The Knight

Two servingmen came in, one with a clean trencher for me, butter, and a basket of rolls, the other with a big bowl of scraps and bones for Gylf.

When they had gone and Gylf was cracking bones, Crol tugged at his beard. It was a black spade beard, as I could see by then. The face above it looked old enough to make me wonder whether that black was not a dye job. He said, “You are not of noble lineage, Sir Able?”

I shook my head, and tried to explain that our father had run a hardware store; when I saw that was going to get me into more trouble, I said that my brother Bold Berthold had raised me and he had been a peasant.

Papounce asked, “But aren’t you a knight? That’s what we were told.”

“I am,” I said. “I’m a knight in the service of Duke Marder of Sheerwall.”

“My own parents were peasants,” Crol said. “I became a man-at-arms. My father was proud of me, but my brothers were jealous.”

“Bold Berthold would have been proud of me, I know,” I said, “and if he were well, and young again, I would have him in a mail shirt and a steel cap as quick as I could work it. I’ve never known anyone as brave as he was, and he was strong enough to wrestle bulls.”

“You’re strong yourself?” Crol’s teeth gleamed between the black beard and his black mustache.

I shrugged.

He reached across the table. “Let’s see you squeeze my hand while I squeeze yours.”

I missed my grip, and Crol’s hand (bigger even than mine) closed on mine like a vise. I kicked the pain out of my head, if you know what I mean, and I became the storm pounding the cliff Garsecg and I had stood on, wave after wave, with boulders flying in them like Ping-Pong balls.

“Enough.”

I let go.

“If I were Duke Marder, I’d have knighted you myself. What Lord Beel may make of you, I don’t know. Have you had enough to eat? We can go over and see if he and his daughter are up.”

Papounce leaned toward Crol and whispered long enough for me to grab another bite of ham.

“I won’t mention your father or your brother,” Crol told me. “If you didn’t mention them either, that might be wise.”

“I won’t, unless Lord Beel—”

Something big, heavy, and soft hit my lap, and Mani’s head, bigger than my fist, came up over the edge of the table to look at my trencher. I could not help grinning at him, and Crol and Papounce laughed; and then a big black paw put out claws big enough to hook salmon and latched on to the rest of my ham.

Crol said, “We’ll stay a minute or two longer. No harm done.”

“Thanks. I wanted to say that I’m not ashamed of my family. It may hurt me here, like it did in Sheerwall, but nothing anybody says will make me ashamed of them. As for Bold Berthold, I told you about him. I told Sir Ravd once, and his opinion was pretty close to mine.”

Papounce said, “He’s a doughty knight, from what we hear.”

“He’s dead,” I told them. “He died four years ago.” I pushed my little stool back and stood up.

Chapter 48. Too Much Honor

Beel’s pavilion was the richest. The walls and roof were crimson silk, and the ropes were braided silk cords. The poles were turner’s work, of some dark wood that looked purple when the sun hit it. The men-at-arms guarding it saluted Crol as three maids came fluttering out like a little flock of sparrows; the first one was carrying a basin of steaming water, the second one towels, and the third one soap, sponges, and what may have been a bundle of laundry.

“We’ll have to wait a bit,” Crol remarked as one of the men-at-arms rapped a pole; but a servingman with the face of a sly mouse popped out of the door to tell us to come in.

Beel sat at a folding table on which a platter of quail smoked and sputtered; his daughter, a doe-eyed girl about sixteen, sat beside him on a folding chair. She was picking bits from one of the quail.

Beel himself, a middle-aged man so short you noticed it even when he was sitting down, studied Mani, Gylf, and me, smiled just a little, and said, “You bring me a witch knight, I see, Master Crol. Or a wild knight, perhaps. Which is it?”

Crol cleared his throat. “Good morrow, Your Lordship. I trust you slept well.”

Beel nodded.

“I thought it would be better for Sir Able to fetch along his dog and cat, Your Lordship, because Your Lordship was bound to hear about them. Then Your Lordship would have wanted to know why I hadn’t let Your Lordship see them for yourself, and quite right too. If they offend, we can take them away, Your Lordship.”

The thin smile returned as Beel spoke to me. “I usually see no one but my herald with a cat upon his shoulder. It’s a novelty to see somebody else wearing one. Are you as fond of them as Crol is?”

I said, “Of this one, My Lord.”

“Sanity at last. He has a score, I swear. His favorite is white, though, and nothing like the size of that monster. Would he like a bird, do you think?”

Beel held up a quail; and Mani jumped from my shoulder to the tabletop, accepted it with both front paws, made Beel a dignified little bow, leaped from the table to the ground and disappeared behind the tablecloth.