The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  She did not move, but she whispered: "I do not want to go home."

  "Why not?" I asked, still staring in wonder at my brown thumbs on the white samite.

  "Philip de Courtville," she whispered, and paused; but as I had nothing to say to that, she whispered on:

  "I outrode and eluded him this morning. I have escaped. I´ll not return to him."

  "Is he your father?" I asked, and looked at her averted face. "Or your guardian?" I added.

  She shook her head.

  "Your husband?"

  "Not yet," she whispered faintly.

  Then we stood silent for minutes, while Star Boy fidgeted and swung his great head inquiringly. "You will starve else," I said.

  At that, she gave me a startled look, grasped the front of my jerkin with frantic fingers, and cried: "Was that all you had?"

  "Ay, to the last crust," I admitted, in desperate voice. "Fool that I am, not to have more! But I too am in flight— chased from my home and pursued and hunted through my own forests by a murderous usurper."

  She cried out even more lamentably than before, set her face hard against the front of my jerkin, between her gripping hands, and burst into tears. And so we stood for a long time. I tried to think, but my poor wits staggered around and around like drunkards in a tavern. In a mazed way I almost wished that I had found the fatal enchantress the White Damosel of Copel instead of this Damosel Blanche; for a nymph or sorceress would not demand victuals of me, whatever else. But it was not in my dazed heart to wish it quite. I moved my hands up from her quivering waist to her quaking shoulders. Soon she quieted a little.

  "What would you have of me?" I asked.

  "Hide me," she whispered against my breast.

  I had nothing to say to that. Next moment, suddenly, she withdrew and lifted her face—wide eyes and tear-wet cheeks and parted lips.

  "Hark!" she whispered, turning her head a little. "Be still! Hark!"

  I heard nothing but her voice and the commotion of my agitated heart.

  "A horn!" she cried, releasing her grip on the breast of my jerkin and breaking backward and aside a pace from my light hold on her shoulders. "There again," she cried, and pointed. "Philip's horn! He is leading the search for me himself!"

  I heard it then: a tootling Norman horn. I glanced at Star Boy and saw that he heard it too. It was not far off, of a certainty.

  "You must mount now, to escape him," I told her.

  She looked at me blankly, but only for a moment.

  "Shout!" she cried. "Shout, you dolt!"

  But I did not shout. Then she screamed, long and high; and the Norman horn tootled higher in acknowledgment. I mounted, without a word. She glanced at me and cried breathlessly, "Wait, and he will reward you!"

  "I am no stranger to Norman rewards," I replied bitterly. "My name is Patrick Pendragon."

  I mounted and wheeled Star Boy and moved off through brake and brush. I heard her uncertain cry for me to return, but soon lost it in the leafy commotion of our passage.

  "God send me a soulless nymph next!" I muttered. "Or Satan's own daughter! Anything but a Norman damosel!"

  I left both course and pace to Star Boy.

  "A narrow escape," I muttered; and looking at my hands, I thought of the waist they had held and all but spanned. "But she liked my tartlets," I sneered: and I laughed so strangely that Star Boy stopped and swung his head to look at me.

  Chapter Three

  Ben Tinker's Cave

  Star Boy went on, but now at a snail's pace; and I did nothing to mend his pace or shape his course, but sat limply and tried as limply to put that damosel out of mind.

  "Faugh! She's not worth a thought," I muttered. "Clinging to me one moment and screaming for her Philip the next! I know goose girls and foresters' wenches with better manners."

  But I looked at my hands again, and even held them up before me and spanned a circle of empty air, or more truly described it, for I left the tips of my thumbs about two inches apart and did not quite join the tips of my middle lingers. Even so, and despite the knowledge that the size of my hands would do credit to a smith, I gazed at them in wonder, and marveled at the thought of the waist that had so recently filled their circumscribed bounds.

  "More like a swan's neck," I murmured. "Nay, more like a lily's stem." And I might have ventured upon yet more poetical flights of fancy had not a chance downward glance encountered the flat, empty wallet on the saddlebow.

  Now a different vision possessed my mind's eye.

  "But she ate like a plowman!" I gasped; and at this incongruous thought I uttered a yelp of mirthless and derisive laughter.

  Star Boy checked, and tossed and swung his head to bring one inquiring eye to bear on me.

  "No heart!" I told him bitterly. "Clutching hands and greedy stomach. A true Norman! She made a fool of you too—but she didn't devour your last crust. There's grass and clover everywhere. So move on, brother."

  He moved on. I paid no attention to the course, but became vaguely aware that we were in fairly rough country again. Well, what of it? With Sir Osbert and his hirelings hunting for me through my ancestral forests, and this Devereaux country all in Norman hands too, might not this rugged border-land, these Hills of Har, prove the safest place for a deposed, forsaken, friendless, and unarmed Pendragon? Would not death by starvation be even less painful here than within chance sniffing-distance of hostile cooking fires?

  Had I been armed, I would have felt, thought, and behaved very differently. Had my weapons been spear and long sword, I would have asserted myself before now, and spilled blood as well as lost it—a quart of new blue blood for every spurt of old red blood, by my halidom! But with only churlish staff and cudgel to fight with, what more could even the last Pendragon do than fade away and finally expire of hunger far from sight and knowledge of the mocking eyes and false hearts of his enemies? This spiritless gloom and resignation was not true to my nature. This was certainly not the mood in which I had chivied and bedeviled the three crossbowmen. In truth, my meeting with the Damosel Blanche had done me no good.

  "A merry meeting, my Lord Pendragon," said a voice from the thicket of holly and thorn half Star Boy's length in front of his nose.

  The colt stopped, and I sat up straight. It was a twangy voice, and somehow familiar.

  "Gramercy," I said, tightening my grip on the staff.

  The thicket parted, and a tall and startling figure stepped into view. Or rather, it was the head that was startling. Eyes as black and bright as jet glittered beneath black and bushy brows; gold of earrings shone through tangled black locks; and the long and swarthy face was all but split across by a gleaming array of white teeth. In one hand he held a long wooden spoon.

  "Ben Tinker!" I cried, dropping the staff and leaping down from the saddle.

  He dropped the spoon and embraced me; and though I had never done such a thing before, nor ever felt the remotest impulse to do so, I embraced him in return; and though his scent was of ill-cured hides and other and probably worse things—as unlike that of the damosel as the fragrance of a rose differs from the smell of burnt grease—I held on as long as he did. Then we unclasped and each took a short step backward.

  "A merry meeting, in truth!" I exclaimed.

  His smile widened, if possible, but he closed one eye with a quizzical air.

  "I did not expect to see Your Nobility in this wild place," he said. "And so meanly furnished for foreign travel," he added.

  I told him my story, from Nick Pottle's first warning whisper to the crossing of the hills, in the fewest possible words, and without any mention of the damosel. He was angry and relieved, but not surprised.

  "The old fox made his play sooner than I expected," he said; and then he cursed for minutes in Romany, Welsh, English, Norman French, and even hedge-Latin, for he was a much-traveled tinker.

  "Nick Pottle did what he could, but it was Roger de Montfoi who told me how to outwit the rogues—and I can't think why he did it," I said.


  "The human conscience is a strange thing," he replied, with a knowing wag of his head.

  He picked up the wooden spoon.

  "But the human stomach has claims to consideration too," he said. "This way to supper, my good lord."

  He turned and rounded the thicket from which he had emerged. I followed him closely, and Star Boy followed me. Beyond that tangle of holly and thorn we made a crooked passage of a jumble of boulders and bushes. He stopped and turned.

  "Welcome to Tinker's Castle," he said, louting low.

  I saw a sharp elevation of rock and vine and hanging wood before me, and a confusion of brush and wood and tumbled boulders all around, but nothing of a castle; and what was more to the point, nothing of supper—not so much as the smoke of it, even. The gypsy flashed all his teeth at me, then stepped back past me to Star Boy and quickly had the saddle off and on the ferny ground, the bridle atop it. The colt shook himself and moved away in search of tender grass. Ben Tinker stooped again, detached the big bottle from the saddle, shook it, unstop-pered it, and sniffed at the orifice.

  "Hah!" he exclaimed. "This is all that was lacking in a feast fit for Pendragon of Dragonland. This way, my noble and doubly welcome guest."

  He entered a clump of hazel and twisted pear, with his wooden spoon and my leather bottle still in his hands, and me close on his heels.

  "Mind your head!" he warned.

  I stooped low, made a few more stumbling steps and found myself in a cave. For seconds I could detect nothing in the gloom save a low red glow far back in it; but as my eyes became used to it, I made out the rocky walls and roof, vague shapes as of household utensils and a tinker's pack, a pallet of fern and hides, and—best of all—an iron pot squatted low above the red embers. But my eager nose served me better than my eyes. It led me straight to the pot, from which Ben had already lifted the wooden lid and into which he had sunk the wooden spoon.

  It was a stew of venison and wheaten dumplings, the flavor sharpened with sage and other herbs. And this was not all. A roast bustard, which had been kept hot in a clay oven, followed. The bird was stuffed with beechmast and truffles. Large though it was, it was tender: and largely though I had eaten of the stew, I did more than justice to the second dish.

  "Gramercy!" I said at last, and licked my fingers.

  He passed the bottle of old mead to me; in a little while I passed it back to him; and so it passed back and forth till its weight was vastly reduced.

  "Your Lordship's arrival was indeed timely," said my host. "And pray do not think I refer solely to this rare old liquor, my rare young lord. In truth, I was about to set out for Dragon Castle within the sennight at latest, to fetch you away. But Sir Osbert was too quick for me, and you were too quick for him, and so here you are, without any effort on my part. I see the hand of Destiny in it. The gods are propitious."

  His diction, sententious even when employed in his trade of soldering pots and pans, was now exaggerated by his intercourse with the leather bottle. It sounded pleasantly on my ear, but its import stuck somewhere short of my brain.

  "Fetch me away?" I mumbled. "The gods are propitious? What are you talking about, good Ben?"

  He leaned toward me, made a long arm, and pressed a hard forefinger on my ribs.

  "My good young lord has slept soundly, lulled to a false sense of security by that old fox's smirks and smiles. But others were awake. Others—and this gypsy tinker not the least of them—kept watch and ward. But tell me, my dear lord—my innocent and ignorant dear lord—what is Your Nobility's estimate of the numerical strength of your trusty following at this moment?"

  My trusty following? I thought of old Nick Pottle and a few more ancient retainers, and half a dozen plowmen and herds of my acquaintance, and Ralph the Forester and some charcoal-burners, and a few woodwards and outlawed poachers, and some friendly cotters' and farmers' wives and wenches. I smiled bitterly; the fellow was drunk, I thought, scornfully, oblivious to my own condition.

  "You are drunk, my good tinker," I said.

  He laughed heartily and gave my ribs another jab.

  "Three score and a dozen," he cried. "Awake, my lord! That is the strength of your trusty following within your own boundaries, not counting women and totterers and toddlers. And all good bowmen."

  I said nothing, but thought him mad as well as drunk. Now I remembered his reputation for whimsy among the scullions and grooms of the castle, for whose amusement he had often played the part of a merry-andrew, and that he had even been summoned to the great hall on several occasions to play the fool before Sir Osbert.

  "Every man of them shoots a straight shaft," he went on. "Some straighter than others, true enough, but the least straight is less crooked than the flight of a bolt from a Norman crossbow."

  "Every longbow in Dragonland, save those of foresters and roving outlaws, was broken and burned when I was a little boy, and again five years ago," I said.

  "Oh, my dear innocent lord!" he protested, with a hoot of laughter. "Have you never heard of a longbow hid in the thatch? But even if bows and shafts are broke and burned, think you that yew trees and ash trees break and wither throughout the copses and forests of England? And think you Ralph Forester and Sam Bowyer, to say nothing of Wat, Hob, Tom Woodman, Luke ap John, and poor Ben Tinker, sleep the sunny years away while my lord seeks dryads in sylvan glades, and wakes rhymes and poetical phrases in his head?" He leaned yet nearer—we squatted facing one the other on low stools—and laid hold of my belt and shook me. "Would you have a bow and shafts, Pendragon? So be it! And a sword? A long and strong and sharp sword—your father's sword? Good! So be it!"

  * * *

  He released me, left his seat, and moved away into the farther gloom. I continued to sit motionless, dumbfounded. What was this talk of my father's sword? The gypsy had sounded even madder and no longer merry when he spoke of it. He was back in a minute. He stooped beside me and laid something across my knees. It was a long, broad, and straight sword in a scabbard of bull's-hide bound with silver and copper. Its double-handed hilt was bound with deerskin, and the straight guards were set with green and yellow gems.

  "It is the sword Dragon-killer, as old as time and sung by ancient bards," I said, wonderstruck. "And it was lost longer ago than I can remember."

  "Nay, naught but the hilt is old as time," said the gypsy, speaking quietly and naturally at last. "The blade was forged for your father's father by the greatest smith in England, and set into the ancient hilt."

  "But it was lost, long ago—hilt and blade and all!" I protested.

  "Nay, not lost, but taken away so that no Montfoi might ever wield it in battle against its own lord. It was brought away from the armory in the tower, that it might strike the usurper down on the destined day. And now that day is in sight. Draw it and heft it."

  I drew forth the great blade. It gleamed as clean and dark as new ice on a mountain tarn.

  "Is it too heavy for you?" the gypsy asked softly.

  I stood up, gripping the hilt in my right hand, and extended the mighty weapon to the extent of my arm and held it at that.

  "See," I said. "Is it too heavy for me?"

  I recovered and tossed it to my left hand and extended my left arm. I tossed it back and gave it a short whirl on a level with my shoulders. Ben Tinker retreated a few paces. I laid hold with both hands and slashed harder and wider, until Ben cried upon me to desist.

  Chapter Four

  The Man in Leather

  I heard strange and inspiring talk that night, much of which taxed my credulity, though I would fain believe it all. By Ben Tinker's telling, every true heart in England, and in the whole island of Britain, was hot and sore to bursting in rage of hate against the Norman oppressor; and as for the native folk of Dragonland, they had been praying and scheming for Montfoi's downfall ever since my mother's death; and the case and state of the poor and oppressed of the vast domain of Devereaux were even more desperate, for they had suffered three generations of Norman lords and tyranny.r />
  "But I never heard so much as a whisper of it," I protested. "Neither indoors nor out. Why wasn't I told?"

  "For your own good," the gypsy replied complacently. "In ignorance lay your safety. By this poor tinker's orders, dear lord—else the eels and carp of your ancestral moat would have disposed of your remains before now. A wise precaution, for here sits Your Nobility with all your limbs and faculties, in good health and good appetite, and strong enough to wield the Dragon-killer with one hand."

  He took up the leather bottle and shook it. It was empty. He dropped it, offered me his couch of dusty fern and smelly skins with an expansive gesture, then sank to earth and rolled over once and slept. I stole forth and bedded down in the open; and thanks to a full stomach, and despite Ben Tinker's momentous information, soon fell asleep. I slept till sunrise, when Star Boy awoke me with inquiring nips and nuzzles. After bathing in a nearby ice-cold stream, I returned to the cave and found my host replenishing the fire beneath and about the pot. He sprang forward and cried out at the sight of me.

  "I feared it was but a dream!" He gripped my shoulders. "Nay, 'twas no dream! My young lord, safe and sound!"

  I pointed to the big leather bottle and asked if he had thought it too a dream.

  "Hah, the bottle!" he cried. "But it is empty! Now it all comes to mind. That was good liquor. The three rogues! Their backs have been flayed before this for letting you escape, mark my words. And the great sword. I wondered to see it lying there. That was rare old mead. But it all comes back to me now. And here you are, and big and powerful enough to wield Dragon-killer. Here you are, Pendragon—and our enemies as good as dead already!" He unhanded me and turned back to the fire, where the pot was beginning to steam. "But to breakfast now—and naught but ale to wash it down with," he concluded.

  He went away after breakfast, with a bow and a quiver of arrows at his back, a short sword and a long poniard at one side of his belt, and at the other side, to balance them, a large wallet crammed with smoke-dried venison and scorched barley scones. I had offered to go with him, and he had refused to consider it, politely but firmly. I was to remain in the cave, or inconspicuously near it, to show no smoke and to keep Star Boy within discreet though vague bounds, until his return in five days' or a sennight's or perhaps even a fortnight's time.