The Table of Less Valued Knights (14 page)

It turned out that you couldn’t spin a sword on any old piece of ground, because clumps of grass or sticking-out stones tended to get in the way, so every time she came to a suitable piece of flat rock or earth, Martha stopped to check for directions. The sword appeared to be pretty keen on heading north-west, more or less back the way she’d come from, guiding Martha away from the crossing to France. Instead they travelled through Puddock and across the border into Tuft – a hefty amount of her gold being confiscated at the customs post on the way in.

At first it was an uneventful journey, though Martha had a feeling of disquiet, having no way of knowing whether the sword was taking her closer to her brother or just in random directions.

Then, late one night, she had gone to the dining room of an inn. The inn was slightly off the path designated by the sword, but it was pouring with rain, and if she’d carried on in the direction the sword had wanted her to travel she’d have been riding for at least another two hours before reaching shelter. She decided to pick up the path in the morning, and headed for the nearest village, a rather bleak place where the houses were still black with soot from the last time marauders had tried to burn it down, which, had they succeeded, would probably have been an improvement. The inn was called the Dipsomaniac Camel, and she supposed that the sign might have been of a camel, but she
had never seen a camel, and neither, she was fairly certain, had the sign painter.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the inn’s dining hall was still busy, perhaps because the sleeping quarters were outside up a flight of steps and nobody was ready to head out into the pouring rain.

Martha took a seat at the end of a long, thickly hewn wooden table, and the barmaid brought her a sour ale and a trencher of stale bread and rancid butter. A few seats down from her was a man dressed as a knight, surrounded by a circle of onlookers. Martha couldn’t believe that he was a real knight; it seemed more likely that he had stolen his colours, possibly from a corpse. The flesh of his blotchy, purple face seemed to be melting away from the bone like bad tallow, his desultory pieces of armour were rusty and unmatched, his teeth outnumbered the hairs on his head, his eyes outnumbered his teeth, and he both looked and smelt as if he’d been rolling in a midden. To Martha’s astonishment, the supposed knight’s audience – which was considerable – was hanging on his every word.

‘I’ve reason to believe that she’s in the vicinity,’ he told the group. ‘Possibly being held in this very village.’

‘What would the Queen of Puddock be doing in a cesspit like this?’ called out a stocky man with a greasy cowlick of hair half obscuring one eye.

Martha’s hand flew to her sword’s hilt, and she’d half started out of her chair before she remembered that she was in disguise. She sat back down and took a deep breath to steady herself.

‘Who is that?’ she asked a scrubby-faced boy who was sitting across from her, and who didn’t look old enough to be in a tavern, let alone making his way so steadily through the tankards of ale littered around his trencher.

‘Sir Gordon Pencuddy. He’s a knight. I’m his squire.’

‘He really is a knight?’

‘Of a sort. He is of the Table of Less Valued Knights.’

‘And what is it he’s saying about the Queen of Puddock?’ Martha managed to choke out.

‘That silly wench? Haven’t you heard? She’s gone and got herself kidnapped. This is why they shouldn’t let women rule. Sir Gordon and I are trying to track her down.’

‘Succeeding, thank you!’ called Sir Gordon, while some people cheered and others hooted their derision. ‘The reward is as good as mine.’

‘I’m sure she’ll give you a reward once you weasel her out!’ shouted a lanky, lantern-jawed man at the far end of the table.

‘That skinny piece? I’d sooner ride a weasel,’ said Sir Gordon.

‘He would and all!’ said the man with the cowlick.

‘Though there’s no need to look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire,’ said the knight.

The gathered crowd laughed.

‘There’s a reward?’ said Martha to the squire.

‘Well, the new King with the giant teeth went up to see Arthur in Camelot,’ said the squire.

‘You mean the Prince Consort,’ muttered Martha.

‘Arthur gave him his very own Knight of the Round Table to go running around looking for his bitch. That Knight’s reward will be virtue, of course. But Sir Gordon reckons if he finds her first, this King will have to give us a real reward. If he doesn’t, he’ll just refuse to hand her over. I’m sure he can find some use for her. It’s not every Less Valued Knight who can boast of tupping a queen, even a minor and scrawny one.’

‘She’d die first,’ said Martha.

‘Or during. Or after, I have no doubt,’ said the squire. ‘The King won’t hold onto her for long, now she’s been kidnapped and sullied. He’ll keep her until she’s spawned an heir, and then my guess is she’ll meet with an unfortunate accident, leaving him to rule as Regent.’

Martha felt her insides heave. She knew he was right. If she’d
ever considered heading home to Puddock – and on several miserable, sleepless nights, she had – this made her determined never to return.

‘What makes you think she’s here?’ she asked Sir Gordon.

‘I can’t reveal my sources,’ said the Knight, ‘but they are very reliable.’

‘Bullshit,’ the squire told Martha. ‘He’s checking every village from here to Cornwall. She’s got to be somewhere. It’s basically a lucky dip.’

‘I’d give her a lucky dip!’ said the lanky wit from the crowd.

‘Well,’ said Martha, standing up, her heart pounding madly in her chest, ‘it’s been delightful meeting all of you fellow men, but I’ve got a long ride in the morning.’

‘You know, you look a bit like the Queen,’ said Sir Gordon, squinting at Martha. ‘Are you sure you’re not her brother?’

‘Her brother is dead,’ said Martha.

‘Seriously, though.’ The knight took a shiny, newly minted coin out of a pouch at his belt and held it up. ‘Spitting image, apart from that caterpillar on your lip.’

‘Very funny,’ said Martha, forcing herself to laugh. ‘I wish I had half her money. Goodnight, everyone.’

She forced herself not to run until she was out of the inn. Then she raced to the stables, mounted Silver, and rode away as fast as she could.

From then on, Martha travelled with one hand on her sword, for reassurance. She tried to avoid people as much as possible, buying herself a bedroll so that, when the weather was good, she could sleep under trees rather than in inns. Instead of frequenting markets, she attempted to gather her food from the wild as much as possible, though that proved harder than storybooks would have her believe. She was hungry all the time.

A few days after the encounter at the Dipsomaniac Camel, Martha was riding through a small wood bordering an area of heathland in the centre of Tuft. The wood was fairly dense but not particularly brambly, with minimal immediate threat of carnivores, bandits or stinging nettles, so she decided to stop to pick berries for breakfast. After what felt like hours, she had managed, triumphantly, to gather a small palmful of green wild strawberries, which, though she pretended to herself to find them delicious, were tongue-shrivellingly bitter. At least there probably weren’t enough of them to give her the runs. Defecating, it turned out, was far from the highlight of this horseback adventure, especially as she hadn’t thought to pack a spade, and the sword managed to shirk digging activities by developing a stubborn weight and unwieldiness when brought into proximity with dirt.

After she’d eaten her berries and remounted, she picked her way through the trees, trying, and mostly succeeding, not to let low branches smack her in the face. It was slow going, so she
decided to cut across the heathland, even though there was more chance of running into other people on open ground.

She was just turning towards the heath when her sword erupted out of her scabbard and, with Martha clinging to the hilt, smacked her horse hard on the rump. Silver reared and bolted out of the woods. Martha screamed and tried to pull on the reins with her unsworded hand, while the sword itself led the charge, dragging Martha, horse and all, towards a group of travellers: a man, a woman, and what appeared to be a giant, riding on – if the drawings she’d seen in the castle library were to be believed – an elephant.

‘Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!’ begged Martha, as the sword swung at one of the travellers – she didn’t know which, because she had her eyes shut, her arm juddered painfully as her blade clashed against what must be her opponent’s sword with resounding metallic clangs.

I’m going to die
, she suddenly thought, with perfect clarity.
What a ridiculous way to go
.

And then the fear took over once again.

Humphrey knocked the boy from his horse and jumped down after him, fighting his way forward while the boy parried his blows surprisingly expertly for someone who had his eyes shut.

‘Leave me alone!’ shouted the boy, in a high, girlish voice. ‘Stop hitting me!’

‘I’m not hitting you,’ said Humphrey, grunting with the effort of the fight. ‘You don’t “hit” with swords. And anyway, you tried to kill me. You’re not in a position to make demands.’

‘I didn’t mean to!’ wailed the boy.

‘To me it looked a lot like you meant to.’

The boy was now staggering backwards under the weight of Humphrey’s assault, the knight swinging his blade harder and faster to try to deal the mortal blow. Still, somehow, the boy managed to fend him off, even though he hadn’t opened his eyes so much as a crack.

‘Humphrey’s going to kill him,’ Elaine said to Conrad in a horrified voice. She had never seen anyone die, and had no wish to, especially not a terrified child.

‘I expect so,’ said Conrad, with an attempt at casualness. He had never seen anyone die either, but, as both a squire and a giant, he thought it was the kind of thing he should take in his stride. He didn’t feel like he was taking it in his stride – in fact he felt a cold, sick terror, and an urgent desire to urinate – but maybe that came with practice.

‘Can’t you do something about it?’ said Elaine.

‘Why should I?’ said Conrad. ‘The boy started it!’ Which was true enough. Quite apart from that, the last thing he wanted to do was climb down from the safety of Jemima’s back and enter the fray.

‘He’s a child!’ insisted Elaine.

‘He must be as old as I am.’

‘He’s frightened!’

‘Well then, he shouldn’t have attacked a knight!’

This was undeniable. But Elaine couldn’t sit doing nothing while this scared kid was hacked to pieces, even if he had started the fight.

‘Humphrey, leave him alone!’ she shouted.

‘If I stop, he’ll kill me,’ Humphrey shouted back.

‘No, I won’t!’ said the boy. But still his sword fought on, repelling Humphrey’s every stroke.

Conrad and Elaine had both seen duels at tournaments, but this was different. It was ugly and brutal, devoid of the courtly flourishes knights added to entertain the crowd. It was a workmanlike, determined push towards death. Not knowing what else to do, Elaine jumped down off her horse and leapt onto Humphrey’s back, putting her hands over his eyes.

‘What are you doing?’ yelled Humphrey. ‘Do you want to get us both killed?’

He tried to shake her off, still waving his sword, now ineffectually, at his opponent. The boy, finally released from the onslaught, turned and began to run. But the blade of his sword got tangled in the undergrowth, and he tripped and went flying, dropping his sword as he fell. He lay winded in the grass, whimpering and trying to find the strength to crawl away.

‘Get off me, Elaine!’ said Humphrey. ‘Let go, you insane woman! It’s fine. I’m not going to kill him.’

Elaine let go, falling painfully to her knees. Humphrey sprang forward, rolled the boy onto his back, straddled him with a knee on each arm, and held his sword to his neck, so
tightly that he broke the pale skin. The boy moaned with fear.

‘I thought you said you weren’t going to kill him!’ Elaine was outraged.

‘Well, I’m certainly not going to let him kill me,’ said Humphrey, but he relaxed the sword slightly. A trickle of blood ran down the boy’s throat. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘My name’s Mar – Marcus,’ the boy replied. He had his eyes open, finally.

‘What the hell were you doing, Marcus?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied the boy.

Conrad snorted.

‘I don’t!’ Marcus insisted, an indignant tone entering his voice. ‘It wasn’t me, it was the sword! It just jumped into my hand and attacked for no reason.’ He glowered at the sword, which was lying peacefully on the grass as if butter wouldn’t melt in its sheath. ‘I thought you were supposed to be protecting me!’ he snapped at it.

Humphrey glanced at the sword, which did not react to Marcus’s admonition. ‘Conrad,’ he said, ‘secure the sword.’

Conrad dismounted from Jemima and marched over to the sword, irritated by how frightened he felt of it and determined not to let it show. He put one of his heavy boots down on top of the blade. He tried not to imagine the sword rearing up and slicing his foot in half.

‘Where did you get that elephant?’ Marcus asked him.

‘You know what it is?’ said Elaine, surprised.

‘The elephant is none of your fucking business,’ Conrad growled at Marcus.

‘Forget about the elephant. Where did you get that sword?’ Humphrey asked.

‘The sword is none of your …’ Marcus began – but thought better of it as Humphrey’s blade pressed against his throat again. ‘It’s a magic sword,’ he said instead. ‘The Lady of the Pond – of the Lake – gave it to me.’

‘If it’s a magic sword, what’s its name?’ said Humphrey.

‘Its name?’

‘Yes, all magic swords have a name.’

There was a brief pause. Then Marcus offered, ‘Leila.’

‘
Leila
?’ said Humphrey.

‘Leila’s a name, isn’t it?’ said Marcus.

‘Magic swords aren’t called things like Leila,’ said Conrad. ‘They have names like Excalibur.’