Excalibur (5 page)

‘As you can see, it has taken him unawares and turned him into a gibbering idiot,' said Grimethorpe.

Morgan le Fey, who had also not been in love
before she had met Sir Lancelot, was a girl, so she knew all about all that love stuff and was not swooning. Her heart, however, was beating dangerously fast because she was sure the person Lancelot had fallen in love with could not be her. She began to feel faint.

‘I see you are feeling faint, my lady,' said Grimethorpe. ‘If I am not mistaken, you too are in love and as someone who has seen more troths plighted than you've had hot dinners, I can tell it is my master who is the object of your heart's desire. Well, let me put you out of your misery, my lady. You are the one my master loves. Were he conscious, he would probably be plighting his troth this very moment.'

Morgan le Fey fainted.

‘Ah,' said Grimethorpe. ‘Better go and get some more smelling salts.'

 

 

‘Call this a secret hideout?' said Princess Floridian. ‘It's pathetic. And if any one of you pushes me once more or even touches any bit of me with the tiniest tip of your finger, you will be coughing up your kneecaps.'

‘Hey, no, I mean, umm,' said Scraper, who had managed against all the odds to find his way back to the cave. ‘You are our prisoner. You are not supposed to talk to us like that.'

‘Listen, potato boy, you come one step nearer and I'll kick your bucket down the mountain.'

‘I don't think so, missy,' said Brat. ‘We're in charge. We tell you what to do.'

‘Don't be pathetic.'

‘We've got a gun,' said Bloat, ‘and we're not afraid to use it.'

‘Go on then,' said Princess Floridian.

‘Well, I can't,' said Bloat. ‘ 'Cause I ain't got no thumbs, but our noble leader, the real King Arthur, he could use it.'

‘Yeah,' said Brat. ‘I'm living on the edge, I am, so don't mess with me.'

‘Living on the edge, living on the edge? More like living in a hedge. You're pathetic and everyone knows you are no more the real King than potato boy here.'

‘Well, we managed to kidnap you.'

‘No you didn't, you pathetic little wimp. I ran away because I thought it would be more fun than going to a boring wedding,' said the Princess.

‘Well, you're our prisoner now,' said Bloat.

‘No I'm not. I can just walk down to the castle whenever I want.'

‘Just you try it,' said Brat.

The Princess stood up and walked out of the cave.

‘No, no, listen,' said Bloat. ‘I mean, how do you think you'll find your way down then, eh?'

‘What, you mean, apart from the fact I can see the castle from here and the footpath with a sign saying “This way to Camelot”?' said Princess Floridian.

‘Yeah, well umm…' Brat began.

‘And,' the Princess continued, ‘if this place is so secret and hard to find, how did potato boy find his way back here?'

‘I just asked someone,' said Scraper, ‘and they showed me the signpost what I followed.'

‘Signpost?'

‘Yes, the one at the bottom of the path that says “Secret Hideout six hundred metres ahead, first on the left”.'

‘Do you honestly expect any of us to believe that you can read?' said Princess Floridian.

‘No, well, but someone read it to me,' said Scraper.

‘Do you honestly expect any of us to believe that you can remember ten words?' said Princess Floridian.

‘Are you saying I am stupid?'

‘Well, actually, I don't need to. You just did,' said the Princess. ‘Now, summing up, you are basically the dumbest highwaymen ever who couldn't hold up your own trousers, never mind a stagecoach, and your secret hideout is about as well hidden as Old Mrs Craftwork's World Famous Tripe & Onions Tearooms, which are the most famous and most visited tearooms in the whole world and ninety-seven per cent of the population know exactly how to get to them.'

‘We did hold up a stagecoach,' said Brat, turning red as his trousers fell down, ‘and we got a gun and some money and a very big huge shiny red thing.'

‘It's a ruby,' said Princess Floridian. ‘The one my
father was going to give to King Arthur as a coronation present. You will give it to me now.'

‘No,' said Brat. ‘It's mine.'

The Princess took hold of Brat's ear and twisted it until he started to cry. He fell to his knees and as he looked up at the Princess she dribbled in his face. She wanted to spit on him, but being a Princess she had to remain dignified and dribbling could always be looked upon as maybe being an accident. Brat handed over the ruby.

‘Do you know how much this is worth?' said the Princess.

‘Don't care,' said Brat, who was having the biggest sulk he had ever had and he had had mega sulks when he had been King.

‘Ten million gold crowns.'

Brat fainted. So did Bloat. Scraper just sat there with his mouth hanging open, which it had been doing ever since the Princess had threatened his beloved bucket.

‘I will tell you what we are doing to do,' said the Princess. ‘We are going to leave here and find a proper secret hideout that is actually secret and not such a
long hard climb halfway up a mountain and hasn't got stuff that looks like snot running down the walls. Then we are going to get properly organised and do some proper highway robbery, kidnapping, looting and pillaging and make us some serious money.'

‘You're not in charge,' Brat snivelled. ‘I am. I am the proper King Arthur and I should be the King of Everywhere.'

‘Well, that's not going to happen is it, Mister King of Nowhere?' said the Princess. ‘So now you've got two choices. You will either do what I say and I will be in charge or I will drag, throw and drop you down this mountain, take you back to Camelot and claim a huge reward. You will be thrown into the deepest dungeon and left there until you die.'

‘There's three of us,' said Brat in a last defiant gesture. ‘We could easily overpower you.'

Princess Floridian picked up Scraper's bucket and jammed it on the gaping idiot's head. She knocked Bloat onto his back and sat Scraper on the young dragon's wings. Then she picked up Brat and rubbed him up against the wall until he was totally covered in the snotty slime.

‘You were saying?' she said.

Brat wasn't saying.

None of them were. Brat and Scraper had both wet their trousers. Bloat didn't have trousers because he was a dragon, so he had just wet his own feet.

They collected their few bits and pieces, including the gun which was actually not a real gun but one carved out of a sheep bone that had been a free gift in a sack of dried gruel, and followed the Princess out of the cave.

As they walked down towards the vast lake surrounding the incredible castle of Camelot, the clouds that had covered the sky all day opened slightly and a narrow beam of brilliant sunlight broke through. It shone like a searchlight onto a small rock in the middle of the lake, where it reflected on something shiny, sending tiny beams of light in all directions.

Princess Floridian stopped and stared.

‘Oh my God,' she said. ‘Can the rumours be true?'

‘Rumours?' said Brat.

‘What rumours?' said Bloat.

‘I likes rhubarb,' said Scraper.

‘SHUT UP,' said everyone else.

‘Excalibur,' said the Princess. ‘The One True Sword of the King. Even in my country we have heard of it, though we all thought it was a fairy story, though as these are the Days of Yore, you can never tell whether fairy stories are made up or real.'

‘Your what?' said Scraper.

‘What?'

‘Days of your what?' said Scraper.

‘Shut up,' said Brat.

‘The legend says that whoever can pull Excalibur from the rock is the one true King of Avalon,' said the Princess.

‘That's me,' said Brat. ‘That's my sword, that is, and I'm going to get it.'

He told the Princess what had happened. How he had been thrown off the throne by his enemies and down to the kitchens.

‘I know,' said the Princess.

‘What do you mean, you know?' said Brat.

‘Everyone knows,' said the Princess. ‘Everyone in the whole entire all of the world knows.'

Brat went very silent then said, ‘So I suppose
they all feel really sorry for me.'

‘Not exactly,' said the Princess.

‘Some of them must.'

‘I wouldn't count on it.'

‘But I used to be totally in charge,' said Brat. ‘I had more pairs of tights in more shades of mauve than anyone else in the whole world! And look at me now, stumbling down a muddy track wearing sackcloth breeches that won't even stay up. Come on, we'll get a boat and go and get the sword and go and kill everyone.'

‘ 'Scuse me,' said Scraper.

‘Shut up,' said Brat.

‘Please.'

‘What?'

‘Can you take my bukkit off my head? My ears has all swolled up and it's stuck.'

They reached the water's edge and sat on a rock while they decided what to do next.
²¹
This was the far side of the lake, the furthest bit away from the castle. Camelot itself was more than two miles away, half-
hidden by hundreds of islands dotted everywhere. Some islands were no more than a bit of rock while others, like the Island of Shallot, where Brat had banished the woman he had thought was his mother, but was actually the mother of the real King Arthur, to and had renamed the Island of Vegetables because he kept muddling shallot up with onions, had small buildings on them.

But this part of the lake was deserted. The water was black and dangerous and no one lived here, neither in, nor on, nor by the water. No one even visited there. So there were no boats anywhere, and to make things worse, the clouds had moved since they had seen the rock with Excalibur sticking out of it and the sunlight had gone away. So even if they had got a boat, there was no way they would know which of the more than three hundred islands was the right one. No one even knew exactly how many islands there were, because every time they started counting them, some of them would move. Some islands joined up to make bigger islands while others split into bits making several. This didn't just happen now and then, but all the time, every day, every night,
every week, year after year. On still, calm nights, you could actually hear islands banging into each other. This constant smashing and crashing made the islands quite dangerous places to be and because of this, the only people who lived on them were hiding from something or someone that was more frightening than getting squashed by a moving island.

This had all been deliberately done by Merlin's forefathers to protect Excalibur. Only the most determined would ever find it.

‘I think we need to plan this,' said Princess Floridian. ‘First of all we'll find a new hideout, then we'll steal more money and get a lot of boats and pay some very stupid peasants to row around in them until they find the right place.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to pay clever peasants?' said Bloat. ‘Wouldn't they find it quicker?'

‘They might,' said the Princess. ‘But they might also want to keep the enchanted sword for themselves. No, we need people like potato boy here, though probably without buckets on their heads.'

In the meantime Scraper had been blundering around in the lake, tripping over rocks and losing a
couple of toes to hungry olms.
²²
The constant falling over in the cold water had made the swelling in his ears go down and finally his bucket came free.

‘You are a very bad bukkit,' he said, as he rolled in a bed of thistles to dry himself. ‘If bukkit loved me, she would not have made my earholes swell up.'

‘OK,' said the Princess, ‘rest time's over. Let's go. We need to find a proper hideout.'

They walked round the lake towards Camelot and the main road, which was also a side road and a back road because it was the only road.
²³
When they reached it, they hid behind a big rock while they tried to decide what to do next.

‘I think the best thing to do would be to make a hideout in the last place anyone would look,' said Bloat.

‘What, you mean like on the moon or at the bottom of the lake?' said Brat.

‘Or in a really big bukkit?' said Scraper.

‘The last place anyone would look is probably a
good idea,' said Princess Floridian. ‘As long as it isn't also the first place anyone would look, too. If it wasn't for the seven islands and all the bridges and gatehouses, the best place to have a hideout would be in a nice quiet corner of Camelot itself.'

‘There're bits of the castle that no one ever goes to,' said Brat. ‘There are all sorts of scary stories about ghosts and demons and vampires living in some of the towers. No one will go near them.'

‘They would make the perfect hideout,' said the Princess, ‘if we could work out how to get there without having to cross the bridges.'

‘But what about the ghosts and demons and vampires?' said Bloat. ‘Wouldn't they scare us to death and eat us all up and suck our blood out?'

‘Oh come on,' said the Princess. ‘These are the Days of Yore, not the Dark Ages. Surely you don't believe all that mumbo jumbo?'

‘No, of course not,' said Brat.

‘Apart from the ghosts,' said Bloat.

‘Well yes, obviously the ghosts,' said Brat. ‘We all know they're real.'

‘And the demons,' said Scraper.

‘Well, yes of course.'

‘And the vampires.'

‘Naturally,' said Brat, ‘we all know they're real.'

Princess Floridian said nothing. She had no time for old-fashioned superstitions, but she herself could remember waking up one morning with all the blood sucked out of her left leg and finding two little puncture marks in her big toe. At the time she had told herself that it had probably just been her nanny, who did have two very pointy teeth and liked to sleep hanging upside down from a wooden beam. She had only been seven and it was ten more years before she found out that all nannies weren't like that.