The Forest of Adventures (#1 of The Knight Trilogy) (13 page)

“Not what you expected
then?”

“Not really.”

It was the exact opposite to my
home with its chaotic clutter and books spilling out everywhere,
the piles of newspapers and Martha’s odd collection of items and
random artefacts. The light and the peace of this house made me
feel incredibly comfortable and completely at home.

Having padded through most of
the house except for Vivien’s private quarters, we finally came to
the bit that I’d been desperate to see right from our arrival; the
castle turret. A vast, ancient wooden door led off from the living
room area and in the surroundings it almost looked like it was an
exhibition piece itself, as if randomly hung on a gallery wall. I
felt like Alice about to enter into wonderland.

Blake danced in front of it,
waving his arms around and mimicking some over enthusiastic
coach-trip guide, “And the last part of our tour takes us to
Camelotpark - theme park of all that is medieval and mystical.
Prepare to be transported into a magical world.”

He unlatched the door and swung
it open, taking a flourishing bow. His mockery seemed an attempt to
cover up some level of embarrassment. I walked into the large
circular room that was the same size as the turret’s footprint. The
wooden floor looked like a giant dartboard with sections painted in
a pattern of green, red, blue and white that all lead to a central
point; each one containing a heraldic image. The colours were worn
and faded with age; flakes of paint had come away with the
footfalls of many feet. Realisation and excitement tumbled over
me,

“Blake, is this –is this what I
think it is? It isn’t is it? That isn’t possible! No it can’t be!”
I gushed.

Blake laughed, “If you let me
get a word in edge ways, I might be able to answer you.”

“Noooo!” I said, still unable
to contain my own childlike joy.

“Yes it is - King Arthur’s
round table which seats one hundred and fifty of his most trusted
knights of The Realm. Each has his own place marked by his family
crest. It’s been placed on the floor for no other reason that we
couldn’t find a room big enough and, well, standing meetings are
all the corporate rage at the moment,” he joked.

“Couldn’t somebody have
magicked a bigger room?” I asked, partly serious.

“Magic doesn’t quite work like
that.”

Blake was clearly amused by my
simplistic understanding of his world.

“So Arthur. He’s not
still…”

“No. He died many hundreds of
years ago.”

“So, if Arthur is dead who’s in
charge of The Realm now?”

“We kind of work on the
principles of a Senate now but The Realm is so tightly structured
and coded that day to day it sort of runs itself. There are very
few real decisions to make and progress isn’t really
encouraged.”

“Doesn’t it make it kind of
anarchic? I mean how does The Realm stop its people from doing
whatever they like?”

“The old codes are very simple
and they’ve been unchanged for nearly a thousand years. In The
Realm the existence of God and the ideas of good and evil are
accepted by The Realm as part of the natural structure of God’s
universe. There is good and there is evil and in nearly all cases
we believe that God will determine the fate of those that commit
wrong. Because of this very few members commit wrong.”

“So you’re saying that by a
mixture of free will and a fear of God most of its members work for
the good of The Realm.” I asked incredulously.

I thought about how different
this was from our world, where most people seemed driven, less for
a common good and more about themselves.

“Mostly it works that way.
However, there’s a small elite group within the Realm that ensure
that things never get too out of hand, especially with our more
magical members of The Realm. They’re a very old order of knights
called the Temple Knights, more commonly known by your world as the
Knights Templar. They’re headed by a rather old and eccentric
fellow called Bertram Whitecastle.”

Blake stepped over and leant in
close, preparing to whisper a secret. His breath whispered across
the nape of my neck,

“There’s a rumour within The
Realm that he once found the Holy Grail and he’s now an immortal.”
He laughed in obvious disbelief and pulled away already striding
off towards the next part of the tour shouting over his shoulder,
“I’ve only met him once when he came to my coming of age ceremony.
He looked like a tortoise and didn’t look very immortal to me. Mind
it must be a real pain to find the answer to eternal life when you
already look half dead; so much better to become immortal when
you’re young and beautiful like me.” He smiled and spun round
flamboyantly before continuing, “They very rarely have a cause to
get involved. They mostly keep themselves to themselves by running
their own little country.”

“Country? - A real country?
Where? Surely if they have a country everybody would know about
it.” I asked with mounting excitement.

“You do. Its a little country
called Switzerland.” He laughed as if he had naughtily revealed a
not-so-secret secret.

“Switzerland?” I asked, still
not really understanding what he was saying.

“Think about it. The best-kept
secrets are the ones that make themselves the most obvious. What’s
Switzerland famous for?”

“I don’t know - chocolate?” I
shrugged, “Cuckoo clocks?”

“Well, I suppose so,” he
smiled, “but I was thinking more along the lines of banking, The
Red Cross, neutrality at all costs, being stupidly wealthy with no
real industry or trade. Haven’t you ever how that could be?”

“No. Strangely not! European
economics aren’t really part of my everyday interest,” I replied
sarcastically shaking my head to show that I was still not clear
how this linked to the Knights Templar.

“Well the Knight’s Templar were
the very first banks, absurdly rich, famously neutral between the
Christian and Arabic world in order to try and establish peace
after the crusades and if that doesn’t convince you, then just
think about their national flag. Doesn’t it remind you of
something?” He pulled his scarf out from his pocket and flapped it
open to reveal a very tattered old St. Georges flag; the red cross
blood red against the white background.

“Noo! It can’t be.” I said with
genuine incredulity. “After all if it was true we would know about
it. Dan Brown would have
exposed
it in one of his novels.”
We both laughed filling the space.

“They’ve surrounded themselves
in mystery but most people of The Realm are afraid of them. In the
old days they were on the front line of fighting to protect The
Realm, but we live in a time of relative peace. The Realm tends to
operate more through infiltration of your Real World diplomacy and
education channels these days; ambassadors, diplomats, scientists,
MI5, teachers, Real World Government members… Prime ministers.” He
smiled cheekily, raising an eyebrow.

“This is ridiculous. No secret
this big could ever have been kept a secret for so long.” I looked
back down at the floor. “Are we just going to walk over this?” I
asked, pointing down at the table, “It just seems a little -
sacrilegious I suppose.”

“You should see the battering
it gets when there’s a disagreement. I really wouldn’t worry. It’s
just a table; it’s the idea that’s indestructible.” He looked
genuinely puzzled by my reverence. “Shall we go on?”

I couldn’t help tiptoeing over
the table as if it were made of glass rather than solid oak. Blake
looked back over his shoulder at me and I could tell from the
involuntary nod of his head that he thought I was a sandwich short
of a picnic.

The tower had three floors, the
second floor being a kind of study which also housed a couch large
enough to sleep on. The room reminded me of Martha’s spaces at
home; books and other general stuff was spread everywhere.

“This is my room. I escape here
when the house gets too crowded. Vivien likes entertaining and the
house sometimes gets a little… over exciting. I get left in peace
here.”

He said this as though,
somehow, this element of his life was burdensome and not really
wanted.

“Anyway, onwards and upwards to
the reliquary!” he said holding out his hand behind him.

The stone stairs were very
narrow and steep. When we came to the top of them, we were faced
with a thick metal door which would have been more at home in a
state of the art bank vault. A large wheel handle sat in the middle
and before he began turning it, Blake pushed his finger onto the
biometric key pad which caused the door to let out a loud hiss as
if it were a dragon disturbed in sleep. Metal locker boxes lined
the room, each one with its own keypad and scanner. In the middle
was a long wooden table on which lay several pairs of white cotton
gloves and a book stand. I could hear a CCTV camera whirring and
sweeping the room.

“Impressive!” I exclaimed
without the slightest hint of irony. “These objects must be very
valuable; that or dangerous!”

“They’re very much both. So
what do you want to see?” he asked excitedly.

“Well, what you got? You
decide. Surprise me!”

Once again, I was over excited
and also not quite believing that I wasn’t caught up in some weird
dream.

“How about a piece of the holy
manger and we’ll go on from there.” He almost sounded concerned as
if this might somehow not be interesting enough.

I stood dumbfounded. Where else
was there to go on to? My head started to spin and I heard a clear
voice telling me that it was time to wake up, to stop dreaming. But
rather than wake in my own bed, Blake handed me a pair of cotton
gloves.

“Sorry about these, not exactly
a fashion statement are they, its just…”

“No, of course gloves should be
worn!” I exclaimed.

The thought of holding holy and
magical relics in my hand made me feel almost dizzy with nerves. I
was surprised at my sense of awe and wonder. I’d always assumed
that the story of Jesus was a fairytale, just as Little Red Riding
Hood and Sleeping Beauty were but here was Blake about to hand over
to me relics that I was suddenly and completely in no doubt were
genuine. I asked if I could sit down, terrified that I might drop
something.

The afternoon went by rapidly
as Blake opened up box after box. Most were books and swords, but
some where more curious objects like a hand held looking-glass that
belonged to Guinevere and a quill pen that belonged to Merlin. I
was shocked back into the real world by the ringing of my mobile
and the realisation that I hadn’t phoned Mum. I looked at my watch
and to my astonishment it was already past five. She was trying not
too sound upset but I could tell that she was.

After Mum’s guilt tripping
call, Blake took me home, refusing the offer of a cup of tea and
leaving me and Mum alone to spend the whole evening circulating
around each other as natural as planets orbiting the solar system
but sadly just as distant. A great wall had come between us and
neither of us was sure how to go about pulling it down.

18. ATOMIC

The days slipped into weeks and
before we knew it the Spring Ball was only a matter of weeks away.
As
The Space Cadets
were to be the main band, Joe and Matt
had taken to living in the music department’s practice rooms in
preparation, leaving the girls far too much unoccupied time on
their hands, which they had filled with an almost obsessive
interest in dress-shoe combinations and balloon colour schemes.

Their slightly crazed event
planning left me exhausted and so I’d taken to seeking refuge in
the library at lunchtime on the pretext of English coursework
research. It was the oldest part of the school and had remained
unchanged, apart from the installation of some Macs in the far
corner, since the Victorian birth date of the school; a time when
libraries were still seen as something sacred and built in the
fashion of churches. The smell of wax polish and book-dust mingled
with the strong black coffee of the librarian’s personal
percolator.

It was rumoured Mrs Minerva was
as old as the library itself and when we were in lower school we
had all believed she was a witch. A rumour that wasn’t helped by
the fact that she often wore crazy coloured tights with her black
boots and her iron grey hair looked like it had never seen a brush.
As we got older and actually braved her out, we discovered she was
really quite lovely… even if she did run the place like a silent
military campaign. Mrs Minerva’s ‘SSSHHH!’ rule suited me fine as
it gave me the perfect conditions for concentrating on my gorgeous
study partner.

Blake always rolled his sleeves
up to work. Leaning his head on his upturned palm, he had this
habit of tapping his pen on his book as if even though his mind was
a hundred percent focused, his body was desperate to go and do
something else. Every now and then he’d push his hair from his
forehead; a gesture at once boy-like and flirtatious. Whilst we
were here studying in private he’d wear glasses which made me smile
because he never wore them in class. It amused me that he had this
insecurity, but I didn’t tease him over it in case he stopped
wearing them. For some inexplicable reason, I found him amazingly
hot in them. Maybe it was a Clark Kent – Superman thing going
on.

Because of my sudden keenness
in my
studies
it felt like I’d started to drift apart from
the old gang and I missed them, which is why when Blake was out on
a history field trip and I went to grab lunch in the canteen, I was
pleased that Daisy made a special effort to seek me out.

The day was wet and cold and
the canteen packed. Our ‘usual’ table was full and so being just
Daisy and me, we pushed our way through the crowds of lower school
students and took a table right in the corner of the room; managing
to find a small oasis of privacy behind one of the notice
boards.