Sleepless Knights

by Mark Williams

  †

  The demands of the kitchen were such that my moments in the Hall during the feast were few and far between. On the few occasions I was out there helping the waiters, I made eye contact with Geraint only once. He gave me a discreet thumbs-up with his good hand, which put me at ease somewhat. I also observed Mordred as I passed the Round Table. He was fast approaching his usual obnoxious level of drunkenness, casting sly, satisfied glances at the High Table.

  At last the final course was cleared. I put aside my tray and stood at the side of the stage. This was the moment that you appeared, Lucas, through the curtain covering the entrance to the Green Room, to hastily confer with the King. Geraint was talking with the Queen, who was indulging his horseplay, but as soon as you returned to the Green Room, a signal from the King prompted Geraint to hobble down from the dais, and I motioned for him to stand next to me. “A quiet word, Miss B,” he began. But the King had risen to his feet and was clearing his throat.

  “Good people of Camelot. You are most welcome on this special day. My Guinevere is fifty years young.” The Hall clapped and laughed, raising their goblets in salute. The Queen put on the indulgent smile she reserved for her husband’s lengthy tributes. But this year there was something different about the King. His manner had completely changed from the doting husband of the Tournament, to someone who was now simply going through the motions; his voice hurried, his tone preoccupied. “Well, time’s getting on, we have a lot of old favourites in tonight’s Chronicles, and many toasts to follow. But first, there is the matter of the winner of the Tournament. Knight X, would you step forward.”

  Knight X rose from the table where he had dined alone. He made his way down the centre aisle and up the steps to the dais of the Round and High Tables, to a burst of loud applause, marred only by ungracious booing as he passed several of his defeated opponents. Mordred, however, cheered with boisterous enthusiasm, and his round of applause lasted several claps longer than everybody else’s.

  “This tournament has been yours alone,” said the King. “We respect your right to keep your face hidden, but hope you will one day feel your true self to be welcome here at Camelot. Accept your prize, as a small token of our admiration.” The Queen held out his trophy, a bronze dagger. Knight X stood before her. He removed the bottom section of his face scarf and lowered his head, as was his right, to kiss her hand. Queen Guinevere held out her arm. Only from where I was standing could one see that her hand trembled slightly at his touch. The King raised his goblet. “To Knight X!” he cried.

  “Knight X!” came the rejoinder. All got to their feet and raised their cups, all drank, all sat back down again. All except Mordred, that is. He remained standing, a smile playing upon his thin lips.

  “Now, without further ado,” said the King, “the Chronicles! The following knight needs no introduction —”

  “If I may be so bold, sire,” said Mordred. “I would like to add something to the festivities. In honour of the Queen’s special day.”

  Geraint leaned on his walking stick and whispered in my ear. “Don’t worry about him,” he said, patting me on the arm. “I’ve sorted it all out.”

  “Yes I saw, and thank you, Geraint; you did an excellent job.”

  “Cheers Miss B. I’ll admit, I was a bit concerned.”

  “No need, it was perfect.”

  The King looked at his brother with a mixture of indulgence and distrust. “Well, what is it, Mordred?” he said.

  “I wouldn’t say it was perfect,” whispered Geraint. “It’s been a while since I’ve done any close-up magic, but I covered it with a classic bit of misdirection, where I plucked a flower from the Queen’s soup bowl with my other hand.”

  “Sorry Geraint, you’ve lost me,” I said.

  “A gift, sire” proclaimed Mordred. “A gift, followed by an early toast.”

  “The old switcheroo,” whispered Geraint. “I saw the fake was still in my drawer, and assumed you didn’t have time to pick it up. So I made the swap myself, just now. Don’t look so worried. No-one saw a thing. See?” He pulled aside his cloak. The fake goblet was tucked under his arm. “The hand is faster than the eye. Ah, I’ve still got it, fair play.”

  “Geraint,” I hissed. “That was not the real Cup of Shame up there. That was the fake. I had already made the switcheroo!”

  “Oh, buggeroo,” said Geraint.

  All eyes were now on Mordred, walking over to the High Table, including those of Knight X, who had paused on his way back down the dais steps. “It’s nothing, really,” said Mordred, picking up a pitcher of red wine. “Just a simple little goblet. But I would count it the greatest honour if the Queen would drink a toast from the gift of a humble knight such as I.” Mordred took the Cup of Shame from among the many presents in front of the Queen. He filled it to the brim and offered it to her. She looked to the King, who simply shrugged, and so she accepted it warily, holding it at half an arm’s length.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Mordred, filling his own cup, “but I don’t think anyone has congratulated the Queen on the wonderful job she did while the King was away fighting Giants? To keep the Court going single-handed! Well, I say single-handed. She had a lot of help from Lancelot. Good old Sir Lancelot. Have you,” Mordred turned to face Knight X, “have you heard of Sir Lancelot, Knight X? Terribly good knight, he was. The King’s best friend. You wouldn’t have had such an easy time of it on the field if he’d been around. He always loved a joust. I wonder what kept him from the Tournament? Other things on his mind, I suppose. Still, I digress. I would like to propose a toast to Queen Guinevere. To her loyalty and fidelity.” He held up his goblet.

  The people in the Great Hall had started to echo the words of the toast with an uncertain murmur, when Mordred spoke again. “Oh, by the way, before we all drink. There is one thing I should say about that toasting goblet. There’s a funny little legend attached to it that caught my interest.”

  A deathly hush filled the Hall.

  “A silly bit of folklore. Embarrassed to mention it, really. But apparently…” Mordred shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. “Apparently, it spills the wine of an unfaithful lover. They call it the Cup of Shame.” My blood ran cold as ice. “I don’t know, those yokels, they’ll believe anything. Obviously, I thought there was no harm giving it to the Queen. And so. To Queen Guinevere! Her loyalty and fidelity.” Mordred drained his cup in one and placed it down on the Round Table.

  The Queen looked again at the King, but his head was bowed above his own cup. Several people around the room chose not to wait for his lead and started to drink. As for Knight X, he had not moved from the steps. His eyes remained on the Queen throughout Mordred’s speech, and she looked back at him now. Something in his look caused her own gaze to harden. She turned this expression to meet Mordred’s insolent face, and raised the cup to her lips.

  “To my loyalty and fidelity,” she said.

  At that precise moment the wall behind King Arthur exploded and a werewolf sank its teeth deep into his neck.

  †

  “Which is where my day becomes your day,” said Beaumains, standing up to stretch her legs. “So, tell me Lucas, how did it go for you?”

  V

  As much as I loathed holding anything back from my deputy, I felt it wise not to tell Beaumains about the state of mind in which I started the day. She was aware that I had been feeling out of sorts for some time now, and the last thing I wanted was to cause her needless worry. In truth, until this morning I had not been unduly concerned about it myself, and had put it down to nothing more than the symptoms of a full workload.

  It first happened in the stables’ food store, when I stopped off to get some oats for Plum’s breakfast. There I was, surrounded by sacks of the stuff, without the foggiest notion of what I was looking for. The very act of recall induced in me a feeling of being rooted to the spot, unable to move a muscle until I could remember why I went in there. The paralysis was accompanied by an acute awarenes
s of the time I was frittering away, not to mention the guilt that such a feeling produces in any serving man worth his salt. So I started, as I always did, to employ my System — a conversation with myself, by which I would attempt to break the deadlock. Today however, my System provided perils of its own. My inner dialogue went like this:

  “What did I come in here for?”

  “You of all people should know that.”

  “All the same, I have not the first clue.”

  “That is alarming.”

  “I know.”

  “What if you were doing something important?”

  “I am well aware of the gravity of the situation. Worrying about possible implications is hardly going to improve matters.”

  “Neither is standing here talking to yourself. What you need is a Filofax.”

  “What’s a Filofax?”

  “A diary, in which one makes a note of one’s daily tasks, to avoid forgetting them. Although, it would be more accurate to call it a personal organiser, as the word Filofax is a brand name, and is more synonymous with the yuppie culture of the 1980s.”

  At this point, terrified by the plunge into madness that my mind was taking, I brought the inner conversation to an abrupt end. Thankfully I remembered the bag of feed, and turned my attention to shooing away the strange blue mice who were attempting to gnaw through the sacking.

  As I say, there was no sense in bothering Beaumains with any of this, so I started the account of my day an hour or so later, with my encounter with a highly animated Gwion in the top room of the Hawk Tower. He moved to a table covered in jesses, lures and wound lengths of creance, and pulled out a large piece of parchment hidden beneath. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, Master Lucas. My strongest birds are doing most of the work. I’ve given the older ones the less demanding moves.” Gwion pointed at the parchment, on which he had sketched a detailed plan of flight. Each bird had been assigned a separate letter, which it had been trained to spell out in the air, in the correct order, to form the complete message ‘Happy Birthday Guinevere.’

  “But there are two main problems, Master. One: getting them to keep to the correct formation. All it takes is one tiny distraction, or for two of them to collide mid-air, and the message will turn into complete gibberish. Two: releasing the powder.” He picked up a small object like a carrot, attached to a jess. “I’ve found plenty of it in Merlin’s old stores — I’ve got red, white and green — but everything depends on each hawk releasing their powder at the right time. But, I think I’ve fixed it. Here, I’ll show you with Pickford.”

  Gwion approached a goshawk on its perch, whispering and clicking to put the bird at ease. Stroking Pickford under the chin, he took the carrot-shaped object and gently tied the jess around his leg. Pickford’s wings flapped reflexively and he clawed once at the carrot before settling down. “Now,” said Gwion, moving back to the table, “watch this.” He took a small wooden whistle out of his tunic pocket and spread out the flight plan on a table. “Pickford’s flying the first letter ‘H’. As soon as he gets into position, I give the first signal.” Gwion blew the whistle. In response to a pitch inaudible to our ears, Pickford hooked a talon through the bottom of the carrot. A thin stream of powder poured from the base. Gwion blew the second signal, and Pickford clawed it shut again.

  Not for the first time, the awe in which I held Gwion’s ingenuity was mingled with a teacher’s guilt that the domestic realm was failing to fully utilise the considerable skills of my apprentice. “I’ve had to train each bird to respond to a different frequency, which means a lot of whistles,” he said, indicating a rack of carved instruments in various sizes. “But, all things considered…”

  “You have done an excellent job, as ever, Gwion,” I said.

  He grinned and looked at his feet, embarrassed I sensed not so much by my praise, as by his own desire to hear it. A beam of sunlight fell through the narrow high window, catching the motes of dust in the air. “I love it when that happens,” he said, alighting on a change of subject. “It always makes me wonder how many specks of dust are in a shaft of light.”

  “One hundred million, seven thousand five hundred and twelve,” I said automatically. Gwion laughed, uncertainly, and was about to reply when the air was filled with the rapid pounding of footsteps on stone, and Sir Perceval and Sir Gareth burst into the room.

  †

  From the rooftop of the Hawk Tower, the knights in the tournament ground were no bigger than crumbs of bread scattered across a table cloth. I could just about make out Knight X, a dot of darkness surrounded by an encroaching circle of silver specks. It appeared as if the tournament had moved to the hand-to-hand combat stage, and would soon be drawing to a close. The formation on the field changed suddenly, as if an invisible hand had shaken the table cloth, and everyone piled on top of Knight X in a frantic mêlée.

  I was attempting to focus my eyes on the ever-growing heap of legs, swords and armour to discover the fortunes of Knight X, when I saw him strolling across the rear wall of the North stand, looking down as the scrum below pummelled each other senseless in their attempt to grind him into the grass. As usual, I could only look over the side of the tower for a few minutes before experiencing a lurching sensation in my stomach, made all the more disturbing as I never normally suffer any fear of heights.

  I leaned back from the edge and held onto the stonework with both hands, but the eccentric architecture of the rooftop only made the feeling worse. Everything about the tower top seemed designed to disorient and bamboozle, from the slant of the floor that made one feel in constant risk of sliding off the edge, to the stone-carved beasts perched in the four corners like malevolent sentinels. This tower was not as high as the Royal Tower, yet from here it appeared through an optical illusion to be a good deal taller.

  None of this seemed to bother Sir Perceval and Sir Gareth; from the lengthy account of their adventures, they had recently received a thorough grounding in the subject of the uncanny.

  “…And then there were the warriors, made of glass,” said Sir Gareth.

  “Only with the heads of dogs,” said Sir Perceval.

  “Glass dogs, mind, not real ones.”

  “I never said they were real dogs.”

  “No, but it was sort of implied.”

  “Well, glass dog heads is what I meant.”

  “That may be what you meant, but it’s not what you said.”

  “Only an idiot would think I meant a real dog.”

  “Are you calling me an idiot?”

  “If the cap fits.”

  “Is that a glass cap, or a real cap?”

  “It all sounds most Chronicle-worthy,” I said hastily, fearing that the demands of questing had taken their toll on their friendship. “I am sure Sir Kay will give you priority billing this evening.”

  I did not want to appear rude, but it was high time for me to be in Lower Camelot, though I hesitated to leave Gwion on his own. After the ‘DEATH BY VINEGAR’ sky-writing debacle, he had wedged himself into an archway in the tower’s western ramparts. He sat with his head in his hands, mumbling bitter curses against the blue mice who had distracted his less committed hawks and thrown the rest of them into disarray.

  “But here’s the thing, Lucas,” said Sir Perceval. “I’ve actually seen the Grail.” He shone with the radiance that infused him whenever he mentioned the word. Until now, I had put this fervour down to an upbringing which instilled in him the unshakable notion that this quest was his and his alone. Ever since his presentation at Court, Sir Perceval’s name had been synonymous with the Grail. Even these past few years, when it had come to obsess the greater part of all knighthood, the unspoken assumption was that Sir Perceval would, as the legend required, ask the right question and possess this magical wonder. This time, even I could see that his zeal had a different hue, as of one who has not merely seen the light, but taken part of it away with him.

  “I almost had it; I was this close in the Glass Fortress.” Sir Perceva
l held his fingers up to my face in an almost-pinch. “If not for the guard dogs with the heads-and-bodies-of-glass, I’d have it by now. We must go back with more men. The Grail can be won, Lucas. The most powerful treasure in the Otherworld! Who knows what it can do?” said Sir Perceval.

  “We will go and see Sir Kay,” I said, for his enthusiasm had deeply impressed me. “When he has listened to what you have to say, I am sure he will have no objection to putting your story in tonight’s Chronicles.”

  VI

  “Well, I’ve listened to what you have to say,” said Sir Kay, “and there’s no way I’m putting your story in tonight’s Chronicles.”

  “Sorry?” said Sir Perceval.

  “Did we miss something?” said Sir Gareth.

  “What part of ‘I’ve seen the Grail’ don’t you understand?”

  Sir Kay’s Green Room was filling up with the usual mixture of the great and the garrulous, tall tale tellers and yarn spinners, experienced climbers all on the peaks of high adventure. There was Sir Ector, propping up Granville’s backstage bar, mead-eloquent on the time he fought the blue hounds of the Black Baron and left both hounds and Baron black-and-blue. By the fireplace, Sir Lanval slackened male jaws with vivid boasts of his night with a faerie woman, whose beauty — not to mention athleticism — improved with every telling. Next to him, Sir Dagonet gave his highly selective account of assisting King Arthur against a race of Giants who made cloaks from the beards of their defeated foes. No blade had touched Sir Dagonet’s beard since the victory, and for this evening’s rendition he had augmented it with a false extension tucked into his tunic, which he unfurled at the story’s climax to hoots of delight.