A Perfect Gentle Knight Read online

  “That was Elaine of Corbenic,” said Sir Lancelot. After telling them the whole story he raised his glass of mead. “Let us drink a toast to the Round Table! May it last forever!”

  “Forever!” they echoed. Corrie clinked her glass with Sir Gawain’s, fervently wishing it could be true.

  5

  Sir Perceval

  Mr. Zelmach was the best teacher Corrie had ever had. Her other teachers hadn’t seemed to like children very much. The meanest was Miss Laird. In grade four she had beaten one of the boys over the back with a pointer while the class watched in terrified silence.

  Mr. Zelmach was always kind. He called them “ladies and gentlemen,” which made them feel important. He was more enthusiastic about music and reading aloud than arithmetic and science. Several times a day he would stop everything and lead the class in a sea shanty or a ballad, whether it was music period or not. They had already begun rehearsing songs for next year’s Centennial. “British Columbia, from the mountains to the sea!” they shouted. Corrie’s favourite was “My Country Is My Cathedral.”

  Twelve of the girls in grade six were appointed monitors. To Corrie’s great surprise, Mr. Zelmach told her she was to be one. That meant she wore a yellow badge and stood in the hall with the rest of the monitors, trying to get all the kids to be quiet as they walked in from recess or lunch. No one ever listened to them, and Juliet stuck her tongue out at Corrie whenever she saw her.

  All the other monitors were the popular girls: the Five, plus six girls in 6B. Boys were never monitors; they were considered too irresponsible.

  Every morning Corrie had to come into the school early and join the circle of the Five in the hall while they waited for the bell to ring. Corrie never said a word unless someone spoke to her. This was usually Darlene. A long time ago, in grade three, Darlene had been Corrie’s best friend. Now she seemed to want to be friends again, as if Corrie’s new status made her one of them.

  “I really like your kilt, Corrie,” she told her one day. Corrie glanced down in surprise. She had two skirts for school that she alternated, this one and a grey pleated one. The kilt had once belonged to Roz; it had moth holes in it, but Darlene didn’t seem to have noticed that.

  “I really want a kilt, but my mother says she’s bought enough clothes for me this fall. Plaid is cool!”

  “I want a perm, but Mum says I have to wait until grade seven to get one,” complained Sharon.

  “Grade seven!” exclaimed Gail. “Won’t that be great? Is everyone going to Laburnum?”

  “I have to go to Ashdown Academy,” said Marilyn.

  “So do I,” said Sharon.

  “You poor things!” said Gail. “I’d hate to go to a girls’ school. I want to be with boys! Older boys, not the stupid ones in this school.”

  Corrie wished she could walk away from this disturbing chatter, but she had to wait because she was a monitor.

  “Doesn’t Meredith wear babyish clothes?” said Donna. “Puffed sleeves and jumpers, as if she was six!”

  “And she gets too excited. ‘Oh, Mr. Zelmach, that’s so interesting!’” mimicked Sharon.

  Corrie forgot to be shy. “That’s not fair! Meredith can’t help getting excited, and it’s not her fault how her mother dresses her. I think you should be nicer to her! She’s my friend, and she’s new to this school.”

  To Corrie’s astonishment, they all looked ashamed. “Sorry, Corrie,” mumbled Darlene. “We forgot she was your friend, okay?” The others nodded.

  The bell rang and Corrie ran to her post. Sebastian would be proud of her—she had been as brave as Sir Gareth!

  CORRIE’S FAVOURITE SONG from school was “Men of Harlech”—it sounded like a knights’ song. “Hark! I hear the foe advancing!” she and Meredith shouted on their way to Meredith’s house. They kept stooping to collect shiny chestnuts; by the time they arrived their pockets were heavy with them.

  “Sebastian likes to use these for our catapults,” said Corrie.

  “What are catapults?”

  “They’re like big slingshots. We made them out of branches and some stretchy rubber Sebastian found. Harry broke a basement window with his, though.”

  “Oh, no! Did your father take the catapult away?”

  Corrie laughed. “Fa never knew! In fact, the window’s still broken. We patched it with some cardboard.”

  “I wish I could be a knight!” Meredith said when they were settled in her room with cookies and milk.

  Meredith said this every day. “I could be Sir Perceval! I’ve been reading about him—he makes friends with a lion! Why not, Corrie? Don’t keep saying Sebastian wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t ever know, so what harm could it do?”

  Meredith’s eyes shone and Corrie’s resistance began to melt. It would be fun to have Meredith as Sir Perceval. They could make swords to keep at her house and they could design Meredith a shield. Sebastian would be hurt and furious at her betrayal. But Sebastian wasn’t here, and Meredith was right: he’d never know.

  Corrie grinned. “All right. Shall I dub you? Knights can knight each other, you know.”

  “Yes!”

  Meredith rushed downstairs and returned slowly with a long carving knife. She closed the door. “Mum would kill me if she knew I had this, but she won’t be back for a while. It’ll make a perfect sword.”

  “I just remembered,” said Corrie. “You have to have a trial, like I did.” She thought for a moment. What was Meredith afraid of?

  Heights … “Your trial is to climb all the way to the top of your cedar tree,” she said. As Meredith’s face whitened, Corrie regretted her words. She didn’t like this kind of power.

  But it was too late now. “All right, I will!” cried Meredith. She clattered down the stairs as if she were trying to outrun her fear.

  The cedar was huge. Corrie had often climbed to the top herself, but Meredith always waited below. But today she quickly ascended until her white face peered down from the top.

  “Can I come down?” called Meredith, her voice shaky.

  “Yes, come down right now!”

  But Meredith looked down and froze. “I can’t,” she said in a thin voice Corrie had never heard her use before.

  “Come on, Meredith, I’ll help you. There’s a strong branch right below your right foot.”

  But now Meredith was crying. “No, I can’t! I feel dizzy! I’m going to fall!”

  Corrie was frantic. What if she did? What if Meredith fell out of the tree and killed herself? It would be all her fault.

  She took a deep breath. A knight is brave. She was Sir Gareth, a brave knight of the Round Table.

  She forced her voice to be calm. “Master Meredith,” she called. “You must not panic. The tree is perfectly safe and you are not going to fall. Remember you are about to be a knight. Do you not want to be one?”

  “Ye-es,” gulped Meredith.

  “Then just come down slowly and carefully and you’ll be fine. Start with your right foot.… That’s good.”

  Corrie amazed herself as she guided Meredith down the tree. Her voice was as calm as Sir Lancelot’s and it seemed to calm Meredith as well.

  Finally Meredith reached the bottom branch and collapsed on the grass.

  “Well done, Master Meredith!” cried Corrie. She slapped Meredith on the shoulders. Meredith’s cheeks were streaked with tears.

  “Oh, Corrie, I was terrified! But I did it!”

  “Yes, you did! Now you can be knighted!”

  They ran laughing into the house and back up the stairs. Meredith knelt at Corrie’s feet. Corrie tapped the knife on her shoulders as she said solemnly, “I dub thee Sir Perceval, noble knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.”

  “There!” Meredith jumped up, flushed with pleasure. They returned the knife to the dining room and spent the rest of the afternoon making swords out of some scraps of wood they found in Mr. Cooper’s workshop.

  SIR PERCEVAL WAS a tricky secret to keep. “Is Meredith a knight too?” Orly aske
d when Corrie and Meredith were galloping down the street on imaginary horses.

  Corrie decided it was safer to include Orly and Juliet and Harry in the secret than to try to hide it from them. She took them out to Camelot and made them swear to secrecy on their swords. The twins did this readily, but Harry was reluctant. “If Sebastian doesn’t want Meredith to be a knight, I don’t think she should be.”

  “It’s just for Meredith and me,” Corrie told him. “It’s an extra game, not the real game. Anyway, she’s going to be a knight whether we want her to be or not. And what’s wrong with that? Sebastian doesn’t need to know.”

  Finally Harry agreed. Corrie felt only slightly guilty. Mostly she was thrilled to have a fellow knight.

  Sir Gareth and Sir Perceval tried to turn their bikes into horses by attaching reins to the handlebars, but it was impossible to ride without falling off. They started a notebook with all their quests written in it. Then they began to pretend school was a school for knights, just as Corrie used to. Whenever Donna or Sharon talked about how dreamy Elvis was, Corrie and Meredith would exchange a smug look. They were knights of the Round Table! They would never be that silly.

  Corrie reasoned that as long as she kept the two knight games completely separate, everything would be all right. Meredith begged to play with her on Saturday afternoons after Round Table meetings, but Corrie tried to reserve Saturdays for her family.

  The school days they played at Corrie’s were difficult, however. Then she tried to persuade Meredith to play another game, in case Sebastian came home while she was there.

  One rainy afternoon Meredith asked if she could see inside Camelot.

  “Camelot!” said Corrie frantically. “No, I’m sorry but—”

  “Sebastian wouldn’t like it,” finished Meredith. “He’s out though, isn’t he?”

  Sebastian had taken Harry on the bus downtown. They wouldn’t be back until dinner.

  “Please, Corrie,” begged Meredith. “This could be the only time. I won’t touch anything and I won’t tell Harry or the twins. I just want to know what’s there. It would help me to be a better knight, to see all your stuff.”

  Finally Corrie led her into Camelot, after checking to make sure that Juliet and Orly were safely watching “The Mickey Mouse Club.”

  “This is wonderful!” breathed Meredith. “The table is actually round!” She examined everything: the walls hung with coats of arms, the detailed drawings of every part of a knight’s armour, and the schedules for jousting and hawking.

  “This is my siege,” said Corrie proudly, showing Meredith the stool with “Gareth” carved in it.

  “Siege?”

  “It means seat.”

  They spent so long in Camelot that Corrie lost track of the time. Suddenly she noticed how dark it was. “Let’s go!” she urged. “What if they’re back?”

  As they burst through the back door, Sebastian and Harry were coming in the front, shaking water from their jackets. “We went to Woodward’s, Corrie,” said Harry. “Look what I bought with the allowance I saved up!” He pulled a model spaceship from a paper bag. “I didn’t have quite enough money, but Sebastian paid the difference.”

  Sebastian stared at their dripping hair. “Why are you two so wet?”

  A knight never lies. Corrie couldn’t answer.

  “I want to talk to you, Corrie,” said Sebastian, looking pointedly at Meredith.

  “I’ll go home now,” said Meredith hastily. “Bye, Corrie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “YOU SHOWED HER CAMELOT?” said Sebastian. It had taken only a few seconds for Corrie to confess.

  She tried not to cry. “I couldn’t help it! She always asks to see it. I finally had to give in.”

  “Why does she ask? How would she know it’s anything special?”

  “I guess … because I told her,” whispered Corrie.

  They were sitting in Sebastian’s room. He got up and walked to the window, then turned around. Corrie couldn’t bear the hurt look on his face.

  “You have betrayed me, Sir Gareth,” he said slowly. “You know the Round Table is our secret. This is a very grave matter.”

  Corrie knew she should answer, “Yes, sire,” and wait to hear him pronounce her punishment. But she couldn’t help arguing. “Oh, Sebastian, why shouldn’t Meredith see Camelot? She’s my friend! And she really wants to join the Round Table. She’d be great—she knows all about knights and she’s brave and chivalrous, and she’s—”

  “No!” snapped Sebastian. “She can’t join us, and that’s that! I’m surprised at you, Corrie—surprised and disappointed. I think you should stop being friends with Meredith.” He was Sebastian now, not Sir Lancelot—that made his words hurt even more. But Corrie continued to lock her gaze with his.

  “I’m sorry,” she said steadily. “I won’t take Meredith into Camelot again, but I’m not going to stop seeing her. She’s my best friend!”

  “But you have us!” Sebastian’s voice broke. “You don’t need friends! You have the Round Table! You’ve never needed anyone else before. First Roz, then you.… What’s wrong, Corrie? Isn’t this family enough for you? Why are you both being so disloyal?”

  Then Corrie melted. “There’s nothing wrong, Sebastian,” she said gently. “I love the Round Table. I love being Sir Gareth. I won’t desert you, I promise. But I need a friend. Meredith is the first one I’ve had for years, and I’m not going to give her up.”

  “All right.” Sebastian tried to smile. “I’m glad you have a friend. As long as you continue to be a loyal knight. And as long as you promise to never let Meredith see Camelot again.”

  Corrie promised. She left his room with her insides churning. She had meant every word—she didn’t want to end her friendship with Meredith. But what would Sebastian think if he knew Meredith was Sir Perceval? Was that being as disloyal as showing her Camelot? How had her life become so complicated?

  HALLOWE’EN WAS a welcome distraction. Corrie helped Juliet and Orly create Zorro costumes. Harry was a spaceman. Corrie and Meredith decided to be bookworms. They cut out and painted the sides of a big cardboard box to look like the backs and fronts of books, connected the pieces with string, and hung them over their shoulders. Over their heads they pulled some old stockings of Mrs. Cooper’s.

  Harry carved the pumpkin to look like Sputnik, and Sebastian bought them firecrackers. Roz declared that she was too old to go trick-or-treating. Instead her club was having a mixed party.

  Roz and Joyce had already succeeded in their goal of becoming popular. They had started a club called the Mysterious Eleven. They were eleven girls who met every Saturday night at a different house.

  “We’re supposed to be cutting up old Christmas cards and pasting them in scrapbooks for the children’s hospital,” Roz told Corrie. “We don’t do that for long—we talk and eat and practise jiving. I don’t know what I’ll do when it’s my turn to have the club here.”

  “Maybe we could ask Fa to take us all to a movie so you could have the house to yourselves,” suggested Corrie.

  “But just look at this place—it’s such a mess and it smells so musty!” said Roz. The Elephant had practically given up cleaning. She had set up a table with a jigsaw puzzle on it in the corner of the kitchen. When she wasn’t reading her magazines she worked at it, the radio turned up so loud that she hardly heard them go in and out. Every surface was thick with dust. When Hamlet wasn’t napping, he was kept busy catching mice in the basement or scuttering after silverfish in the bathrooms.

  “We could help you clean,” Corrie told Roz.

  “Thanks, but I’m not going to worry about it yet. It’ll be a long time before it’s my turn.”

  Roz continued to tell Corrie about the party. Each of the girls was inviting one boy. “I’m going to ask Ronnie. Do you remember him from my grade six class? The funny boy with the curly red hair? He used to be short and a real pest, always imitating Woody Woodpecker. Now he’s grown so tall you wouldn’t know him, and he
’s much nicer. I think he’s cute!”

  Corrie tried to giggle along with Roz, but it was getting more and more difficult to find something in common with this sophisticated older sister, just as it was with many of the girls in her class. Was there something wrong with her that she wasn’t interested in boys or mixed parties or rock and roll?

  But neither was Meredith. At least they had each other. It was much more fun to be knights than to moon over some boring boy.

  Meredith was enthralled with Hallowe’en in Vancouver. “It’s so different here! We called out ‘Hallowe’en apples’ in Calgary, not ‘Trick or treat.’ And we never had firecrackers.”

  Corrie and Meredith covered three blocks of houses, then took home their heavy pillowcases full of candy. They tore off their uncomfortable costumes and went down to the golf course with the others. Orly held Corrie’s hand tightly as they stumbled over the grass in the darkness. All around them, neighbourhood kids were setting off firecrackers. Sebastian would only let the twins have little ladyfingers to throw, but Harry was in ecstasy as he heaved cherry bombs into the air. They gasped at the Roman candles whizzing up in balls of colour, then cheered as Sebastian lit the Burning Schoolhouse and it exploded with a satisfying bang.

  Corrie’s favourites were the sparklers. She waved hers around to make shining streams of light, then wrote “Gareth” in the air. Beside her, Meredith wrote “Perceval.” Luckily, Sebastian didn’t notice.

  6

  Mordred

  November was crisp and golden. On windy days, leaves and chestnuts showered down from the trees along the Bells’ street. Corrie, Meredith, Harry, and the twins raked the leaves over the curb and burned them.

  “Hey, Meredith, want to hear our song?” Juliet and Orly began chanting the gruesome song they had been singing since Hallowe’en:

  The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out

  In your belly and out your snout.

  Your stomach turns a mushy green

  And pus squirts out like whipping cream!

  “We made it up,” said Juliet proudly.

  “You did not,” said Corrie. “We all know that song—it’s really old.”