A Knyght Ther Was Part 8

To his amazement she broke into tears. "Oh, Sir Thomas!" she cried.

"In my great haste to return the Sangraal to the chamber and to right the grievous wrong committed by the untrue knight Sir Jason, I did bewray my trust again. For when I espied ye and me and Easy Money in the pa.s.sage I did suffer a great discomfit, and it so happed that when my steed did enter into a cave that the Sangraal came free from my hands and ... and--"

Mallory was staring at her. "You _dropped_ it?"

Stepping over to the silver table, she lifted a corner of the red samite. The dent was not a deep one, but just the same you didn't have to look twice to see it. "I ... I nyst not what to do," she said.

Suddenly Mallory remembered the first sound he had heard in the pa.s.sage when he and Rowena were leaving the castle of Carbonek. "Well how do you like that!" he said. He grinned. "I take it that this puts your hands in jeopardy all over again--right?"

"Yea, Sir Thomas, but I would lever die than beseech thee again to--"

"Which," Mallory continued happily, "makes it out of the question for a knight such as myself to leave you behind." He took her arm. "Come on," he said. "I don't know how I'm going to fit a sixth-century damosel into twenty-second century society, but believe me, I'm going to try!"

"And ... and will ye take Easy Money to this land whereof ye speak, Sir Thomas?"

"Sir Thomas" grinned. "Wit ye well," he said, "and his buddy, too.

Come on."

In the _Yore_, he tossed his helmet and gauntlets into a corner of the rec-hall and proceeded straight to the control room. There, with Rowena standing at his elbow, he set the time-dial for June 21, 2178 and the s.p.a.ce-dial for the Kansas City Time-Tourist Port. Lord, it would be good to get home again and get a haircut! "Here goes," he told Rowena, and threw the switch.

There was a faint tremor. "Brace yourself, Rowena," he said, and took her over to the control-room telewindow.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Together, they gazed upon the screen. Mallory gasped. The vista of spiral suburban dwellings which he had been expecting was not in the offing. In its stead was a green, tree-stippled countryside. In the distance, a castle was clearly discernible.

He stared at it. It wasn't a sixth-century job like Carbonek--it was much more modern. But it was still a castle. Obviously, the jump-board had malfunctioned and thrown the _Yore_ only a little ways into the future, the while leaving it in pretty much the same locale.

He returned to the jump-board to find out. Just as he reached it, its lights flickered and went out. The time and s.p.a.ce-dials, however, remained illumined long enough for him to see when and where the TSB had re-materialized. The year was 1428 A.D.; the locale, Warwicks.h.i.+re.

Mallory made tracks for the generator room. The generator was smoking, and the room reeked with the stench of shorted wires.

He swore. Perfidion!

So that was why the man had broken with tradition and invited a common time-thief to a game of golp!

If he had been anyone but Perfidion he would have gimmicked the controls of the _Yore_ so that Mallory would have wound up directly in the fifteenth century sans sojourn in the sixth. But being Perfidion, he had wanted Mallory to know how completely he was being outsmarted.

The chances were, though, that if the man had antic.i.p.ated the near-coincidence of the two visits to the chamber of the Sangraal he would have seen to it that Mallory had never gotten a chance to use his Sir Galahad suit.

Returning to the control room, Mallory saw that the lumillusion panel had been pre-programmed to materialize the _Yore_ as a fifteenth-century English castle. Apparently it had been in the books all along for him to become a fifteenth-century knight, just as it had been in the books all along for Perfidion to become the proprietor of a misplaced hot-dog stand.

Mallory laughed. He had gotten the best of the bargain after all. At least there was no smog in the fifteenth century.

Who was he supposed to be? he wondered. Had his name gone down in history by any chance?

Abruptly he gasped. Was _he_ the Sir Thomas Malory with estates in Northamps.h.i.+re and Warwicks.h.i.+re? Was _he_ the Sir Thomas Malory who had compiled and translated and written _Le Morte d'Arthur_? Almost nothing about the man's life was known, and probably the little that was known had been a.s.sumed. He _could_ have popped up from nowhere, made his fortune through foreknowledge, and been knighted. He _could_ have been a reformed time-thief stranded in the fifteenth century.

But if he, Mallory, was Malory, how in the world was he going to get five hundred chapters of semi-historical data together and pa.s.s them off as _Le Morte d'Arthur_?

Suddenly he understood everything.

Going over to where Rowena was still standing in front of the telewindow, he said, "I'll bet you know no end of stories about the doings of the knights of the Table Round."

"La! Sir Thomas. Ever I saw day of my life I have heard naught else in the court of my father."

"Tell me," Mallory said, "how did this Round Table business begin? Or, better yet, how did the Grail business begin? We can take up the Round Table business later on."

She thought for a moment. Then, "List, fair sir, and I will say ye: At the vigil of Pentecost, when all the fellows.h.i.+p of the Round Table were come unto Camelot and there heard their service, and the tables were set ready to the meat, right so entered into the hall a full fair gentlewoman on horseback, that had ridden full fast, for her horse was all besweated. Then she there alit, and came before the king and saluted him; and he said: Damosel, G.o.d thee bless. Sir, said she, for G.o.d's sake say me where Sir Launcelot is. Yonder ye may see him, said the king. Then she went unto Launcelot and said: Sir Launcelot, I salute you on King Pelles' behalf, and I require you to come on with me hereby into a forest. Then Sir Launcelot asked her with whom she dwelled. I dwell, said she, with King Pelles. What will ye with me?

said Launcelot. Ye shall know, said she, when ye--"

"That'll do for now," Mallory interrupted. "We'll come back to it as soon as I get stocked up on paper and ink. Scheherazade," he added.

"Scheherazade, Sir Thomas? I wot not--"

He leaned down and kissed her. "There's no need for you to wot," he said. Probably, he reflected, he would have to do a certain amount of research in order to record the happenings that had ensued his and Rowena's departure, and undoubtedly said research would result ironically in the recording of the true visits of Sirs Galahad and Launcelot to the chamber of the Sangraal--the "time-slots" on which he and Perfidion had gambled and lost their s.h.i.+rts. The main body of the work, however, had been deposited virtually on his lap, and its style and flavor had been arbitrarily determined. Moreover, contrary to what history would later maintain, the job would not be done in prison, but right here in the "castle of Yore" with Rowena sitting--and dictating--beside him. As for the impossibility of giving a sixth-century damosel as his major source, that could be avoided--as in one sense it already had been--my making frequent allusions to imaginary French sources. And as for the main obstacle to the endeavor--his twenty-second century cynicism--that had been obviated during his encounter with Sir Galahad.

The book wouldn't be published till 1485, but just the same, he was keen to get started on it. Writing it should be fun. Which reminded him: "I know we haven't known each other very long in one sense, Rowena," he said, "but in another, we've known each other for almost nine hundred years. Will you marry me?"

She blinked once. Then her plum-blue eyes showed how truly blue they could become and she threw her arms around his gorget. "Wit ye well, Sir Thomas," said she, "that there is nothing in the world but I would lever do than be thy bride!"

_Thus did the prose epic known successively as "La Mort d'Arthur,"

THE MOST ANCIENT AND FAMOUS HISTORY OF THE RENOWNED PRINCE ARTHUR, KING OF BRITAINE, AS ALSO, ALL THE n.o.bLE ACTS, AND HEROICKE DEEDS OF HIS VALIANT KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE, and "Le Morte d'Arthur"

come to be recorded._