"Really," Bedevere said. "I used to be one of King Arthur"s knights, you see, and I"m here on a-"
"King Arthur?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Oh I see."
"Good."
"No disrespect intended, I"m sure."
"Not at all."
"My name"s Mahaud, by the way."
"Sir Bedevere de Haut Gales."
"I"ve heard of you. Aren"t you the knight who used to-"
But Bedevere interrupted. The name was familiar, and the voice - ye G.o.ds, how could he ever forget that voice? But no, surely not. It wasn"t possible.
"Did you say Mahaud?" he said.
"That"s right," Mahaud replied. "Mahaud de Villehardouin."
Bedevere"s voice quivered as he spoke. "Matron?"
The skull laughed again, and this time Bedevere laughed too.
"You remember me, Matron," Bedevere exclaimed. "I was in the same year as Aguisant and Bors and Gaheris Minor."
"Of course I remember! You kept beetles in a shoe box in the junior dormitory."
"Look . . ." It was Turquine, and there was just a hint of peevishness in his voice. "I hate to interrupt, but aren"t you going to introduce me?"
There was a puzzled silence and then Bedevere said, "Sorry, Turkey, I forgot. Matron left the term before you arrived. Matron, this is Sir Turquine le Sable. He was at the old Coll too, but after your time."
"Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise. Look, Bedders, do you know what"s going on here, because-"
"Shut up, Turkey, there"s a good chap. Sorry, Matron. How are you keeping, anyway?"
There was a long silence. "I"m dead."
"Surely not?"
"I most certainly am."
"I see. Oh I am sorry to hear that, Matron. I . . ."
Bedevere stopped in mid-sentence. Was it just him, or was something turning out a bit counter-intuitive here? "Dead?" he repeated.
"As nail in door," Matron replied. "And I"m not at all pleased about it, let me tell you."
"I"m not surprised."
"I mean to say," Matron went on, "when I retired, the Coll was extremely generous - much more than I expected, really very moving - and so of course I wanted to invest my little nestegg for my old age. And then I met this charming young lady, said she was the elder sister of one of the boys at the Coll..."
Bedevere felt a lump rise in his throat. "Lyonesse Capital Growth Trust units?" he asked.
"Lyonesse Managed Income Bond, actually," Matron replied. "And not six months after I"d taken out the policy, I got this letter saying the whole thing had gone into liquidation and how sorry they were. It made my blood boil, I can tell you. So I came straight down here and . . . Well, here I am. And if ever I get my hands on that wicked little chit of a sales girl, I"ll . . . Well, she"d better watch out, that"s all."
"That"s awful, Matron," Bedevere said. "Cheating you like that and then murdering you as well. That"s - well, awful. They really shouldn"t be allowed to get away with it."
"Hear hear," muttered Turquine, and added something about it needing no ghost come from the grave, which Bedevere thought was in rather poor taste. He shushed firmly, and then scratched his head.
"Excuse me asking," he said after a moment"s thought, "but how come you can still, well, talk? I thought you needed to The skull clicked its teeth. "Some people may let themselves run to seed when they retire," Matron said. "Not me. Like I always used to say to you boys at the Coll, the important thing is willpower, willpower and determination. I was determined not to let myself get out of shape, and it"s worked."
"I can see that," Bedevere replied, and added, "Good for you." But he still felt there was something lacking. An explanation, for instance. Still, it was bad manners to keep on, and Matron had always been most particular about things like that. He changed the subject, and they chatted for a while about the other boys in Bedevere"s cla.s.s. This kept them entertained for a while; except that all of them were dead, and there was a risk of the whole thing getting a touch morbid; not to say repet.i.tive. Very carefully, he reverted to the earlier topic.
"Matron," he said, "do please excuse me if this is a bit, well, personal, but I"d always understood . . ." Inspiration! "When I was at the Coll, Sir Giraut taught us that when a person"s sort of dead, that"s it, you know..."
"Giraut!" snapped the skull, contemptuously. She has no lips to purse now, Bedevere reflected; otherwise... "The man was a charlatan. Used to leave apple-cores behind the radiators."
"I never liked him much."
"Good for you," Matron replied. "What did he know about being dead? Just because he"d got a fancy degree from some university somewhere, that doesn"t mean to say he"s got the right to pick the middle out of the bread."
Bedevere nodded, not that anyone could see him. "So what"s it really like, then?" he asked. "Death, I mean. I"ve always wanted to know."
"Well," Matron said, after a moment"s reflection, "I can only speak as I find, you understand. You won"t catch me pontifiicating about things I know nothing about, like some people we could mention. But personally, I find it"s quite like being alive. Of course, the magic makes a difference."
"I see," Bedevere said. "The magic."
Matron laughed. "I can tell you didn"t pay much attention in cla.s.s, young Master Bedevere. Too busy playing Hangman with that Ector de Maris, I"ll be bound."
Bedevere flushed, for n.o.body likes to be maligned; but he repressed his indignation and said, "About the magic, Matron. What does it do?"
"Magic," Matron said, in that slightly plonking voice of hers, "is a by-product of the decay of the gold isotope Gold 337. It"s a form of radiation. All radiation can make living things mutate; it influences molecular structures, you see. But magic radiation is extremely powerful. It can make living things mutate very quickly - turn you into a frog, for example - or it can affect inanimate objects, such as vases of flowers or the flags of all nations; make them pop out of top hats, that sort of thing. It can also, well, raise the dead." Matron hesitated for a moment. "No, that"s not strictly true. Mare a case of making death a bit more like life, you might say. No, that"s still not quite right. More the other way round."
"Make life seem like death, you mean?" Bedevere enquired. This was like GCC Philosophy with Dr Magus; and then he remembered, very faintly, that Matron and Dr Magus used to take long walks down by the archery b.u.t.ts. Under cover of the friendly darkness, he grinned.
"Exactly," Matron was saying. "If there"s a lot of magic about - and there"s plenty down here, I can tell you; if you don"t believe me, ask the rat to show you his conjuring tricks - then a person can be dead and alive at the same time. That"s to say, she"s alive, but her body is dead. It"s all a bit spooky, really," she added, "but you get used to it after a while."
"I see."
"Not," Matron continued, "that it"s the slightest bit of use to me being alive if the rest of me is nothing but a lot of old bones. In fact it"s the worst of both worlds, except that I don"t get toothache any more. One must be grateful for small mercies, I always say."
Bedevere sat in silence for a while. Turquine, for his part, was surrept.i.tiously trying to fit together the bits of the skeleton that he"d started to use to make a set of stumps and a cricket bat with.
"How would it be," Bedevere said at last, "if we all got out of here? I mean what would happen, do you think? Would you - well, stop being half alive and be wholly dead, or would you stop being half dead and be . . .?"
"I really couldn"t say," Matron answered. "Mind you, either would be an improvement. I never could be doing with shillyshallying, you know that."
"Fine," Bedevere said thoughtfully. "So if we could get out of here . . ."
"If, young man. As we used to say when I was a girl, if ifs were horses, beggars would ride."
"Quite," Bedevere agreed. "But you"ve been down here a long time. Haven"t you, well, noticed anything?"
The skull mused for a moment. "Not a great deal, no," it said. "From time to time, people drop in, they die, we talk for a while, then usually we fall out and they sulk, and they give up the power of speech. Some people can be so petty."
"So you haven"t got any suggestions about how we might . . .?"
"Well." A long silence. "There is something. I tried it with a young man who dropped in fifty years or so back, but I"m afraid he made rather a m.u.f.f of it. No backbone, you see."
"Ah."
"Especially after he fell off the wall."
"Right." Bedevere scratched his ear thoughtfully. "I"m game," he said. "What about you, Turkey?"
Turquine looked up. He was having difficulties. Beyond the basic principle that the leg bone connecka-to the thigh bone, he was no anatomist.
"You know me," he said, "I"ll try anything once. Er, Bedders, do you know anything about knees?"
"This isn"t going to work," said Turquine. "Don"t ask me how I know, I just do."
"Shut up, Turkey," Bedevere grunted.
"All right, I"m just saying, that"s all. Don"t blame me if-"
"Boys!" said the skull sharply. "No getting fractious, please."
"Sorry," said Turquine. "It"s just-"
"That"ll do, Master Turquine," the skull said. "Oh, by the way, did you have a cousin called Breunis?"
Turquine raised an eyebrow. "That"s right," he said, "Breunis Saunce Pitie. Come to think of it, he was at the Call, zoo."
"I knew you reminded me of someone," said the skull. "He was a horrid little boy."
Many years ago, Lyonesse Market Research discovered that market penetration for Lyonesse financial services among the Giants of South Permia was less than 18%, per cent, and a major marketing drive was launched. It was quite successful, and, as a result, the Giants (who were basically personifications of glaciers and could trace their ancestry back to the Second Ice Age) were soon extinct.* One such Giant, Germadoc the Violent, had taken out an offsh.o.r.e roll up sterling a.s.sets bond which went yellow on him about ten minutes after the ink was dry on the policy doc.u.ment, and he had come straight across to Atlantis City to complain. The customer service people had had to fire catapults at him just to stop him moving about. Then they tied him up and put him in the dungeon. In sections.
Being a Giant, his femurs were a touch over twelve feet long. The trapdoor was very slightly more than eighteen feet above floor level.
"I saw someone at a circus do this once," Turquine was saying. "Garcio the Magnificent, they called him, he was very good. Mind you," he added, "he had proper stilts, with little ledges you put your feet in and hand-grips and everything."
Bedevere, clinging on to an enormous bone for dear life, nodded impatiently. "Are you there yet?" he demanded.
"Not sure," Turquine replied. "It"s so dark, you see . . . Ah, what"s this?"
The stilts swayed alarmingly, and Bedevere was nearly swept off his feet. He braced himself against the wall and hugged the bone to his chest. This had jolly well better work, he was saying to himself, otherwise . . .
"Gotcha!"
And then a loud cry and an oath, and suddenly there wasn"t any weight at the top of the stilts any more. Bedevere yelled "Turkey!" and tried to peer upwards, but it was pointless. There were some grunting noises.
"Turkey!"
"It"s all right," came a strained voice from above. "There"s a handle or something, I"m hanging on to it. If I could just loosen this catch . . ."
And then there was a flood of light.
And then things in the dungeon got a bit fraught.
Germadoc the Violent was very good about it all, considering. Once Bedevere and Matron had explained, and he"d understood that he was alive again and it really wasn"t their fault at all, he"d helped them all up out of the cellar Bedevere was amazed how many of them there had been and then led his fellow-complainants away to find somebody to complain to. They could hear them doing it, far away in the distance.
"Well," said Turquine, "that"s that. Piece of duff, really."
Matron smiled. Once she got the flesh back on her bones, Bedevere saw that she hadn"t changed a bit.
"Thank you, both," she said graciously. "Very much obliged, I"m sure. It was very perceptive of you, young Bedevere, to realise that we weren"t dead at all, and it was just the magic in the dungeon all along."
Under normal circ.u.mstances, Bedevere would have explained that Sir Giraut at the dear old Coll had explained to him that since death is final, anything that permits the patient to carry on talking must be something else. But he remembered the apple-cores behind the radiators and contented himself with a bashful smile. "That"s all right," he said.
"And you, Master Turquine," Matron continued, "that was very brave of you. Well done."
Turquine, unused to compliments, blushed. Usually when he was brave, the only witnesses were the people he was being brave against, and they tended to be hyper-critical.
In the distance there was a crash which made the floor shake, followed by a lot of cheering. That was probably Germadoc, complaining. By the sound of it, he had decided against putting it in writing.
"Well," Bedevere said, "we"ve got the Personal Organiser, the Atlanteans don"t seem to be about, I think it"s time we were on our way. Can we drop you off anywhere, Matron?"
Mahaud de Villenhardouin smiled. "Thank you," she said, "that would be most kind. Would Glas...o...b..ry be out of your way?"
Glas...o...b..ry ... Bedevere knew the name from somewhere, but although the bell rang in his mind, n.o.body came to answer it. He a.s.sured her that that would be fine, and together they went in search of the fax machine.
It was hard to find. Although under normal circ.u.mstances Atlantis City is crawling with faxes, just then none of them seemed to be working. In fact, most of the office equipment was out of order, one way or another, which only goes to show that a good concerted complaint can make itself felt.
Eventually they tracked one down in a snug little room with comfortable chairs and a calendar with pictures of kittens on it. Something told Bedevere that this was probably the Queen"s office.
"Here we are," Turquine said, thumbing through the directory. "Any number of places in Glas...o...b..ry are on the fax. Any preference?"
Mahaud shook her head. "I expect it"s changed rather a lot since my day," she said. "And besides, I won"t be stopping."
Glas...o...b..ry. The town of the Gla.s.s Mountain.