Sleepless Knights (41 page)

“Teleportation, and flight.”

I clicked my tongue, Plum whinnied, and we vanished from the cell.

†

Of course, young Gwion, the situations I am describing to you are not normal working conditions. Your own transition from butler to magician will, I'm sure, be an altogether smoother one. I doubt, for example, if you will ever have cause to open a Nick in Time, as I did. But, as for the whole matter of Service Time, that is something that could do with explaining. It is a butler-magician's greatest asset, and the foundation on which his working practise rests. You experienced it shortly
before I left you for the last time. But once again, I am getting ahead of myself. In order to illustrate the full application of Service Time, I must first tell you about the Nick in Time, and a picture as hopeless as any painted by even the most morose of myth-makers.

Arriving at the stadium, I alighted from Plum and told him and the others to await my signal, for the matter of a Fay was a wizard's work. Everything was more or less as I had left it. Morgan had her arms spread wide in triumph, holding the scabbard and now standing directly over King Arthur as he bled his last from the curse of Excalibur. Lancelot was still skewered to the ground by a skeleton foot. Gawain remained in a bloody heap on the ground, lying ominously still. And the skeletons themselves surrounded the scene like spectral spectators. But now they looked wholly different to my eyes. They were no longer an anonymous threat, the marauding horde of the damned dead. Each and every one of them was a knight I had once called a brother.

“Merlin,” she said, blankly, at my arrival. “Tardy, as usual. Well, you are too late this time.”

“I come to make peace,” I said. I held out my hand, flat and open, offering it for her to shake. “I give you one last chance for redemption. End this, and return to Annwn of your own free will. Or reap the destiny you have sown.”

Morgan curled her lip in disgust and spat into my hand. The spit landed in the middle of my palm. I transformed it into a miniature lake, its waters lapping tiny reeds at my wrist.

“Pathetic games and parlour tricks,” she said. “You are going soft in your old age.”

“Actually, I have only just been born,” I said.

The sword Excalibur, fresh-formed and full-sized, rose up from the lake in my palm. Morgan shrieked, as was her wont, but it was to no avail, for in the twinkling of an eye the
magical scabbard flew out of her hands to be reunited with the sword. I fastened them to the waist of the fallen maimed King, as I had first done all those years ago.

At the return of Excalibur the curse was lifted. Blood flowed back up out of the ground and into King Arthur. He rose to his feet as his flesh meshed together. Morgan flew up into the air, howling with rage. “Army of the Dead! Destroy them!” she cried. The skeletons moved forwards at her command. But I had a command of my own at the ready. “Staff!” I shouted.

The entire sky above the Millennium Stadium was filled with the massed ranks of the domestic living-dead and their horses, led by Kay, Perceval and Pellinore upon the Questing Beast. They descended to the pitch and dismounted, surrounding the skeleton army. The sight of their old horses, as bereft of skin as they, awakened the memory of the skeletons' old knightly selves. They dropped their jagged black swords on the ground, scratching their skulls, as if trying to puzzle out how they had got there. The one pinning down Lancelot pulled his foot from out of the fallen knight's hand. Perceval and Kay helped Gawain to his feet.

Morgan drew on all her powers, focusing them into one last mustering of black magic. She threw it with all her might at King Arthur, a beam of bile that crackled through the air. King Arthur drew Excalibur to meet it. The blast struck the sword with a sizzle, like hot fat hitting cold water. Gaining more strength with every step, Arthur pushed the beam back until he stood level with his half-sister.

“Curse you,” she said.

“Not anymore,” said King Arthur, and chopped off her head.

The nearest skeleton caught it before it hit the ground, jumping onto a horse and taking off into the air. The other skeletons followed him, plucking up Morgan's decapitated
body and riding back to the Otherworld portal, a hundred of them in a flying stampede, until only my living-dead staff remained.

Except that they were no longer the living-dead, but now fully returned to the people I remembered. You, Gwion, shook your head woozily. Geraint looked around himself in wonder, while Enid, Bedwyr and Owen embraced each other. And Beaumains walked towards me, the light of recognition in her bright eyes, her full, reinstated mouth breaking into a wonderful smile. I smiled back, but not without sadness, for with this restoration her work was done, and I knew what would happen now that the curse was broken. Beaumains got to within an arm's reach of me and dissolved into the air. Her departure, like all the passing away of my old staff, was no more than a breath of breeze on my cheek.

“Well, Herne,” said Pellinore, slapping me on the back, hard. “That's every last critter back in the hole. Except for this one.” Pellinore patted the Questing Beast's flank. It wagged its tail. At least, I think it did, for my vision was temporarily blurred.

“I am afraid you can't keep it, Pellinore,” I said, wiping my eyes.

“Damn. Thought you were going to say that. Well, I can't say I won't miss it after all these years. Gave me quite the run-around, all told. But, you're the hunter, huntsman.” I clicked my fingers and sent the Questing Beast back to the Otherworld.

“Lucas?” said Arthur. “What happened to you?”

I ignored him for a moment and shut my eyes, stretching my mind out to the West Wales coast, sealing up the portal between this world and the Otherworld forever. When I opened my eyes again, the dark skies had been replaced by bright June sunshine. The media and military people, who had remained on the tiered seating throughout the finalé,
still held their distance, not yet trusting the evidence of their senses against everything they had seen over the past few days.

Arthur and Lancelot stood side-by-side, looking at me, their expression one of curiosity mingled with surprise, pushing aside all their recent enmity. Even Gawain's rage at Lancelot seemed to have left him.

“You have some explaining to do, Lucas,” Arthur said to me. Of course, I had to do nothing of the sort. But old habits die hard, even when one has just started a new life.

And loose ends have always bothered my eye.

 

The first thing you need to know about a Nick in Time, Gwion, is what it is not. It is categorically
not
time travel. Such things are, to my knowledge, highly unwise, even for magicians as powerful as we. There are, however, certain points in time that possess rare qualities, setting them apart from the more common moments in the endless procession of days. In order to make effective use of such nuggets, you first have to ask yourself some searching questions. I suppose what it all boils down to, is this:

Do you really want the way back to be the way forwards?

And that is something that I could not answer, as I stood there among the knights I had served for so long, after telling them the story of how Lucas the butler achieved the Quest for the Grail and became Lucas the Merlin. Certainly, my notebook offered no clues. The next page remained stubbornly blank, as did all the pages after that. So we stood there, the seven of us, while the world returned to normal. The ranks of the media had increased up on the seating. Cameras were pointing down at us. With a familiar yawn of clatter and clamour, the world once more woke up to our presence among them.

“I must say,” said Kay, “all this has a whiff of anti-climax. I mean, it's all well and good you being a wizard,
Lucas — congratulations, by the way — but what about the rest of us?”

“Aye. And don't think my grievance is done,” said Gawain. “Magic Pants Lucas is all well and good, but it doesn't alter the fact that we're only here 'cos both of you lied.” He pointed to Lancelot, and to Arthur. “So don't go pretending everything's all mead and honey. Gareth still died for nothing. They all did.”

“The question is,” said Perceval. “What do we do next? Wait around to get arrested?”

“No thanks, not again,” said Kay.

“Like we'll have any choice in the matter!” said Gawain. “We'll be freaks. They'll put us in cages an' prod us with sticks. If we're lucky.”

“And now that there's no Grail — well, now that
you're
the Grail, Lucas — I suppose there's nothing left for us to do but… what? Wait around to wither and die?” said Kay.

“Not so Eternal a Quest after all, it would seem,” said Lancelot.

King Arthur remained silent, drawing a circle in the mud with the point of Excalibur.

“If we are to die as mortal men, then I would sooner have done so back when such a death meant something,” said Lancelot to the King. The King cut the circle in half, forming two semi-circular shapes.

The notebook trembled in my hand like a timorous mouse.

“To have the world remember us at our best,” agreed King Arthur, “not as tarnished and sullied knights past their prime.”

“Returning with the Grail to save the day,” said Lancelot.

“Back in the nick of time,” said Arthur.

The notebook gave a sudden jolt. Words started to write themselves on the open page. Aha. So that was it.

“I might be able to do something about that,” I said. “Or rather, you might, Arthur.” King Arthur looked at me expectantly, as the pitch started to fill with running men and women. I stretched out my hands and pressed my palms against the air in front of me.

“Whatever are you doing, Lucas?” said the King at my side.

“Looking for a loose end,” I said. “The tiniest tear; a Nick in Time. Arthur, when I give the word, take Excalibur and draw a slow, wide arc in the air, starting from the exact point that I show you.” The King unsheathed his sword and stood ready.

Wherever the Nick was, it would be near me. It was only
because
of me that it was there in the first place. I pressed again with my hands. The air to my left felt a little looser, like a wobbly floorboard. I brought my eye up close to the spot — a tiny point of light, no bigger than a pin-hole. I looked into it and saw, with the distorted magnification of a fisheye lens, seven men standing in a hidden glade. I turned my ear to the pin-hole, and listened. The clamour of the approaching crowd grew ever louder, but I tuned them out easily, for I knew exactly what I was listening for.

“This is not a time for sorrow,” said a voice.

Bright light shone through the pin-hole as the Grail, as it was back then, rose up in the glade, hovering above the head of the old King Arthur like a large and clumsy crown.

“My knights,” said the voice through the hole, “today is a glorious day.”

The military pounded towards us, a crowd of cameras and microphones following after them like reinforcements.

“There,” I said to King Arthur, pointing at the seam. “Cut there.”

The King raised Excalibur. He tucked the tip of the sword into the pin-hole, and sliced through the air in a wide arc
to his right. At the sword's passing there was a loud ripping sound, like a thick material being torn in two. The stadium was suddenly filled with light, as if the sun were rising in front of us. The crowd dropped back, blinded and awestruck. The radiance increased, until the King had sliced away a full semicircular section. The air in the stadium dropped down like a fold of cut cloth, revealing a perfectly formed archway, a door between today and yesterday.

A bridge between Grails.

“The noble dream of Camelot will never die while we seven are still alive to uphold it,” said the old King in the glade.

“Amen to that,” said the King in the stadium.

He stepped through the archway and into the glade, back into the moment when the power of the Grail had first been unleashed at his command. King Arthur walked over to his old self, frozen in the transfigured moment. He passed into his own body, settling into its outline, the once and future king united. The rest of the knights followed him back to their past selves and did likewise.

I stood for a moment on the torn seam between worlds, on the frayed edges of a Nick in Time, and signalled for Plum to follow me through. Then I too stepped into the hidden glade. And for the second time, I achieved the Grail, and at last I knew everything else I had to do — the full knowledge of Service Time, my final destiny as butler-magician. The old Grail passed into me, and I passed into my old self, and I closed up the Nick in Time behind us as easy as pulling up a zip.

And King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table left the modern world, forever.

 

The phenomenon we butler-magicians call ‘Service Time,' Gwion, has its origin in situations of high domestic crisis — moments when one has a hundred things to do and not enough hours in the day in which to do them. It is not that time itself slows down. It is more that you yourself speed up, in such a way that you catch time unawares, giving it no choice but to follow
your
schedule for a change. I left King Arthur and the knights behind in the glade, to make their return on horseback, and took Plum and myself to Camlann the very instant we returned, for there were things I had to do first, in order for our return to have the maximum effect. We teleported into the valley of Camlann, and I tethered him to a tree out of sight before setting out across the battlefield.

I strode through the mêlée, ducking axes and avoiding swords with no more inconvenience as if they were platters of food being conveyed to a feast along a busy corridor. Mordred's forces had mounted their first attack, down the southern slope into the valley. Sir Gareth and the garrisons had been pushed back down to the valley floor and over towards the opposite, northern side. There were my staff, in the middle guard, acquitting themselves admirably against Mordred's forces. Enid, Bedwyr and Geraint, all grit and determination. And you, Gwion, brave and resourceful; I smiled at the thought of what a worthy successor you will
make. Sir Bors, Sir Ector and Sir Dagonet had fallen, but this time my heart was light at their passing, for I knew that the Otherworld they were going to was now an afterlife fit for heroes.