[told by the knight formerly known as Sir John Oldcastle]

There's a perfectly simple explanation for the confusion about my name. My author, who was probably a secret Roman Catholic, had been amusing himself naming me after various Protestant martyrs, because I'm not religious and I don't have any principles I'd miss breakfast for, let alone die for. (The original Sir John Oldcastle, my namesake, was one of the Lollard rebels beheaded in the fifteenth century.) At any rate, my author had kept having to change my name to avoid being sued for libel by the descendants of people whose names he'd used. Let's just say, for now, that I am a knight, a fairly unsuccessful seducer, the second-most beloved gangster in English fiction (after Robin Hood, but a good way ahead of Fagin) and an outrageous liar. I had grown old (all right: even older) in the service of one of the finest writers ever, and now he had decided to kill me off. That's entirely his decision, of course, and if he thinks anyone is going to bother going to see the sequel that doesn't include me, he has my pity, as he is clearly losing his touch.

When King Arthur called for me, I had no idea whether this was another hallucination or a dream, or, as Malvolio thought, just my friends playing a trick on me again. I could see and hear the King, a grey-bearded man not much younger than I was, but leaner and tougher-looking and dressed in chain-mail, and I knew that I wanted to follow him, more than I had ever wanted anything. He put his hand under my arm to support me as I stumbled towards the door, and, when it opened, I found myself standing on cool, dewy grass, with the inn I'd been staying in nowhere to be seen. It was midnight, and there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before: so many that the famous constellations were hidden behind a cast of extras who were all determined to be noticed. I didn't know where I was, except that I wasn't in London, but I could put off finding out until the morning. It was probably a very beautiful scene, but in the meantime I was shivering and my teeth were chattering with a combination of sickness, cold, and fear of the unknown.

'It's not far now,' the King said. 'We're camping just over there – where Cheiron's got the campfire going,' and he pointed to an orange glow a few hundred yards away. It might not seem very far to the King of the Round Table, but I dreaded walking, especially in the dark and barefoot, in long wet grass that caught around my ankles.

'Haven't you got horses?' I asked. 'I'd have brought my bay mare, if I'd known.' In fact, I'd had to sell my horse months ago to pay off the interest on various debts (and had then spent part of it on getting drunk, lost the rest playing dice, and forgotten all about the debts), but King Arthur wasn't to know that.

'I haven't brought any with me, unless you count Cheiron,' said the King. 'I'm just on holiday at the moment, walking from here back to Camelot, and I don't plan to enter any jousts or tournaments. I thought, once you were feeling better, you might want to come with me. But for now, you'd better come and get some sleep.'

So I trudged with him towards the camp, trampling countless poor slugs and snails on the way. The person called Cheiron was kneeling by the fire, but was still much taller than an ordinary man standing upright. I couldn't see in the firelight precisely what he was, but his voice was friendly. 'Hi, Arthur,' he called. 'Good evening – are you Sir John?'

'I'm what's left of him.'

'Do you want a mug of tea? I've got the kettle on.'

'I'd prefer wine, if you've got any,' I said.

'Afraid not. We're a bit low on supplies right now, but there's a town with a market on Monday. I can offer you tea, hot chocolate, or vegetable soup.'

'Well, I'll have chocolate, then.'

'And I'd like a cup of tea, please,' said Arthur. 'Thank you, Cheiron.'

'You're welcome,' said Cheiron. He helped Arthur off with his armour, and handed us our drinks, and we stood warming ourselves by the fire. I couldn't see why a true king would venture anywhere without a good supply of wine, but at least the chocolate was hot and sweet and velvety, and my teeth had stopped chattering. Finally, Cheiron gave me a hot-water-bottle, and Arthur and I crawled into the tent beside the campfire, where there were two mats rolled out with two sleeping-bags on them. My sleeping-bag was much too narrow to wriggle into, but it turned out to be the kind that unfastens to turn into a quilt, and, as I was still shivering slightly, Arthur handed me a blanket to go on top, and a pair of thick woolly socks.

'Well, sweet dreams,' he said. 'Sleep tight, good knight.'

'No such luck!' I muttered. 'If there's only tea or hot chocolate, I'll have to learn to sleep sober.' I wasn't sure how long I'd survive this sort of hardship, but, for now, I fell asleep almost at once.