Excalibur (3 page)

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.

‘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?'

‘I did indeed, sir,' said the jester.

‘Well, good sir, if you will tell me the name,' said Spikeweed, knowing what the answer would be, ‘I will be happy to fly you and your money safely back to your home.'

‘Bloat,' said Malmsley. ‘The boy called him Bloat.'

‘And the boy's name,' said Morgan le Fey, who had been listening to the conversation. ‘I don't suppose you got that, did you?'

‘I did indeed, my lady,' said Malmsley, ‘though I say I did, but it could just be what the young dragon called him. I mean, Brat isn't a real name, is it?'

‘Oh yes it is,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘It is indeed.'

The second act was –

Armoire was built like a small castle, not a tall elegant castle with pointy spires, but a square block with narrow slit windows and one very small door. While his assistants set up his equipment, Armoire strangled
five sets of bagpipes with his bare hands.

Once everything was set, Armoire climbed up a wobbly bamboo tower until he was standing one hundred feet above a very sharp, pointy rock that had been placed directly beneath him. Then a beautiful assistant climbed the tower to blindfold him while two male assistants followed her up carrying four donkeys.

When all was ready, Armoire walked out to the end of a narrow plank, caught the four donkeys and began to juggle them.

Even though the dragons had made a peace treaty with the humans, there were a few distant dragon cousins who had come to Avalon for the coronation, who thought life had become quite dull now they were not setting fire to things and attacking Noble Knights. Two of these young dragons were hiding on the roof of a tall tower and as Armoire began to juggle, they began to blow. There were no flames, just big gusts of hot wind and these big gusts of hot wind were aimed right at Armoire's bamboo tower.

The whole structure began to move, very slightly at first, but as the dragons blew harder, it gathered momentum until it was swaying backwards and
forwards like the pendulum of a big clock. Some of the knots holding the whole thing together became untied and gradually all the string began to unravel.

Armoire's three assistants scrambled back down to the ground as the entire structure began to come to bits. Everyone, including the King and his party, fled as bamboo began to rain down round them.

The donkeys looked terrified, not the normal everyday-looking terrified that being juggled a hundred feet up in the air brings, but the special kind of terrified brought by the realisation that they were probably all about to become very flat rugs on the rocks below.

Being blindfolded, Armoire didn't realise any of this was happening. Of course, he could feel the tower swaying backward and forwards, but he though it was just happening inside his head and tummy because of the powerful curried archaeopteryx he had eaten for dinner the night before. All he knew was that he couldn't hear anyone cheering, because they had run away out of earshot, and it made him very upset.

I'll show them
, he thought, and in the split second when all four donkeys were in the air, he began to do a strip tease while singing the Belgian National Anthem
in such a deep booming voice that it made the entire bamboo scaffold vibrate as well as sway violently at exactly the right pitch to make all the remaining bits of string come untied.

‘I think I can say, without fear of contradiction,' said Merlin as everyone peered out of the castle windows to see what was going to happen, ‘I think I can say, it will end in tears.'

Unbelievably, it didn't.

The wind gave one almighty gust and the whole construction – the bamboo, the string, Armoire with his trousers half off and the four donkeys – was lift ed into the air, carried over the castle walls and dumped into the lake.

And yet there was even more to come. As the bamboo and string fell towards the lake the wind whipped it up and down and threw it around until it all wove itself into an unsinkable raft with Armoire and three of the donkeys in the middle of it.
¹⁴

The applause was staggering, probably the loudest noise ever heard anywhere in the whole world. A boat was dispatched to tow the raft ashore. Before the boat reached them, the three donkeys panicked and threw themselves into the water. Armoire, who still had his blindfold on, hadn't the faintest idea what had happened, but the applause told him it must have gone fairly well. When his beautiful assistant told him what
had
happened, he fainted.

‘That is the most amazing act I have ever seen in my life,' said King Arthur when Armoire regained consciousness.

This didn't really mean much, because up until then the only act he had ever seen had been Malmsley Cohen.

‘I hereby dub thee Lord Armoire Of The Scaffolding and grant you seventeen acres of freehold land, five potatoes a week and a quart of ale every fortnight.'

Anything that followed Armoire's act was bound to be an anti-climax. The fire-eaters ate not just their fire, but the entire pizza oven down the last brick, and barely raised a cheer.

Even –

failed to excite the audience. The show's high point, a life-size model of Athene the Goddess of Love made entirely out of the finest cheddar cheese, totally failed to excite them. Even when a huge flock of magpies swooped down and ate it they were bored. All they could think of was the amazing Armoire and his donkeys flying through the air towards the lake. Only when the magpies, smelling cheese on the Myth Buskers' fingers, actually pecked them to death and ate them did they show any signs of interest.

‘That was a bit violent,' said a visiting Queen, but it was the Days of Yore, when being pecked to death by cheese-crazed animals happened all the time.

‘You should have been around in the Dark Ages,' said her husband, King Mozzarella. ‘We had exploding cheese in those days. Everyone got covered in it. It was wonderful except for the bits of Myth Busker that kept getting caught in your teeth.'