"So that"s what it"s all about, is it?" the Queen replied.
"Um." Bedevere bit his lip. "That"s beside the point," he said, "and the point is very sharp, very sharp indeed, so.. ."
"Very well, then," said the Queen, folding her arms and sticking her chin out. "Kill me then, see if I care."
Bedevere frowned, and then turned the frown into a scowl. "Don"t push your luck," he growled; but the growl came out about as menacing as the mewing of a kitten.
"Go on."
"Look..."
"Scaredy-cat!"
"Don"t you-"
"Cowardy cowardy custard!"
"d.a.m.n!"
With a grunt of pure rage, Bedevere swung the knife up and hurled it into the floor, where it quivered like a violin string. Then he sagged, like an ice-cream skeleton in a microwave.
"I thought so," said the Queen. "You never had the faintest intention, did you?"
Bedevere scowled at her. "Don"t sound so d.a.m.ned disappointed," he said, and slumped into the corner. "Anyway," he added, "I had you going there for a moment, didn"t I?"
The Queen had her powder compact out again. "Certainly not," she said to the mirror. "You knights are all mouth and vambraces. You"ll be hearing from my legal advisers about this, by the way."
But Bedevere had made up his mind. One moment he was in the corner, about as taut and poised as a bag of old shoes; the next moment he was on his feet and grabbing the Queen"s organiser bag with both hands.
"Hey!" the Queen squealed. "Get off, will you?"
The strap broke - it was a fiendishly expensive bag, with one of those flimsy gold chain straps, and Bedevere weighed close on thirteen stone without armour - and the bag flew open. One of the things that landed on the floor was a small, leather-covered thing like a book. Before the Queen could move, Bedevere was standing on it, with a smirk on his face you could have built a trading estate on.
"And sucks to you too," he said.
"You"ve got no right..."
"Granted," said Bedevere. Then he stuck his tongue out.
The Queen shrieked and grabbed the hilt of the dagger, but it was too firmly stuck in the floor. So she called Bedevere a rude name instead.
"Sticks and stones," replied the knight, and he stooped quickly, picked up the book, and stowed it carefully away.
"Now then," he said, "about my money..."
Just then, a chimney appeared in the corner of the room; and in the mouth of the chimney, a pair of boots . . .
"What the h.e.l.l"s keeping him?" said Turquine irritably.
The hackers looked at each other.
"Ten to one he"s got lost," Turquine continued, picking at the sleeve of his coat, where a loose thread was beginning to unwind itself. "No more sense of direction than a tree, that man. Got us lost on the way here, and that was just on the ring road."
The hairy hacker coughed meaningfully. "Look," he said, "I know this isn"t going to be easy for you to accept, but people . . ."
"What?"
The hacker flushed under his superabundance of facial hair. "When people go in . . . in there," he said, "well, coming out is the exception rather than the norm, if you see what I mean. Like, your friend is probably..."
"b.a.l.l.s," Turquine replied. "He"s just got lost somewhere, that"s all. Come on, you dozy lot, I suppose we"d better go and get him."
The hacker shrugged; a what-the-h.e.l.l, Light-Brigade, lastone-into-Sebastopol"s-a-sissy shrug.
"All right," he said. "Wait for us."
"Freeze," said a voice from the fireplace.
Bedevere and the Queen turned and stared. The boots kicked, like the feet of a hanged man, and there was a vulgar expression from about where the mantelpiece should have been. Then a lot of soot and what looked rather like a dead bird fell into the grate, followed by a man in a somewhat grubby red cape.
"Hold it right there," he said. "Don"t even think of moving, either of you."
He extracted himself from the fireplace, brushed a good deal of soot off himself, and straightened his back. He was very tall and broad, and he had eyes like little red traffic lights.
"Where you made your mistake," he said to Bedevere, turning round and tugging at something still lodged in the chimney, "was in a.s.suming that there was no other way into this room. Well, you were wrong. I can get in anywhere."
Bedevere turned to the Queen. "Excuse me," he said, "but do you know this gentleman?"
The Queen mumbled something and nodded. Good Lord, Bedevere said to himself, she"s terrified. Then a tumbler fell in the combination lock of his mind.
"Just a moment," he said, "aren"t you . . .?"
Von Weinacht snarled at him. "Don"t say it," he said. "Don"t make things worse for yourself than they already are." He tugged, and a sack came down into the grate with a heavy crunch. From it, von Weinacht produced a transparent cellophane package with a brightly-coloured piece of cardboard at the top. Bedevere recognised its contents as one of those plastic swords given to children by parents who don"t value their neighbours" daffodils. The Queen gave a little shriek.
"Now," said von Weinacht, "to business." He tore off the cardboard and took out the plastic sword. "Two birds with one stone. You," and he nodded his streaming white beard at Bedevere, "are searching for the Holy Grail. You aren"t going to find it. And you ..." He gave the Queen a long and unfriendly look. "You and I go way back. I"ll deal with you later."
"Excuse me," Bedevere interrupted, "But how did you know . . .?"
Von Weinacht laughed. "I know everything," he said, with conviction. "I know the ground-plan and floor layout of every house in the world. I can read the minds of every parent and every child ever born. Of course I know what you"re up to, and you aren"t going to get away with it. Now, give me that book before I take it from you."
He pulled off the plastic scabbard and threw it on to the ground, revealing a horribly shiny steel-blue blade. If that"s plastic, Bedevere realised, then I"m Sir Georg Solti.
"Sorry," he said, "no can do."
Von Weinacht grinned repulsively, then roared like a bull and swung his sword. There was a disturbance in the air where Bedevere"s head would have been if he hadn"t moved it; and at the same moment, a patch of honey appeared on the wall, followed by a door, which opened to reveal Sir Turquine. He was slightly out of breath and holding a two-footlong adjustable spanner.
"Oh good," he said, "fighting. That"s more like it."
Von Weinacht wheeled round and scowled at him. Turquine did a double-take.
"Just a tick," he said, "I know you. You"re that burglar."
There was a moment of perfect stillness while two memories rewound many hundreds of years . . .
. . . To the Yuletide Eve before Turquine"s seventh birthday, when he"d been sleeping peacefully in the hall at Chastel Maldisen and this burglar had tried to break in through the smokehole in the roof. Ugly customer, dressed all in red for some reason, carrying a whopping great swag-bag on his shoulder. Luckily, Turquine"s father had bought his son a crossbow for Yule, and hadn"t hidden it very carefully . . .
. . . To that nightmare back in the Chastel Maldisen, when some horrible little child had kept him holed up in the roof for ten very long minutes by shooting arrows at him while he clung to a rafter and yelled frantically for reindeer support . . .
Turquine was the first to recover. "It"s been a constant source of aggravation to me, that has," he said, "the one and only time I"ve ever had a burglar and I kept missing. Mind you," he added, "b.l.o.o.d.y thing wasn"t properly shot in, kept pulling to the right..."
"You didn"t do so badly," von Weinacht hissed, and he drew back the sleeve on his left arm to reveal a long, white scar. "Three birds," he added. Then the sword flashed in the air like a blue firework.
Turquine parried with the spanner, and there was a ringing sound like a fight in a belfry. The head of the spanner fell to the ground.
While von Weinacht was celebrating with a horrible gloating cry and whirling the sword round his head for a final devastating blow, Turquine very shrewdly kicked him in the nuts, belted him with what was left of the spanner, and ran for it.
Von Weinacht recovered quite remarkably quickly, screamed like a wounded elephant and followed.
Bedevere shrugged and turned to the Queen. "Anyway," he said, "time I was going. Thanks for everything."
The Queen tried to hit him with the register of shareholders but missed, and he darted out of the door just before it healed up and vanished. Bedevere stood in the corridor and caught his breath. A long way away, he could hear running feet and curses. That way, he decided.
He was running flat out, one hand clamped on the book, the other pumping rhythmically at his side, when the corridor turned back into a spiral staircase.
Of course, he came the most terrific purler. First he banged his head on the ceiling, then he bounced several times off the walls, and then the steps got him. As if that wasn"t enough to put up with, he had just managed to arrest his rapid progress by sticking his legs out when a stunned PA came down on top of him, landing a sharp elbow in his midriff before rolling away into the darkness.
Come on, Bedders, pull yourself together, this isn"t getting you anywhere.
He hauled himself on to a step, rubbed his head to make sure he wasn"t bleeding, and breathed in a couple of times. Nothing broken, as far as he could tell. Splendid.
Down below, there was the most appalling racket, rather as if a lot of people were falling down on top of each other and swearing a lot. Grinning ruefully, Sir Bedevere got up and began walking carefully down the staircase.
The Queen had emptied her bag out on the floor. It must be here somewhere. She always had one, for just such emergencies as these.
Lipsticks. No. Nail varnish. No. Purse, credit cards, tissues, calculator, notebook, diary. No.
Ah...
She took the small jar of cold cream, drew back her arm, and let fly . . .
Von Weinacht had, apparently, knocked himself out cold on the stone pillar at the foot of the staircase. Under him, squashed flat and moaning slightly, was a PA. Various semiconscious hackers lay about untidily. Bedevere smiled, feeling ever so slightly superior, and stepped over them.
"Turkey?" he called. "You there, Turkey?"
"Over here," came the reply, and Bedevere followed the sound of the voice under a low doorway. There was Sir Turquine, sitting astride a large oak chest, trying to lever off the lid with von Weinacht"s sword.
"Not now, Turkey," said Bedevere. "I think it"s time we left, don"t you?"
Turquine shook his head. "Haven"t got it yet, have we?" he replied. The sword broke.
"What makes you think it"s in there?"
"What makes you think it isn"t?" Turquine replied, hammering at the padlock with the sword-hilt. "I"m just being thorough, that"s all." The padlock broke.
"Well," said Bedevere" "is this what you"re looking for?" He produced the notebook and held it up. If Michelangelo had ever wanted to do an allegorical statue of Smugness, he couldn"t have found a better model.
Turquine looked up and grinned. "That"s it, is it?" he said.
"Reckon so."
"Good lad." He got up off the chest and threw back the lid. "Might as well have a look in here anyway, while I"m here," he said. "Good Lord, it"s full of diamonds and things. There"s a turn-up."
Bedevere shook his head affectionately. "Hurry up, then," he said, "and then we"d better be off. And don"t take any gold."
Turquine nodded. "Because of b.u.g.g.e.ring up the earth"s axis, I know," he replied. "Load of old socks if you ask me. Just the sort of thing you"d expect from a lot of bankers. Want some?"
Bedevere thought of twenty thousand gold-mine shares and nodded. "Why not?" he said. "Just to show willing, you understand."
"Exactly," Turquine agreed. He scooped out a double handful of emeralds and handed them to his friend, who stowed them away in his pockets.
"Ready?"
"Almost," Turquine replied, scrabbling about in the chest. "I think this one"s rather nice, don"t you?" He held up an enormous ruby, then kicked the lid shut.
"It"s not stealing," he added, "because in return, they can have this back."
He threw down a piece of paper and stamped on it. Bedevere recognised it, and smiled.
"Lyonesse Goldfields?" he asked.
"Worse," Turquine replied. "Lyonesse Capital Growth Trust Income Units. When I told my Dad what I"d done he nearly flayed me alive."
The knights grinned at each other.
"Time we weren"t here," said Turquine. "Now then, this way."
Bedevere shook his head. "Not unless you want to see the boiler room," he replied. "Follow me."
"But I think there"s a short-cut-"
"Follow me."
As they walked, Bedevere asked Turquine what had kept him.
"I like that," Turquine replied. "Honestly, Bedders, you"ve got a nerve. If it hadn"t been for. . ."
Bedevere shrugged. "I knew I could rely on you, Turkey. You just cut it a bit fine, that"s all."
Turquine nodded. "I know," he said. "As soon as you didn"t follow, I guessed something was up. No, finding the spanner was easy, it was just finding a jar. . ."