Free Camelot by Colin Thompson Page B

Queen had finished her letter and was calling for her dinner.
    â€˜Just give me a few minutes, my lady,’ Sewyr cried and crawled off towards the kitchen.
    â€˜Well, hurry up, I’m hungry,’ shouted the Queen after her. ‘And make sure you wash the goat’s hoof properly, it was covered in hair and cobwebs last time.’
    â€˜Yes, my lady.’
    Even I, who am the humblest of the humble,should not be treated this way, Sewyr whispered inside her head. She decided to flee the Island of Vegetables at the earliest opportunity. She spat into Igraine’s gruel and carried the bowl up to her mistress.
    â€˜I’m not sure if I am just forgetting how wonderful proper food is, or if I am, heaven forbid, actually learning to love gruel,’ said the Queen, ‘but it actually tastes better than usual.’
    â€˜That’ll be the secret ingredient, my lady,’ said Sewyr.
    â€˜Secret ingredient?’ asked the Queen. ‘What secret ingredient?’
    â€˜Can’t say, my lady. If I did, it wouldn’t be secret and it would lose its magic,’ said Sewyr.
    She may have been filthy, a peculiar shape and covered in scabs, which were another of her secret ingredients, but Sewyr was not stupid. If I was, she thought, I would consider it an honour to serve a queen.
    She thought back to the crack in the sewer wall that had been her home for so many years, and it didn’t seem so bad after all. At least there, no one had taken the skin off her back or made her clean under their toenails with her teeth. At least there she hadpeople who loved her – not much, admittedly, but enough to apologise after they had kicked her. Back then she had been sick of her home. Now she was homesick.
    And of course, there was Gerald. For years Gerald had begged for her hand in marriage, and not just her hand, in fact, but all of her. She had spurned him, selfishly thinking she could do better than a husband with only one eye, and more warts than a giant warty toad. But now, as she curled up in her bucket and tried to sleep, she realised that love was more important than looks and Gerald certainly loved her with all his heart. Not just his heart, too, but his liver and kidneys and even his strange left foot shaped like the hoof she put in her mistress’s gruel each night.
    â€˜Oh Gerald,’ she cried out, ‘how could I have been so blind?’
    â€˜Shut up,’ the Queen called down from above. ‘I’m trying to sleep.’

    â€˜Here is my letter to the King,’ said Igraine the next morning. ‘How are we to get it to him?’
    â€˜There is only one visitor to our island, and he comes but once a month, my lady,’ said Sewyr. ‘It is the Gruel Delivery Man in his coracle.’
    â€˜Can he be trusted?’
    â€˜That I cannot say, my lady,’ said Sewyr, seeing an opportunity opening up. ‘Perhaps I should go in person and make sure your precious letter reaches the King.’
    â€˜I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,’ said the Queen. ‘How can I be certain you will return?’
    Oh deary me, thought Sewyr, not quite as stupid as you look.
    â€˜But my lady, how would anyone in their right mind prefer living in a smelly drain over serving a great queen?’
    The Queen was not as clever as she looked either and when Sewyr told her that the Gruel Delivery Man was Sewyr’s own twin brother and that he would be happy to stay and look after the Queen while Sewyr was away, that seemed to allay her suspicions.
    â€˜Besides, my lady,’ Sewyr continued, ‘the coracleis only large enough for one person, so if I am to go to Camelot, then he must stay here until I return.’
    â€˜All right,’ said the Queen, ‘but if you fail to deliver my letter and secure my release, I shall put the Curse of the Bagpipes on you.’
    The Curse of the Bagpipes was one of the worst curses known to medieval man. For