It came to pass one day that the King’s trusted wizard set out from the royal court of Cummelot to ride to the beautiful castle of Sir Barnard, many miles distant. This lovely place was forbidden to the peasants because it harboured an unlovely secret: living there all together were the ninety-four children born to the King by sundry women, each with yellow hair and each able to speak only the word ‘spaff’, so that, should they be discovered, they would be recognised at once as royal byblows. Scrolls had been nailed to trees the length and breadth of the land, warning: ‘Goeth thee not to Barnard Castle, for there be dragons and thou shalt be consumed by fire and teeth.’
Thither the wizard rode on his magic horse which could gallop at five hundred miles to the carrot, to take Sir Barnard his regular bag of gold. Now it happened that a lowly rustic later saw the wizard leaving these forbidden lands, and wondered at how he had survived the fearsome dragons. The rustic told his village of this extraordinary event and they rose up as one and journeyed for many days to request an audience with King Boris. And on their way they shared the tale with others and thus there gathered a great multitude before the gates of Cummelot.
After keeping them waiting for only several weeks, King Boris emerged from his stronghold with his little dog, Winalot. The rustic asked the king why the wizard had gone to the forbidden lands of Sir Barnard’s Castle. King Boris said it was to look upon the bluebells, upon which the rustic replied that the peasants would like to go there also, to look upon the bluebells. So King Boris reminded them of the dragons that would consume them with fire and teeth.
‘But the wizard hath not been consumed by fire and teeth,’ protested the rustic.
Pausing only to order trolls to be set loose later upon this irksome hovel-dweller, King Boris replied, ‘that is because the wizard is magical, whereas you are only peasants.’
‘The wizard is magical,’ repeated his henchman Sir Han Cockupalot, laughing strangely.
‘The wizard is magical,’ repeated his other henchman Sir Michaelot of Slitheygove, laughing even more strangely and adding, ‘Mine eyes were recently so bad that I could hardly ride my horse, but he restored my sight. It was a miracle. He is truly the second Cumming.’
‘Your eyes are bad,’ said the peasants, ‘because you partake of wicked weeds with Sir Gawain and Sir Cocain. Anyway, it is unfair that the wizard can look upon the bluebells and we cannot.’
‘The wizard went to the Castle of Sir Barnard not only to look upon the bluebells,’ King Boris told them. ‘He went also to… er… um… cripes… to rescue the priti maid Guinevere-to-the-far-right from the Unholy Hedgehog of Doom.’ For King Boris hoped that the peasants would find fair ladies as irresistible as he did.
But the peasants cried, ‘The priti maid Guinevere-to-the-far-right is an evil sorceress! We did not want her rescued from the Unholy Hedgehog of Doom.’
Then two junior knights, Sir Caradoc and Sir Polling-Shoc, said to King Boris, ‘The people are not happy with the wizard,’ for which they were both hung, drawn, and deselected.
‘If I send the wizard away,’ said King Boris, ‘I will not have his magic to protect me— I mean you, against the wicked usurper Mordred.’
At which they asked him, ‘What sort of feeble king art thou anyway?’
‘The sort that ruffleth his hair, and sayeth spaffalot, and hath a cute dog,’ said Boris. ‘Since when is this not enough?’
But his knights realised the game was up and they all drew their swords and stabbed each other in the back, with a universally fatal effect. All King Boris could say as he stood there, knee-deep in blood, was ‘Spaff spaff spaffity spaff.’ So the druids were called and pronounced him mad, and Mordred was brought in from exile and found to be a sensible man who liked donkeys, so the peasants renamed him Sir Steer Calmer, and he did.
The End
© C P Jenkinson 28/05/2020
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