Balin and Columbine (A Children of the May Novella - Book 1.5b)

Chapter Two: A Fair Unknown

Time passed. The new year arrived in Camelot, then the seasons of Lent and Easter, until high above the dungeons the new city prepared for its first feast of Pentecost. The weird walls of the tumorous castle were decked in red and gold by the lowly people of the place, until Camelot resembled the flame of the Holy Spirit that was supposed to have visited the followers of the Lord Jesus on that day hundreds of years before.

It was the king’s rule that the Pentecostal feast could not begin until he had seen or heard of an adventure. Arthur said that it was on that day that the adventures of the Church began, when St. Peter and the other apostles began their quests, so it was only right to mark the special day with a new feat of cunning or bravery.

It was Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s foolish jester of a knight, who was entrusted with the task of finding the Pentecost adventure. Most years Dagonet, who did not have a strong mind for invention, was forced to ask fat Sir Dinadan to find a story for the king’s entertainment, though occasionally Dagonet’s luck was good and an adventure fell in his lap. There had been one Pentecost a few years before when Dagonet had been fearful for his head, but he had been saved by a great green knight riding uninvited into the banqueting hall in the twisted tower of Caerleon. The knight had challenged Sir Gawain, the king’s nephew, to an exchange of blows: Gawain was to have a go at chopping the Green knight’s head off, and if he failed to separate head from neck the stranger would have his turn the next year. Of course, Gawain had swaggered forward, completely confident that the Green knight would have no chance of surviving the first blow. But when he brought the axe down on the stranger’s unprotected neck the blade had passed straight through the skin without so much as drawing blood. Gawain had gone as green as his rival’s armour when he realised he had but a year to live. The king had thought that hilarious, though Gawain cheated his way into survival the next year, by stealing a magical garter, and who knows what else, from the other knight’s woman. Clever fellow in the matter of saving his own life was Sir Gawain.

But the Pentecost Balin spent down in the dungeons of Camelot did not look to be such a lucky feast for Sir Dagonet. Not only had no adventure presented itself, but Sir Dinadan had decided to spend the feast in Berwick, where he was keeping his eye on a band of child-rebels. Thus Dagonet found himself needing to invent a story on his own. By mid-afternoon of the feast-day he had resorted to drink as an aid to his imagination, and was sitting in one of Camelot’s many alehouses, finding scant inspiration at the bottom of his goblet. He was working on a not especially good tale about Sir Lancelot, a monk and a shirt made of human hair. Dagonet was convinced that making a mock of Sir Lancelot would go down well with the king; relations had been frosty between Arthur and his best friend since the king had married Queen Guinevere, Leo de Grance’s squinting little daughter. The gossip was that Lancelot had loved the girl, but Arthur had seen her, liked her, and stolen her. Lancelot hadn’t shown up for the Pentecost this year, so Dagonet felt safe from the rage of the greatest knight of the round table. But at the same time he was not convinced that his tale was funny enough to please the king; he knew he lacked Sir Dinadan’s eye for the grotesque details the king found most amusing.

It was getting towards the appointed hour of the feast. Dagonet was praying hard that the tale he had invented would be the better for the amount of ale he’d imbibed, when his luck turned. A dirty young man staggered into the alehouse, bringing with him the smell of smoked fish.

‘Bloody hell, everyone, come out here and look at this in the marketplace.’ The young man was worse the wear from drink, but at that point Dagonet would have done anything in the hope of finding a better adventure than the one he’d written.

The foolish knight shoved his way through the crowded doorway into the red and gold marketplace. There was a fair on the day of Pentecost, though no one was watching the jugglers, trapeze artists or fire-eaters. Even the dwarf wrestling, normally a peasant favourite, was going uncheered. Most of the crowd had formed a giant huddle, and were pointing and laughing at something in their midst.