to moisten his throat.
"This is too bad," he told his horse. "In twenty-four hours I have lost that which Sir Nigel kept tag of for twenty years—unless the venerable knight was exaggerating. Or so it seems. But well take another scout around, of course: but I must confess that I don't see much of a future for you and me in this hi
gh quest of the Saracen Beast. It sounded impractical to me—a trifle too high and wide—when I first heard of it. But well do our best, of course—for another day, at least. We owe that much to generous Sir Nigel."
So the search for cloven hoof-prints was resumed.
* * *
"What's that?" exclaimed Dinadan. But he was not looking at the ground. His head was up, and so was Garry's.
"Hark! Hounds in full cry! The Beast with the noise as of questing hounds in its belly! Nay—it's real hounds—and they have brought the Beast to bay!"
He leaped forward and ran hard and straight toward the clamor, with the gear-encumbered charger clanging after him. Now he heard the halloos of men mingled with the fierce outcry of hounds. He went through thick and thin, and soon burst from cover into a small glade and the scene of action. Here was the Beast. . . . Nay, this was no monster, but a noble stag of ten points doing battle for its dear life against hopeless odds; the center of a milling ring of fangs and steel. It still struck with horns and hooves, but with failing force. There was froth on its muzzle now, and blood on neck and breast and flanks, and the great eyes were dimming. Dinadan saw plainly enough that this was not the Saracen Beast, but only a great hart of ten points overmatched and about to die and therefore no concern of his; but a sudden furious madness of indignation and pity seized him, and he dashed into the melee with a defiant yell and buffeting hands and feet. Hounds and two fellows in wool and leather slunk or jumped out of reach of his arms and legs, but a third huntsman turned upon him and threatened him with a boar-spear.
But only for a moment. Before the fellow could deliver even a jab, Dinadan enveloped him like a whirlwind, snatched the short spear, and clipped him over the nob with its butt-end. Now a menacing but inarticulate roar caused our hero to look to his left; and he beheld a large person in a tunic of green silk coming at him on a tall horse. A personage, evidently, by the quality of his tunic, the curly feather and gold brooch in his green cap, and the arrogance of his voice.
Still roaring, this personage dismounted within a pace of Dinadan and threatened him with the butcher's knife with which he obviously intended to deliver the coup de grace to the enfeebled stag. Dinadan, waggling the boar-spear in a calculating manner, warned him to make less noise and more sense, or he too would be laid flat with a broken head. At that, the other ceased his inarticulate bellowing suddenly and was silent for long enough to flap his mouth open and shut half a dozen times. Then in a controlled but dangerous voice Green Tunic demanded:
"Who are you, knave?"
To this Dinadan returned, in a voice that matched the questioner's: "Who wants to know, churl?"
At that, the two huntsmen who had jumped aside from Dinadan's first onset struck at him from the rear, only to have their blows nullified by the long shield on his back. He turned upon them and struck with the clubbed spear, thus presenting the shield to a vicious slash of their master's knife. He turned again, quick as a trout, dropped the borrowed boar-spear, drew his sword, and sent Green Tunic stumbling back beyond the sweep of it.
"Fool, I am Sir Gregstone, lord of all this barony!" cried Green Tunic. "Put up that sword!"
Dinadan cried, "I am Sir Dinadan of the Quest of the Saracen Beast!" And he sent the two varlets leaping backward with a circular sweep of his long sword.
"The Saracen Beast, say you?" exclaimed Sir Gregstone, with a change for the better of both voice and countenance. "Just so. An exalted quest, truly, sir—ah—I didn't catch the name, sir."
"Dinadan."
"Dinadan. Quite. And what, then, of old Sir Nigel of the Tower?"
"He handed over to me, after twenty years of it, and went to Camelot."
"Just so. A fine old gentleman. But may I make so bold as to ask why you charged into this entirely private hunt of my own hart in my own forest, kicking my hounds and breaking the heads of my huntsmen?"
"I mistook your quarry for my own—your stag for the Beast—by the tracks of its cloven hooves," lied Dinadan.
"He's stole away an' got clean off, lord," grumbled one of the spearmen.
Of the other spearmen, one still lay supine with a cracked nob, and one nursed a broken shoulder.
"My mistake, Sir Gregstone," lied Dinadan, feigning regret.
"Let it pass," said Gregstone, but with a wry grimace. "A head of ten points, by my halidom! I've never seen a greater. But let it pass. And put up your sword, I pray you, Sir Dinadan, and come home to dinner."
"Gramercy," accepted our hero, who even at this stage of his career seldom refused an invitation to dine or sup.
The grumbling spearman knelt beside the fellow on the ground and tried to rouse him, but without success. Dinadan joined them, unhooked Sir Nigel's flask from his belt and unstopped it, raised the unconscious churl's head and shoulders, and tilted the flask to the parted lips. After three swallows, the sturdy fellow was up on his feet and staggering happily. Then Dinadan examined the other casualty's shoulder, advised him to see a doctor and administered two swigs from the flask. . . .
They came to Sir Gregstone's residence shortly after high noon. It stood, or rather squatted, in a fair meadow, and was girt by a wide moat like a paunchy champion by his sword-belt. It consisted of structures of two or more periods, some of hewn timber and some of masonry, with a square tower in their midst. Its appearance was substantial and commodious rather than elegant.
Like its lord's, thought Dinadan, with a glance at Sir Gregstone.
They were no more than across the drawbridge when loud halloos in their rear caused Dinadan to halt and turn. He saw a knight armed cap-a-pie riding hard toward them on a red horse.
"Who is that?" he asked. "And what does he want?"
"Pay him no heed!" cried Gregstone. "He is but a crackpot. An' dinner is waiting," he added urgently.
"Nay, he bawls your name and dubs you coward," protested Dinadan. "He dares you to arm and come out to him. Are you deaf?"
"I hear him, as I've heard him, almost daily, this past month and more, the devil take him! Come in to dinner or 'twill be burnt to cinders."
"But he calls you coward an' knave and a disgrace to your golden spurs. He calls you glutton and tyrant."
"He's mad. Heed him not. Hell come no nearer than the bridge. Ignore him and come in to dinner, and hell return to his pitch in the forest."
"But all he asks is to run a tilt with you—but in villainous language, I admit. Why not arm yourself and oblige him—and be done with his clamor? I´ll be glad to squire you."
"No, no! Not now, anyway. After dinner, maybe. I´ll explain it all after dinner."
Sir Gregstone pushed and pulled Sir Dinadan into the great hall, and grooms followed with the horses; and while Dinadan was being nudged and plucked toward a table set beneath a canopy on a dais, the horses were led the whole length of the hall and out by a back door.
The two knights dined by themselves, but with service enough for a company of ten; and there was just as much too much of victuals and drink as of service. In truth, there was too much of everything except conversation, of which there was nothing for a long time. Dinadan was a good trencherman, but he could not hold a candle to his host in this respect, nor could he match him in the cup-and-can branch of gourmandry. At last, however, Sir Gregstone wiped his lips and fingers on a corner of the tablecloth of damask, sat back in his chair, hiccuped, and closed his eyes.
"Now what about the knight on the red horse?" asked our hero, prodding his host with an elbow.
Gregstone moved his fat lips, but nothing came of it. Dinadan prodded again and harder, and repeated the question louder. The fat lips this time emitted a thick whisper:
"It'll keep. Forty winks. No hurry."
Dinadan swore impatiently. Though he had plied knife and fingers and cup and horn with his customary heartiness, he was not sleepy, and his curiosity was as lively as ever. So he drew back his elbow for a third and yet sharper prod.
"Hold it!" someone exclaimed at his shoulder.
He
held it, and turned his head and saw an elderly gentleman in a robe of black velvet standing behind him.
"I beg your pardon, young sir, but you'll gain nothing by nudging him," continued Black Robe, in a hurried and conciliatory voice. "His ribs are too well larded. Hell sleep for hours yet. But permit me to reply for him, sir. I know the answers as well as he does."
He introduced himself as Clark Andrew, one-time tutor to Sir Gregstone and for many years now seneschal of the great house and steward of the wide domain. At Dinadan's suggestion, he took a seat and helped himself to wine. He had already dined—"Before the sirloin was done too hard for my waggly tender teeth," he explained. He dismissed the servants with a gesture.
"And now, young sir, what would you know?"
"Why your Sir Gregstone ignores the challenge and insults of the knight on the red horse, venerable sir."
"Quite. I myself would ask that question if I did not know my bully lord and friend as I do. Should you repeat it to Sir Gregstone three hours from now, when he wakes from his postprandial nap, he will tell you that he ignores challenges and insults because he lacks suitable harness in which to accept the former and resent the latter. Mere sophistry, young sir—though 'tis true that of his two suits of armor, which were made for his father, one is now too small for him and the other still too large."
"D'ye tell me he lacks the price of a new suit of mail?"
"Not at all, young sir. God forbid! He could have a suit of the best Spanish made to his measure every sennight of his life, had he a mind to; but like his father before him, he is a better patron to cooks and tailors than to armorers. He is no jouster; nor was Sir Guff. He has neither the seat nor the spirit for exchanges of thrusts and cuts with equally armed cavaliers; nor had his sire. Harts and hinds are more to his taste as antagonists—but only after they have been properly winded and worried by hounds and huntsmen. And so it was with Sir Guff, who took his first and only tumble in a passage of arms as a young man and harnessed to match his slimness, and who had no further ado with body armor until, when as big around as a hogshead, he ordered a new suit of mail for a purely ceremonious occasion. And so it is that Sir Gregstone, a true son of his father, can excuse himself from combat on the plea that he has nothing to wear."
The Merriest Knight Page 4