The Squire's Tale Page 4

  Ten minutes later, Terence and the little man crouched behind a mossy fallen tree and looked at the Five Kings' camp. "There," the green man said. "That tent in the middle, with the flag at the top. That's the kings' council tent, and there they keep the ring."

  "Why don't they wear it?" Terence asked.

  "They couldn't decide which one should have the honor. So they keep it in a jeweled box on the council table. Luck to you, lad." And then the little man was gone.

  Terence hesitated, his mind in a whirl. He didn't know who his companion was, and he didn't trust him. One look at the little green leafy face was enough to be certain that the sprite loved mischief. But he had told the truth about the Five Kings' camp: here it was. Terence realized that he could not risk waiting. Taking a deep breath, he drew his new dagger from its sheath and slipped over the log into the camp. In a few steps he was at the council tent. Two knights strolled by him, but they paid him no mind. No one ever looked at servants and squires.

  With his dagger, Terence cut a slit in the back of the tent, the glinting blade sliding through the rough canvas as if it were silk. Terence slipped through the hole, and though almost blind in the sudden gloom, he could see a jeweled box on a nearby table, just as the little man had promised. Quickly, Terence opened the box and removed the ring. Only then, his eyes adjusting to the shadows, did Terence realize he was not alone. Five bearded men dressed in rich purple and scarlet sat at a larger table a few feet away.

  "Hey, put that back, boy," said one.

  Terence's heart dropped and his stomach tightened. It was the Five Kings. With a gasp, he sprang backwards and dived through the hole he had cut in the tent. Shouts of "Hey! Who was that! What is he doing?" came from the tent, then "After him!"

  Terence blundered into a knight, who cursed and aimed a kick at him, but Terence was already out of reach. He leaped around the maze of tents, hearing or imagining pursuit right behind him. Then he saw a row of horses, saddled and ready. Quickly he grabbed one, climbed into the saddle, and kicked it into a gallop. Only then did he look over his shoulder. No one followed. He rode into the cover of the woods and stopped, gasping for breath.

  From a nearby oak came the chuckling voice of the little green man. "Right from under their noses, no less. I like a good thief, I do. But don't stop now, Terence. Here they come."

  "There! In the trees!" came a shout, and then there was a rumble of horses. Terence kicked his horse into a run and held on for his life. Gawain had taught him to ride, but he had never had to ride at a dead run. Soon he had lost the reins, but he rode a war horse that was used to that. It probably thought it was leading a charge, and all Terence had to do was hold on to the saddle and duck under branches and brambles as they crashed through the forest. Twice he glanced behind him and saw five riders, growing nearer every second.

  "Terence!" a voice shouted suddenly. It was Gawain. He and the others sat their horses on the far side of a little clearing. "Where did you get that horse?"

  "The Five Kings!" Terence gasped. "Behind me!"

  "With how many men?" Sir Kai asked sharply, but as he spoke the kings burst into the clearing behind Terence.

  "I'll take the left," Sir Kai said abruptly and spurred his horse.

  The next minute was a blur of motion to Terence. Sir Kai threw himself bodily against the king on the far left and swung his sword at the next one. Tor leaped from his own horse onto the middle king's horse, and brought him to the turf. Gawain had his fingers in one king's visor, shaking him back and forth, while he parried the sword of another and thrust. That king reeled and fell. Sir Kai lifted one king from his saddle and threw him against another.

  "Ow! No biting!" Gawain shouted.

  The king facing Tor swung at Tor's left, but with a move that Terence recognized easily, Tor leaped lightly to his right and chopped left-handed, and the king dropped. Immediately, Tor joined Sir Kai, who had just sent one king reeling backwards. In a moment, the other king lay sprawled at their feet. They turned toward Gawain, but Gawain had already dismounted and was wiping his sword on the grass.

  "Are you hurt?" Sir Kai called to him.

  Gawain looked resentfully at the body at his feet. "He bit my finger," he said.

  ***

  "Sir Kai and Sir Gawain," King Arthur said, "I honor your courage, your skill, and your loyalty. Even more, I thank you. You have won a great battle for my kingdom; all I have I owe to you." He kissed them on their cheeks and smiled warmly.

  Terence was so proud of Gawain he thought he would burst. After the Five Kings had been killed, the planned ambush had never happened. As soon as Sir Kai had reported their victory to the king, Arthur had ridden alone up to the leaderless knights waiting in the forest, requested their surrender, and—having received it—sent them home unpunished, all swearing eternal allegiance to such a courageous and magnanimous king. Now, back at Camelot, Sir Kai and Gawain stood stiffly while their king thanked them formally. Terence beamed.

  "Squire Terence?" the king said. Terence jumped with surprise. "For your part in this adventure, I also thank you. Will you do me the honor of accepting a small gift?" Terence gulped and nodded. Arthur took a thick yew longbow from a page and extended it to Terence. On his outstretched hand was the ring that Terence had taken from the kings. At Terence's request, Gawain had given it to the king privately. Arthur saw him look at the ring. His eyes glinted with a secret smile, but he continued, "This bow cannot be broken, nor can its string rot. Merlin says you still have to aim it, though."

  "And now," the king continued, turning away from Terence, "where is Tor?"

  "Here, your highness," Tor said, stepping forward.

  "Kneel, Tor," Arthur said. Tor dropped at the king's feet. Arthur drew Excalibur from its scabbard and touched Tor on his shoulders and head. "Now rise, Sir Tor, and welcome to the Fellowship of the Round Table. Be ever true to your God; protect always your neighbor; honor always your king."

  4. A Hart, a Hound, and a Very Ugly Woman

  The wars were over. Only a few rebel knights and barons still resisted Arthur's authority, and these holdouts Arthur chose to ignore as insignificant. Instead, he turned his attention to being as skillful a leader in peace as he was in war. He established courts of justice and made laws restricting the taxes and forced labor that the lords often levied against peasants. The land knew peace for the first time that anyone could remember.

  There was peace within the castle walls, too, though Gawain called it tedium. Every day was a leisurely round of feasting and telling tales and dallying with fair ladies. Gawain devoted much time to the ladies, all of whom seemed to find him irresistible. He soon acquired the reputation of being a ladies' favorite, but to Terence it seemed that Gawain preferred his evenings spent drinking and arguing with other knights. The king and Sir Kai and the king's judges stayed busy, but the knights were left to amuse themselves. Even Terence, who as a squire actually had a few daily tasks to perform, had more time than he knew how to fill.

  A squire, Terence learned, was a sort of in-between person. His position was too low for the knights to notice him, but at the same time too lofty for him to be welcome among the servants. He wasn't even at home among the other squires. They all dreamed of becoming knights themselves, and all their talk was about the great knightly deeds they would perform. Terence had no such ambitions. Only around Gawain and Tor did he feel at ease.

  One other person in the court did show an interest in Terence. One day in a corridor, Merlin stopped him. "Squire Terence, isn't it?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir?" Terence said, a bit apprehensively.

  "Ah, good," the old man said. "Tell me, how is my old friend Trevisant? I knew that he had taken in a boy to raise."

  "He was well when I left him, sir."

  "He's a great man," Merlin said simply. "But that's why you were left with him." Merlin looked hard at Terence's eyes for a long, uncomfortable minute, then the enchanter nodded and smiled. "I am glad you've come to court," he said. "But I don't
choose to tell you why."

  "Thank ... thank you, sir," Terence said, bewildered. Merlin chuckled and continued on his way.

  Terence filled his days practicing with his new longbow until his arms ached and then practicing his horsemanship until other parts did. It was a pleasant life in many ways, but he chafed for lack of occupation. So he was relieved when this tranquil (or tedious) existence was disturbed by the announcement one fine June day that the king was to be married. Sir Leodegrance, who had given the round table to Arthur, was now giving the king his daughter, Guinevere. All the ladies of the court, as well as Sir Griflet and many of the other knights, were in an uproar, ordering new clothes and designing new ways of dressing their hair for the wedding feast, which was to last seven days and end with a tournament. Visiting barons and nobles began to arrive, bearing their wedding gifts and all planning to stay for the feast. Sir Kai, drinking a vast amount of wine with Gawain and Tor and a few others in Gawain's chambers one night, complained that it was easier to provision for a war than for a wedding, but even Sir Kai admitted that the king's wedding must be splendid.

  And splendid it was. All of the lords and ladies wore glittering clothes, so the royal Chapel of St. Stephen was afire with color. Most brilliant of all was young Guinevere, in a shimmering ivory robe with a rich blue underdress and trim, all interwoven with cloth of gold. When she and Arthur kissed, ladies wept and men cheered.

  The feasting began directly after the wedding. Arthur had tables set for hundreds in his great banquet hall. He and Guinevere sat at a shorter table at the head of the hall, and the guests sat at two long rows of tables that ran along each side. In the center of the hall, between the two rows of tables, servants scurried back and forth, carrying roast venison and oxen and boar and platters piled high with poultry and trenchers filled with hot and cold soups and plates of custards and calf's-foot jellies and pastries and stoup after stoup of ale and wine. Terence stood correctly behind Gawain's chair at one of the long tables.

  At midnight of the first night's feast, just as Terence was losing interest in the spectacle and beginning to wish for bed, adventure arrived. From the kitchen came a terrific crash, followed by the sound of a woman in hysterics. More crashes followed, and then the kitchen door burst open. Into the banquet hall bounded a gigantic hart, pure white except for his hooves, eyes, and majestic antlers. It raced down the center of the room, directly toward Arthur. Servants threw down their plates of food and dived under tables. The stag stopped in front of Arthur, then sprang onto the king's table and began running again. Food and wine flew willy-nilly onto the floor and the clothes of the guests.

  At that moment, a monstrous deerhound, as white as the hart itself, burst in from the kitchen, baying loudly. Seeing the hart, it leaped onto the table and gave chase. Ladies screamed, and men bellowed vague commands that no one heeded—"Stop that!" and "Somebody do something!" Terence saw Tor wiping soup from his face, and he heard Sir Griflet scream in an outraged voice, "Look what they've done to my hat!" Two knights whom Terence did not know joined the chase, swinging their swords recklessly and ineffectively. The hart's antlers knocked a chandelier, and shadows from the candles veered crazily back and forth.

  Finally the hart gave a mighty bound and disappeared through an open window into the night. Like a flash, the hound followed it, and then all was quiet in the banquet hall except for Sir Griflet muttering wrathfully over his hat. The king stood, smiling slightly.

  "I do hope all of you had eaten your fill before the excitement began," he said. "As tonight's dinner appears to be concluded, let us repair to our rooms and trust that tomorrow's feast will be less eventful."

  The guests seemed to relax again. Servants and ladies and one or two knights crawled out from under the tables, and a low murmur of conversation began. In the hubbub, a voice called out, "Just a moment, please." It was Merlin. "I don't think we're done with this business," he said. "Listen!"

  At first Terence heard nothing, but then, through the open kitchen door, came a slow clop-clop-clop-ping. In a moment, a massive white mule appeared in the open doorway. On the mule's back was a slender, heavily veiled woman, dressed all in white. She stooped slightly as the mule went through the doorway, and then sat in silence until the mule had walked deliberately the length of the hall and stopped in front of the king's table. A hush fell over the hall. Something he had never felt before stirred in Terence's heart, and he felt at once horrified by the woman and drawn to her.

  "Shame!" the woman said suddenly in a rich, low voice. Terence's heart leaped at the sound. "Shame to you, King Arthur, and to all of your vaunted knights."

  "Madam," King Arthur said. "For what cause do you say so?"

  "Has any of you ever seen such a hart or brachet as those that were just here?" she asked, her gorgeous voice rising and filling the room with warmth.

  Terence leaned close to Gawain and whispered, "What's a brachet?"

  "Female hound," Gawain answered shortly in a strained voice. Gawain's eyes had not left the woman since she entered the room.

  "And yet, when these beasts enter your banquet hall, all you can say is that you hope it does not happen again," the woman continued. "For shame that you should leave these adventures so lightly!"

  For a moment no one spoke. Then Gawain vaulted lightly over the table and walked up to the mule, looking piercingly at the woman's veil. "A battle I call an adventure," he said. "A dragon in the woods is an adventure. But how is a hart and hound, even oddly colored ones, an adventure?"

  The woman looked at Gawain silently for a moment, then nodded. "The greatest adventures begin simply," she said. Again, her voice was low, but it throbbed richly and filled the room. Then she gestured at the room that lay in shambles around them. "But do you consider this simple?"

  "It is a nuisance, indeed, but no adventure," Gawain replied.

  "Nephew," the king said gently, "let us hear the lady."

  "I beg your pardon, sire," he said. "But we have yet to see whether this visitor is indeed a lady. A man may wear a veil." He looked intently at the woman and said, "Show us your face, madam."

  Every eye turned toward the woman, but she did not answer. Deliberately, she lifted her veil over her head. For a second there was a stunned silence, and then one of Guinevere's ladies uttered a tiny squawk and fainted. A man swore, and several knights crossed themselves surreptitiously.

  The woman on the mule was the ugliest woman Terence had ever seen. Her nose was impossibly long and crooked. Her eyes squinted. Her thin, almost invisible lips opened to reveal a loose scattering of yellow, carious teeth. Her upper lip was dark and bristly, and from a huge black mole on her neck grew a thick tuft of hair. Her cheeks were deeply scarred, as if by pox. Aghast, Terence looked away. Others, too, averted their eyes. Only Arthur, Merlin, and Gawain looked steadily at the woman's features. Arthur's and Merlin's faces were expressionless, but Gawain looked stricken.

  "Do you believe now that I am a woman?" she said.

  Gawain bowed. "I do not doubt you, madam. But I still see no adventure in a stag and a hound." His voice was harsher than before.

  "Those who choose to avoid danger make it a point not to see adventures, I believe." The woman's voice, too, had changed. Now there was a mocking note.

  "And those who are fools see adventures where there are none," Gawain retorted. As if realizing his rudeness, Gawain bowed again and added, "Meaning no offense, of course, madam."

  The woman smiled without humor and said, "Offense taken all the same, young coxcomb."

  "As you wish," Gawain said, his jaw clamped shut.

  "I had heard," the woman said to Arthur, keeping an eye on Gawain at the same time, "that your court was the most gallant of all courts, and the most respectful. I see now that that was nonsense. But are there knights here willing to dare an adventure?"

  "Sir Gawain appears to have forgotten himself," Arthur agreed. "But he himself will dare—"

  "Sir Gawain?" the woman interrupted. "Do you mean to t
ell me that this pompous, self-absorbed fribble is Sir Gawain! Appalling! I had heard he was the best knight in the court." She looked into Gawain's eyes, and the mocking note in her voice grew stronger. "I do hope that Camelot isn't attacked by a band of blind, crippled old women. But perhaps you have other knights who could protect Sir Gawain from them."

  Gawain met her gaze, and his eyes flashed, but he said nothing. At last, Arthur said quietly, "What would you have us do, my lady?"

  "You must send two knights out on the adventure," the woman said. "One to follow the hound and one to follow the hart."

  Merlin spoke suddenly. "Do as she says, your highness."

  "Sir Tor!" Arthur called. "You will follow the hound."

  "King Arthur," the woman said. "Send Sir Gawain after the hart." She looked at him from the corner of her eye. "Perhaps he will find adventure where he saw none before."

  "So be it," said the king.

  The mule turned slowly and started toward the kitchen door. As she passed by Gawain, the woman whispered, "Fribble!"

  "Harridan!" Gawain replied promptly. And his eyes followed her until she had disappeared.

  5. Questing

  By noon the next day, Terence, Gawain, and Tor were twenty miles from Camelot, pressing deeper into the forest. It had not been a pleasant ride. Gawain had been broodingly silent all morning, and neither Tor nor Terence wanted to interrupt his preoccupation. Instead, they had busied themselves with the hunt and with controlling the greyhounds that the king had lent them for the chase.

  Tor finally broke the silence. "Shall we stop here for a luncheon?" he asked. Gawain did not reply. Tor looked at Terence and shrugged. "I said, shall we—"

  "The sooner we catch those animals, the sooner we'll be done with this fool's errand," Gawain said gruffly. "Let's press on."

  "I'm hungry," Tor replied simply. "I'm stopping."

  "Suit yourself. We're not," Gawain said, trotting ahead.