by Tom Holt
Ms Mayer scowled at him, then sighed. “I suppose not. But never mind about that. How do we find out what this stupid question is?”
“Oh, I know that,” Mr Gogerty replied sadly. “Everyone knows the question. It’s the answer that’s the problem. It has been all along.”
“Oh for pity’s sake,” Mr Mayer interrupted, jumping up and inadvertently treading on a discarded pizza tray. “If I hear one more cryptic utterance I’m going to start biting people. If you know this bloody question, tell us what it is. Then, if we don’t know the answer, we’ll look it up, on Google or Wikipedia. I suppose you’ve been so busy chasing around the place doing magic, it’s never occurred to you to try something so obvious and simple.”
“Actually,” Mr Gogerty said mildly, “I did try it once, just to see what’d happen.”
“And?”
“I got two answers,” Mr Gogerty said. “But I knew them already. There are only two possible answers, you see. The difficulty lies in choosing which—”
Mr Mayer bared his teeth. It was almost certainly an empty, melodramatic gesture, but Mr Gogerty had been around long enough not to take that sort of risk. “All right,” he said, “the question is this. Which came first—”
Ms Mayer groaned. “You can’t be serious.”
But Mr Gogerty nodded and grinned. “I’m afraid so. That’s the question you need to answer. Which came first, the chicken –” he folded his arms and leaned back in his chair “– or the egg?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Dimly aware that something wasn’t quite as it should be, the black knight nevertheless adjusted his grip on the handle of his shield, drew his sword, stifled a yawn and lumbered across the greensward to meet his enemy.
The white knight turned to face him, shield outstretched. There was no r in the month so it was the black knight’s turn to strike first. He aimed a devastating blow at the side of his opponent’s head, which the white knight deflected quite easily before countering with a backhand cut to the shoulder. The black knight took a long step back, and the slash whistled harmlessly past.
“My sister-in-law’s birthday today,” said the black knight. Then he parried high, checked the stroke halfway and converted it into a low cut to the knee. Unsporting, strictly speaking, but because he was the villain, he was allowed.
“Is that your sister in Argyll?” the white knight replied, moving sideways to avoid the attack and using the same motion to chop down briskly at the black knight’s wrist.
“That’s right,” the black knight said, tilting the edge of his shield to block. “She’d have been six hundred and forty-two today.” He lunged at the eye slits of the white knight’s helmet, but a timely parry with the flat of the blade sent the attack off to the side. The white knight riposted with a cut to the elbow, which the black knight’s armour absorbed.
“She married a Yorkshireman, didn’t she?” the white knight asked.
The black knight nodded, then swung his sword in a wide, flailing arc. Ostensibly he was trying to crush the top of his opponent’s helmet; what he was actually doing was giving him an opening, so he’d be able to nip smartly inside the black knight’s guard, whack him hard on the collarbone and follow up with a full-strength blow to the head that would end the fight. It was a fairly recent addition to their repertoire – he’d introduced it the year before Sir Walter Raleigh brought back the first potato from the New World – but they’d both got the hang of it, more or less, and the black knight quite liked it because it meant he could lose quickly, without having to be pounded to a standstill. After all, as he’d explained to the white knight more than once over the years, just because they were both trapped for ever in endless repetitions of a bizarre and meaningless ritual, it didn’t mean pain didn’t hurt.
But the white knight didn’t move. He just stood there, his head tilted a little to one side, like a puzzled dog. “You know what,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”
Slowly the black knight lowered his sword. “You think so too?” he asked.
The white knight nodded, quite an achievement for a man wearing a twelve-pound helmet. “Don’t ask me what it is,” he said, “but something’s definitely not right. It’s been bothering me ever since we started this morning.”
The black knight sheathed his sword. He wasn’t supposed to do that. In seven centuries he’d never done it. They fought; he got knocked silly and dropped the sword, and when he came back on line again at the start of the next time around, the sword would be back in its scabbard at his side. That was probably why it took him four goes before he eventually managed it.
He waited, half expecting a bolt of lightning to fry him where he stood for breaking the rules. Nothing happened.
“It’s like something’s missing,” the white knight said contemplatively, and the black knight thought, Yes, that’s it. He’s right. Something missing. A bit like walking into an empty house when you’d been sure there’d be someone at home.
They both looked around. It had been years since the black knight had actually stopped and taken any notice of his surroundings. They were still, he noticed, as dull and boring as ever.
“What do you think we should do?” the black knight said.
“Don’t know,” the white knight replied. “You feel it too, then.”
“Definitely,” the black knight confirmed quickly. “Something’s been bugging me all day, but I didn’t like to say anything. Thought it must just be me feeling a bit off colour or something.”
“You’re not feeling well?”
“No, I’m fine. Well, a bit of a headache. But I always get a bad head after you’ve knocked me out a couple of times.”
Then the white knight did something extraordinary, something he’d never done before in all the years they’d been working together. He took his helmet off.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “I didn’t realise.”
The white knight wasn’t a bit like his colleague had expected. In fact he was a round-faced, chubby-cheeked man with small blue eyes and a big ginger moustache. “I did sort of try hinting,” the black knight said. “Anyway, that’s not important.”
“But if I’ve been giving you headaches all this time…”
“Forget it.” The black knight was fumbling with his own chinstrap buckle. It had been so long, he could barely remember where it was or how it worked.
“Yes, but we could change the fight a bit. How’d it be if instead of a side cut in—”
“Really,” the black knight said firmly, “it’s no big deal.” His fingers found the loop of the strap and tugged it past the bar of the buckle. A moment later he was out of the helmet and into the light and air.
“Are you all right?” the white knight asked.
“Fine,” the black knight assured him, gasping slightly. The light (it was a dull, overcast day) was blinding him, burning his eyes. “Just not used to all this space, I guess.” He lifted the helmet clear of his head, lost his grip on it and dropped it. “I’ve been trapped in that stupid thing so long…”
“Of course,” the white knight said. “I was forgetting, you don’t get to take yours off, do you?” He frowned. He had a kind face. “That must be a real pain in the bum,” he said.
Suddenly the black knight could feel tears welling up in the corners of his eyes, and he didn’t think it was the brightness of the light. He decided to change the subject.
“So,” he said. “What d’you reckon?”
The white knight shrugged. “Search me,” he said. “Maybe we should ask the priest.”
That sounded promising. Priests were men of God; a priest would be bound to know. “Should we?” he asked hopefully.
“Can’t hurt,” the white knight said. “Come on.”
But the priest took one look at them walking towards him side by side when they should have been clubbing each other savagely, and ran into the chapel, slamming the door behind him. A moment later they heard bolts being rammed home.
The
black knight remembered he was the bad guy. “We could break the door down,” he suggested.
The white knight thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Better not,” he said. “After all, it’s a sort of church. Besides, he didn’t look to me like he knows what’s going on.”
True enough; the poor man had come across as scared out of his wits. “Now what?” the black knight asked.
“I think we should keep going till we meet somebody, and ask them.”
The black knight could think of several objections to that. On the other hand, the white knight was the good guy, which presumably gave him the moral authority to decide their course of action; also, he had nothing better to suggest. “All right,” he said. “Which way?”
The white knight shrugged. “Broad as it’s long, I guess. This way,” he added, and there was something in his voice that inspired confidence – not all that much, but some. He took a step forward, then paused and turned back. “I’m Gareth, by the way,” he said.
Seven hundred years of bashing each other over the head. “I’m Mordred,” the black knight replied.
The white knight held out his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said.
Old habits die hard. It cost the black knight a special effort of will not to grab the proffered hand and twist it into an armlock. Instead, he shook it gravely. “Likewise,” he said.
The next few seconds were acutely embarrassing, as was only to be expected after such a display of raw but cissy emotion. Then the white knight pulled himself together and stomped off through the long grass, and the black knight followed him.
Seven hundred years he’d worn the same armour every second he was conscious, but in all that time he’d never had occasion to walk more than a few yards. Ouch, he thought. It wasn’t hard to identify the source of the discomfort. His armoured shoes (sabatons, to be pub-quiz-trivia accurate, a pair of sheet steel galoshes that looked like giant woodlice) had rubbed huge great blisters on both his heels, and every step he took was agony. He stopped to whimper, then had to break into a trot just to keep up.
“What d’you reckon that is?” the white knight said, and pointed to a curious white seat dead ahead. The black knight stopped (bliss!) and studied the thing. It wasn’t like any seat, chair or throne he’d ever seen before. It had no arms, for one thing, and it was rounded in every plane. It was white, shiny like marble, with what looked like a wooden cushion. Closer inspection revealed a sort of tap, like a larger version of a beer-barrel spigot, only apparently made of brightly polished steel, sticking out of the square boxed-shaped section you were presumably meant to lean your back against.
“What’s a stone chair doing in the middle of a field?” the white knight asked.
Good question. “Must be a monument of some kind. Symbolic,” the black knight explained. “Maybe it’s a war memorial or something.”
The white knight approached it warily. “You’d think there’d be writing on it,” he said. “Otherwise, how’s anybody supposed to know what it’s commemorating?” He extended one steelplated finger and gently pressed down on the spigot. It moved under his hand, and from somewhere came a great sound of rushing water.
“Must be magic,” the white knight said, as if repeating an article of faith. Magic explained anything, just as any bizarre or inexplicable action can be made sense of by saying it’s for tax reasons. “A siege perilous, something like that. I bet if you sit in it and close your eyes, you can see all the kingdoms of the earth.”
“Could be,” the black knight replied diplomatically. “Or it could be a trap. Could be if you sit in it, it grabs hold of you and won’t let you go.”
“If you prod the shiny bar thing, you can hear the sea.”
“I’d leave well alone if I were you,” the black knight said. He wasn’t entirely happy about his new best friend’s attitude. The sort of man who, confronted in a mysterious landscape with an alien lever, presses it to see what it does isn’t the kind of leader who inspires confidence.
“You’re quite right,” the white knight said wistfully. “Come on, then, if you’re coming.”
They hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a patch of thin air dead ahead of them suddenly turned into a door. The white knight stopped dead in his tracks.
“It’s a door,” he said.
“Maybe,” the black knight said warily. “Funny place for a door to be, though. For a start, there’s no wall.”
“Magic,” the white knight said, and he was right: there could be no possible alternative explanation. But confirmed outbreaks of magic made the black knight want to run a mile, even in badly fitting sabatons, whereas the white knight made it sound like a good thing. On balance, the black knight decided, his new friend had been less trouble when he’d been bashing him on the head.
“So what do you reckon?” the white knight said. He nudged it with his foot and it swung open an inch or so. “Do we go through it or what?”
Typical good-guy mentality. Still, it was pretty well certain that the idiot was going to go through it whether the black knight approved or not, and if one of them went through, solidarity demanded that the other must follow. He groaned to himself and said, “Why not?”
So they went through, and found themselves in a corridor or cloister. Everything about it made the black knight’s flesh creep. For one thing, the walls appeared to be covered with paper; what the hell was that supposed to mean? Did passing through the door mean they’d wound up inside a book? From what he’d gathered from stories he’d heard, that was exactly the sort of thing you could expect if you started messing around with magic. And as for the floor…
“Hellfire,” he groaned. “This place has got woollen grass.”
But the white knight shook his head. “I know about this stuff,” he said. “It’s called carpet. Cousin of mine brought some back from the crusades. Fiendishly expensive stuff, by all accounts. My cousin said it cost him twelve gold nobles a yard. We must be in a royal palace.”
“Lucky us,” the black knight muttered. It wasn’t too late to turn round and go back, but he knew that if he suggested it, the white knight would only say, “You go back if you want,” or words to that effect, and then he’d have to carry on to the bitter end or be shamed eternally. “After you,” he said stiffly, and the white knight tore his attention away from the floor and stomped on down the corridor, until they reached another door.
“Look, there’s a glass panel,” the white knight said in an awed voice. “Definitely a palace.”
The black knight took a deep breath. “Did you ever hear the story,” he said, “of the wandering knight caught out in a terrible storm who came across a castle in the middle of nowhere, and when he knocked there was no answer, so he went in, and it turned out it wasn’t a castle after all, it was the lair of the troll king, and suddenly a whole load of trolls jumped out at him from nowhere and ate him?”
“No,” said the white knight. “Why?”
“Nothing,” the black knight replied gloomily. “Go on, then.”
So the white knight pushed the door open and lumbered through it, and the room they found on the other side was so weird and strange and unlike anything either of them had heard of that they quickened their pace and kept going, until they came to yet another door, which opened onto a lane, and green grass, and fresh air. They stumbled through it and dropped on their knees on the grass, shaking.
“That,” said the white knight, “was all a bit much.”
The black knight slowly hauled himself upright and looked around. “You know what,” he said. “I think I know where we are.”
“Really?”
Nod. “I reckon that’s the abbey’s twelve-acre pasture,” he said, pointing. “Except there ought to be a wood over to the left and there isn’t one.”
Pause. Then the white knight said tactfully, “We’ve been away for a while.”
Oh God, the black knight thought, so we have. Seven hundred years. For a moment the weight of the implications cru
shed him, like a ploughman’s boot crushing a snail. On the other hand, he was alive, he’d escaped from the terrible endlessly repeated battle, he’d got through the troll king’s palace in one piece. Always look on the bright side, his mother used to say. “Come on,” he said cheerfully, and started to walk up the lane.
“Where are we going?” the white knight asked.
“You’re not from round here, then.” He realised how little he knew about the man he’d been fighting all these years.
“Me? Lord, no. I’m from Kent originally. So where is this?”
“Worcestershire,” the black knight replied, “I think. My home territory, I grew up just over that big hill over there, look. If I’m right, we’re just outside Norton St Edgar.”
“Oh. Is it nice?”
The black knight shrugged. “It’s home,” he said.
They walked on for a while, and for some reason the blisters on the black knight’s heels didn’t hurt nearly as much as they had earlier, or perhaps he didn’t notice or didn’t care. Home, he thought, home! But home is a location in time as well as space.
They rounded a corner, and—
“I was right,” the black knight said. “There’s St Edgar’s church, dead ahead. And…” He laughed. “Looks like they’ve turned Old Blind Wat’s cottage into a pub.”
“A pub,” the white knight repeated thoughtfully. “Um, have you got any money on you?”
“I don’t need money around here,” the black knight replied. “My family owns this whole—” He stopped and thought about it. “No,” he said. “No money. Sorry.”