Excalibur Read online

  ‘But you are the King, sire,’ said Sir Lancelot, who had been chosen to advise the young monarch on account of his extreme handsomeness and excellent taste in clothes. ‘It is expected of you.’

  ‘But, they are awful and anyway,’ said Arthur, ‘wouldn’t it be better if I didn’t look exactly the same as the Pretender?’

  ‘True,’ said Lancelot. ‘And to be perfectly honest, all this stuff is seriously tacky.’

  ‘Yes, it is, good sir knight. So what do you suggest?’

  ‘Well…’ Lancelot began.

  ‘Could I not wear something like you’ve got?’ Arthur suggested. ‘You know, a nice floppy white shirt and some tasteful skin-tight black leather trousers.’

  ‘Indeed, sire,’ said Lancelot. ‘I always say nothing says good taste on a man better than a pair of shiny leather pants finely craft ed from the delicately tanned hide of the archaeopteryx and hand sewn by Giuseppe Armandlegmani Pantalon of Medina. If my liege would permit, I will measure your inside leg this very moment and send instructions by carrier pigeon to Medina this very afternoon.’

  ‘And the shirts?’ said King Arthur.

  ‘I have heard from my lady Morgan le Fey that her lady-in-waiting sews the finest thread she has ever seen,’ said Lancelot.

  ‘The Lady Petaluna?’ said King Arthur as casually as he could.

  ‘Indeed, sire, a sweet young thing, only surpassed in beauty by her mistress,’ said Lancelot as casually as he could.

  The thought of Lady Petaluna making him a shirt sent the young King into several states at the same time. The first state was panic at the idea of someone as lovely as Petaluna pressing a tape-measure up against him. The second state was excitement at the idea of someone as lovely as Petaluna pressing a tape-measure up against him. The third state was embarrassment at the idea of someone as lovely as Petaluna pressing a tape-measure up against him.

  When he had been the humble kitchen boy, Romeo Crick, and had first set eyes on Morgan le Fey’s beautiful lady-in-waiting, Arthur had become very depressed. How could a mere oven-scraper ever hope to win the heart or even little finger of such a high-born lady? Now, though, he was the high-born one, quite a lot higher than the Lady Petaluna in fact. Now, there would be an endless line of desperate mothers introducing their daughters to him in the hope he would marry them and make them Queen. But the King knew in his heart that Lady Petaluna was his one true love.

  When word was sent for Lady Petaluna to come and make the King a beautiful shirt for his coronation, the thought of it sent the young girl into several states at the same time. The first state was panic at the thought of pressing a tape-measure up against someone as handsome and perfect and wonderful and unattainable as King Arthur. The second state was excitement at the thought of not so much as pressing a tape-measure up against someone as handsome and perfect and wonderful an unattainable as King Arthur, but of even being in the same room with him when he might not be wearing a shirt.

  When she had first set eyes on the King he had been the humble kitchen boy, Romeo Crick, and she had become very depressed. How would she ever be allowed to have a relationship with a mere oven-scraper, when she was such a high-born lady? Now, of course, he was far higher born that she was, so how could she ever hope to compete with the inevitable endless line of desperate mothers introducing their daughters to him in the hope he would marry them and make them Queen? She may have been a lady, but she was only a class-C lady with no wealth, not a true eldest-daughter-Princess-type class-A lady whose very undies would be made with thread of pure gold. Aft er all, her own mother had been only too happy to sell her to Morgan le Fey for a few coins and a set of tea towels depicting pictures of the Lizards, Frogs and Other Amphibians of Camelot.

  To add to both of their problems, both King Arthur and Lady Petaluna were extremely, incredibly, painfully shy.

  The shirt did not turn out well. It was not because Lady Petaluna couldn’t sew very well. She was the finest seamstress in the whole of Avalon. The problem was that because she was so shy she had kept her eyes shut all the time she had been measuring the King. Luckily, Morgan le Fey had given Lady Petaluna a maid of her own the week before, a young girl called Dave.6 Dave had read the measurements off the tape measure and written them down. Unfortunately Dave was too shy to admit she couldn’t read and had just made up the numbers. She couldn’t count either, so the numbers were even more inaccurate. Nor could she write so the piece of paper with the King’s measurement on was not so much a list of detailed figures as a lot of scribbles.7

  Lady Petaluna was too embarrassed to admit she had kept her eyes shut and too embarrassed to admit that she couldn’t read either, so she had made the shirt by guesswork, but love is blind so King Arthur thought the shirt was wonderful.

  ‘Isn’t it wonderful,’ he said to Lancelot. ‘And it fits me like a glove.’

  ‘Indeed, your majesty, but for whose hand?’

  Because Arthur was King no one else dared say it was dreadful. In fact, within two hours there were people wearing exact copies.

  ‘I think it is brilliant,’ said a Yuppie To The Court of King Arthur. ‘I cannot imagine why no one has ever thought of making one sleeve twice as long as the other before.’

  ‘Yes, and three sleeves, too,’ said another. ‘So clever for those embarrassing times when you lose a sleeve or dip your cuff in your soup.’

  ‘Which, with one sleeve so long, happens frequently,’ said a third.

  But poor Lady Petaluna knew the shirt was a disaster and lay on her bed in tears. Any slight hopes she might have had of the King falling in love with her were gone forever.

  If only there was a wise book called the Blue Sages or maybe the Yellow Sages that listed different types of places throughout the land that one might wish to go, she thought, I would find me a remote monastery and hie me there to spend the rest of my life as a nun wearing naught but sackcloth and eating ashes and gruel for every meal, even Christmas dinner.

  O woe is me, she thought too.

  I are totally full of woe, she added.

  ‘But my lady,’ said Dave, ‘the King thinks your shirt most wonderful.’

  ‘He can’t do,’ Petaluna sobbed. ‘He’s just saying it to be kind.’

  ‘Indeed, my lady, he says it to spare your feelings,’ said Dave.

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘And wouldst thou not wish him to be kind to thee?’

  ‘More than anything in the whole world,’ said Petaluna.

  ‘Well, my lady, your wish is granted,’ said Dave.

  Petaluna fainted.

  The day of the coronation finally arrived and everything was ready. Visitors had arrived from many lands, some coming by dragon, some by balloon, others by road or river or sea, a few by flying carpet or enchanted pumpkin. Two princes even arrived by parcel post. The whole world saw the coronation as the first day of a new and exciting era, more new and exciting than any new and exciting era had ever been before.

  Probably the least excited person was the young King himself. He was a modest boy and until recently had lived a simple uncomplicated life. Apart from being carried off as a newborn baby and rescued by two poor but honest peasants who had raised him as their own and then got killed leaving him alone with a pig called Geoffrey who had been struck by lightning leaving him alone with nothing but a very tasty dinner of pork and then being stuff ed into a sack and sold to the Cook at Camelot who had discovered that he was fireproof, the boy had led an uneventful life. Aft er all, being carried off and ending up in a sack with the taste of roast pork in your mouth was the sort of thing that happened to young children all the time in those days.

  ‘Do we have to have all this fuss?’ he kept asking Sir Lancelot.

  ‘Oh my lord, I know exactly how you feel and I do sympathise,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘but it is tradition and that is what life is all about. It is your royal duty.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Arthur, ‘but I’d as soon have a cup of tea and
a bun and just let everyone assume I was the King without all this pomp and ceremony.’

  ‘I know, my lord, but think of the positive things,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘Tell me if I am wrong, but I think you are quite sweet on my wonderful lady Morgan le Fey’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Petaluna, are you not?’

  ‘I am,’ said the King, ‘but please, good knight, promise you will tell no one.’

  ‘Of course not, sire.’

  ‘And I, in turn, will tell no one that you are in love with my sister.’

  ‘I, what? Oh umm,’ Sir Lancelot stammered and fainted.

  When he came to, he fell to his knees before the young King and begged forgiveness.

  ‘What for?’ said Arthur.

  ‘Well, my lord, the incredibly wonderful and divine and gorgeous and magnificent Lady Morgan le Fey is far above me,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘She is, after all, the daughter of a King and the sister of a King and I am but a humble knight. With your permission, sire, I will take me to the highest tower of Camelot and throw myself off onto the sharp rocks below that the vampires may come and devour my worthless remains.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ said Arthur. ‘This is not the Dark Ages. These are the Days of Yore – no one throws themselves off high towers any more. They simply take poison.’

  ‘Very well, sire. I shall take me to the chemist this very hour.’

  ‘Only joking,’ said the King. ‘You will do such thing. I may be only a child, but I’m pretty sure my sister is pretty keen on you too.’

  ‘I cannot believe that, my lord,’ said Sir Lancelot, who was used to women falling at his feet wherever he went, but still couldn’t believe the wonderful Morgan le Fey could care for him.

  ‘Believe it or not,’ said King Arthur, ‘I totally forbid you to kill yourself in any way at all and if you do, you will be punished.’

  ‘But sire, if I am dead, how could I be punished more?’

  ‘You will be brought back to life and killed in a really messy and painful way,’ said the King. ‘Now forget about all that and help me get ready, please.’

  ‘Indeed, sire,’ said Sir Lancelot without the slightest hint of sarcasm. ‘I am your majesty’s most devoted servant.’

  He really did mean it. He could sense greatness in this slight young boy standing before him. When he had first met Arthur, he had thought him so shy and uneducated that he would probably not survive long enough to make his coronation. There were any number of potential assassins in the world and the boy seemed like a sitting duck – not just a duck that was sitting there looking around at the world, but a duck that was sitting there fast asleep in a big ovenproof dish – but now there was a new air of kingliness about him.

  Arthur could sense this kingliness creeping into his soul. The timid child he had always been was being replaced by a new, stronger personality that would eventually make him the greatest ruler who had ever lived, and he had Sir Lancelot to thank for the transformation. A few months earlier, the boy would have slipped into the shadows and kept silent, but now, by ordering the greatest knight in the world to not kill himself and having the greatest knight in the world obeying him, he realised he had true power, not just the power of being the King, but a great power that had been asleep inside him since he had been born.

  When he had first been told he was the true King, Arthur hadn’t really believed it. Sure, he had the Mark of the King on his back to prove it, but part of him had wondered if it wasn’t just a coincidence, maybe a bruise or something. But now he knew in his heart that he really was the one true King of Avalon, even if he didn’t like purple tights, and he felt as if he had suddenly grown two feet taller.8

  The boy and the knight felt a strong bond unite them. It was an unspoken bond because men don’t talk about that sort of thing, but it was there and they both knew it. Now he was ready for his coronation.

  As Sir Lancelot led the young King out into the vast courtyard in the centre of Camelot, Merlin saw instantly the change that had come over the boy. Even in his three-armed disaster of a shirt, he walked with a regal air he had not had a few hours earlier. It had been Merlin who had appointed Sir Lancelot to take the boy under his wing and the old wizard knew he had made the right choice.

  The Days of Yore would go down in history as the Days of Yore and be remembered as the time when Avalon achieved a greatness it had only dreamt of until now.

  All will be well in the world, Merlin thought. Though of course, having achieved its ultimate greatness, where is there to go but down?

  But Merlin was like that. He always saw the worst-case scenario. In his eyes the glass was less than half full and there were dirty brown things floating in it.

  ‘I am not a pessimist,’ he would say when people told him he was a pessimist. ‘I am a realist. I just like to be prepared for every possible situation.’

  Which of course he wasn’t, otherwise he would know that Princess Floridian was determined to find Excalibur and take over the world.9

  The Great Throne of Kings was the biggest chair that had ever been made. In the Dark Ages the Kings had been great big lumpy people. That was how they had become King, by sitting on all their enemies until they were overcome with dead. But over the last few generations, in the sort of grey space between the Dark Ages ending and the Days of Yore beginning, the Kings had got smaller. They had stopped sitting on people, except for fun that is, and gone over to the hereditary system where the new King did not have to be stronger or cleverer or have any qualifications at all to become King.10 All he had to do now was be the son of the existing King.

  Being a skinny boy of eleven, King Arthur couldn’t actually climb up onto the throne so there was a short delay while a peasant was fetched, scrubbed down and made to lie on the ground in front of the throne. Arthur still couldn’t reach and it took a pile of seven peasants neatly piled up to form a small staircase before he could finally clamber up onto the big red cushion.

  It hadn’t just been the Kings who had got smaller. So had everyone else. By the time they had set everything up so the Archbishop and his two assistants and the Lord Chamberlain were in place, there was a pile of forty-two peasants scattered around the throne. There had been frantic begging and arm-waving when volunteers had been called for to form the human stage. It wasn’t just the luxury of being scrubbed down, a luxury most peasants could only dream of, or the promise of three potatoes every single week forever,11 but the honour of serving their new King in such a proud and noble way.

  As the crowd looked on in awed silence, the Archbishop took the Great Crown of Avalon and placed it on Arthur’s head. Being so small, the crown not only fell right past his head, it actually slipped down over his shoulders, pinning his arms to his sides. Two handmaidens were called to stand behind the new King, holding up the crown so it looked like it was sitting in the right place.

  ‘Blah, blah, blah, yea, verily blah, blah, blah,’ droned the Archbishop.

  No one was actually listening to a single word he was saying, but every time he paused for breath, the crowd let out a great cheer.

  ‘Blah, blah, blah, pronounce you King,’ the Archbishop said and fell to his knees to kiss the King’s hand.

  ‘Great,’ said Arthur. ‘Can we start the party now?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ whimpered the two handmaidens, whose arms were burning with pain.

  Arthur stood up, the peasants rearranged themselves and he climbed down to the ground.

  King Arthur and all his top guests sat in a semicircle eating pleasant pheasant sandwiches and Special Royal Ginger Beer while a string of entertainers entertained them. First off was –

  12

  ‘I say, I say, I say, a very funny thing happened to me on my way here today,’ said the Jester. ‘No seriously, it did. We was coming here on the Chelmsford Stage when we was held up by highwaymen. No, hold on. I’ll start again. I say, I say, I say, a very scary thing happened to me on my way here today, No, no, don’t laugh.’

  No one did.

&n
bsp; ‘Well, I say highwaymen, but really they was highway children, a weedy little boy and a weedy little dragon. No, missus, I kid you not. And they had, wait for it, they had a big lumbering potato with them who upturned the stagecoach and robbed us. Put all our valuables in a bucket and made off with them. Actually, now I think back, it wasn’t very funny thing at all. It was really scary and I was really frightened. No, I mean, don’t laugh.’

  Everyone did.

  ‘No, no,’ said Malmsley as the post-traumatic shock began to take effect. ‘Don’t laugh.’

  Everyone laughed and then they stopped, took big swigs of ginger beer and threw pleasant pheasant sandwich crusts at the sad figure of the Court Jester who was now weeping and shaking uncontrollably.

  Then they laughed a lot more.

  Malmsley fell down and curled up into a sobbing, shivering ball on the floor.

  Everyone laughed and laughed, took a deep breath and laughed some more. Then they began throwing money.

  ‘No, I mean, no, oops, oh dear,’ cried Malmsley, wetting himself.

  More laughter followed by lots and lots of money, so much money that soon the jester was buried in it.

  Ooo-er, Malmsley, old chap, that went down well, he thought, and who would have thought a huge pile of cash could lift s one’s spirits so and actually cure post-traumatic shock.

  He got to his feet and took a great bow which brought loud cheers and even more money. At the end of the day, all the money thrown at him plus his performing fee minus the tiny bit of cash the highwaymen had stolen meant he was now quite rich and had had three offers of marriage. Considering the trouble he’d been having paying his rent, Malmsley Cohen was a happy man. Over the ensuing years he would incorporate the sobbing and falling over into his act, until he ended up very rich and happily married to three beautiful women who were even richer.13

  ‘This young dragon,’ said Spikeweed, taking Malmsley to one side, ‘you didn’t happen to catch his name, did you?’