It was my father who first told me about Sir Lancelot and King Arthur and all the rest of them, and I was just a little boy the first time that Sir Lancelot came to visit me. I was in bed, in the big bedroom at the top of the stairs, and he rode right up the staircase on his horse, with his lance and his armour and everything, and stood at the end of the bed, with the horse rearing up every now and then, and making that kind of gargling sound that horses make, while he talked to me. He kept his visor down so that I couldn't see his face, but his voice was very clear and powerful. He said I was never going to see his face, and he was right, I never have. He said he would always be there to help me or any maiden in distress that I might happen to hear about, and that if I liked I could come along with him on some of his adventures.
Well, you can imagine how I felt about that! I couldn't wait! I said I wanted to go and have an adventure right away, and we did! We went to Camelot first and he showed me the castle and the moat and the drawbridge and the round table, and I met Merlin and Guinevere and Sir Galahad and I watched them practising sword-fighting and jousting and having feasts, and Sir Lancelot introduced me to some of the maidens in distress that he had rescued. They had all fallen in love with him of course and would never leave him, but his heart belonged to Guinevere and so he wouldn't let them give him a hug or a kiss. I said they could hug me instead, but they didn't seem very interested in that.
After we'd been in Camelot for a while we went riding, with me sitting behind Sir Lancelot on the back of the saddle, and we found a maiden who was being kept prisoner in a tower by a horrible one-eyed giant about ten feet tall. Sir Lancelot told him he had better let her go if he didn't want to be put to the sword. That's what knights do to you if you're bad, they put you to the sword. Needless to say, the giant wouldn't let the maiden go, so Sir Lancelot had to put him to the sword. Then the maiden fell in love with Sir Lancelot and wanted to stay with him forever. He didn't want her, of course. He didn't seem to want to live with maidens, just rescue them. Like I said, his heart belonged to Guinevere. Speaking for myself, I would have been content with one or two of the maidens.
Even though we'd been away for days and days we were able to get back to my bedroom by morning. That was because Merlin could do magic, of course. My parents never knew that I had been away.
He came back other nights and we went on other adventures. Sometimes he rode right up the stairs like he did on the first night and sometimes he would leave the horse out on the driveway. I used to look down at it in the moonlight, a beautiful pure-white stallion, nibbling the lawn and making that little gargling sound again.
We fought and killed a dragon - put it to the sword because it had been eating virgins, which are a kind of maiden. It was a very big dragon, bigger than a red London bus. Another time we found a witch who was casting evil spells that made women give birth to dead babies, and stopped the cows giving any milk. We had to burn her at the stake, like on Bonfire Night, because that's the only way you can kill a witch. If you put them to the sword they just come back to life again.
Even after my father left my mother. Sir Lancelot kept coming to pick me up at night and taking me out on adventures. In fact I think he came even more often after Dad left. He never wakened my mother, she never heard the armour rattling or the feet on the stairs or the horse making that little gargling sound. And I was always back in my bed before the morning.
Then Larry came, and started visiting my mother. He had a very loud voice and didn't treat her very nicely, but she seemed to like him nevertheless. They used to go out drinking, and they would come back, him talking loudly and laughing quite a lot, and sometimes he would stay until the morning. I noticed that he used to hold her quite tightly by the shoulder, and once I saw him throw her down on the sofa very roughly. And he wasn't laughing that night. Dad was never rough with Mum like that. He knew how you were supposed to treat maidens. I was worried about Larry. I didn't like him.
The next time I saw Sir Lancelot I asked him about my mum and Larry. He agreed with me. He said that Larry sounded like the kind of man who deserved to be put to the sword. So I reminded him that he had said he would help me if ever I needed help, or if ever I came across a maiden in distress, and this seemed to fit both descriptions. I know my mother was a bit old to be a maiden, but Sir Lancelot said that that didn't matter and it was definitely a case for putting to the sword. But he couldn't use Excalibur because that was a special sacred sword. He would need an ordinary sword for Larry. I had a look in the kitchen and found a small sword, about nine or ten inches long. Sir Lancelo