Excalibur (14 page)

‘Can I decide?' said Rampart.

‘OK,' said Brat. ‘What's it to be?'

‘Well, first of all,' said Rampart, ‘may I ask you a question?'

‘You may.'

‘If I was to say I think you may be the two highwaymen that everyone has been talking about, would you say I could be right?'

‘You could be.'

‘In that case,' said Rampart. ‘There is a fourth choice.'

‘Which is?'

‘I will join you and we will run away together,' said Rampart.

‘And where do you suggest we run away to?'
said Princess Floridian. ‘The King will have spies and soldiers scouring the whole of Avalon to find us.'

‘I would suggest we travel by night and make our escape down the River Stycks that flows many miles through Avalon until it reaches the sea.'

‘And know you this river?' said the Princess.

‘I do indeed, my lady. For my father and I have travelled down it many time delivering swords and shields and iron underpants to the towns that lie along its route.'

‘And why would you want to join us?' said Brat.

‘Indeed,' said Rampart. ‘Why would I want to leave a life of drudgery in my father's foundry pumping the bellows from dawn to dusk with never a word of thanks and naught but a potato and a sheep's knee for my dinner? Why indeed?'

‘Fair enough,' said Brat. ‘Welcome, good Rampart.'

‘Welcome indeed,' said Princess Floridian. ‘We will begin our journey this very night, for I cannot imagine there will be much more time before they all realise we have escaped.'

As she spoke a loud roar rolled across the
water and a giant flame shot up in the air like a great searchlight, telling the runaways that their escape had finally been noticed. Silhouetted in its light, the Vampires of Camelot spread out across the lake searching for the runaways by the light cast by the flame. Rampart pulled in to the nearest island and tore some branches from a large bush, which he wove together over the top of the boat.

‘Thus they will think us no more than a fallen tree floating in the water,' he said. ‘It's an old smuggler's trick my father taught me when we were carrying contraband turnips downriver to Tintagel.'

‘It will mean we can travel in broad daylight too,' he added.

Brat and the Princess knew they had made a good choice allowing the young blacksmith to join them. They had guile and evil cunning, but Rampart was practical. They would have never thought of something as simple as a few branches to disguise their boat. They would have tried to whip up a magic invisibility spell which, considering neither of them were wizards, would have been completely pointless.

‘There is one more thing we must do before we
leave,' said Princess Floridian.

‘Yes?' said Brat.

‘Yes, we must give you a new name.'

‘I've got one you can use,' said Rampart. ‘It's brilliant. I was keeping it for when I have a son of my own, but you can have it, if you like.'

‘Are you sure?' said Brat.

‘Absolutely. You two have rescued me from a life of mindless monotony. It's the least I can do.'

‘Go on then,' said Princess Floridian. ‘What is it?'

‘Brassica,' said Rampart.

‘I love it,' said Brat.

‘So do I,' said Princess Floridian. ‘And it sounds great if you put Prince or King in front of it.'

‘Oh yes. Prince Brassica. I like it,' said Brat who was now Brassica, and he muttered softly to himself: ‘King Brassica of Avalon.'

They hacked down three bushes and set them adrift on the water, following in their own disguised boat. All the water in Lake Camelot drift ed slowly towards the river, so all they had to do was use the oars now and then to change direction slightly and get up a bit more speed.

 

 

The sudden major change that was coming over Brat-now-Brassica had not just happened by chance. Nor had it been the situation they had found themselves in that had suddenly made him change from a spoilt little brat to someone with a maturity and wisdom way beyond his eleven or twelve years. Most people learn nothing by experience and if they do, it usually happens too late anyway.

What
had
happened was that when he had been forced to try to free the False Excalibur and the ground had opened up and swallowed him, something incredible had happened.

Others before him who had grasped the fake sword had not met such a generous fate as Brassica. The Spirits of the Kingdom, who were the guardians of the true sword, usually converted the fake sword graspers into little bits of burnt charcoal that were ground up and added to the boiling lava at the centre of the world. This should have been Brassica's fate, but as the spirits began to toast him,
⁶³
they realised he was no ordinary person.

There was royal blood in his veins!
⁶⁴

As soon as they realised this, the Spirits of the Kingdom turned off the gas and spat Brassica out as quickly as they could. They felt rather bad at having nearly toasted the child so to make up for it, they put a lot more extremely clever brain cells inside his head, and that is how he suddenly became much more grown-up and noble.

No, there had not been a terrible miscarriage of justice. Brassica was not the true King Arthur, but he did share his blood.

Brassica who had been Brat who had been the Pretend King Arthur was actually the real King Arthur's half brother.

They were both the sons of Uther Pendragon, but Brassica had a different mother. Arthur's father had not been unfaithful to his wife. He had just mistaken her for her identical twin sister – Bladwyn the Lady of the Leek – who had been so ashamed that she had cast her newborn baby adrift in a wicker basket where he
had been found by the peasants who had raised him as their own except they hadn't because the second Bladwyn had turned her back, a mysterious unknown secret person had swapped her baby with King Arthur, thus causing this incredibly complicated paragraph that you have just read.
⁶⁵

The biggest question, the answer of which could rewrite history or at least give it an upset stomach, was – who was the oldest, King Arthur or Brassica. For surely, being the son of the same King, then the true King of Avalon would be the eldest child. No one knew the answer to this question.
⁶⁶

Of course, Brassica had not got the slightest inkling of any of this. No one, apart from the Spirits of the Kingdom, who never spoke to anyone, knew about this. Of course, Bladwyn the Lady of the Leek knew King Arthur had a half brother or sister – she
had been too shy to look before she had wrapped him up and set him adrift – but she was far too ashamed to say anything and not only that, she had become one of those nuns in a monastery where no one is allowed to speak. She never allowed herself to think about her lost child, but if she had, she would probably have assumed he had not survived to adulthood having been eaten either by some river creature or by the peasants who might have pulled his wicker basket from the water. Now and then she had a daydream that her baby had been rescued by a noble lady who had brought it up as her own in the lap of luxury, but she knew that sort of thing only happened in stories. Being a nun in a very, very remote monastery she hadn't heard about one half-brother replacing the other, otherwise she would have known exactly what had happened to her long lost baby and that her child actually had been a boy.

And of course, whoever it was who had swapped the two babies over also knew who Brassica was.

Brassica himself did not have a clue.

They drift ed slowly down the lake towards the River Stycks that would carry them away to freedom. Clouds that had offered complete darkness also drift ed
away and the lake was bathed in cool blue moonlight. Overhead, Camelot's vampires flew backwards and forwards over the islands searching for the escapees. It was assumed they had taken refuge on land.

‘They wouldn't be so stupid as to try and escape by boat while we are out searching for them,' said Merlin. ‘They will find an island with shelter and lie low for a few days until we call off the search.'

‘Unless they have already reached the far side of the lake and escaped into the forest,' said Sir Lancelot.

‘That's true,' said Merlin. ‘We will send soldiers and bloodhounds to search the shore.'

Four boatloads were sent each with thirty soldiers and three rabid bloodhounds who hadn't caught a convict for months and were drooling for a snack. One boat sailed within five metres of Brassica and Princess Floridian as they lay stock still beneath their disguise of broken branches.

‘What's that?' said a voice on the soldier's boat.

‘Just some old branches,' said another.

‘Shall I fire a burning arrow into it, just in case?' said a third voice.

‘I wouldn't have thought it would burn.'

‘It's worth a go.'

A flaming arrow flew across the water. It missed the escapees' boat by a few inches before crash-landing on a small island and setting the whole thing on fire.

‘Oops.'

A figure came flying out of the flames and threw itself into the water in a cloud of burning leaves and smoke with a side order of screams.

‘I surrender,' the figure cried.

‘Bullseye!' cried the first soldier. ‘We are in for a big reward.'

‘Or not,' whispered Princess Floridian as they drift ed further away into the shadows.

The burning man was a runaway who had fled to the island five years earlier before he could be arrested for creeping into farmers' fields at night and carving their vegetables into silly shapes. The trouble was, the things he carved were so horrible that no one wanted to eat the carrots afterwards, so they were all wasted.
⁶⁷
Then he had moved to turnips, but when he had started working with marrows, the people had got angry and set a trap
for him. Apart from depriving them of valuable food, some of the carvings gave people very rude nightmares. Eventually the villagers set a trap to catch him. One night the smallest man in the village hid inside a hollowed-out marrow and waited. When he was found the next morning his eyes were bulging out of their sockets and he was gibbering and a giant rabbit had been painted on his naked body with blue paint. The Vegetable Interferer had struck, but the experience had scared him away and he was never seen again. Until now, when he was hauled out of the lake by the soldiers.
⁶⁸

All the confusion with the burning island and the Vegetable Interferer allowed Brassica and his accomplices to slip away behind another island and hide there out of sight until the sailors had reached the other side of the lake.

As dawn rose the next morning Brassica could see a gap in the trees around the lake that showed them the entrance to the river.

 

‘They have given us the slip, my lord,' said the captain of the guard when the soldiers arrived back at Camelot after a night's fruitless searching.

‘You found no clues as to their whereabouts at all?' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Nothing, sire.'

‘Methinks your searching was less than thorough,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘No, my lady, we searched high and low,' said the captain. ‘We looked behind every rock and under every bush. We even apprehended three other criminals.'

‘Bring them forth,' said Merlin. ‘Perhaps they saw something.'

The three villains were brought in. First there was the Vegetable Interferer dressed in a potato sack and shackled to him was the second criminal, the notorious Road Thief. The Road Thief had topped the charts as Avalon's Most Wanted for as long as anyone could remember and his capture took the immediate pressure off the captain for his failure to find Brassica and Princess Floridian.

The Road Thief was exactly what his name
suggested. He stole roads. People would set off in the early morning for a distant town, riding along in their horse and carriage down a busy road when suddenly, they would turn a corner and the road had vanished. Where there had been well-worn wheel tracks, nice potholes full of rain and cast-off rubbish such as broken pig's bladders
⁶⁹
and copies of last week's
Ye Avalon Morning Herald
along the roadside, there would be a wide expanse of soft green grass and a few grazing sheep. The road that had been there the night before had simply vanished. Naturally, this was put down to Ancient Magic, but in fact it was the work of one man with a big shovel – The Road Thief. In the middle of the new field there would always be a small sign bearing the words:

The third villain was the blacksmith who was wanted for selling fake steel underpants that were made out of painted canvas and were far more comfortable than the buyers had wanted. There was also the matter of the international turnip smuggling.

‘Whilst we are delighted to have apprehended you three,' Merlin said, ‘none of you are the reason our soldiers were scouring the lake.'

He went on to explain who they had been looking for and added, ‘So if any of you three know something that might help us find our runaways, it would be very good news for you. Were it to lead to their re-capture, it would not only wipe out your crimes completely, but even set you up for life with a weekly potato allowance, a small cottage and a bonus cuddly puppy.'

‘I can help you,' said the blacksmith, ‘though in doing so I must admit that I have been a stupid fool who was completely taken in.'

He told them how he had freed Brassica and the Princess from their shackles, and even given them weapons before sending them off with his only son.

‘Whom I now fear they may have murdered,' he said.

‘So you have heard nothing since they left?'

‘Not a word, nor has my trained hawk been able to find a trace of them,' said the blacksmith.

‘Can I assume,' said the Road Thief with a tinge of sadness in his voice, ‘that I am no longer Avalon's Most Wanted?'

‘You can indeed,' said Merlin. ‘Which of course means your punishment will be far less extreme. You will spend five years building new roads, but now you will be allowed to use a shovel.'

Then everyone put their heads together to work out where the runaways might have run away to. This is what they came up with:

The final list had eighty-seven possibilities, but, unlike the ones above, most of them were very silly.

‘And of course, you have missed out what I think most likely,' said the blacksmith, ‘and that is they have sailed away down the river.'

‘There's a river?' said several people.

‘Is is not guarded by River Sprites?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘It is,' said the blacksmith, ‘but supposing they did not kill my beloved Rampart? Supposing they forced him to guide them to freedom?'

‘So?'

‘I do not wish to say more,' said the blacksmith,
‘for fear of incriminating myself.'

‘Fear not, my good fellow,' said Merlin. ‘Your help has already earned you the potato allowance and the small cottage. You only have the cuddly puppy to go.'

‘Well, as you have suggested, though, of course, I am totally denying it, I might have been ferrying turnips down the river as a favour for a complete stranger I met in an alehouse,' said the blacksmith. ‘Well, if I had done that, I would probably have taken my beloved son with me and we would probably have bribed the River Sprites and befriended them. So if that was the case, which of course it isn't, then they would have no problem entering the river.'

‘There is also the possibility,' said Morgan le Fey, ‘of your son not so much being dead or forced at knifepoint as being a willing member of their gang.'

‘What!' cried the blacksmith. ‘My beloved Rampart an evil crinimul? He would never leave me. I have given him everything.'

When he was asked to define everything, running away seemed like a better option.

‘Very well, let us assume they plan to flee
downriver,' said Merlin. ‘I will take preventative measures.'

He took his most powerful wand, the one he only used when things needed enormous magic, and climbed to the top of his Special Spells Tower. Turning towards the window that faced the direction where the river lay, he began to chant.