Grailblazers. Part 33

'Good evening.'

Boamund spun round. Standing beside him - he hadn't been there a moment ago, unless he'd been very heavily disguised as a small ornamental cherry tree - was what Boamund took to be a hermit.

'h.e.l.lo,' Boamund replied. 'Are you a hermit?'

'Yes,' said the hermit. 'How did you guess?'

'I just sort of did,' Boamund replied. 'Excuse me, but what do hermits actually do?'

The hermit scratched the lobe of his ear. 'It depends, really,' he said. 'In the old days, we used to meditate, pray, fast and converse with spirits. These days, though, most of us sit in lay-bys on main roads with a big painted board saying "Strawberries". You've probably seen us.'

'Well, no, actually,' Boamund replied. 'You see, I've been asleep for rather a long time, and-'

'So you have,' the hermit replied. 'I forgot. Well now, young Boamund, I expect you're rather excited.'

'Um,' said Boamund, 'yes. Quite. Are you going to tell me what happens next?'

The hermit shook his head. 'I'm afraid not,' he said. 'My role is what you might call a nice little cameo. Very cameo,' he added, with a touch of bitterness. 'All I'm supposed to do is tell you something true but misleading. You don't mind if we spin it out a bit, do you? Only I've been waiting fifteen hundred years for this, and I'd hate to rush things. I mean,' he added, 'it's not as if I've got a great deal to look forward to, is it?'

'Is it? I mean, haven't you?'

'Not really, no,' the hermit said. 'I'm booked in at that terribly dreary Gla.s.s Mountain place. Have you ever been there?'

'No.) 'You haven't missed much,' replied the hermit. 'That's why

I volunteered for this job, actually, just to have an excuse to put it off for a while. It wasn't exactly a riot of fun sitting beside the A45 in the rain with twenty pounds of squishy strawberries for all those years, but anything's better than where I'm going next.' The hermit sighed deeply and brushed a fly off the tip of his nose.

'Oh,' Boamund said. He felt rather awkward. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'Not your fault,' the hermit replied. 'That's where we go, you see, when we finally leave the world. They'll all be there, all the great magicians and sorcerers and hermits and anchorites, all sitting about yammering away or falling asleep in big leather armchairs. I expect I'll get used to it.' The hermit shook his head sadly. 'They all do, apparently, after a while. That's the really awful part of it, in my opinion.'

'I'm sorry,' Boamund replied. It was hard to know what to say.

'Thank you,' the hermit said. 'Now, the message is this. Only the true King of Albion will recover the Holy Grail. Good luck.'

A blue pyramid, smaller than the one Simon Magus had vanished into and somehow indefinably but perceptibly second cla.s.s, formed over him, gave a few perfunctory twinkles and vanished. Boamund looked at where it had been and chewed his lip for a moment.

'Oh,' he said.

He turned to look at the lake; and then in the corner of his eye he caught sight of a stealthy shadow creeping furtively towards him. He whipped out the sword and sprang.

'Hold it,' said the figure. 'Have you just been talking to the hermit?'

'Yes,' Boamund said. 'Why?'

'Oh nuts,' said the figure. 'I'm late. Forget it.'

'But . . .'

'I'm sorry,' the figure said, 'my fault, I blew it. What I'm going to say to the b.l.o.o.d.y woman when I come back without Grailblazers a scratch on me I really don't know. Probably I'll be back behind the counter Monday morning doing car insurance. Still, there it is.'

Boamund frowned. 'You want me to thump you?' he said. The figure nodded.

'Still,' he said, 'no use crying over spilt milk. Thanks anyway. Be seeing you.'

Boamund moved to strike, but the figure had gone. He shrugged, and returned to his seat on the landing-stage.

'Gosh,' he said.

Where he'd been, there was now an enormous blue car a Volvo - with a strange yellow object fastened to its wheel. Under one of its windscreen wipers was a sc.r.a.p of paper. Boamund lifted it out, unfolded it and read: WHOSO EXTRICATES THIS CAR FROM THIS.

CLAMP SHALL BE THE RIGHTFUL KING OF.

ALBION.

He scratched his head, and looked down at the yellow thing. It looked like some sort of trap or snare, and he wondered if the car was in pain. Perhaps it was dead; it certainly wasn't moving.

Rightful King of Albion.. .

'Well,' he said, 'here goes.'

Excalibur whistled in the air, and he struck with all his might. Because of a slight miscalculation - the blade was some six inches longer than he'd imagined- the net effect was that a tree immediately behind him lost the tip of one of its branches. He steadied himself, rubbed his wrist where he'd jarred it, and tried again. There was a clang, and the yellow thing broke in two and fell to the ground.

'Nice,' said a voice behind him. 'Very neat.'

It was a girl, wearing a blue and yellow uniform and holding a notebook. For some reason Boamund felt slightly apprehensive.

'It's all right,' the girl a.s.sured him, 'I'm purely allegorical, I'm not going to give you a ticket. You're supposed to get in and turn the key.'

'Oh,' Boamund said, 'right. Which key?'

The girl gave him a puzzled look, and then laughed. 'Sorry,' she said, 'I forgot, you've been asleep. Inside the car, there's a big wheel thing. Behind that on your right-hand side you'll find a small key. Give it a gentle turn clockwise and that'll start the engine. Clockwise is this way.' She demonstrated. 'Got that?'

'Thanks.'

'You're welcome,' said the girl and, rather to Boamund's disappointment, vanished. He climbed in, located the ignition and turned the key.

The car vanished.

Boamund sat up and felt the top of his head. There was something on it. A crown.

'Good Lord,' he said, and took it off. It was quite light and thin, and he had the feeling it was probably silver gilt; but it had little points like a saw-blade and a few rather small jewels set into it. He put it back on and tried to imagine being a king.

He looked up, conscious of a noise in the middle distance. It wasn't the sort of noise he had expected to hear beside a lake, somehow. It was, in fact, a telephone.

He looked round, and saw a hand breaking the surface of the lake, about a hundred and fifty yards from the bank. It was white, clothed in samite and holding a telephone.

Suddenly, Boamund wondered if the whole thing was a practical joke.

You know how it is with telephones. Whatever you're doing, however busy or preoccupied you are, sooner or later you give in and pick up the receiver. Boamund sighed and got to his feet. At the side of the jetty was a small boat - hadn't been there a moment ago; big deal, nothing surprised him about this caper any more - and sitting in it was a hooded figure holding the oars.

'Come on, will you?' said the hooded figure. 'I'm catching my death in here.'

Boamund scrambled down into the boat, sat down and began to sulk. The hooded figure dipped the oars in the water and began to row. The boat made no sound as it moved, and the water was as smooth as gla.s.s.

'Is it Thursday today?' the ferryman demanded suddenly.

Boamund looked up. 'Sorry?' he said.

'I said, is it Thursday?' the ferryman said. 'You lose track of what day it is when you're on nights.'

'I think so,' Boamund replied. 'Does it matter?'

'Because if it's Thursday,' the figure went on, 'then I've forgotten to set the video. She won't bother, of course, the dozy cow. Probably got her feet up, watching the news. You married?'

'No.I 'Very wise,' the ferryman said, and Boamund noticed that there was no face under the hood. 'Go on, then, answer it,'

Boamund hesitated. 'If I do,' he said cautiously, 'this boat isn't going to disappear, is it? I mean, the car did.'

'Get on with it.'

'All right, then.' He leant over and took the receiver. 'You're sure the boat won't disappear? Only.. .'

The hooded figure gave him a scornful, eyeless look, and he put the receiver to his ear.

'h.e.l.lo?' he said.

The boat vanished.

Danny Bennett reached the bottom of the page and sighed.

A thousand-year-old, ecologically significant international insurance, tax and financial services scam, protected by offsh.o.r.e trusts, conspiracies in high places, corruption, intrigue, coverups and graft, implicating virtually every wellknown figure in history from Julius Caesar to Spiro Agnew, the implications of which would cast entirely new light ors the Princes in the Tower, the Turin Shroud, Easter Island, the Loch Ness Monster, the Fall of Constantinople, Alexander Nevski, the Mary Rose, Christopher Marlowe, the Flying Dutchman, Cortes and Montezuma, the Gunpowder Plot, the Man in the Iron Mask, the Salem witches, the escape of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the death of Mozart, the War of Jenkins' Ear, the Marie Celeste, Jack the Ripper, Darwin, the Hound of the Baskervilles, Ned Kelly, Rorke's Drift, Anastasia, Piltdown Man, the Wall Street Crash, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Bermuda Triangle, the Reichstag fire, fifty tons of n.a.z.i gold going missing near Lake Geneva in 1945, McCarthy, Suez, Watergate, decimalisation, the death of Pope John Paul I, Three Mile Island, the sinking of the Belgrano and the disappearance of Shergar.

'Load of old rubbish,' he said.

He screwed the pages into a ball and threw them in the bin. Then he went back to his desk and got on with his work.

'Well, h.e.l.lo there,' said a voice. 'Your Majesty,' it added, and giggled.

Boamund opened his eyes. It was true that his entire life had flashed before him in that terrible few seconds in the water; sinc a he'd slept through most ofhis life, however, it hadn't been terribly interesting. He'd seen himself lying there, snoring, while his clothes gradually rusted.

'Where am I?' he asked.

The voice (female) giggled again. 'That's a very good question,' it said. 'Shall we start with something a bit easier, like the square root of two?'

Boamund tried to move but couldn't. From where he was lying, all he could see was ceiling. It was a sort of dark green and it moved about, and there was a fish where the lampshade should have been.

'Water pressure,' the voice explained. 'You've got tons and tons and tons of water on top of you, you see, and since you aren't used to it, it's squas.h.i.+ng you flat.'

'Oh,' said Boamund. 'Did I drown?'

'Certainly not,' the voice replied. 'If you'd drowned, you'd be dead, silly. You're at the bottom of the lake.'

'Oh,' Boamund repeated. There was something sharp digging into the small of his back.

'Well,' the voice said, 'you got here, then.'

'Yes,' Boamund said. 'Um, am I on the right lines, or did I go wrong somewhere? I mean, am I meant to be here?'

The voice laughed. 'Absolutely,' it said. 'You've succeeded. Well done.'

Boamund reviewed his position, and decided that success was probably over-rated. 'What happens now?" he asked. 'And who are you, anyway?'

Suddenly he could feel the weight sliding off him, and he sat up with a jerk. He found himself looking at a woman; tall, slim, graceful, with golden hair and a portable telephone. She was sitting in a tubular steel chair wearing a silky cream blouse and lemon Bermuda shorts. A pike swam past her with a saucer in its jaws, and on the saucer was balanced a tiny coffee cup, which the woman lifted off and held between thumb and forefinger.

'Can I get you anything?' she asked. 'Coffee? A doughnut, perhaps? You strike me as the sort of person who likes doughnuts.'

Boamund blushed. 'No, thank you,' he said stiffly. 'You seem to be a person of importance, please explain what's, going on.'

'Business before pleasure, you mean? the woman said. 'Fair enough. My name is Kundry.'

Boamund looked behind him and saw what it was that he'd been lying on. He picked up the crown, which had. been flattened, and tried to bend it back into shape. He felt extremely depressed, but wasn't sure why.

'Don't worry about that,' said Kundry. 'It isn't a real crown, actually; just something to be going on with. Allegcrical.'

The word made a connection in Boamund's mind. 'I recognise you,' he said. 'You were that girl with the car.

Kundry smiled. 'The traffic-warden, that's right. Also the hand with the telephone.' She lifted the portable handset off the smoked-gla.s.s table beside her. 'Also the hermit, the unpunctual a.s.sa.s.sin and the owl. Cast of thousands, in fact.'

'You're a sorceress,' Boamund said.

'Quite right,' Kundry replied. 'Actually, it's not illegal any more. Hasn't been, since Nineteen Fifty-Something. In my position, one has to be very careful.'

'Um,' Boamund said. 'What is your position, then?'

'I'm the Queen of Atlantis,' Kundry replied. 'Among other things, of course. I'm also the high priestess of New Kettering and the Grafin von Weinacht. Actually,' she added, 'that's not strictly true; I'm not supposed to use the t.i.tle since the divorce, so my daughter Katya's the Grafin now. She's a horrid little girl, my daughter. Let's say, shall we, that I'm the Dowager Grafin von Weinacht. I'm not absolutely sure what Dowager means, but I think that after being married to the Graf for six hundred years I deserve some sort of t.i.tle. A medal, even,' she added. 'Anyway,' she went on, 'none of that really matters as far as you're concerned. What you should be in interested in is me being Kundry.'

'Ah,' Boamund said. He beat about furiously in his mind and stumbled across a phrase which seemed to fit. 'You have the advantage of me there, I'm afraid.'

Kundry raised a beautifully pencilled eyebrow. 'You've never heard of Kundry?' she said.

'Um . . .'

'Good Lord. What did they teach you at school, I wonder?'

'Falconry,' Boamund replied. 'Also fencing, tilting, heraldry - actually it was the New Heraldry, you do it all with little diagrams - courtesy, magic with divinity and dalliance to Grade 3. And the flute,' he added, 'but I never got the hang of it properly. I can play Edi Bi Thu and San'c Fuy Belha ni Prezada if I go slowly.'