The Table of Less Valued Knights (6 page)

‘You didn’t go near the tournament itself?’ said Humphrey.

‘No, I hate the things. Never been a jousty kind of bloke. Although, I’m guessing …’ He eyed Humphrey’s armour.

‘Yup,’ said Humphrey. ‘Sorry.’

‘Can I at least put my armour on first?’

‘Course. But where I can see you.’

‘Back room, then,’ said Tony.

Humphrey turned to the others. ‘Conrad, if you hear me call out, you know what to do.’

Conrad cracked his enormous knuckles.

‘That’s quite a squire you’ve got,’ said Tony as he led the way into the back of the house.

‘He’s just standing by in case you’ve got an ambush waiting for me back there,’ said Humphrey. ‘I’ve been caught out before.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Tony.

There was nobody in the back room, though, just a dusty sea of worn clothing and unwashed bedclothes, the incriminating black armour in a heap on the floor by the window.

‘Sorry about the mess,’ said Tony. ‘I’m doing a few home repairs at the moment. It’s something I do on the side. Though it’s not going that well otherwise they might call me Tony the Builder.’ Tony was pulling on his black cuisses and greaves. ‘So
how did you find me?’ he went on. ‘Bigwigs been complaining to Arthur?’

‘Actually, we’re not even looking for you. We’re looking for the person who kidnapped the winner of the tourney. You didn’t hear anything about that, did you?’

‘Well, obviously I heard that it happened – we were all laughing about it down the Cock and Bottle, a knight being snatched like a screaming virgin. But nobody’s got a clue who did it.’

‘No rumours, even?’

‘Nothing much. Nobody likes the du Monts, they were pleased to see them get egg on their faces. I think if it was someone we knew who’d done it, they’d have been boasting about it.’

‘Lady Elaine’s unpopular too?’

‘The daughter? Was that her outside?’

‘Yes.’

‘She looks like a nice maid. Does it matter what people say?’ Tony held up his arms. ‘Can you help me buckle this breastplate?’

Humphrey yanked at the straps.

‘It’ll definitely be a joust, then?’ said Tony. He looked rather dashing in his black armour.

‘Sorry,’ said Humphrey. ‘I have to fight you, for the glory of God and King Arthur. Believe me, I’d rather not. But you’ve got to give the people what they want.’

By the time Tony had saddled up his horse, a skinny, mangy creature which spent most of its life tethered to a post in his back garden, and he and Humphrey had made their way to the village green, quite a crowd had gathered to watch. The villagers were excited to have a real knight on their patch, taking on their very own outlaw. Still more thrilling was the news of a giant riding a monster, which attracted a throng of children, all desperate to have a turn on Jemima’s back.

‘Nobody’s frightened of me,’ said Conrad, lifting a six-year-old
girl up onto the elephant, and walking Jemima around in a circle. ‘Why is nobody ever frightened of me?’

To give the villagers a proper spectacle, Humphrey and Tony the Outlaw feigned a series of near misses and light clashes of shields before Humphrey finally tipped Tony – a poor sportsman at best – off his horse and into the churned-up grass, to a chorus of oohs and aahs from the assembled throng. Even though the result was a foregone conclusion, Elaine was relieved when it was over, with no more damage done than a dent to Tony’s black armour.

Afterwards, Tony swore fealty to Humphrey, as was traditional, and vowed to devote his life to the good of humanity from then on. Humphrey embraced him, then sent him on his way, to whitewash his house and no doubt to plot further crimes.

‘Which will now all be committed in my name,’ Humphrey muttered to his squire.

‘It’s not a perfect system,’ said Conrad.

‘And we’re no closer to finding who kidnapped Sir Alistair,’ said Elaine.

‘On the contrary, we’re one man down,’ said Humphrey. He didn’t speculate as to how many men they had to go.

They pitched their tents in a meadow close to Too Small To Have A Name, relieved to be sleeping off the long journey at last. Elaine had a tent to herself, within screaming distance, as Conrad put it, of Humphrey and his squire’s – ‘That’s not exactly reassuring, Conrad,’ she said. Jemima slept in front of Elaine’s tent flap, though, which made her feel less vulnerable. Conrad and Humphrey shared a tent – ‘Within snoring distance,’ Elaine retorted later. (She assumed the giant-sized snorts she’d heard coming from their tent were from Conrad’s epic nose, but in fact they emanated from Humphrey, while Conrad snoozed as quietly as a baby lamb.)

Conrad got up early the next day and went to buy them a meat pie for their breakfast, from a stall in the village that Tony the Outlaw had recommended. On the way back he passed a reasonably sanitary-looking midden and pinched a handful of vegetable scraps for Jemima. By the time he got back to camp, Elaine had emerged from her tent and was rubbing herbs on her teeth to clean them. There was no sign of Humphrey. Conrad went over to the tent and held the flap open so that sunlight shone directly into his master’s face. Humphrey dragged his head out of the glare and opened his eyes.

‘Good morning!’ said Conrad.

‘Morning? Since when do we get up in the morning?’

Conrad lifted the tent flap further up, so that Humphrey’s face was in the sunbeam again. After a moment or two,
Humphrey gave in and pushed himself up to a seated position. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve slept on a bedroll,’ he said. ‘Are you sure I didn’t lose that joust yesterday? Bloody hell.’

He hauled himself out from under the blankets, feeling a familiar stab of pain in his right knee, which no longer pointed in the same direction as his left thanks to a Saracen with a long lance and a short temper who’d knocked him off his horse many years ago. That was only to be expected. What had started to bother him lately were the other, newer pains which had never troubled him as a younger man. His feet felt uneven on the ground and his shins protested as he walked. His back seemed to be made of one resisting piece that refused on any account to bend. He was sure that one of his shoulders had lodged itself inches higher than the other. And why did the joints of his fingers hurt? That didn’t even make sense.

He splashed some water onto his face in an effort to make himself presentable, pulled on his leggings and shirt, and went outside into the unexpectedly warm caress of the day. Despite himself, he smiled. He’d forgotten how much he liked being out of doors.

In the space beside the tents, Elaine was sitting on her saddlebag, holding a pewter plate with a slice of pie on it, which she was looking at with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

‘What’s the matter? Isn’t it good?’ asked Conrad, who had taken half the pie for himself. He tended to lean towards quantity rather than quality when it came to food.

‘It’s delicious, thank you,’ said Elaine. There was no evidence to suggest that she’d actually tasted the pie. ‘Good morning, Sir Humphrey.’

‘Morning,’ said Humphrey, wondering what he’d done to be busted back to ‘Sir’. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Elaine. ‘It’s just …’ She paused, then carried on in a rush. ‘Excuse me if I’m speaking out of turn,’ she said. ‘Obviously, I’m not a knight. And you’re the one running the
quest. But it seems to me, I’m not sure how efficient it is, to be going one by one to all the blacksmiths in Tuft, bribing them to tell us who they’ve made black armour for recently. If every village has a forge, it could take months to visit them all, and goodness knows what will have happened to Sir Alistair by the time we find him. If we find him. We don’t even know that the kidnapper used a forge to get the armour made. He might have a private armourer, a lot of the good families do. And there might be secret armourers who only service the criminal fraternity and aren’t to be found shoeing horses in little Tuft villages.’

Humphrey and Conrad stared at her.

‘Did you sleep well?’ said Humphrey.

‘Not really,’ said Elaine.

Humphrey took his slice of pie and sat down on the grass, which was still damp from dew.

‘I’m sorry that you’re not happy with my strategy,’ he said carefully. ‘Is there another approach that you’d like to suggest?’

‘Well, I don’t want to tread on any toes,’ said Elaine, ‘but I would imagine that the kidnapper targeted Sir Alistair either as an attack on my family, or as an attack on Sir Alistair or his family. Or, possibly, it has something to do with him being one of King Leo’s knights. Those are the main theories I’m working with. I think we’ve probably ruled out it being anything to do with my family, otherwise we’d have received a ransom demand, or a message of triumph at the very least. So, if it were my quest, which it sort of is, I would head either to King Leo’s castle, or to Sir Alistair’s family seat, to find out whether there is any kind of motive for the crime. But I don’t really know what I’m talking about.’

Humphrey nodded slowly, chewing on his pie. There wasn’t a lot to chew, but it gave his mouth something to do while his brain worked. Conrad watched Humphrey’s face, trying and failing to read his mood.

‘Thank you for your thoughts,’ Humphrey said at last. ‘Given your concerns, what I propose is that we plot a course in the
direction of Sir Alistair’s home town, but we continue to stop at the forges we pass on the way, in case they have any information that may be useful to us. If that’s acceptable to you?’

Elaine nodded, but after a couple of nods her head started to go into a shake. ‘It’s just, I’m in an awful hurry to find him,’ she said.

‘I’m aware of that,’ said Humphrey.

‘We’re supposed to be getting married in less than a fortnight.’

‘I’m sure, under the circumstances, that the priest won’t mind postponing.’

‘And I don’t have unlimited funds. If you spend all our money on bribes, we’re not going to have any left for food.’

‘We can hunt for food,’ said Humphrey. ‘I brought my bow and arrows.’

‘If you’re sure …’ said Elaine reluctantly.

‘Trust me,’ said Humphrey.

‘Very well.’ But Elaine didn’t look happy. She handed her plate to Conrad and stood up. ‘You can have mine if you like,’ she said. ‘I’m not very hungry. I’m going to …’ She struggled to find an elegant turn of phrase. ‘Perform my ablutions. Please don’t come behind the tent.’

‘She’s not wrong, is she?’ said Conrad to Humphrey, as Elaine disappeared around the side of her tent.

‘No,’ said Humphrey, his eyes on the space where she had been a moment ago. ‘She’s not.’

Despite Elaine’s misgivings, they continued to stop at all the forges along the road towards Sir Alistair’s home, which was located at the far end of Tuft. Apart from checking on the buyers of black armour, Humphrey knew that smiths had loud voices – not only in that they had to shout above the tumult of the forge, but also in the sense that with so many travellers stopping to have their horses seen to, news travelled fast from smithy to smithy. If there were any rumours about the identity of the Knight in Black, a forge would be a good place to pick them up. Unfortunately, what happened was that word of their quest preceded them on the forge grapevine, making the smiths more recalcitrant and forcing the cost of bribes up.

They all hated visiting the forges, Humphrey included. Forges were stuffy, noisy and cramped, clouded with thick smoke that choked their eyes and throats and left their skin smeared with soot. But the more restless Conrad and Elaine became, the more Humphrey insisted on stopping at each and every forge, refusing to be in the wrong. Humphrey thought it was a bit rich for the two of them to complain; they weren’t the ones who had to fight duels with every black-armour-wearing miscreant in Tuft, sometimes several in a day. When Conrad moaned that he was getting blisters from having to chop down so many trees to make lances, Humphrey stripped to his britches to show them both the huge yellow and purple bruises he was covered in from having been knocked off his horse so many times. Whatever he
might claim, fifteen years without a quest made even the best of knights quite rusty when it came to jousting.

Meanwhile, although they still tried to ride incognito, they could hardly camouflage the individual who – to his vast irritation – was becoming known as Sir Humphrey’s monster-riding jester. They were assailed at every turn by people who wanted to see Jemima for themselves, or who had heard that touching her thick grey hide would cure any ailment. Others, knowing that there was a knight travelling with the famous monster, chased after the group with quests of their own, which they hoped to entice Humphrey to take on.

‘This,’ Humphrey told Elaine, ‘is why I don’t travel in armour. A knight’s work is never done. Rescuing damsels, fighting sorceresses, getting cats out of trees, opening tight jars. And all for honour, God’s least fungible reward.’

And yet he was in no hurry to finish this quest. Back at Camelot, he’d got up late, eaten, drunk, gambled, caroused, got bored, got fat. That was his life. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed this: being on his horse, out in the world, with a sense of purpose for once. Even the fights were becoming exhilarating, as the more practice he got, the more often he won. As for having Elaine riding beside him – beautiful, funny, smart Elaine, who not only sang along with Conrad’s dirty travelling songs but made up extra verses – who wouldn’t want that to carry on for as long as possible? Of course, he reminded himself, she was betrothed. But perhaps, if it took him a long time to complete the quest … long enough for the kidnapper to tire of Sir Alistair … 
What, and so the kidnapper kills him
?
That’s your happy ending
? He tried again. What if he never found Sir Alistair … 
So he stays locked up for ever, while you deflower his bride
? There was no satisfactory answer. But for as long as he didn’t find Sir Alistair while still being able to demonstrate that he was looking, he felt that could enjoy being with Elaine without guilt.

Elaine, however, was growing more desperate with every passing day. Finally, on the morning of the day that should have been her wedding, she stared into her breakfast bowl, nauseated by the congealed beans therein, as tears brimmed in her eyes.