The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  Gareth murmured modestly, "My own father, sir."

  "Hah!" cried Dinadan. "Will Kay have a red face when he hears that!"

  "Where is the damosel?" asked Gareth.

  "Sir, at the first clash she went headfirst into that thicket, like a fox to earth," said Gligger, pointing a finger. "But here she comes out."

  The damosel issued from the tangled hawthorns on her hands and knees. Her tall headdress now was crooked, her tear-smudged face was scratched, and her fine gown was ripped and bedraggled. Still on all fours she stared blankly at the two knights and then at the motionless figures on the greensward.

  "All sped," said Dinadan harshly.

  "Dead?" she gasped incredulously.

  The knights exchanged significant glances.

  "It was not an occasion for chivalrous courtesies," said Dinadan sternly.

  She stood up then and pointed a trembling finger at the most richly armed of the corpses.

  "That was my father," she said; and though her voice was low and clear it chilled her hearers to the marrow. "A false knight, forsworn and outlawed—leader of robbers and murderers. He sent me to bring some great and rich knight of King Arthur's court to him—Arthur himself even, or else Launcelot or Tristram or Lamorak or another of great fame and wealth—to be held for ransom. He forced me to swear on my dead mother's rosary to make my plea to Arthur, and to bring the victim to the try sting place, mauger my immortal soul! I made my plea, but in so unmannerly a fashion that no great champion, but only this youth, would undertake my adventure. And then you came, and would not stop or be driven off—neither of you. So I gave all my gold to the braggart at the bridge to stop you both: for without any champion I'd be free of my vow to keep that tryst. He didn't stop you. But I would have turned you somehow—even warned you at the price of eternal damnation—but they shifted the ambush two full leagues this side of the try sting place."

  And then she laughed; and the two knights stared at her in amazement, and even Gligger looked dazed. And her laughter grew higher and wilder, and she pointed again and screamed exultantly, "And look at them now!" Then she swayed and fell and lay twitching.

  The knights brought her out of that fit, or swoon, or whatever it was, with splashes of cold water from a nearby spring and sips of liquor from a leather bottle. She sat up at last, a pitiful figure, and hid her face with her hands.

  "An astounding tale, if true," said Dinadan. "I am inclined to believe it, and doubtless Sir Gareth is too, but we must take you back to King Arthur, that he may hear it from your own lips."

  She bowed her head yet lower in meek acquiescence. Then Dinadan took the purse of gold from his wallet and gave it to Sir Gareth.

  "It is your adventure," he said. "I'm but an onlooker."

  So Gareth helped the bedraggled damosel to her feet, and to where her jennet stood patiently, and up into the saddle. She looked down at him and whispered, "Will the King punish me?"

  "Nay, for what?" Gareth answered. "He is a just but merciful prince. At the very worst he may place you in a convent, for the good of your immortal soul."

  "Shall I need money in a convent?" she whispered.

  "Nay, you would lack nothing. But you have money. Here, take back your purse now, for fear I might lose it on the way."

  Dinadan then called Gareth for help in rounding up the newly acquired horses from the surrounding thickets. The knights and Gligger worked afoot, and the knights right heavily and hotly in their suits of mail; but the task was accomplished at last.

  "Well leave the five dead rogues as they are," said Dinadan. "We have enough hardware now without adding that junk to it. But the damosel! Where is she?"

  She wasn't there: neither she, nor the jennet. They shouted, but got no answer. They shouted again and yet again, but all to no purpose.

  "Stolen away," said Dinadan. "A guilty conscience, I fear. Ay, guilty indeed, to go without her purse!"

  "She—had her purse," stammered Gareth. "I—she—I didn't think she'd run away."

  Dinadan smiled cynically, but his hand on the new knight's shoulder was kind.

  "Live and learn, dear lad," he said. "Even I am still learning!"

  Mountain Miracle

  When Sir Dinadan and Sir Gareth won back to Camelot from the adventure of the perfidious damosel, and King Arthur knew the young knight of Dinadan's making for a son of his beloved sister Queen Elizabeth of Orkney, great was the rejoicing, many were the feasts and flings of celebration. But these did not satisfy Arthur, so he conceived a tournament and games that would make a mere poppy show of anything of the sort ever seen before in this realm. And to give all lovers of hard knocks and high jinks plenty of time in which to assemble, he ordained it to begin on St. Michael's Feast and to continue a sennight and a day; and to this end he sent trusty heralds in every direction throughout his realm and beyond it, and beyond Cornwall into Wales and even to Ultima Thule, and by ships to Ireland and Brittany.

  —The Book of Maelor

  Now Sir Dinadan was in clover again, and even deeper than ever before, having received a fat purse from King Arthur in addition to an honest price for the spoils of his spear and sword. And now he had no other mouth or back dependent upon him save those of his loved charger Garry (unless you count the dozen and more cripples and blind beggars who clustered about his lodgings whenever he was in town), for he had not employed a squire since homesick young Victor had left him and returned to Castle Fergus. Now he engaged the two best rooms at his inn, and the best of the stabling there for Garry, and a groom for each. He gave doles daily to his clamorous almsfolk, and bonuses every Sunday. He had a hairdresser in every morning to comb and curl his ringlets, and a barber to razor his cheeks and chin. He called a skilled limner in to repaint the rampant unicorn on his shield. He got his lutes out of pawn and had them restrung, and looked to the refurbishing of his wardrobe.

  Now Dinadan lived in the manner he would liefest of all others in this world. On fine days he rode Garry abroad for an hour or two after breakfast, and again after dinner, but lightly, and both horse and man lightly housened in silk and velvet instead of leather and iron. Sometimes he played at pall-mall, or skittles, or shuttlecock, with other agile gentlemen of the court, and with noble dames and damosels and maybe a few queens looking on and applauding. But he sat at home in his lodgings a few hours every day, and many hours in foul weather, making new songs, both the words and the tunes, and writing the words on parchments and trying the tunes with voice and lute. And almost every evening he supped at some high table, and as often as not treated the company to music after meat; but not always, for his moods were not as constant as was his appetite for good victuals and drink.

  So Dinadan supped one muggy July night, after a day of rain and song-making, with a witty dowager duchess who was one of his oldest and merriest friends. Feeling in a low mood and spent after his day-long battle of rhymes, he was somewhat set aback to find a full score of company, and strangers amongst them, instead of a dozen, and all familiars. But at the thought that the hostess had the best cook and the best cellar in Camelot, as well as the liveliest wit, and that his sure friend young Sir Gareth sat just across the board from him, he took heart.

  * * *

  When the sounds of spooning and supping and all sorts of bowl and trencher action were past, and even the clattering and gurgling of cups and cans and bottles a little reduced, a large stranger—strange to Dinadan, at least—called loudly and right assuredly for a song.

  "Now for a song, Duchess—a ditty of love to a merry tune!" he bellowed like a bull. "Now for this tame poet I have heard about! Bid him sing for us now, fair hostess!"

  He was a big man around as well as up and down, and richly dressed and bearded, and he sat at the dowager Duchess's right hand. The lady cried "O fie!" and plucked him by a sleeve and whispered in his ear.

  "Ho!" he exploded. "Ho-ho! Temperamental, hey?"

  She plucked and whispered again in obvious agitation, whereupon he laughed indulgently and
patted her plucking hand with a paw as big and hairy as a bear's.

  "Leave him to me, dear lady. Dinkydan's the name, wot?"

  "Dinadan," the poet corrected mildly.

  Now all eyes were turned upon Dinadan, who sat loosely and cup in hand, with his gaze among the bannered and cobwebby rafters. His friends regarded him expectantly, some of them even apprehensively, and the strangers curiously.

  "Hah, just so!" exclaimed the large stranger. "You are Dinadan."

  "Sir, to you," replied Dinadan softly, but loudly enough, at the same time shifting his position slightly and lowering his dreamy gaze from the rafters to the wine in his cup.

  The other gaped in angry astonishment and would have protested with oaths against this belittling of his ducal dignity (for a duke he was, though of a remote and savage duchy), had not their hostess plucked and whispered again. So he swallowed his monstrous oaths, but with difficulty and wry grimaces.

  "Sing for the Duchess!" he cried instead, in a voice half-choked with fury.

  Dinadan smiled thinly into his cup and murmured as thinly: "The lady is quite capable of asking for herself."

  "Please, Dinny," pleaded the dowager Duchess. "Duke Boreas intends no scathe. Please sing for us."

  "Hah! Boreas!" Dinadan exclaimed, but consideringly, like one thinking aloud. "A wind from the north. Very appropriate."

  Now he stood up and looked kindly at his hostess, yet far from happily, with a crooked smile and one eyebrow cocked and the lid of the other optic slightly drooped, and so addressed her gently.

  "Madam, I have sung at your bidding twenty times if one, and hope, with luck and God's mercy and your kindness, to do so as often again at least, and shall do so even now, but this time on a condition."

  "A condition?" she wailed. "Oh, this is not like you!"

  And all his friends present had the same thought, and they surmised that some shrewd play was afoot.

  "You say sooth, lady," he sighed. "Erstwhiles I have ever sung for you from a full heart, no matter how sorely I railed at love and lovers, but tonight I have only a full stomach, and it somewhat queasy. However, I shall obey you to the extent of my ability and with my newest numbers—but only on condition that the vociferous person on your right first sings for his supper too."

  "Person?" roared Duke Boreas. "Eh? D'ye mean me? D'ye call me a person?"

  The hostess clapped her plump little hands to her ears. Some of Dinadan's friends chuckled, and others of them giggled. The six strangers, who had evidently come to the feast with Boreas, glared and scowled and plucked at their beards.

  "I could think of other names for you," said Dinadan softly, "but would be sorry to offend the ears of the ladies."

  Duke Boreas opened his mouth to roar again, but the fury of his indignation paralyzed his vocal cords and he only gaped.

  "If you can't sing, how about a dance?" Dinadan went on smoothly and with a reasonable air. "What, you can't dance? That's too bad. And yet I have seen very good dancers of very much your shape and size, usually performing to the beating of a drum; but in my childhood I once saw an old bear who had learned to dance to any music. Can't my lord duke do anything to entertain the company and repay our fair hostess—in part, at least—for the trenchers you have cleared and the cups and cans you have drained?"

  This was shrewder than his intimates even had expected, and they gasped apprehensively; and all the strangers from the northern wilds gnashed their carnivorous teeth; and Duke Boreas himself lurched and lunged to his feet, fumbling at his side the while for the hilt of the sword, which fortunately had been left in the antechamber. But he found his voice, and so he straightway vented his wrath in a bloodcurdling declamation of what he could and would do to Dinadan's liver and lights and other vital organs at the first opportunity. The hospitable Duchess popped up and slapped the visiting Duke's whiskers with gem-encrusted hands.

  "Gramercy," said Dinadan politely, but whether in thanks to his hostess for her gesture in his behalf or to Boreas for his bloody intentions, who knows? "But now is hardly the time for it, nor this the place," he continued. "But if my lord duke has come all the way from his mountainy fastnesses to play a part in King Arthur's great joustings and junketings at Michaelmas, at the Castle of Maidens, why not keep it till then, and so contribute to the success of the royal tournament instead of upsetting our gracious hostess's digestion here and now—not to mention my own?"

  Boreas snarled: "So be it! Then I´ll—I´ll—" But he had already disposed horribly of every organ, limb, and feature in the knight's possession, so he let it go at that.

  "Agreed," said Dinadan pleasantly. "The time, the Feast of Saint Michael; the place, the Castle of Maidens. With sharp points and edges, I presume. Quite. And as the appointment is for over two months from now, may I suggest that Your Grace make a note of it?"

  "Ill remember," promised Boreas.

  "Gramercy," said Dinadan; and he turned to the duchess with a curved instead of a crooked smile and a flutter of an eyelid.

  "Madam, I apologize humbly. But now that your illustrious ducal guest has so politely excused himself from making the initial acknowledgment of your hospitality on the good and sufficient plea that he can neither sing nor dance—but I suspect that only his innate modesty deters his grace from excelling in both arts—I shall try to make amends by singing for both our suppers."

  "You and your jabes an' jokes will be the death of me yet!" cried the Duchess, with tears of relief in eyes and voice; and Dinadan's other friends present looked vastly relieved and surprised too, and Boreas and his six bewildered to the point of stupefaction.

  "God defend you, madam, and from any worser death too!" replied Dinadan unctuously, and added matter-of-factly: "May I trouble you for the loan of a lute now?"

  A page with a lute was at his elbow in a jiffy.

  Now he twanged, now high, now low, and tauted one string and eased another. Now he strummed, and the sound was as aimless and tuneless as the babble of a brook, and inquiring eyebrows were raised by a few who did not know him very well, and supercilious eyebrows by the seven who did not know him at all, and Boreas gurgled deep in his throat: "I could do as well meselfl" And the brook babbled on, lisping and tinkling, till even the Duchess began to fear that the lutanist was dozing, overcome by his potations or the monotony of his strumming. But hark! The brook runs faster—faster and deeper and louder. Here's no lisping now, but sibilant complaining; no tinkling, but splashy clashing. Now the aimless brook runs full and strong between its banks and over its boulders. No babbling now, but a deep and increasing roar topped by splashy shouts: no brook now, but a mountain torrent in spate.

  The seven strangers stare, each to his front, and breathe thickly. They see the old gray kelpie washed from his familiar pool and floundering furiously in the twisting, sloshing turmoil of waters black and green and brown, all sinewed and fanged with white. They see it as surely as they hear it. And now, of a sudden, Dinadan's fingers are still; and in the silence the bursting flood and quaking rocks are gone from before their entranced eyes, leaving only this scene of candleshine agleam on cups and silver flagons and spilled wine, on bejeweled throats and breasts, on faces as fixed as masks and eyeballs like polished agates.

  Boreas cried in a strange voice: "I heard the eagles screaming!"

  "I took it for Old Kelpie," muttered another mountaineer.

  "You were both right, I hope," said Dinadan. "Gramercy."

  He was pleased with himself and them.

  "And now something littler and lighter, and words to match," he said; and straightway he tinkled and sang a rustic sweet ditty to do with a shepherd and a dairymaid and kisses behind a haystack.

  The Duchess and other ladies laughed and clapped their hands, but none of the cavaliers, and Boreas and his fellows least of all, appeared much impressed.

  "Wot d'ye know of dragons?" mumbled Duke Boreas. "Hah, a fight with a dragon! My sire fought a dragon—the biggest fire-spitter ever seen—single-handed, to the death.
There be something to sing about!"

  "Just so," murmured Dinadan consideringly. "I've never fought a dragon myself, nor seen one. Born too late. A fire-spitter, did you say?"

  "Ay, with a belly hot as a forge, and fire from his nose like sparks from an anvil."

  "Just so," agreed the poet, and fell to plucking at his lute, but only for a moment. "Nay, I need a harp for this!" he cried. "Madam, a harp, I pray you!"

  And a harp was at his elbow in a count of seconds, for Sir Tristram, who was a skilled harper, was also a frequent guest at this table. It was a short harp, but strong and of nine strings, and after a few plunks and twangs, Dinadan had it humming like a swarm of bees and clanging like swords on helmets. And now the clangor outrang the humming, and the ladies held their ears.

  "A dragon! A dragon!" shouted Dinadan, through and above the tumult of the brazen strings.

  Thus and then "The Slaying of the Dragon" was made and uttered for the first time, for that hour and forever. By one old chronicler it is recorded as "Dragon-song of Dinadan" and by another as "Dragon-death," but by that name or this, fearsome fragments and wild vibrations of it have clanged down the centuries even to this day.

  At last the dragon was slain and reborn to immortality; and Dinadan sat down, limp and spent. All eyes were upon him, some fearful, some fierce, and some simply dazed. Duke Boreas' were fierce and dazed both, and at once flaming and glazed; and in appearance as in behavior he was like one bedeviled to madness, grabbing at the air before and above him with strangling fingers, swelling and flexing the muscles of his heavy shoulders and thick neck and snorting like a bull; and all the other mountaineers were flexing their muscles too, and clawing the air and their whiskers and snorting. It was an awesome scene.

  "That was horrid," wailed the Duchess. "Oh, my poor nerves!"

  "I quite agree with you," sighed Dinadan: and he filled and drained a large cup and sighed again; whereupon the seven strangers filled and drained cups and cans, and heaved great sighs, in imitation: and the poet moaned on: "I got carried away. Couldn't feel tireder if I'd slain him with my own hands, the poor creature. And look at your harp!"