Grailblazers

by Tom Holt

  He strolled into the hall, trying to hear Vera’s voice in his head. What would the confounded woman be likely to say? She’s come home after a hard day, gone down the pub, run into her best friend and her best friend’s daughter-in-law...

  Maybe it was the pendulum. It wasn’t the escapement; he’d had that out and in pieces all over the kitchen table that time he’d had a block with Titus Andronicus. But the pendulum was something he hadn’t considered. If the poxy thing was out of true - the weight not balanced right, or whatever - that might well account for it.

  Maybe he shouldn’t start the scene with Vera at all. Maybe two courtiers...

  First Courtier: They say Jack Duckworth’s been off his feed lately.

  Second Courtier: Perhaps he hasn’t heard that their Terry’s in trouble with the police over that vanload of stolen eiderdowns that was found round the back of Rosamund Street...

  Nah.

  He opened the door of the clock and looked inside.

  There were his initials, where he’d scratched them on the case when he was twelve. There was the stain where he’d hidden the rabbits he’d had off the Squire’s back orchard, the night Sir John Falstaff’s men had got a warrant to raid the place. Happy days.

  He reached in and located the pendulum. Seemed all right, not loose or anything. Maybe it’s the ...

  The ghost raised an immaterial eyebrow. There was something wrapped very tightly round the pendulum and tied on with a bit of binder cord. It had plainly been there some time. Maybe Dad had tried to adjust the timing by packing the pendulum. That could account for it; a good sort, Dad, but not mechanically minded. Didn’t hold with machines of any sort, which was why he’d refused to fork out when there was that chance of being prenticed to the instrument-maker. The ghost shook his head sadly; still, it didn’t do to dwell too much on lost opportunities. Things hadn’t worked out too badly in the end.

  The something tied round the pendulum turned out to be a sheet of old-fashioned parchment. Swept away by nostalgia, the ghost removed it carefully, smoothed it out, and studied it. Marvellous stuff, parchment; miles better than this squashed-tree rubbish you got these days. Once you’d finished with it, all you had to do was get a pumice-stone and you could wipe off all the old writing and there you were.

  He closed the door of the clock and wandered slowly back to his desk, squinting at the writing on the parchment. Pretty old-fashioned writing, even by his standards. Pictures, too; naughty pictures. A piece fell into place in his mind, and he remembered Dad coming home from the Fair one night, when he was quite young... saying something about - that was right, about fixing the clock. But it didn’t need fixing, Mum had said. I’ll be the judge of that. Soon have it right. And the blessed thing had been up the pictures ever since. Hardly surprising, really.

  Fancy that, the ghost muttered to himself. After all these years, and it was a bit of porn round the pendulum all the time.

  The words, he realised, were in Latin, which was a closed book as far as he was concerned; and the pictures weren’t as naughty as all that. Good piece of parchment, though, keep you going for weeks if you were careful and didn’t rub too hard. He smiled and nodded his head, then put the parchment down and went off to the bathroom to look for a piece of pumice.

  ‘Great,’ said Sir Turquine. ‘Now what do we do?’

  They had cleared the table in the Common Room of shirts, empty pizza boxes and Lamorak’s angling magazines, and had mounted a sort of trophy.

  An apron, a small leather-covered book and a pair of socks. The silence in the Common Room was tainted with just the tiniest degree - one part in a hundred thousand - of embarrassment.

  ‘Maybe I’m just being more than usually obtuse here,’ Turquine went on, ‘but speaking purely for myself, I don’t see that we’re that much closer to finding the Grail. Do you?’

  Pertelope had taken a biro from his top pocket and used it to poke the socks experimentally.

  ‘They don’t look old,’ he said. ‘You sure that ruddy dwarf got the right pair?’

  ‘Positive,’ Boamund replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because.’ The other knights looked at him, and in a disused compartment of his mind Boamund began to speculate as to why ‘Because’ wasn’t as convincing a reason as it had been when he was a boy.

  ‘Maybe it’s an acrostic or something,’ Lamorak suggested.

  There was a brief moment of silence, as six knights tried to make sense out of the initial letters of the items before them.

  ‘No,’ said Bedevere, ‘I think there’s more to it than that. I mean, if it was that we wouldn’t actually need the things themselves. I think there must be, well, clues in there somewhere.’

  ‘Clues,’ Turquine repeated.

  ‘Like,’ Galahaut suggested, ‘some common factor, maybe?’

  Six pairs of eyes rested on the exhibits; an apron, a leather book and a pair of socks.

  ‘Animal, vegetable or mineral?’

  ‘Shut up, Turkey, I’m thinking.’ Bedevere rubbed his nose with the heel of his hand and picked up the apron. ‘I’m asking myself,’ he said, ‘what does an apron say to me?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Turquine replied. ‘Not unless you’ve been out in the sun again.’

  Bedevere ignored him. ‘Apron,’ he said. ‘That suggests housework, cleanliness, tidiness, cookery...’

  ‘Kitchen floors,’ said Lamorak, whose turn it was to clean it. ‘Fruit cake. Rubber gloves. Persil. I don’t think we can be on the right lines here, somehow.’

  ‘Maybe we’re missing the point,’ Galahaut interrupted. ‘It’s not just aprons, it’s this apron in particular. Has anyone examined it? In detail, I mean?’

  ‘Well, not as such,’ Boamund said. ‘I mean, an apron is an apron, surely.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Galahaut replied. ‘Give it here, someone, and let’s take a closer look.’

  He took the apron in his hands and stared at it for a while. ‘It’s just an apron, that’s all,’ he said.

  ‘Brill,’ Turquine said. ‘The fundamental things apply, and so on. If you ask me, someone with a very odd sense of humour’s had us for a bunch of mugs.’

  ‘We’re approaching this from the wrong angle,’ Pertelope interrupted. ‘There you all go, trying to understand things. That’s not what we’re for; if they wanted things understood, they’d have given the job to a bunch of professors instead of us. As it is, we’re doing it; and what are we good at? Being brave and socking people. Therefore...’

  Bedevere held up his hand for silence. ‘Per’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s got to be it, hasn’t it? I mean, the thing about knights is, they’re fundamentally - well, stupid, aren’t they? I mean we. Obviously, what we’re meant to do is take these things, ride forth for a year and a day and have adventures, and then it’ll just happen. Stands to reason, really.’

  ‘What’s it, Bedders?’ Lamorak asked.

  ‘It,’ Bedevere replied. ‘Thing. Finding the Grail. I mean,’ he said, waving his hands about, ‘that’s the way it’s always been done. You set forth, you meet a wise old crone by the wayside, she gives you a scrotty old tin lamp or a bit of carpet or a magic goldfish, and next thing you know you’re in business. You’ve just got to have a bit of patience, that’s all. Leave it to them.’

  ‘Them,’ Turquine muttered, ‘we, they, it. You’re nothing but a pronoun-fetishist, Bedders.’

  ‘What’s a pronoun?’

  ‘And who are you calling stupid, anyway?’

  Galahaut, frowning, banged the table with his fist.

  ‘I vote we give it a shot,’ he said. ‘I mean, can’t do any harm, can it? And if all that happens is that we wander around for a year and a day having a good time, then so what? We can start again from scratch, no skin off our noses.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Bedevere said. ‘Whoever heard of knights having to organise things? It’s just a matter of getting on with it.’

  Boamund nodded suddenly. ‘Bedevere is right
,’ he said decisively. ‘Put all that stuff in a bag, somebody, we’re going questing.’

  Toenail, who had been curled up in a cardboard box under the table polishing the sugar-tongs, jumped up, loaded the three treasures into a plastic carrier, and stowed them in his knapsack. He had come to this conclusion half an hour ago.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll just do my packing,’ said Lamorak. Toenail pointed out that he’d done everyone’s packing that morning, while they were all having breakfast. The cases were in the hall, he said.

  ‘Right,’ said Boamund happily, ‘that’s settled. Let’s get on with it, shall we?’

  Thus it was that three minibuses set off from three very different places at precisely the same moment.

  The first - an ex-British Telecom Bedford, property of the Knights of the Holy Grail - headed off down the Birmingham ring road towards London, with Sir Pertelope driving and Sir Turquine doing the map-reading. Perhaps because of the human chemistry involved, it missed all the relevant turnings and ended up on the A45 to Coventry.

  The second - an Avis eight-seater Renault nominally on hire to the Faculty of Experimental Mythology skittles team - left Glastonbury, joined the M5 north-bound to Bristol and the Midlands, made good time and stopped at the Michael Wood service station for a cup of tea and a go on the Space Invader machines in the front lobby.

  The third - a brand new, jet-black Dodge with tinted windows, fat tyres, diplomatic number plates and a sticker in the window saying ‘Tax Disc Applied For’ - materialised on the M40 at its junction with the M25 and drove like a bat out of hell northwards, staying in the fast lane all the way and flashing the cars in front with its lights until they pulled over and let it pass.

  ‘No,’ said Aristotle, ‘I had the iced bun, Dio had the Black Forest gateau, Merlin had the toasted teacake, you had the croissant and the black coffee, so you owe me thirty pee.’

  The soi-disant skittles team glowered at each other. Nostradamus, who had the bill, took a pencil from behind his ear and began to do sums.

  ‘Actually,’ Merlin said, ‘I just had a cup of tea. It was, er, Mrs Magus who had the...’

  Simon Magus glanced at his watch. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll treat you. I’ll pay. Can we go now, please?’

  The magi looked at him.

  ‘There’s no need to take that tone,’ Aristotle growled. ‘It’s perfectly simple. I gave Nostradamus a fiver-’

  ‘We haven’t got time, Ari,’ Simon Magus growled. ‘Let’s sort it out in the van, all right? Mahaud - oh God, where’s she got to now?’

  ‘I think she went to the shop to buy some pepper-mints,’ Merlin said. ‘She said that sucking a peppermint stops her feeling travel-sick.’

  ‘Oh for crying out loud,’ Simon Magus exclaimed. ‘Dio, be a good chap, go and tell her...’ But Dio Chrysostom, who was adamant that he’d had nothing but a hot chocolate and a digestive biscuit, folded his arms and pretended not to hear. Things were starting to get just a little bit out of hand.

  Simon Magus frowned. On the one hand, here were eight of the finest minds in the whole of the Glass Mountain, the final repository of the wisdom of the world, the fountain of magic, the shield and pillar of mankind. On the other hand, they made the Lower Shell back at the Coll seem positively rational by comparison. He cleared his throat meaningfully.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The bus leaves in three minutes.

  Anybody not back by then gets left behind. Clear?’

  He jingled the keys and stalked off across the car park.

  ‘Oh bother,’ said the Queen of Atlantis, frowning slightly. ‘That is a nuisance. Get out and change it, somebody.’

  There was a certain degree of shuffling in the body of the bus, but otherwise nobody moved.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ the Queen said. ‘There isn’t a spare wheel in this thing.’ She smiled glacially. ‘Am I right?’

  ‘There, um, wasn’t room,’ said a foolhardy young PA. ‘You see, we had to strip out everything that wasn’t absolutely essential so’s we could fit the surveillance devices and the mobile fax transceiver in, and...’

  ‘And somebody decided that a spare wheel wasn’t essential.’ The Queen pursed her exquisite lips. ‘More a sort of luxury, I suppose, like a built-in cocktail cabinet. I see. Well then, did we also discard the puncture repair kit as the last word in Sybaritic self-indulgence, or have we still got that somewhere?’

  ‘Oh yes, we’ve...’

  The searchlight eyes homed in. The wire-guided smile locked on target.

  ‘How simply splendid,’ the Queen said. ‘Out you get, then.’

  Reluctantly, like a toreador going out to meet a bull with nothing but a bunch of flowers and a toothpick, the foolhardy young PA stood up, banged his head on the roof of the bus, and shuffled across to the door.

  ‘Now then.’ The Queen turned her head and turned the smile up to saturation level. ‘While we’re waiting, let’s just see what else we’ve forgotten, shall we?’

  Fortunately, the phone rang.

  ‘Turkey.’

  Sir Turquine looked up from his map. By his calculations they should be in Hertfordshire by now, which meant that some damn fool had moved Coventry a hundred miles to the south. ‘What?’ he snapped.

  ‘Are you sure this is the right way?’

  ‘Look...’

  Boamund, who had been fast asleep ever since Perry Bar, woke up with a jolt and said, ‘Stop the van!’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I said,’ Boamund repeated, ‘stop the van.’

  Turquine looked at him and shook his head. ‘You can’t,’ he said, ‘it’s a main road. You’ll have to wait till we pass a Little Chef or something.’

  ‘Not that, you fool,’ Boamund snapped. ‘We’re here.

  This is it.’

  Pertelope shrugged. ‘You’re the boss, Snotty,’ he said. ‘There’s a lay-by just ahead. Will that do?’

  ‘Yes,’ Boamund said impatiently, ‘that’s fine, just pull over.’ He was frowning - a bad case of concentration, by the looks of it, as if he was struggling to keep something large and slippery in his mind.

  ‘You all right, Bo?’ Bedevere asked. ‘You look all funny.’

  ‘Actually,’ Boamund replied, ‘I had a dream.’

  ‘Hello,’ Turquine said, ‘here we go. Young Snotty’s been at the glue again.’

  Boamund waved his hand angrily. ‘Shut up, Turkey,’ he said. ‘This dream was important, and I’m trying to remember it. It’s not easy, you know.’

  The van stopped, and the knights jumped out. It was cold, and a fine shower of rain was falling. Beyond the post-and-wire fence, mist was blurring the edges of a large pine wood.

  ‘That’s it,’ Boamund said, pointing. ‘That forest over there. The other side of those trees, there’s a lake. That’s where we’ve got to go.’

  Bedevere had managed to get hold of the map, and was examining it carefully. ‘He’s right, you know,’ he said. ‘At least, there’s flooded gravel pits all round here. At least,’ he added, lowering the map and nodding northwards, ‘if that’s Meriden over there, then there’s gravel pits behind those trees. Otherwise, we could be anywhere.’

  He stopped and looked down. Toenail was tugging at his sleeve.

  ‘Did you say Meriden?’ the dwarf demanded excitedly.

  ‘Yes,’ Bedevere replied, ‘that’s right. Why?’

  ‘Meriden,’ the dwarf repeated. ‘Where the bikes come from.’

  Bedevere raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s he going on about bikes for, anybody?’ he said. Galahaut nodded.

  ‘The old Triumph factory was at Meriden,’ he said. ‘What of it?’

  The dwarf grinned. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Only, Meriden happens to be the exact geographical centre of Albion, that’s all.’

  Galahaut frowned. ‘How extremely interesting,’ he said. ‘Now puddle off, there’s a good little chap, because...’

  ‘Say that again,’ Bedevere interrupted.
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  ‘Meriden,’ the dwarf repeated, ‘is the exact centre of Albion, geographically speaking.’ He winked at Bedevere. ‘Just thought I’d mention it,’ he added.

  ‘Thanks.’ Bedevere twitched his nose a few times and looked at the map. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘that’s rather interesting, if you think about it.’

  Lamorak looked at him quizzically. ‘Is it?’ he said. ‘Personally, I could never get the hang of geography. What’s the capital of Northgales, all that stuff. I mean, who wants to know?’

  ‘In the exact centre,’ Bedevere said, as much to himself as to anyone else. ‘Well, I’ll be blowed.’

  ‘Your Majesty.’

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘I think you’d better pull over, Your Majesty.’

  The Queen glanced in her rear-view mirror, sighed, and slowed down, while the PAs looked at each other and grinned. They were going to enjoy this.

  The policeman who walked over and tapped on the window was young, tall and red-haired. In fact, the Queen said to herself, it’s funny how young they all look these days. She wound down the window and smiled.

  ‘Good afternoon, officer,’ she said pleasantly.

  The policeman didn’t react to the smile; or if he did, he didn’t show it.

  ‘Do you realise,’ he said, ‘you were doing over a hundred and ten miles per hour back there, madam?’

  ‘Gosh!’ the Queen replied. ‘How frightfully exciting! It didn’t feel like that at all.’

  ‘Please get out of the van, madam.’

  ‘But it’s raining.’

  The policeman’s face remained impassive. ‘Out of the van, please,’ he said. ‘Now I’m going to ask you to blow into—’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I’m going to ask you rivet rivet rivet rivet,’ said the small green frog; and then it seemed to notice that something was different. It hopped up and down on the spot once or twice and then it just sat there with its mouth open. The Queen shook her head sadly and beckoned to the other policeman.