by Tom Holt
‘I ... I’m an insurance salesman,’ Bedevere muttered into his beard. ‘It’s a really interesting job,’ he said hurriedly. ‘You’ve no idea what a wide cross-section of society...’
‘An insurance salesman,’ said Boamund.
‘Um,’ Bedevere mumbled. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance be interested in a...?’
‘I see.’ Boamund was frowning. On his broad, plain, straightforward, honest and, well yes, stupid face a cold look of displeasure was settling, like ice on the points of a busy commuter line. ‘You know what we used to call you back at the old Coll, Bedders?’
‘Er, no,’ said Bedevere. Actually he had had a fair idea and he’d always resented it. The way he saw it, a chap can’t help it if he’s born with big ears.
‘Li chevalier li plus prest a succeder,’ replied Boamund, severely. ‘Double first in tilting, I seem to remember. Honours in falconry. Dalliance blue. Captain of courtesy three years running. And now,’ he sighed, ‘you’re an insurance salesman. I see.’
‘It’s not like that,’ Bedevere growled unhappily. ‘Times change, and—’
‘I remember,’ Boamund went on obliviously, ‘I remember when your father, rest his soul, came to Sports Day one year, and you were jousting for the Deschamps-Mornay Memorial Salver. He was so proud of you.’
Bedevere snuffled. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘they don’t have jousts any more. It’s all your televised snooker, your American football—’
‘And when he heard you’d been selected for the Old Boys match,’ Boamund continued cruelly, ‘well, I’ve never told you this before, Bedders, but—’
‘Look!’ Bedevere was close to tears. ‘It’s not as simple as that. We tried our best, honest we did. We looked all over for the wretched thing. We even went to,’ and the knight winced, ‘Wales. But we just didn’t have the faintest idea of what it was we were looking for. Chivalry doesn’t prepare you for things like that, Bo. Chivalry is all about finding someone who’s big and strong and mean sitting on a ruddy great black horse and clouting him around the head till he passes out. In chivalry, you leave all the planning and the thinking to someone else. You’re just there to do the important bit, the bashing people up side of things. We couldn’t manage it on our own, Bo, with nobody to tell us what to do. There’s no place for knights in the modern world, you see. We’re...’ He searched for the exact term. ‘I suppose you could say we’re over-qualified. Too highly trained. Over-specialised. You know what I mean.’
‘Useless, you mean.’
‘Yes,’ Bedevere agreed. ‘It’s just that there aren’t any dragons left any more. And no damosels to rescue, either. Young Turquine tried to rescue a damosel the other day. It was some sort of a party, and he was delivering pizzas. He walks in through the door and there’s this terrible barbaric music and all these men pulling girls about by the arms and ... Well, he jumped right in, like a true knight, sorted a few of them out, I can tell you. And then this damosel kneed him in the—’
‘I see, yes.’
‘Then they called the police,’ Bedevere said. ‘Luckily, Galahaut and I happened to be passing, so we were able to pull him off before he did any of them a serious injury, but ...’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Boamund. His face looked like something rejected by Mount Rushmore for excessive gravity. ‘I think it’s probably just as well I’ve come to take charge here, don’t you? Delivering pizzas! Selling insurance! Old Sagramor would turn in his grave if he knew’
Bedevere, remembering their old venery tutor, secretly agreed, and hoped that this would involve his brushing up against something sharp. ‘But...’ he said.
‘What I was about to say,’ Boamund went on, ‘is that I’ve been woken up from a fifteen-hundred-year sleep to take charge of this Order, and by God, take charge of it I jolly well will!’
Just then, the door of the Common Room flew open and a large, round man with a red face bustled in, holding a portable telephone in one hand and a huge stack of thin styrofoam boxes in the other.
‘Bedders,’ he called out, ‘there’s a dwarf in our kitchen. I went in there to heat up the pizzas and the nasty little thing was making the floor all wet. I chucked him in the bin, naturally, but the damage was done. How many times have I told you about leaving the back door open in the ...’
He froze, and stared. The pizzas fell from his hand and started to roll around the room like slow, anchovy-garnished hoops.
‘Bloody hell,’ he said at last. ‘It’s Snotty Boamund!’
‘Hello, Turkey,’ replied Boamund coldly.
Sir Turquine went, if anything, redder than before. ‘Hell fire, Bedders, a joke’s a joke, but what the hell do you think you’re playing at? I was only saying the other day, things may be a bit smelly these days, but at least we don’t have to put up with that sanctimonious little toad and his incessant wittering on about ideals any more. And you agreed with me, I remember. You said—’
‘Er, Turkey,’ said Sir Bedevere. ‘I—’
‘And now,’ Sir Turquine protested, ‘you get someone all dressed up with a mask on or something, just to give me the fright of my life! Look at my pizzas, you stupid idiot, they’ve got fluff all over them...’
‘It’s me, Turkey,’ Boamund whispered, in a tone of voice that would have frozen helium. ‘How are you keeping?’
Turquine now dropped the portable telephone as well. ‘My God,’ he said, ‘it is you! What in the name of...?’
Bedevere swallowed hard, stood up and, as briefly as he could, explained. The other two knights exchanged looks that would have had a sabre-tooth tiger yelping for joy and growing an extra thick winter coat.
‘Bollocks,’ said Sir Turquine at last. ‘He’s got no authority. Ifhe’d got any authority, he’d have a commission or something, sealed by that bastard Merlin. He’s just having us on.’
Without speaking, Boamund reached inside his jacket and produced a thick, folded parchment, from which hung a seal. The odd thing about the seal was the way it glowed with a strong blue light.
Sir Turquine, whose mouth had suddenly become extremely dry, took the parchment and opened it. He stared at it for a moment and then said, in a kind of quavering roar, ‘Nuts. It’s in gibberish. He’s just written it himself.’
‘Tell Sir Turquine,’ said Boamund quietly, ‘that he’s holding it the wrong way up.’
Sir Turquine glowered at him helplessly and turned the parchment round, so that the seal hung from the bottom. Boamund sniffed; Turquine could remember that damned supercilious sniff as though it were yesterday. He glanced down at the writing.
‘Although,’ Boamund went on, ‘as I seem to remember, Sir Turquine was never exactly adept at reading. One seems to recall that when the rest of the class were halfway through the Roman de la Rose, Sir Turquine was still sitting at the back of the room saying “Pierre has a cat. The cat is fat. The fat cat sits on the—”’
‘All right,’ shouted Sir Turquine, ‘commission or no commission, I’m going to kill him.’
Sir Bedevere hastily placed a hand on Turquine’s chest while Boamund said ‘mat’, very deliberately, sat down and ate an olive. Turquine gave a last infuriated snarl, threw the commission on the ground and jumped on it. Since it was, of course, enchanted parchment, all that happened was that his shoelaces broke.
Boamund smiled, that same smug, teeth-grindingly infuriating smile he’d had when he was Helm Monitor back in the sixth form, and made a little gesture with his left hand. Turquine, bright red in the face, snorted like a horse, knelt down, and extended his hands, their palms pressed together. Boamund, looking down his nose like an archbishop, stepped forward and pressed his palms to the backs of Turquine’s hands, as lightly as possible; thus signifying that he had accepted Turquine’s fealty. It didn’t help to soothe Turquine’s feelings to find that he’d knelt in one of his own pizzas.
‘Arise, Sir Turquine, good and faithful knight,’ said Boamund, obviously enjoying every moment of it. Turquine gave him a look you could ha
ve roasted a chicken on, made an obscure noise in the back of his throat, stood up and made a great show of brushing mozzarella off his right knee. Boamund turned to Sir Bedevere and made the same gesture.
Sir Bedevere hesitated, muttered, ‘Oh, all right then,’ and performed the same simple ceremony.
‘And now, Sir Turquine,’ said Boamund, ‘you will kindly oblige me by retrieving my dwarf from wherever it was you put him.’
‘I might have guessed it was your dwarf,’ Turquine grumbled as he plodded to the kitchen. ‘Funny the way that even when we were at school, some of us always seemed to have dwarves when the rest of us had to polish their own armour. ’Course, that came of some of us having great soft-hearted sissy mothers who wouldn’t have their dear little boys hurting their hands with nasty rough...’
The kitchen door slammed behind him, and Boamund sighed. ‘He always was inclined to whine a bit,’ he observed, and Bedevere, never a man given to nostalgia, found himself harking back to the happy days of boyhood, when he’d gladly have given a whole week’s pocket money for the chance of doing something unpleasant to young Snotty.
And then it occurred to him that, although young Snotty was exactly the sort of pompous little swot that Authority invariably made a prefect, nevertheless there was a sort of malign justice that had always ended up by landing him in the smelly, right up to the vambrace, even when (as was generally the case) it wasn’t actually his fault.
Bedevere, having checked that Boamund wasn’t looking, smirked. The way he saw it, the mills of the Gods may grind slow, but they don’t half make a mess of you when the time comes.
Dwarfish society is well ordered and stable to the point of inflexibility, and the average dwarf generally knows his place to within 0.06 of a micron. As a result, sudden promotion is something that dwarves are ill-equipped to deal with.
Toenail was no exception. From being a lowly hermit’s gopher, he had, at a stroke, risen to being Chief Factotum to a whole order of chivalry. The only other dwarf in the oral tradition of the race who’d ever achieved that distinction was Lord Whitlow King of Arms, who superintended the household of King Lot of Orkney in King Uther’s time. It was an honour.
On the other hand, Toenail couldn’t help feeling, Lord Whitlow probably had a few lesser dwarves to help him out, or at the very least a vacuum cleaner. And he couldn’t be positive about this, because oral tradition can be a right little tease when it comes to matters of detail, but he had a feeling that Lord Whitlow probably got paid.
Boamund was all right, of course, as knights go - and Toenail was rapidly becoming an authority on knights. Not only had the new Grand Master paid him back for the petrol and the damage to the rear mudguard of the bike as soon as Toenail had found him the old teapot which served the Order as its exchequer, but he’d expressly forbidden Sir Turquine and Sir Pertelope (who was nearly as bad) to put him in the dustbin without authority, on pain of dishonour. Toenail wasn’t sure what dishonour now meant in the context of the Order, but he guessed it was something to do with not being allowed to use the van at weekends. Given the trades which Turquine and Pertelope now followed, this was clearly a sanction of the utmost weight.
Of course, it was now Toenail’s job to clean out the van every morning (which meant scrubbing caked-on tomato puree off the back seat and occasionally unloading cartons of Hungarian training shoes which Lamorak had bought cheap and somehow forgotten to disembark himself), but that in itself was an honour, if one translated it into the terms of the Old Days. You’d had to be a pretty high-ranking dwarf to be Chief Groom and Lord High Equerry.
On balance, the first fortnight of the new state of affairs had gone off all right, so far as Toenail could judge. There had been a few tricky moments; Turquine, Lamorak and Galahaut the Haut Prince had mutinied and tried to ambush Boamund on his way back from the newsagent’s, with a view to loading him with chains and casting him in the toolshed, but Bedevere (rather, Toenail had felt, against his better judgement) had betrayed the conspiracy, with the result that Boamund had foiled the plot by getting the number 6 bus instead of the number 15a. He had given them all a very stern talking-to in the Common Room after tea, following which Turquine had stalked out of the room and been very ostentatiously sick in the kitchen sink. Apart from that, however, a routine was developing. Basically, it consisted of the other five going out to work as usual, while Boamund sat in the Common Room with his feet up on the sofa and watched the snooker on the television. Boamund had taken to snooker very quickly, Toenail had noticed, and was talking freely of having a table installed in the garage, which would mean Lamorak finding a home for seven hundred pairs of flood-damaged Far Eastern jeans, fifty one-handed alarm clocks and all the rest of his stock-in-trade.
Toenail sighed and dipped his cloth in the metal polish. So far, Boamund’s main effort in the direction of starting the quest up again had been ordering him to get all the armour and weapons from the cellar and polished up to tiltyard standard. That seemed to suit the other five, who he knew had no intention of giving up their settled if unprofitable lives just to go looking for that damned Grail thing; but Toenail, with a degree of perception that is not uncommon among dwarves, had a shrewd suspicion that things might change once the Embassy World Snooker Championship was over. Call it, Toenail said to himself, astrology.
He breathed a fine mist on to the surface of a shining gauntlet, polished it off on his trouser-leg, and added it to the pile. There was enough armour there to equip an army, and he hadn’t even started on the horse-furniture yet. Mind you, he couldn’t really see how there was going to be much call for that. A couple of sheets of corrugated iron welded on to the sides of the van was probably all that would be needed.
From the direction of the Common Room he could hear raised voices, and his genes told him that the Lords were holding a High Council.
Racial memory is very powerful among dwarves. Putting down his cloth, he tiptoed to the linen basket, raised the lid and jumped in.
‘No,’ said Turquine.
Boamund glowered at him and struck the table with his mace of office. Lamorak, who had forty-two others just like it in the lock-up, sighed. As he’d suspected at the time, they weren’t solid teak at all.
‘This,’ Boamund said grimly, ‘is mutiny.’
Turquine grinned. ‘Well done, young Snotty,’ he said. ‘You’re learning.’
‘Mutiny,’ Boamund went on, ‘and treason. Unless Sir Turquine immediately repents of his words, I shall have no alternative but to declare him dishonoured.’
‘You try it,’ Turquine replied, ‘and see how far it’ll get you. Because,’ he added, with the confidence of strength, ‘I don’t need that clapped-out old scrapheap of a van any more. Look at this!’ And, with a magnificent gesture, he threw a set of keys on the table. ‘They’re so pleased with me,’ he said, ‘they’ve let me drive the company van. And,’ he added conclusively, ‘it’s a Renault. So you can take your honour and you can ...’
Boamund’s expression did not change. He simply leant forward, took the keys from the table, and put them in his pocket.
Turquine nearly fell over.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘you can’t do that, it’s not my—’
‘Agreed,’ replied Boamund. ‘It has now become the property of the Order. And you, Sir Turquine, are dishonoured. Now, then...’
There was uproar for a moment, what with Sir Turquine trying to explain that it didn’t work like that, and Sir Lamorak and Sir Pertelope both simultaneously asking if they could have it for the weekend. Boamund silenced them all with a blow from the mace, the top of which came off and rolled under the sofa.
‘Since Sir Turquine is no longer entitled to speak,’ Boamund said, ‘is there anyone else who wishes to express an opinion?’
There was a long silence, and then Galahaut the Haut Prince got up, rather sheepishly, and looked around.
‘Look, Bo,’ he said, ‘you know, in principle I’m with you all the way about finding the Grail. One
hundred per cent. I think finding the Grail is right for us, so let’s do it, yes, fine. Only,’ and he drew a deep breath, ‘timing-wise, perhaps we could, you know, readjust our schedules a bit, because my agent says there’s this bit in a dog-food commercial coming up ...’
Boamund’s face became ominous, but Galahaut seemed not to have noticed. ‘It’s a real opportunity for me,’ he went on, ‘to get myself established in dog-food work generally. They say they want me for the tall, good-looking man of mature years in a chunky Arran sweater who says that top breeders recommend it. Play your cards right, they said, this could be a second Captain Birds Eye.’
‘No,’ said Boamund. ‘We leave in a week.’
Galahaut looked round the room reproachfully; but everyone happened to be looking the other way, apart from Turquine, who was sulking. ‘Come on, Bo,’ he said, ‘this could be the break I’ve been waiting for. One really good commercial, it’s better than a West End hit these days. Look at the Oxo woman,’ he added.
‘Who’s Oxo?’ Boamund asked.
The flame in Galahaut’s eyes kindled for a moment, and then died away, to be replaced by an unmistakable flicker of guile. ‘All right, then,’ he said meekly, ‘you’re the boss. You can count on me.’
Very true, Boamund thought; I could count up to two on your faces alone, you devious little toad. I know what you’re thinking, and we’ll see about that. ‘Anyone else?’ he said.
Lamorak was getting to his feet, and Boamund narrowed his eyes. He’d been practising it in front of the mirror for days.
‘And before Sir Lamorak addresses us,’ he said, ‘I should like to make it plain that I don’t think we’re going to find the Grail down the Portobello Road. So Sir Lamorak can jolly well unload all those boxes and things he put into the van when he thought my back was turned.’
Lamorak groaned. ‘Oh, come on,’ he said. ‘It’s got to be worth a try, Bo. You go to a street market these days, there’s all sorts of old junk...’