Grailblazers (34 page)

‘What's it, Bedders?' Lamorak asked.

‘It,' Bedevere replied. ‘Thing. Finding the Grail. I mean,' he said, waving his hands about, ‘that's the way it's always been done. You set forth, you meet a wise old crone by the wayside, she gives you a scrotty old tin lamp or a bit of carpet or a magic goldfish, and next thing you know you're in business. You've just got to have a bit of patience, that's all. Leave it to them.'

‘Them,' Turquine muttered, ‘we, they, it. You're nothing but a pronoun-fetishist, Bedders.'

‘What's a pronoun?'

‘And who are you calling stupid, anyway?'

Galahaut, frowning, banged the table with his fist.

‘I vote we give it a shot,' he said. ‘I mean, can't do any harm, can it? And if all that happens is that we wander around for a year and a day having a good time, then so what? We can start again from scratch, no skin off our noses.'

‘He's right,' Bedevere said. ‘Whoever heard of knights having to organise things? It's just a matter of getting on with it.'

Boamund nodded suddenly. ‘Bedevere is right,' he said decisively. ‘Put all that stuff in a bag, somebody, we're going questing.'

Toenail, who had been curled up in a cardboard box under the table polishing the sugar-tongs, jumped up, loaded the three treasures into a plastic carrier, and stowed them in his knapsack. He had come to this conclusion half an hour ago.

‘Ready?' he asked.

‘I'll just do my packing,' said Lamorak. Toenail pointed out that he'd done everyone's packing that morning, while they were all having breakfast. The cases were in the hall, he said.

‘Right,' said Boamund happily, ‘that's settled. Let's get on with it, shall we?'

 

Thus it was that three minibuses set off from three very different places at precisely the same moment.

The first - an ex-British Telecom Bedford, property of the Knights of the Holy Grail - headed off down the Birmingham ring road towards London, with Sir Pertelope driving and Sir Turquine doing the map-reading. Perhaps because of the human chemistry involved, it missed all the relevant turnings and ended up on the A45 to Coventry.

The second - an Avis eight-seater Renault nominally on hire to the Faculty of Experimental Mythology skittles team - left Glastonbury, joined the M5 north-bound to Bristol and the Midlands, made good time and stopped at the Michael Wood service station for a cup of tea and a go on the Space Invader machines in the front lobby.

The third - a brand new, jet-black Dodge with tinted windows, fat tyres, diplomatic number plates and a sticker in the window saying ‘Tax Disc Applied For' - materialised on the M40 at its junction with the M25 and drove like a bat out of hell northwards, staying in the fast lane all the way and flashing the cars in front with its lights until they pulled over and let it pass.

 

‘No,' said Aristotle,
‘I
had the iced bun,
Dio
had the Black Forest gateau,
Merlin
had the toasted teacake, you had the croissant and the black coffee, so
you
owe
me
thirty pee.'

The soi-disant skittles team glowered at each other. Nostradamus, who had the bill, took a pencil from behind his ear and began to do sums.

‘Actually,' Merlin said, ‘I just had a cup of tea. It was, er, Mrs Magus who had the...'

Simon Magus glanced at his watch. ‘All right,' he said, ‘I'll treat you. I'll pay. Can we go now, please?'

The magi looked at him.

‘There's no need to take that tone,' Aristotle growled. ‘It's perfectly simple. I gave Nostradamus a fiver-'

‘We haven't got time, Ari,' Simon Magus growled. ‘Let's sort it out in the van, all right? Mahaud - oh God, where's she got to now?'

‘I think she went to the shop to buy some pepper-mints,' Merlin said. ‘She said that sucking a peppermint stops her feeling travel-sick.'

‘Oh for crying out loud,' Simon Magus exclaimed. ‘Dio, be a good chap, go and tell her...' But Dio Chrysostom, who was adamant that he'd had nothing but a hot chocolate and a digestive biscuit, folded his arms and pretended not to hear. Things were starting to get just a little bit out of hand.

Simon Magus frowned. On the one hand, here were eight of the finest minds in the whole of the Glass Mountain, the final repository of the wisdom of the world, the fountain of magic, the shield and pillar of mankind. On the other hand, they made the Lower Shell back at the Coll seem positively rational by comparison. He cleared his throat meaningfully.

‘Right,' he said. ‘The bus leaves in three minutes.

Anybody not back by then gets left behind. Clear?'

He jingled the keys and stalked off across the car park.

 

‘Oh bother,' said the Queen of Atlantis, frowning slightly. ‘That is a nuisance. Get out and change it, somebody.'

There was a certain degree of shuffling in the body of the bus, but otherwise nobody moved.

‘Don't tell me,' the Queen said. ‘There isn't a spare wheel in this thing.' She smiled glacially. ‘Am I right?'

‘There, um, wasn't room,' said a foolhardy young PA. ‘You see, we had to strip out everything that wasn't absolutely essential so's we could fit the surveillance devices and the mobile fax transceiver in, and...'

‘And somebody decided that a spare wheel wasn't essential.' The Queen pursed her exquisite lips. ‘More a sort of luxury, I suppose, like a built-in cocktail cabinet. I see. Well then, did we also discard the puncture repair kit as the last word in Sybaritic self-indulgence, or have we still got that somewhere?'

‘Oh yes, we've...'

The searchlight eyes homed in. The wire-guided smile locked on target.

‘How simply splendid,' the Queen said. ‘Out you get, then.'

Reluctantly, like a toreador going out to meet a bull with nothing but a bunch of flowers and a toothpick, the foolhardy young PA stood up, banged his head on the roof of the bus, and shuffled across to the door.

‘Now then.' The Queen turned her head and turned the smile up to saturation level. ‘While we're waiting, let's just see what else we've forgotten, shall we?'

Fortunately, the phone rang.

 

‘Turkey.'

Sir Turquine looked up from his map. By his calculations they should be in Hertfordshire by now, which meant that some damn fool had moved Coventry a hundred miles to the south. ‘What?' he snapped.

‘Are you
sure
this is the right way?'

‘Look...'

Boamund, who had been fast asleep ever since Perry Bar, woke up with a jolt and said, ‘Stop the van!'

‘Sorry?'

‘I said,' Boamund repeated, ‘stop the van.'

Turquine looked at him and shook his head. ‘You can't,' he said, ‘it's a main road. You'll have to wait till we pass a Little Chef or something.'

‘Not that, you fool,' Boamund snapped. ‘We're here.

This is it.'

Pertelope shrugged. ‘You're the boss, Snotty,' he said. ‘There's a lay-by just ahead. Will that do?'

‘Yes,' Boamund said impatiently, ‘that's fine, just pull over.' He was frowning - a bad case of concentration, by the looks of it, as if he was struggling to keep something large and slippery in his mind.

‘You all right, Bo?' Bedevere asked. ‘You look all funny.'

‘Actually,' Boamund replied, ‘I had a dream.'

‘Hello,' Turquine said, ‘here we go. Young Snotty's been at the glue again.'

Boamund waved his hand angrily. ‘Shut
up,
Turkey,' he said. ‘This dream was important, and I'm trying to remember it. It's not easy, you know.'

The van stopped, and the knights jumped out. It was cold, and a fine shower of rain was falling. Beyond the post-and-wire fence, mist was blurring the edges of a large pine wood.

‘That's it,' Boamund said, pointing. ‘That forest over there. The other side of those trees, there's a lake. That's where we've got to go.'

Bedevere had managed to get hold of the map, and was examining it carefully. ‘He's right, you know,' he said. ‘At least, there's flooded gravel pits all round here. At least,' he added, lowering the map and nodding northwards, ‘if that's Meriden over there, then there's gravel pits behind those trees. Otherwise, we could be anywhere.'

He stopped and looked down. Toenail was tugging at his sleeve.

‘Did you say Meriden?' the dwarf demanded excitedly.

‘Yes,' Bedevere replied, ‘that's right. Why?'

‘Meriden,' the dwarf repeated. ‘Where the bikes come from.'

Bedevere raised an eyebrow. ‘What's he going on about bikes for, anybody?' he said. Galahaut nodded.

‘The old Triumph factory was at Meriden,' he said. ‘What of it?'

The dwarf grinned. ‘Nothing,' he said. ‘Only, Meriden happens to be the exact geographical centre of Albion, that's all.'

Galahaut frowned. ‘How extremely interesting,' he said. ‘Now puddle off, there's a good little chap, because...'

‘Say that again,' Bedevere interrupted.

‘Meriden,' the dwarf repeated, ‘is the exact centre of Albion, geographically speaking.' He winked at Bedevere. ‘Just thought I'd mention it,' he added.

‘Thanks.' Bedevere twitched his nose a few times and looked at the map. ‘You know,' he said, ‘that's rather interesting, if you think about it.'

Lamorak looked at him quizzically. ‘Is it?' he said. ‘Personally, I could never get the hang of geography. What's the capital of Northgales, all that stuff. I mean, who wants to know?'

‘In the exact centre,' Bedevere said, as much to himself as to anyone else. ‘Well, I'll be blowed.'

 

‘Your Majesty.'

‘Mmmm?'

‘I think you'd better pull over, Your Majesty.'

The Queen glanced in her rear-view mirror, sighed, and slowed down, while the PAs looked at each other and grinned. They were going to enjoy this.

The policeman who walked over and tapped on the window was young, tall and red-haired. In fact, the Queen said to herself, it's funny how young they all look these days. She wound down the window and smiled.

‘Good afternoon, officer,' she said pleasantly.

The policeman didn't react to the smile; or if he did, he didn't show it.

‘Do you realise,' he said, ‘you were doing over a hundred and ten miles per hour back there, madam?'

‘Gosh!' the Queen replied. ‘How frightfully exciting! It didn't feel like that at all.'

‘Please get out of the van, madam.'

‘But it's raining.'

The policeman's face remained impassive. ‘Out of the van, please,' he said. ‘Now I'm going to ask you to blow into—'

‘Sorry?'

‘I'm going to ask you rivet rivet rivet rivet,' said the small green frog; and then it seemed to notice that something was different. It hopped up and down on the spot once or twice and then it just sat there with its mouth open. The Queen shook her head sadly and beckoned to the other policeman.

‘Officer,' said the Queen, ‘I'm going to turn you into a frog, too.'

The policeman stared at her.

‘Please don't take it personally,' the Queen went on, ‘because I know you're just doing your job, and really it's not your fault, it's just the way things are. It won't hurt, I promise you.'

She smiled, and a second frog appeared at her feet. Very carefully, so as not to damage the little creatures' fragile legs, the Queen picked the two amphibians up and put them on the palm of her hand.

‘Now then,' she said. ‘One day, a princess will come along this road. Probably,' she added, ‘doing a hundred and twenty and towing a horsebox. If you're terribly nice to her and don't ask to see her driving licence, she may kiss you and then you'll be back to being policemen. If not, try mayflies. I'm told they're a bit of an acquired taste, but well worth persevering with. Ciao!'

She put her index finger gently behind the frogs' back legs to encourage them to jump off her hand, smiled once more and got back into the van.

‘Right,' she said.

‘Where?'

Boamund scowled. It had been such a vivid dream, the sort you know you're going to remember, and now all there was in his mind was a sort of sticky silver trail where it had once been.

‘It's about here somewhere,' he said. ‘A lake. All misty. You know the sort of thing.'

Turquine shook his head. ‘No sign of a lake here, Snotters,' he said. ‘I mean, a thing like a lake, it's not easily overlooked. You must just have imagined it.'

‘I did
not
imagine it,' Boamund shouted. ‘It was a lake, and it was
here.'

‘Isn't here now,' said Turquine, and he smirked. ‘Just a lot of trees, and this.'

He waved his arm at the small, exclusive, half-finished development of executive starter homes and shrugged. The other knights, unusually sensitive to their leader's embarrassment, said nothing.

‘We could try over there,' Boamund suggested; and Bedevere was reminded of a cat he'd once known who had the habit of going to each door and window in turn every time it rained, presumably on the off-chance of finding one where it was sunny. ‘It must just be hidden by the mist. I'm sure if we looked
properly...'

‘Come on, now,' Turquine was saying, in that unbearably aggravating let‘s-be-reasonable tone of his. ‘We've given it a jolly good go, there's no lake here, so let's say no more about it and—'