Excalibur (6 page)

‘So do either of you know a way we can get in and out of the castle undetected?' she said.

‘No,' said Brat.

‘Yes,' said Bloat.

‘Well?'

‘The tunnel,' said Bloat.

‘Tunnel?'

‘The one in the back of the old cave where my granny lives,' said Bloat. ‘It goes into the sewers under the castle.'

‘Yes, of course,' said Brat.

‘So you're saying we can get into the deserted towers,' said the Princess, ‘but we have to go up through the lavatory?'

‘Yes, brilliant, isn't it?'

‘Not so brilliant, actually,' said the Princess.

‘Hey,' said Brat, ‘it would be the last place anyone would look.'

‘That is most definitely true.'

‘And besides, no one ever goes there to go there,' said Brat. ‘It won't be all gunky and horrible.'

‘OK,' said the Princess. ‘We'll give it a go. We'll send potato boy up first to clean the pipes with a mop.'

‘And my bukkit!' Scraper beamed. ‘Yes, let me, let me.'

‘Oh, all right,' everyone else agreed.

 

 

Morgan le Fey and Sir Lancelot were in the planning room doing planning. They had a huge map of Avalon spread out on the table and were working out the best way to capture the two mini-rebels and potato boy and rescue the lovely Princess.

Actually, it was Morgan le Fey who was doing all the planning. Sir Lancelot was just nodding and looking all gooey-eyed at her and trying to rehearse the whole troth-plighting thing in his head. All he had was the first verse and he wasn't too pleased with that:

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Which he had to admit was pretty terrible and made no sense. He decided he would ask Grimethorpe to write something for him.

‘You know what?' said Morgan le Fey. ‘This Princess must be really dumb to have let herself be kidnapped by a couple of children.'

‘They must have caught her off guard or threatened her with a dangerous weapon,' said Sir Lancelot.

‘Maybe,' said Morgan le Fey, though she had her doubts.

‘What? Think you that she may have gone with them of her own free will?'

‘Who knows?' said the Princess. ‘I think we'll just keep an open mind on that one.'

Neither of them had ever met Princess Floridian, but it was common knowledge that she was a bit of a handful so it did seem unlikely that she would have been overpowered by Brat and his friends.

‘Well, everyone knows they were hiding in the old highwayman's cave up the mountain across the valley,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘And my spies tell me they were seen leaving there a short while ago. So now we have to try and guess where they're going.'

‘I think somewhere near here,' said Sir Lancelot, who actually hadn't the faintest idea where they might
be headed, but put his finger on the map next to Morgan le Fey's.

The gentle touch of fabric as his cuff slid over the back of her hand set her heart fluttering. The map looked all blurry and the Princess felt her knees go all wobbly and uncontrollable. She sat down in a chair and pretended to look out of the window.

‘Yes, well,' she said, followed by several large bits of silence.

Gradually her heart regained control of itself and she said, ‘We need to work out if they are planning to go to the first place we would look because they think that would be the last place we would look, or if they are planning to go to the last place we would look because they think that would be the last place we would look.'

‘Umm, yes, exactly,' said Sir Lancelot, who hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about.

‘Though of course,' the Princess continued, ‘they could be going somewhere else completely different where we would never think of looking.'

‘Exactly.'

Sir Lancelot was not stupid, by no means, but his
job as a noble knight and executor of fearless deeds did not require a lot of thinking about stuff. In fact, part of his rigorous training had been a month at Avalon's famous Noble Knight And Executor Of Fearless Deeds Boot Camp where all sorts of stuff he wouldn't need had been removed from his brain. These included:

Some new things had been implanted in his brain and they included:

So it was not surprising that as Morgan le Fey speculated on the highwaychildren's whereabouts, his eyes glazed over. They had been glazed over before she had started talking due to his being in love with her. So now he was double-glazed.

Morgan le Fey was only single-glazed. She had the being-in-love glazing, but knew exactly what she was talking about even if it wasn't getting her any nearer to finding Brat and Bloat.

‘Maybe, my lady,' Sir Lancelot suggested, ‘we need some aerial recon … reconnais … umm, er.'
Curse those long words
, he thought. ‘Something flying about in the sky,' he said.

‘What, like a bird?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Well, sort of, except a bird that could follow them and then come back here and tell us where they had gone.'

‘Ah, a clever talking bird,' said the Princess. ‘Know you of such a bird?'

‘Not exactly,' said Sir Lancelot. ‘I know of birds and I know of clever things and I know of things that talk, but I do not know of one thing that can do all three.'

‘I do,' said Morgan le Fey, ‘except it is not a bird.'

‘What else does fly, but birds?'

‘A vampire.'

‘But are not vampires mere fictions?' said Sir Lancelot. ‘I know people lived in fear of them in the Dark Ages, but now we are in the Days of Yore and surely people no longer believe in such fairy stories.'

‘Except vampires are not fairy stories,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘They are rare and secretive and very few have seen them, yet they exist. Not only that, they live right here in Camelot, in the castle itself. Come, I will show you.'

She led Sir Lancelot to the window and pointed across the wide courtyard to a line of towers on the far side. The very highest tower was hidden from view. It was a bright, sunny day, yet a single large cloud encircled the tower like a soft, pale grey cardigan.

‘Up there,' she said. ‘The tower in the clouds. That is where the vampires live.'

‘You have seen them?' asked the knight.

‘Indeed I have,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘More than seen them, for they have been my friends since I was a baby. On the day I was born, as I lay alone in my crib bathed in the moonlight, they came to me and spoke to me and although I was but a few hours old, I understood their words. They became not only my friends, but my teachers. They taught me all the ancient wisdom of the world, more wisdom than even Merlin himself knows.'

She turned to Lancelot and took his hands in hers. ‘You are the only person I have ever told this to,' she said.

Lancelot blushed. He tried to look away, but could not. He tried to speak, but could not. He was desperate to go to the toilet, but could not, which did sore make his eyes water.

‘I, umm, I, umm,' he said, but Morgan le Fey put her fingers to his lips.

‘You know and I know that we are destined to be together,' she said. ‘Your shyness does you credit, my lord. But don't worry, it will pass.'

‘Yes, but, yes, but,' Lancelot blurted out. ‘I am bursting.'

‘I, too, am overwhelmed, but it is our fate,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘You must relax and go with the flow.'

Go with the flow was too much. The brave, fearless, noble knight wet himself. He was, however, saved by his cloak and very large boots. He just hoped his beloved would not hear the squelchy noise as he walked about.

Morgan le Fey took a silver whistle from around her neck and blew on it. There was no sound, or rather, the sound it made was way above the range of human hearing, even above the range of dogs, but sure enough, as the two humans looked up into the cloud, a small dot appeared. It circled twice and flew down to their window faster than the human eye could see.

‘You have finished your homework, my child?' said the vampire, Fenestra, as she came in through the window.

‘No. I'm sorry. I am still working on it,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘But it has been three years, my child,' said the vampire.

‘I know, I know, but geography's really difficult,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘I keep getting stuck in Belgium.'

‘Who doesn't?' said Fenestra.

She then noticed Sir Lancelot and froze.

‘You know it is forbidden for you to tell anyone of our existence,' she said.

‘This is not anyone,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘This is Sir Lancelot and we are as one. Our destinies are intertwined forever.'

‘Fair enough,' said the vampire. ‘I just thought he might be a boyfriend or a servant or something like that, but if your destinies are actually intertwined then that's fine.'

The vampire held out a thin black wing and fluttered her heavy black eyelashes at Sir Lancelot.

‘Nice-looking boy, isn't he?' she said. ‘Even if he has wet himself.'

Sir Lancelot fainted.
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Morgan le Fey explained about Bloat and Brat and how they were trying to find out where they were going.

‘I thought maybe you could fly over the area and see if you can spot them,' she said.

‘Well, it's not the sort of thing we normally do,' said the vampire. ‘I mean, we are a noble race of philosophers, not an HPS
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. Our minds are focused on higher things than that.'

‘What, you mean like sucking blood?' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Well, umm, that's just a hobby,' said Fenestra. ‘A bit of light relief to break up the endless hours of introspection and doing philosophical stuff.'

‘If you find the bandits, you can suck their blood,' said Morgan le Fey, ‘as much as you like.'

‘Oh, well, that's different then,' said the vampire.

She thought for a bit and then said, ‘This bloodsucking, would we be able to do it without having to fill out all the usual forms and endless paperwork?'

In the bad old Dark Ages there were no rules
controlling bloodsucking, and vampires, who are not known for self-restraint, frequently sucked so much blood out of their victims that they dropped dead.
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When the Days of Yore started, King Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, decided something had to be done as everyone was getting fed up tripping over deathly white corpses all the time. So regulations were brought in that meant vampires had to fill out seven forms in triplicate saying exactly when and where and who and lots of other details.
²⁸

‘Yes,' said Morgan le Fey.

‘Can you do that? Are you allowed to overrule the rules?'

‘I am the King's sister,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘I can pretty well do anything I like.'

‘All their blood,' said Fenestra, beginning to drool, ‘until they are completely white and empty.'

‘Not every last drop. You can make them pale grey, but you must leave them enough to survive. You're not allowed to make them dead,' said Morgan le Fey. ‘And you know what that means, don't you?'

‘What?'

‘When they have made new blood, you can drain them all over again.'

‘Wow,' said the vampire. ‘And the dragon, we can have his blood too?'

‘Oh yes.'

‘Gosh, I've never tasted dragon's blood,' said the vampire. ‘It's legendary.'

‘So you'll do it?' said Morgan le Fey. ‘You'll try to find them?'

‘Absolutely,' said Fenestra. ‘Though could we keep this just between us? I mean, there's only one very small dragon and two humans. If all my twenty-six relatives could suck their blood too, there wouldn't be very much for each of us.'

‘So your philosophy doesn't have a problem with selfishness,' Morgan le Fey said with a smile.

‘Who cares?' said the vampire. ‘Dragon's blood, I mean, come on!'

Morgan le Fey agreed that even if the vampire didn't manage to trace the rebels, but they were found anyway, the vampire could still suck their blood. She realised this meant the vampire could simply sit up in her tower and wait until someone else found them, but Morgan le Fey knew the lure of paperwork-free illicit blood would be strong enough to keep the creature searching all day and all night.

When Sir Lancelot came round, the vampire had left and was already floating back up in her high tower, preparing for her mission.