Excalibur (8 page)

But as she began to say more, an enormous flash of water shot out of the pipe followed by Scraper.

‘Brilliant way to get down,' he said with a grin. ‘Just flushed meself.'

‘So it's all nice and clean?' said the Princess. ‘We can go up?'

‘Oh yes,' said Scraper. ‘Queen could eat her dinner off toilet pipe.'

One by one they all wriggled up the pipe with Scraper at the back in case any of the others lost their grip and slipped down. With potato boy there they would have something soft to land on and not fall all the way down to the bottom.

One by one they climbed out of the toilet bowl, except Scraper, who could only get his arm up into the room.

‘Well, we can either flush him down again or smash the lavatory and get him out,' said Bloat.

‘I think we should smash it,' said Princess Floridian, ‘but before we do, can you boys leave the room while I use it?'

‘What about Scraper?' said Bloat. ‘I think we should warn him.'

‘Scraper, can you hear me?' the Princess shouted.

‘Yes.'

‘Have you got your bucket?'

‘Of course I have.'

‘Well, put it on your head.'

‘Why?'

‘You'll see.'

‘Bukkit might get stuck again,' said Scraper.

The Princess explained why and Scraper agreed that getting his head stuck in his bucket was probably the nicer option.

 

 

‘Why would they go to the Dragon Valley?' said Sir Lancelot as they circled around on Susan's back. ‘The little dragon's parents will be looking out for him.'

‘Exactly,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘So that means they are going to hide in the last place they think we would look for them.'

‘They've gone into that cave,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘So all we have to do is fly down there and grab them.'

‘I think not. I think that is the cave with the tunnel at the back that leads into the castle drains. I don't think they're going to hide in the Dragon Valley. I think they are planning to hide in Camelot itself.'

‘That is brilliant,' said Lancelot. ‘I know they are highwaymen and all that and we want to capture them, but what a brilliant bit of strategy, hiding not so much under our noses as right up our noses.'

‘Quite,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Too bloody clever by half. There are over a hundred drains going down into the sewers. It could take weeks to find them.'

‘We'll place guards in the cave,' she added, ‘but I
think once they get into the castle they'll find another way to get in and out.'

Morgan le Fey had been an independent free-thinker all her life. Someone only had to tell her not to do something for her to want to do it. Her parents and teachers had thought this would be the easiest way to get her to do something
they
wanted her to do, but which
she
didn't want to do. However, the Princess was far too clever for that and usually beat them at their own game. If there was something she wanted to do, maybe stay out late to watch a Wild Minstrel sing rude songs, then she would first of all pretend it was the last thing in the world she would ever want and then make her guardians believe that being made to do it would actually be really, really good for her education.

This was what is known as a win, win, win situation because:

Part of her rebellion had been to go to places she was specifically told not to go to. This included all of the Remote Wing of Camelot, a collection of corridors and towers that had been almost deserted since the Terrible Hauntings And Turning Into Frogs that had taken place two hundred and fifty years before.

The Terrible Hauntings And Turning Into Frogs had never happened. The whole thing had been created by Merlin's grandmother to get some peace and quiet. She had got so fed up with people bothering her all day with requests for spells and potions to cure everything from The Purple Plague to Belgian Ague With Added Sauce that she had begun to tell stories of terrifying ghosts that had started appearing in the Remote Wing.

This had confused the people living in the Remote Wing, which in those days had been known
as the remote wing and had been a peaceful, laid-back sort of place. They had never seen a single ghost. So Merlin's grandmother began wandering around at night covered in a white sheet, wailing painfully and chucking lots of frogs about. This had been back in the Dark Ages and in those days people had been very gullible and superstitious.
³⁷
In no time at all the remote wing was deserted because everyone living there had fled.

Once they had all gone, Merlin's grandmother, Grannivere, moved in and no one bothered her ever again. She gradually faded from everyone's memory and if her name cropped up now, it was assumed that she had died a long, long time ago. Aft er all, Merlin himself was very, very old and his mother Mummivere had died many years before. So his granny must have died long, long ago.

She hadn't.

And the one and only person who knew she was still alive was Morgan le Fey, because she was the one and only person who had been brave enough to venture
into the Remote Wing since it had been abandoned.
³⁸
She had been all over the Remote Wing because she had been told it was the most dangerous place in the whole world and she must never, never go anywhere near it.

‘And if I was them that's where I would go and hide,' she said.

‘If that's the case,' said Sir Lancelot, ‘they are unassailable.'

‘No they're not,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Well, it won't matter anyway. Everyone knows the Remote Wing is the most dangerous place in the whole world and no one must ever, ever go anywhere near it,' said the brave and fearless knight.

‘That's just a myth.'

‘No, no, it's not,' said Lancelot. ‘Everyone knows it is a terrifying place that no one ever comes back from because they have been haunted to death by big white ghosts and ferocious frogs.'

‘How long have you lived at Camelot?'

‘Five years,' said Sir Lancelot, ‘though I was away
doing noble deeds for four years, eleven months and three weeks.'

‘I was born here,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘There is not a single room that I have not been to. Apart from the Secret and Hidden Rooms that I have not visited because they are secret and hidden and may not actually exist, but I have been all over Camelot including the Remote Wing, into every room and corridor and cupboard lots and lots of times. Well, I've only been into the cupboards once, but I've been into the corridors and rooms tons of times.'

‘And the frogs didn't get you?'

‘Does it look like they did?'

‘It must be because you are a royal Princess. I expect the great and wise Merlin gave you a special protection spell when you were born,' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Or,' said Morgan le Fey, ‘and this is just a suggestion based on the fact I've been there lots and lots of times, there are no frogs.'

‘But…'

‘Or ghosts.'

‘But…'

‘Not a single one. And there is someone living
there,' said the Princess. ‘Someone who will not be at all pleased to find she has visitors.'

‘Who?'

‘Grannivere, Merlin's grandmother.'

Sir Lancelot thought about it. He began to wonder if Morgan le Fey had maybe drunk too much strange mushroom tea that morning and it was affecting her brain. He hoped that was the case.

Otherwise
, he thought,
I have fallen in love with a looney
.

‘But she would have to be over two hundred years old,' said Lancelot.

‘Two hundred and eighty-seven, to be precise,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Her birthday was last Thursday. I made her a cake.'

Now Sir Lancelot knew he was in love with a crazy person.

‘OK,' he said. ‘Susan, I think we should go back to the castle now.'

Even Susan thought Morgan le Fey was probably mad. She had flown past the Remote Wing, at a safe distance, quite a few times and had never seen any sign of life apart from thick cobwebs over the windows.

‘But then again, if there are giant frogs there,' Susan said out loud before she could stop herself, ‘there wouldn't be any cobwebs because the frogs would have eaten all the spiders.'

‘Did that horse just speak?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Sorry,' said Susan. ‘Didn't mean to startle you.'

OMW
,
³⁹
thought the Princess,
I have fallen in love with a strange man who has a mad talking horse
.

Luckily, Susan was wearing her self-righting saddle, the one with the velvet seatbelts, otherwise Morgan le Fey would have fallen off with surprise. Nevertheless Susan flew back to Camelot as quickly as possible.

There were seventy-four towers in the Remote Wing and some of them were more than twenty-three stories high. To search all of them would take ages.

‘And of course if they got any idea we were looking for them, they could just keep moving around so we'd never find them,' Morgan le Fey. ‘What we need is a spy.'

‘I could fly around and look through the windows,' said Susan.

‘Yes. I think a big flying horse looking in the window at them might make them a bit suspicious.'

‘Well, I could pretend I hadn't seen them.'

‘Umm, that's one option,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘But I think we need someone a bit smaller.'

‘Or someone disguised as something else,' Sir Lancelot suggested.

‘Yes, you could tie feathers all over me and I could pretend I was a bird,' said Susan.

‘I think you'll find most birds weigh quite a bit less than a thousand kilos,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘Probably about nine hundred and ninety-nine kilos less.'

‘I wasn't thinking of feathers,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘I was thinking of a bit of trompe l'oeil.'

‘I'm not being covered in dead fish,' said Susan.

‘It means trick of the eye,' said Lancelot. ‘I was thinking of painting you to look like a big cloud.'

Morgan le Fey went to the window and blew her vampire whistle. When Fenestra arrived she explained the situation. How they'd seen the runaways going into the dragon's cave and where she thought they were probably headed. She told the vampire that with a bit
of luck she could be in for a nice bit of bloodsucking quite soon, once they could find out exactly which tower they had taken refuge in.

‘I have the perfect solution,' said the vampire. ‘My nephew Fissure. He's only eight years old and he's so small for his age you could easily mistake him for a crow. Give him a couple of plump rats to suck dry and he'll fly round every tower in Camelot, not just the ones in the Remote Wing.

‘Because, I know you think that's where they might be,' Fenestra continued, ‘but I'm not so sure. For a start they might think that you might think that's where they would probably go, so they won't. And secondly, they probably know all the myths about the Remote Wing and might be too scared to go there.'

‘You could be right, but Brat has been there before,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘To go to the lavatory when the young dragons were blowing bubbles at him.'
⁴⁰

While the Princess sent down to the kitchens for a pair of plump fresh rats, Fenestra flew back to her tower to fetch Fissure. The young vampire had never
seen two plump fresh rats at the same time before and his eyes lit up like small fires. He began to drool and tremble in anticipation and would have eaten his own mother if he'd been asked to.
⁴¹

‘You can drain one rat now,' said the old vampire, ‘and have the other one when you find them.'

‘And if you find them nice and quickly, you might even get a third rat too,' Morgan le Fey added.

‘Wow, I'll be as quick as lightning,' said Fissure, though it sounded more like: ‘Mmmmmm urggh ooh yummmmm,' because he had both fangs in a rat's neck.

The young vampire flew off towards the Remote Wing. From where she stood at the window, Morgan le Fey could just make him out as a tiny black dot flying round and round the towers like an eccentric corkscrew as he spiralled down from the top windows to the bottom. He shot round a dozen towers in less
than five minute and then vanished. He flew round the back of the farthest tower to begin the corkscrew, but didn't reappear.

‘I wish someone would invent a long cardboard tube with a bumpy glass bit at each end that would make things that are a long way away look as if they were much nearer,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘No one would buy anything like that,' said Sir Lancelot.

‘I just wish someone would invent cardboard,' said the vampire. ‘At least that would be a start.'
⁴²

‘I think my mother did invent cardboard,' said Sir Lancelot, who had not read footnote 34, ‘but she called it an omelette.'

‘They could call it a muchcloserscope,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘I think omelette sounds better,' said Lancelot.

‘I hope he's all right,' said the vampire when her nephew still had not reappeared ten minutes later.

I hope he's not
, thought the second rat.