Arthur and Me Read online

  ‘Poor chicken,’ I said.

  ‘Merlin lost,’ said Arthur.

  Lost?

  ‘I’m not meant to tell anyone that. He told the knights how savage it was. They were all a bit nervous of it after that. Lucky for the chicken, really, it never got eaten.’

  Merlin was turning out to be a bit rubbish, but all this was giving me an idea. I was going to ask Arthur lots about Camelot and Merlin and all the knights so I could get a good grade for The Big Arthur Essay.

  The Big Arthur Essay was our end-of-term project for Mrs Wendell-Jones. She wanted us all to write what it would be like to spend a day in King Arthur’s court. I wanted to write an awesome essay this time. All year I’ve got nothing but Cs and C+s and once even a C-. My soppy sister gets As all the time and once, just once, I wanted to be able to tell Mum I got a B and have her stick my essay on the fridge like she does with Soppy’s.

  I thought Arthur could tell me loads of amazing things about his knights. No one else would have someone who had actually been there telling them about King Arthur’s court. I was going to get top marks for sure.

  I was about to ask Arthur lots of questions, but Mrs Wendell-Jones came round the corner with the rest of my class. She looked really worried.

  ‘Look miss, there’s Tomos!’ Sharon yelled and Mrs Wendell-Jones stopped looking worried and looked very angry instead as she stamped over towards us.

  ‘Where on earth have you been, Tomos? We were worried sick! I was just about to phone your parents and tell them that we’d lost you … again,’ she said. Then she saw Arthur and stopped talking. I wasn’t surprised. I bet a wrinkly old man in bearskins was the last thing she expected. Arthur bowed to her and took her hand to kiss it. Mrs Wendell-Jones leaned back slightly and looked a little scared.

  ‘Arthur Pendragon, my lady,’ he said, smiling broadly.

  Mrs Wendell-Jones looked about to faint. Then she smiled back at Arthur and shook his hand so hard that I was surprised it didn’t fall off.

  ‘Of course!’ she cried. ‘You must be one of the tour guides. We were told that you might be in costume. What a shame we missed you, it would have been such a treat for the children.’

  ‘I don’t understand, my lady,’ he said. ‘I was found by this young squire…’

  Mrs Wendell-Jones looked at me. ‘Oh Tomos, that’s where you’ve been. Learning more about dear Arthur, how good of you.’

  Arthur looked very pleased at being called ‘dear Arthur’. Behind Mrs Wendell-Jones I saw the Gruffudd twins scowling at me. They weren’t happy that I was in her good books for once.

  ‘It’s such a shame we have to go,’ she said to Arthur. ‘It was so nice to meet you. Perhaps next time you could show us round.’

  I thought super-dooper fast. I HAD to get Arthur on that bus.

  ‘He’s … coming home with me,’ I said. ‘He’s … he’s … a cousin!’

  Mrs Wendell-Jones beamed from ear to ear. ‘Wonderful!’ she cried. ‘We can talk all about King Arthur on the way home. What a treat.’

  Everyone groaned. The Gruffudd twins looked daggers at me. Arthur looked quite pleased.

  ‘I can tell you all some wonderful stories,’ he said, as Mrs Wendell-Jones guided him to the bus door.

  I hurried behind them and tapped him on the arm.

  ‘Arthur!’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes, Tomos?’

  ‘Not the one about the chicken!’

  Chapter Five

  Turns out my room is full of magic!

  On the way home, Mrs Wendell-Jones insisted that Arthur sit up front with her. He was talking to her all the way back so I thought she must be having a fantastic time, but when we all got off the bus at school she looked a bit puzzled. She stopped me as I was going down the steps.

  ‘Tomos, does your cousin read a lot of books about Arthur?’ she asked me. She was staring at Arthur in a very odd way.

  ‘I think so, yes,’ I said. ‘He has to know all the stories so he can … um … talk to the visitors.’

  ‘He told me the most extraordinary things,’ she said.

  Extraordinary – that’s good, isn’t it? It means better than ordinary, more than just the dull stuff everyone knows. I figured Arthur must know loads of cool stories about the old days. It was going to be so easy to get a good grade on that essay!

  I raced home with Arthur. Well, I say ‘raced’. It was pretty slow going actually. Arthur kept stopping and asking what everything was. I kept having to tell him that, ‘Yes, everyone could afford a stone castle now, not just huts made of straw,’ and explain what tarmac and cars and shops were.

  When we got to my house I had to smuggle him inside. My sister was listening to her awful music, singing along with some of her drippy friends. My sister only listens to stupid boy bands who have spiky stand-up hairstyles and sing about how all girls are beautiful angels, which just proves that they have never met my sister. She isn’t an angel. I think the goblins delivered her and then ran away to make sure that Mum and Dad couldn’t give her back!

  I told Arthur to follow me up the stairs quietly.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Are we not welcome in this kingdom?’

  ‘Not if my sister catches us, no.’

  We tiptoed past her door and I threw open the door of my room.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ I said.

  Arthur wasn’t listening to me. He was staring, his mouth wide open.

  ‘What is this place?’ he asked.

  ‘Urmm … it’s my room.’

  Arthur walked over to my computer and tapped at the screen.

  ‘A dark mirror. Morgan the witch had one of these,’ he said. ‘She did her magic with it.’

  Mrs Wendell-Jones had told us all about Morgan. She was Arthur’s sister, sort of, and she was even worse than my sister.

  ‘It’s a computer,’ I said, turning the screen on. A big picture of our cat, Mr Truffles, appeared on the screen.

  ‘What magic is this!’ Arthur shrieked and stumbled backwards, knocking over a pile of Za’ark action men that I’d left by my bed. Then he stood on them and started hopping round the room, clutching his bare toes and yelping.

  I desperately shushed him, hoping that Soppy’s music would be loud enough to drown him out.

  Down the corridor, the music stopped.

  I shoved Arthur, still clutching his foot, into my wardrobe and slammed the door. From inside I could hear his muffled voice.

  ‘Ooohh … owwwwww!’

  The door to my room flew open.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, Tomos?’ Soppy demanded.

  Arthur howled.

  ‘Arrrgh,’ I wailed, trying to cover up the noise from inside the wardrobe. ‘I, um, I stood on one of my action figures.’

  She looked at me with disgust.

  ‘You’re wearing your shoes,’ she sneered. ‘You are such a baby! We are trying to rehearse.’

  ‘Oooowwww!’ howled Arthur.

  ‘Oooararrghhhhhh!’ I cried.

  ‘So if you could keep the noise down, PLEASE!’

  ‘Aaaargh!’

  ‘Eaaaaaarghhh!’

  She glared at me. She looked as though steam was about to come bursting out of her ears, or her head was going to turn round and round and explode (which would be SO COOL!).

  ‘You are SUCH a child!’ she yelled and stomped out, banging the door.

  Arthur put his head out of the wardrobe. He had stopped wailing, but his eyes were so wide they almost met in the middle of his face.

  ‘You have to keep quiet,’ I hissed. ‘If anyone finds you here we’ll be in big trouble.’

  Arthur nodded, clamped his mouth shut and made little whimpering noises. After a while he stopped grasping his foot and sat down on my bed.

  ‘Are you a magician?’ he asked.

  I thought about this. I did have a magic tricks box that Auntie Jean bought me for Christmas, but I wasn’t very good at it. No one ever picked the card they were supposed to, and I got my fi
nger stuck in the machine that was meant to pretend to cut your finger off, and had to be taken to casualty.

  They quite like me at casualty. All the nurses know me by now.

  Then I realised that he was still looking at the computer. He thought that it was magic.

  ‘This isn’t magic, Arthur, it’s just the stuff we have now. You’ve been asleep for ages,’ I said.

  ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Things,’ I said. ‘Just things that we can make nowadays.’

  ‘Tell me about them,’ he said.

  ‘I want you to tell me things,’ I said. ‘I want to know all about Camelot.’

  Arthur looked surprised. ‘Camelot? Why do you want to know about Camelot?’

  So I told him about the essay and Mrs Wendell-Jones and about how I really wanted to get a good grade and prove to Mum and Dad that I wasn’t bad at everything. I told him that Mrs Wendell-Jones had told us all about how brave and noble the knights were and how the Round Table had been created so that they would all be equal.

  ‘No, it wasn’t,’ Arthur said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It wasn’t made so everyone would be equal. It was made round because they all squabbled so much about who was most important that I got rid of my square one.’ He sighed. ‘I liked that square one, it had lovely carvings on it.’

  The brave knights of the Round Table squabbling?

  ‘Oh yes,’ Arthur continued, ‘they wouldn’t stop bickering. Galahad was the worst. Always stirring things up, arguing with Sir Lancelot about who was the best looking and most popular. Sir Percival was always trying to get everyone to joust, and Sir Tristan just used to sulk and fire arrows at anyone who annoyed him. Awful, the lot of them.’

  I was shocked. This was NOT the noble, gallant band of knights that Mrs Wendell-Jones had told us about.

  ‘But they must have been brave,’ I said.

  Arthur nodded. ‘Oh, they were all very good in a fight. Well, apart from Lancelot. He used to spend rather too much time looking at himself in his sword.’

  This didn’t sound right at all. Still, it must be true. I grabbed my pencil and a pad of paper and started scribbling it all down.

  ‘Tell me about the day that you pulled the great sword from the stone,’ I said.

  Arthur looked puzzled. ‘You mean the sword that made me king?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Wendell-Jones told us that only you could pull it out of the stone, and that proved that you…’ I tailed off as Arthur’s face went from ‘slightly confused’ to ‘what on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘You didn’t pull it out of a stone?’ I said.

  Arthur pulled a face. ‘Weeelllll, not really a stone. More a very large melon.’

  ‘A WHAT???? Why did that make you king?’

  Arthur shrugged. ‘It was Merlin’s fault. We were in the castle kitchen, and Galahad and Lancelot had been messing around with the great sword, and it got stuck. Merlin said, “Whoever can get that out deserves to be king,” and just as he said it, I tripped over the melon and the sword shot out and hit Galahad on the knee.’

  I stared at him. He looked a bit embarrassed.

  ‘Merlin told me never to tell anyone that,’ he said.

  Too late. This was going in my essay.

  ‘Tell me about jousting,’ I said, flipping over a new sheet of paper.

  Chapter Six

  Even heroes get bullied

  The next morning I woke Arthur up super early and snuck him out into the back garden. I had a huge surprise for him. I had made a jousting stand based on the pictures that Mrs Wendell-Jones had shown us in her books. I put a clothes airer at each end of our garden and balanced a broom between them. I was really pleased with it, but Arthur just grunted. He was bent over double holding his back because he hadn’t slept well in my wardrobe and was a bit grumpy.

  ‘It’s my jousting lane,’ I said. ‘It’s so you can teach me how to joust. We have to sit on our bikes and try to knock each other’s hat off with these.’ I waved a swimming pool noodle at him. They were the long foam rolls that Mum makes me use in the swimming pool till I learn to swim. Which I will do. Eventually!

  Arthur was still grunting, so I ran over and got my sister’s bike. I wheeled it over to him, hoping he wouldn’t notice that it was pink and a bit on the sparkly side.

  ‘What is this?’ he said, straightening up a little.

  ‘It’s a bicycle,’ I said. ‘To ride instead of a horse. I’m sorry we don’t have horses, but this is a special joust. I know you won’t be able to ride a bicycle.’

  ‘I can’t ride a horse either,’ said Arthur.

  Eh?

  ‘Fall off every time,’ Arthur continued. ‘And they make me sneeze.’

  I decided that the only way to teach Arthur to cycle would be the way my dad taught me. So I took him up to the top of the hill by our house.

  When we were at the top I told Arthur what to do.

  ‘I’m going to let go, and I want you to keep pushing the pedals round so that you are cycling on your own. It’s easy.’

  Arthur looked a bit dubious, but he got on Soppy’s bicycle and tucked his long robes round himself so they wouldn’t get caught in the wheels.

  ‘Ready?’ I asked. ‘Here we goooooo … STOP!!!!’

  Arthur had pushed himself off down the hill. He hadn’t put his feet on the pedals, though. They were stuck out either side of him. He went faster and faster down the hill, crying out in horror and gripping the handlebars. I ran to try and catch up with him, but he was just going too quickly.

  ‘Aaaaaargh!!!!’

  cried Arthur, wobbling all over the road.

  ‘Hold on!’ I yelled.

  At the bottom of the hill Arthur hit the kerb and was catapulted into the air, over the handlebars, into Mrs Owen’s rose bushes.

  ‘Oooow!!!!’

  He screamed.

  Soppy’s bike was ruined. The front wheel looked like a floppy pancake, all bent out of shape. I was going to be in so much trouble for this.

  Arthur sat in the middle of Mrs Owen’s prize-winning roses. He had flattened a couple of the bushes and broken branches off the others. I really hoped that Mrs Owen wasn’t home. If she caught Arthur sitting in her precious garden she would hit the roof. I leaned over and hauled Arthur out. He whimpered a little and grasped his bottom.

  ‘The spines!’ he yelped.

  ‘We have to get out of here,’ I hissed, grabbing his hand and trying to drag him. Arthur nodded and put one hand up to his head.

  ‘Where’s my crown?’ he said, looking around him. ‘It must be around here somewhere…’

  He started patting the ground around him, lifting up decapitated roses and moving broken branches aside. I couldn’t remember him having a crown on his head before he got on the bike. I wracked my brains trying to remember if I’d ever seen him wearing a crown. I closed my eyes tight shut and tried to see Arthur in my head. Yup, there he was. Brown furry robe, tight trousers, big boots with far too many buckles, long belt, rough shirt, long beard, grizzly face … and hair … and … YES! I was right.

  ‘You didn’t have a crown!’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen you wearing one.’

  Arthur stopped patting the ground and looked up at me, astonished.

  ‘What? I must have been wearing my crown.’

  Half an hour later, after Arthur had uprooted nearly all of Mrs Owen’s roses and Mrs Owen had chased us down the road screaming at us for what we had done to her garden, Arthur had to admit that maybe he hadn’t been wearing his crown.

  ‘It was a really nice one,’ he sulked, stomping back towards my house. ‘Everyone knew I was King when I wore my crown.’

  I followed as quickly as I could. It’s not easy to walk fast when you’re trying to push a bike with a wobbly wheel. Soppy’s bike kept wanting to go in a different direction to me and the chain had fallen off and was making a noisy clacking sound against the pavement.

  ‘You’re still King without your crown,’ I said, tryi
ng to cheer him up. ‘It must be brilliant being King, with everyone thinking you’re great and listening to you and doing what you tell them to.’

  Arthur shuffled his feet. He wouldn’t look at me. He looked a bit like our cat does when it’s done something on the carpet.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ I asked.

  Arthur mumbled something.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They don’t listen to me.’

  I was puzzled. ‘Who doesn’t?’

  He looked straight at me and scowled. ‘The knights!’ he snapped. ‘They never listen to me. They laugh at me. Galahad gets them to play games against me. Lancelot just does whatever he wants to and ignores me. Even Bedevere looks at me like I’m an idiot most of the time. You don’t know what it’s like.’

  Wow! Arthur had his own set of Gruffudd twins to deal with. They sounded completely awful.

  ‘Do they ever stick worms in your shoes?’ I asked.

  Arthur nodded. ‘All the time. I had to fight an entire battle once with squelchy boots on.’

  ‘What about ink down your neck?’

  ‘Oh yes. Just as I was about to tell them off about the worms.’

  ‘I get it from the Gruffudd twins,’ I said. ‘They steal my lunch too.’

  Arthur looked down at me. He wasn’t scowling anymore. He looked really sad.

  ‘I need my crown, you see, Tomos,’ he said. ‘At least with my crown on I’m King. King Arthur. Without my crown, well I’m…’ He looked down at the ground and shrugged. ‘I’m nothing.’

  I knew how he felt. Sometimes when the Gruffudd twins are bullying me, I feel like the whole world has turned round and is staring at me and thinking how stupid and small and useless I am.

  ‘My mum tells me that it doesn’t matter what they say. That words can’t hurt me,’ I said.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘That’s not true. Words are powerful. Merlin made a spell once when we were being attacked. The castle was surrounded and we were in lots of trouble. Bedevere caught Galahad trying to escape through the garderobe.’

  ‘What’s a garderobe?’ I asked.

  Arthur went a bit pink. ‘It’s the … well, it’s where you … it … urm…’