The Table of Less Valued Knights (18 page)

‘We were supposed to be spending the evening with my mother,’ said Isadora.

From Edwin’s point of view, it was pretty embarrassing that Sir Dorian had made a detour off an important quest for a king (
prince consort
) for such a trifling matter, but Sir Dorian laughed.

‘Joust to make it worth my while?’ he said.

‘Oh all right,’ said Barnabas, ‘but don’t get me in the stomach, I’ve only just eaten.’

Barnabas, who seemed an amiable, slightly bookish type, never stood a chance. It was over in seconds. All the same, Sir Dorian did a lap of honour around the village green as if he’d just defeated the Minotaur. Edwin thought that would be the end of it, but Isadora insisted on thanking Sir Dorian for defending her honour – as she put it – by inviting him to dinner with her family. Sir Dorian was squeezed between Isadora and her mother, a sapphire-eyed beauty who must have been a child bride. Edwin, meanwhile, was seated at the far end of the table, next to Isadora’s seven-year-old brother whose only topic of conversation was horses, and a profoundly deaf great-aunt. On the subject of deafness, Edwin was too far away to overhear Sir Dorian’s conversation (and far too bored to listen to his neighbours) so he didn’t know what pretext it was that took Sir Dorian and Isadora away from the table midway through the meal, though he could guess why both of them were pink-cheeked when they returned some time later.

And so it continued. Edwin had never seen so many damsels in distress in his life, though in his opinion a lot of them weren’t particularly distressed. Like Isadora, most had had some kind of lovers’ tiff and wanted a knight to fight for their supposed honour. It seemed to Edwin that fighting for the honour of these damsels was a clear case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted – bolted into the field of a welcoming stallion. While he usually didn’t object to a damsel of that ilk – far from it – these ones only had eyes for Sir Dorian. And Sir Dorian was incapable of saying no. ‘
Always do ladies, damsels, and gentle women succour
,’ he’d say cheerfully, and, ‘
Be for all ladies and fight their quarrels
.’ Since this was part of the Knights’ Code, apparently, Sir Dorian claimed that he was obliged to take on every single one of these so-called quests. ‘I’m sorry,’ he’d say to Edwin with an exaggerated sigh, ‘but there’s nothing I can do.’ He didn’t look very
sorry as he picked up his jousting lance to knock yet another toothless philanderer off his nag. He looked even less sorry when he came back from being thanked by the damsel, who insisted on offering him something for his trouble, not money of course, perhaps a bite to eat, why don’t you follow me into the larder and help me get something off this high shelf, oops, the door has closed …

So progress was slow. Still, at least it gave Edwin time to think of all the tortures and indignities he would inflict on Martha when he finally caught up with her. If she wasn’t in distress when she ran away she’d certainly be in distress after he found her. The longer it took, the more ‘succour’ Sir Dorian gave the damsels they met, the more baroque Edwin’s imagination got. His errant – in every sense of the word – wife would pay for every second of boredom and embarrassment that Sir Dorian was subjecting him to. After all, if it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t even be on this miserable quest. It was only fair. And Edwin prided himself on being fair.

As the days passed, the heat of the summer grew. The air was thick with it, a terrible, invisible blanket they were forced to push through. Elaine appeared to be suffering most, emerging from her tent late and unrested, sweating greenly on top of her horse, picking listlessly at her food when they stopped for meals, and offering little by way of conversation. Humphrey worried that she might be ill, but she brushed off his concern.

‘It’s this weather,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand it. I can’t wait for it to break.’ She glowered at the blue sky, which stubbornly refused to produce even one small cloud.

‘We could reduce our hours in the saddle,’ suggested Humphrey. ‘Only ride first thing in the morning and then late evening before it gets dark. Stay in the shade in the heat of the day.’

‘No!’ said Elaine. ‘We’ve got to press on. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’

Humphrey agreed, even though the temperature was driving him mad too. And Conrad and the boy. The only one of the group unaffected was Jemima, who seemed in her element, though when they stopped to drink she’d suck up half a river with her trunk and squirt the rest over her head. Conrad, caught in the spray, didn’t object at all.

Spending time in the infernal heat of the forges interrogating blacksmiths was a particular ordeal. Humphrey found himself plotting routes that, while broadly following Leila’s instructions, avoided villages and towns as much as possible. Devoid of
knights in black armour, Elaine turned to Leila more and more, hoping that the sword would be able to tell her where her fiancé was.

‘Where is Sir Alistair?’ she’d ask Leila, but when Martha spun the sword, she just went round and round and round until Martha had to put a boot down to stop her.

After one of these disappointments, Elaine burst into tears. When Humphrey tried to comfort her, she shouted at him, ‘You don’t know what you’re doing. My father was right, I should have got a real knight!’

Humphrey turned and walked away, over to the fire pit where Conrad was peeling carrots, while Jemima loitered nearby, hoping for scraps.

‘I used to be better at this,’ he said to his squire.

Before Conrad could respond, Martha wandered over. ‘Better at what?’

‘Well, the old days were the glory days,’ said Humphrey, perking up at the sight of a receptive audience. ‘You’ve heard of the Questing Beast, I’ll bet? Turned out to be just a big stray cat. You should have seen King Pellinore’s face …’

The pair drifted away from Conrad, who wielded his peeling knife with new irritation.

Later, after the sun had dipped beneath the horizon and the sky was turning from indigo to black, Elaine took Humphrey aside to apologise for her harsh words.

‘I don’t want another knight,’ she said, resting her hand on his shoulder for emphasis.

‘It’s fine, I’d already forgotten about it,’ Humphrey said, shrugging her off, but the ghost of her touch lingered for hours.

The heat barely dropped that night. Martha, wedged between Humphrey and Conrad, stopped even trying to sleep. She missed the way Deborah used to fan her during heatwaves at the castle. Bored and uncomfortable, she slipped out of the tent, onto the expanse of heath where they’d set up camp.
The air was a little fresher outside, though there wasn’t so much as the hint of a breeze. She sat on a log next to the embers of the campfire and looked up at the stars scattered in fistfuls across the sky. She could take Silver and run away, she realised. But where would she go? Leila was strapped to Humphrey’s hip even at night. Leaving would mean leaving the sword, leaving Humphrey – though why should this matter? Staying with these people was her best chance of finding Jasper. Whether she liked them or not was irrelevant.

‘You’re still here.’

Martha looked up. Humphrey had followed her out of the tent. He was wearing only the long underwear he slept in. Black hair curled all the way down his broad chest and crept beneath the waistband of his underwear to whatever lay below. Martha found herself thinking of the book she’d looked at the night before her wedding, and felt a renewed surge of disgust, but this time tinged with a strange, slightly frightening curiosity.

‘I was just trying to cool down a bit,’ she said.

‘If you run away, Conrad will devote the rest of his life to finding you, and when he does he will disembowel you and hang you with your own guts.’

‘I couldn’t sleep before,’ said Martha. ‘But I’m sure I’ll have no problem dropping off now.’

Humphrey sat down next to her. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘It’s hotter than a whore’s cunt.’

‘I, um …’ said Martha, her already feminine voice coming out in a distinctly unmanly wobble. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Never been with a whore?’

‘No.’

‘Ever been with anyone?’

‘No.’

‘How old are you?’

For a mad moment, Martha thought to herself
, I mustn’t say
too young or he won’t be interested in me
. Then she reminded herself:
He won’t be interested in me because I am a BOY
.

‘Fifteen,’ she said.

‘Same age as Conrad, and he’s had plenty,’ said Humphrey.

‘Really?’ said Martha, aghast.

‘Sure,’ said Humphrey. ‘I could take you, if you like.’

‘Take me?’

‘To a whorehouse. There’s one just outside Camelot called Mother Superior’s House of Shame. It specialises in nuns.’

‘Nuns?’

‘Well, the madam says her girls are fallen nuns. None of them could exactly be described as a novice. She reckons she can charge extra to corrupt a virgin who’s dedicated herself to the divine.’

Martha felt she had to say something, and the only thing she could think of was the truth. ‘I don’t know what a whorehouse is.’

‘You’re not joking, are you?’ said Humphrey.

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘No, you don’t joke very much – Conrad’s right about that.’ Humphrey paused. Then he said, ‘A whorehouse is a place where people have sex for money.’

‘Who pays?’ said Martha.

‘Who …? The men pay. Though if you can find somewhere where the women pay, I would like very much to hear about it.’

Martha felt a dry-mouthed panic, half from discussing these things with Humphrey, half at the thought that she might actually end up in a whorehouse with him. It would hardly take long for the whores to find out that she was carrying the wrong equipment.

‘I don’t know what a cunt is either,’ she found herself confessing.

Humphrey laughed in disbelief. ‘Weren’t there any other boys at the castle, when you were growing up?’ he said.

‘I was always in the Princess’s chambers,’ said Martha. ‘The
only people I spent any time with were the Princess and her maids.’

‘You don’t have a father? A brother?’

‘They died,’ said Martha. Sensing an explanation was necessary, she added, ‘Smallpox.’

‘I should have guessed. The scars on your face.’

‘Yes,’ Martha made herself agree. ‘Smallpox. I got it too, as a baby, but I survived.’

‘Well, that’s lucky, isn’t it? You’re immune now.’

‘Yes.’ In fact Martha had never had smallpox. She would probably catch it now, and die, and how would she explain that to Humphrey? He would realise that the scars on her face were from acne and it would be so humiliating.

‘And your mother?’ he said.

‘Smallpox too,’ said Martha, for want of a better answer. She was sick of talking about smallpox now. ‘I was raised in the castle, from before I can remember. Queen Martha was amused by children, so I was something of a jester to her, before I became her page.’

‘A jester?’ said Humphrey, amused. ‘You?’

Why did nobody here think she was funny? Everyone at the castle always laughed at her jokes.

‘Only when I was very small,’ she said. ‘They dressed me as a little dog, and I used to toddle around and fall over.’

Humphrey took a moment to picture this, chuckling. Then he said, ‘So I take it nobody bothered to teach you about sex.’

‘I know enough,’ said Martha hurriedly. ‘There is no need to enlighten me further.’

‘And what about the other things a man needs to know? You can ride, at least.’

‘The Princess liked my companionship on horseback.’

‘You’re bloody awful at pitching a tent, though. And you can’t light a fire.’

‘That’s true,’ acknowledged Martha.

‘You have no swordsmanship – we learned that early on. What about archery?’

‘Nope.’

‘That I can teach you. If you like.’

‘Archery? Why on earth do you want to teach me archery?’

That was exactly the question Conrad asked Humphrey the next morning.

‘Archery? Are you out of your mind?’

Martha, quietly reading a book of poetry in the shade of a sycamore tree, pretended not to listen.

‘I think it would be useful,’ Humphrey replied.

‘Useful how?’

‘If the Queen’s fallen into hostile hands, it would help to have another fighter on our side.’

‘Hostile hands? You know who has hostile hands? Marcus!’

Martha did not react, though her hands weren’t remotely hostile – she rubbed shea butter into them morning and night.

‘Marcus isn’t a threat,’ said Humphrey.

‘He tried to kill you!’ insisted Conrad. ‘And now you’re going to arm him?’

‘I’m not going to give him his sword back.’

‘Oh well, that’s fine then. We all know that murderers are very weapon-specific.’

‘He’s not a murderer.’

‘I don’t know what else you’d call him. Is this because he’s got a crush on you? Are you that vain?’

Martha felt her face redden, and bent more deeply over her book. She’d been staring at the same poem for several minutes now without taking in a single word of it.

Humphrey looked at Martha, then took Conrad’s gigantic arm and dragged him out of earshot.

‘I’ve got a theory about Marcus,’ he whispered.

Conrad refused to look interested, but shrugged one shoulder as minimal encouragement.

‘I don’t think he’s who he says he is,’ continued Humphrey.

‘No shit.’

Humphrey ignored Conrad’s tone. ‘Have you noticed how much he looks like Jasper?’

Conrad nodded reluctantly. ‘I suppose.’

‘I believe him when he says he comes from Puddock Castle, and he’s obviously obsessed with the royal family there. Last night he was telling me he used to be the Princess’s jester, which didn’t ring true at all …’

‘When were you talking to him last night?’

‘After you were asleep. It doesn’t matter, listen. I think he might be the dead King’s bastard.’

Conrad snorted. ‘Oh come on.’

‘Seriously. He’s hopeless at everything. That’s the mark of a king’s son. Have you seen his hands? They’re like a girl’s! He’s obviously never done a day’s work in his life.’