Grailblazers

by Tom Holt

  Boamund shook his head. ‘Listen,’ he said to the girl, whose face was doing what concrete does, only quicker, ‘I don’t want this yellow muck, right, I want roast swan stuffed with quails...’

  The girl said something to Boamund, and the dwarf, whose genes were full of useful information about the habits of insulted knights, instinctively dropped his tray and curled up into a ball on the floor.

  But Boamund just said, ‘Suit yourself then, I’ll get it myself,’ muttered something or other under his breath, and started to walk away. Against his better judgement, Toenail opened an eye and looked up.

  Boamund was still holding his tray. It contained a roast swan, a boar’s chine in honey, some peculiar-looking slices of black pudding, three small roast fowl and a large pewter jug.

  ‘Here,’ said the girl, ‘that’s not allowed.’

  Boamund stood very still for a moment. ‘Sorry?’ he said.

  ‘Eating your own food’s not allowed,’ said the girl.

  Toenail felt a boot digging into his ribs. He tried ignoring it.

  ‘Toenail, I don’t understand this at all. First they don’t have any proper food, only lassania, and now she says I’m not allowed to eat my food. Does that mean we all have to swap trays or something?’

  Toenail stood up. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘we’re leaving. Quick.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘Come on!’

  Toenail grabbed Boamund by the sleeve and started to drag him doorwards. Behind them somebody shouted, ‘Hey! Those two haven’t paid!’

  Boamund stopped dead, and try as he might Toenail couldn’t induce him to move. ‘What did you say?’ Boamund enquired.

  ‘You haven’t paid for that.’

  ‘But I didn’t get it from you,’ Boamund was saying, very patiently, very reasonably. ‘Your people didn’t have anything I wanted so I got something for myself.’

  Toenail betted himself that he knew what was coming next. ‘You’re not allowed,’ said the voice, ‘to eat your own food in here.’ Oh good, said Toenail to his feet, I won.

  ‘Look.’

  ‘No,’ said the voice, ‘you look.’

  Honour, its cultivation and preservation, are at the very root of chivalry. It is thus highly unwise to say something like, ‘No, you look,’ to a knight, especially if he’s hungry and confused. Although Toenail had deliberately averted his head, on the slightly irrational grounds that anything he didn’t see he couldn’t be blamed for, he didn’t need eyes to work out what happened next. The sound of an assistant cafeteria manager being hit with a trayful of roast swan is eloquently self-explanatory.

  From under his table, Toenail had a very good view of one section of the fight - roughly from the feet of the participants as far as their knees - and as far as he was concerned that was quite enough for him, thank you very much. You had to say this for the lad, fifteen hundred years asleep on a mountain, you’d think he’d be out of practice, but not a bit of it.

  After a while, Toenail could only see one pair of feet, and they were wearing the pair of motorcycle boots he’d bought specially, after measuring the sleeping knight’s feet about a week ago. How long ago that seemed!

  ‘Toenail!’

  ‘Yes?’ said the dwarf.

  ‘You’re not particularly hungry, are you?’

  Toenail put his head out. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Let’s have something when we get there, shall we?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Boamund replied. He wiped gravy off his face and grinned sheepishly.

  They got to the bike and got it started about four seconds before the police arrived. Fortunately, the police had omitted to bring helicopters with them, so when the bike suddenly lifted off the ground and roared away in the direction of Birmingham there wasn’t very much they could do about it, except take its number and arrest a couple of students on a Honda 125 for having a defective brake light.

  2

  ‘Yes,’ Toenail replied.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Boamund said. ‘Give me that street map a second.’

  Toenail did so, and Boamund studied it for a while. ‘Looks like you’re right,’ he said. ‘It just doesn’t look like any castle I’ve ever seen before, that’s all.’

  Toenail was with him there a hundred per cent. It looked far more like a small, rather unsavoury travel agent’s office. Closed, too.

  ‘Maybe it’s round the back,’ he suggested.

  Boamund looked at him, ‘I think you’re missing the point rather,’ he said. ‘The thing about castles is ...’ He paused, trying to choose the right words. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you just don’t get castles round the backs of things. It’s not the way things are.’

  ‘Maybe it is in Brownhills,’ replied the dwarf. ‘Have you ever been here before?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Boamund confessed. ‘Things have changed a bit since my day.’

  ‘Well,’ said the dwarf, ‘there you are, then. Maybe the fashions in castle architecture have changed too. The unobtrusive look, you know?’

  Boamund frowned and got off the bike. It occurred to Toenail that this was probably one of the best opportunities he was going to get for quite some time to jump on the bike, gun the engine and get the hell out of here before something really horrible happened to him; but he didn’t, somehow. What he told himself was that the bike wouldn’t start, and that knights took a dim view of attempted desertion. The truth of the matter was that his dwarfish genes wouldn’t let him. Stand By Your Knight, the old dwarf song goes.

  Boamund was knocking on the door. ‘Anybody home?’ he called.

  Silence. Boamund tried again, with the air of a man who knows that the proper way to do this would be to sound a slug-horn, if only he had such a thing about his person. Still nothing.

  ‘It must be the wrong place,’ Toenail said. ‘Look, let’s just go away somewhere and think it over, shall we?’

  Boamund shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think this is the right place after all. Look.’

  He pointed at something, and Toenail stood on tiptoe and looked. He could see nothing. He said so.

  ‘There,’ Boamund said, ‘can’t you see, on the doorframe, very faint but it’s there, definitely.’

  Toenail squinted. There was, he had to admit, the faintest possible pattern or design, crudely scratched on the paintwork. He stared at it for a while, until his imagination got him thinking that it could be mistaken for a bunch of roses, their petals intertwined. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘It’s a waymark,’ Boamund replied. ‘Part of the Old High Symbolism. Must mean that there are knights here.’

  ‘Is that what it means, then?’ Toenail demanded.

  ‘Strictly speaking, no,’ Boamund replied. ‘What it actually means is, “No insurance salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses; beware of the dog.” But reading between the lines ... Here, what’s this?’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Boamund muttered. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He rubbed away a dried-on pigeon dropping, scrutinised the doorpost carefully and then chuckled to himself. ‘It’s definitely a waymark,’ he said. ‘Look.’

  ‘This time,’ Toenail said, ‘I’m going to have to take your word for it.’

  ‘It’s the ancient character designed to let bailiffs know that you’ve moved,’ Boamund observed. ‘We call it the Great Self-Defeating Pentagram. This is the right place, I reckon.’ He thumped on the door so hard that Toenail reckoned he could feel it wince, and then called out very loudly in what Toenail would ordinarily have guessed was Bulgarian.

  Several seconds of complete silence; and then a window above their heads ground open.

  ‘We’re closed,’ said the voice. ‘Go away.’

  Boamund was staring, open-mouthed. ‘Bedders!’ he yelled out joyfully, and waved. ‘Bedders, it’s me.’

  Toenail looked up at the man in the window; a round-faced, bald head with a big red nose. ‘Bo?’ it replied, and its tone of voice implied that this was better tha
n pink elephants or spiders climbing the wallpaper, but still uncalled for. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Bedders!’ Boamund repeated rapturously. ‘Come and open this door before I kick it in!’

  This, Toenail surmised, was entirely consistent with what he knew of the way knights talked to each other. Apparently, under the laws of chivalry, the way you expressed warm sentiments of friendship and goodwill to another knight was to challenge him to put on all his armour, be knocked off his horse, and get his head bashed in with a fifteen-pound mace.

  ‘You touch that door,’ the head replied, ‘and I’ll break both your legs.’ An expert on courtly repartee would immediately have recognised this as being roughly equivalent to our, ‘George, you old bastard, how the devil are you!’, but Toenail decided to hide behind the bike, just in case.

  ‘You and whose army, you drunken ponce?’ Boamund replied tenderly. The head grinned.

  ‘Stay right there,’ he said, and the window slammed.

  Boamund turned round.

  ‘What are you doing down there?’ he asked.

  ‘Hiding,’ said a voice from behind the bike’s rear wheel. ‘What does it look like I’m—?’

  ‘You don’t want to take any notice of old Bedders—that’s Sir Bedevere to you,’ Boamund replied. ‘Soft as porridge, old Bedders. Here, quick, where’s that sword?’

  He rummaged around in the luggage, and when the door opened (to reveal a huge-looking figure completely covered in steel, Toenail couldn’t help noticing) he had found the sword and the shield and had put his crash helmet back on. For his part, Toenail, having assessed the various options available to him, jumped into the bike’s left-hand pannier and pulled the lid down over his head. There are times when it feels good to be small.

  ‘Ha,’ he heard someone saying. ‘Abide, false knight, for I will have ado with you.’ Toenail shuddered and closed his eyes.

  ‘I will well,’ said the other idiot. ‘Keep thee then from me.’

  Then there was a noise like a multiple pile-up, followed by the inevitable sound of something metal, as if it might be a hub-cap, wheeling along the ground, spinning and then falling over with a clang. And then shouts of boisterous laughter.

  And then someone pulled open the lid of the pannier and extracted Toenail by the collar of his jacket.

  ‘Toenail,’ Boamund was saying, ‘meet Sir Bedevere. Bedders, this is my dwarf, Toenail.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Toenail,’ said the armoured lunatic. By the looks of it, the thing that had come off and rolled about on the floor must have been his helmet, since he was bareheaded and bleeding from a cut over his left eye. ‘Well, then,’ said Sir Bedevere, ‘you’d better come in. The others,’ he added, ‘are all out, and it’s muggins’ turn to do the kitchen floor again.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Hang on,’ he said, brightening, ‘your dwarf can do it, can’t he?’

  Toenail was just about to protest violently when Boamund said, ‘Good idea,’ and clapped Toenail heartily on the back. Much more of this, the dwarf muttered to himself, and I’m going to be sick. However, as it transpired, things could have been worse. Bedevere did show him where the mop and the Flash were kept, and it was a smaller kitchen than, say, the one at Versailles.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Bedevere, showing his guest to the comfortable chair, ‘sit down, make yourself at home, tell me all about it.’

  ‘About what?’ Boamund replied, helping himself to peanuts. ‘That reminds me,’ he added. ‘I’m starving. I haven’t had any food—proper food, that is - in ages.’

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Bedevere politely, and Boamund, having recited the necessary formula, set about eating his way through a side of venison which obligingly materialised in front of him. In fact, thought Toenail to himself as he crouched on his hands and knees trying to shift a particularly stubborn stain, if all knights can do this, what do they need a kitchen for, let alone a kitchen floor?

  ‘You were saying,’ said Bedevere.

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bedevere replied. ‘About what you’ve been doing and, er...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘How come you’re still alive. I mean,’ Bedevere assured his friend, ‘wonderful that you are. Spiffing. But it’s rather a turn-up, don’t you think?’

  Boamund put down a pheasant’s wing and looked at him. For all that they’d been through basic training, Knight School and the Benwick campaign together, that still didn’t entitle young Fatty to go asking him personal questions. ‘What about you, then?’ he demanded. ‘You’re the one who was always stuffing himself with honey-cakes and second helpings of frumenty. If anyone should have pegged out...’

  Bedevere winced. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said.

  Boamund gazed at him defiantly over a roast quail. ‘Go on, then,’ he said, ‘I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  The gist of what Bedevere said was this:

  Boamund no doubt remembered how sticky things were getting towards the end of Arthur’s reign, what with the Saxons and everything ...

  Well, no. Boamund was asleep at the time, but he’ll take your word for it. Do go on, please.

  ... what with the Saxons and everything, and the last thing the King wanted was for his knights to offer any resistance to the vastly superior Saxon forces. This could only make things worse, and was fundamentally a bad idea. On the other hand, chivalry would undoubtedly forbid the knights to do nothing while a lot of Danish bacon entrepreneurs took over the country and drove small shopkeepers out of business.

  Arthur therefore decided on a diversion; and since chivalry was about to end, he felt it only right and proper that it should go out with a bang. He therefore summoned his knights to Camelot, told them a little white lie about the Saxons all having gone home, leaving money to pay for all the broken doors and windows, and suggested that they might all like to go and look for the Holy Grail.

  The knights accepted the challenge with enthusiasm, for all that none of them had the faintest idea what a Grail looked like, and agreed to reassemble at Camelot a year and a day later and bring the Grail with them.

  The idea succeeded beyond Arthur’s wildest dreams. When the court reassembled it turned out that of the hundred knights who had set out on the quest, fifty were dead, fourteen had been arrested, twenty-two had defected to the court of the king of Benwick, and eight had given up chivalry and gone into personnel management. The remaining six, King Arthur reckoned, were unlikely to bother anyone. He therefore provided them with a chapter house and a pension scheme, named them the Order of Chevaliers of the Sangrail, and left by the fire escape while they were all in the bar.

  The Chevaliers of the Sangrail continued with the quest for a while; but it should be obvious from the fact that they alone had survived out of the original hundred that they were all knights who held quite firmly to the rule that discretion - or, even better, naked fear - is the better part of valour, and besides, none of them knew what a Grail was. For three years they toured Albion on the off-chance that the Grail was to be found either in an inn or a greyhound track, and then decided by a majority of five to one to abandon the quest. Their reasoning was that Albion was a small place and in their travels the chances were that they’d probably come across it; find it, His Majesty had told them, there was nothing in the fine print about recognising it once found. They then put the chapter house on the market and went to draw their pensions. All would probably have been well, had not the chairman of the trustees of the pension fund been a diehard magician and reactionary Albionese nationalist by the name of Merlin. He insisted that the Grail had to be brought to Camelot in order that the quest be fulfilled; and until it was they could whistle for their pensions.

  The Chavaliers decided to make the best of a bad job. Instead of actively searching for the Grail, they resolved in future to look for it passively; that is to say, to do something else, hopefully something more interesting and profitable, while waiting for the thing to turn up. After investi
ng all their spare capital in a scheme to dig a tunnel connecting Albion with Benwick, which was frustrated by the fact that Benwick disappeared into the sea when they were five miles short of it, they moved into the chapter house, let the ground-floor premises to a man who arranged bucket-shop pilgrimages, and got jobs in the local woad factory.

  The woad factory is, of course, long gone. The knights are still there.

  ‘Except,’ Bedevere said sadly, ‘for Nentres, of course.’

  Boamund surreptitiously wiped a tear from his eye and murmured, ‘Dead?’

  ‘Not quite,’ replied Bedevere. ‘About six months ago he announced that he’d had enough and was going south. Apparently he’d met this chap who was starting up a video shop somewhere. The blighter,’ said Bedevere savagely, ‘he buggered off with our outings fund. Seventy-four pounds, thirty-five pence. We were planning to go to Weymouth this year.’

  ‘Where’s Weymouth?’

  Bedevere explained. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘here we all are, and here you are too. It’s a small ...’

  Then the penny dropped. Bedevere had been in the process of raising a glass containing gin and tonic to his lips. He spilt it.

  ‘I see,’ Boamund was saying. ‘That would account for it, I suppose.’

  Bedevere picked a slice of lemon out of his collar. ‘Always delighted to see you,’ he gabbled, ‘and it would have been nice if you could have stayed for a while, but if you’re really busy and in a hurry to get on with whatever it is you’re here to do, which must be really important, then please don’t let us ...’

  ‘Actually,’ Boamund said.

  ‘... stop you. After all,’ he wittered frantically, ‘we’re just here, minding our own business, or rather businesses - Turquine delivers pizzas, you know, and Pertelope’s got a really nice little window-cleaning round, shops and offices as well as houses, and Galahaut’s an actor, though he’s resting just now, and Lamorak buys things and sells them in street markets and I...’ He broke off and, unexpectedly, blushed.

  ‘Go on,’ said Boamund, intrigued. ‘What do you do?’