[Sir John continues]

When Arthur and Cheiron were gone, I returned to the tent and tried to work out what to do next. I didn't seem to be a prisoner, but on the other hand, travelling with a centaur who was determined to restore me to peak fitness and a king who was addicted to walking, camping, and plain food, might be far worse than being in prison, where at least I'd had a roof over my head.

So, if I was going to escape, this could be my only chance. If anyone wondered what I was doing wandering around in my dressing-gown (none of Arthur's clothes would have fitted me, and Cheiron never wore any), I was a poor old widower who lived with my married daughter, but she was wicked and had evicted me in the middle of the night, so I was travelling to seek the mercy of my other daughter, who lived at... except that I didn't know where I was, or what towns and villages were nearby. Well, if anyone asked any awkward questions, I was either deaf or mad, or both. And then tomorrow, I'd be a rich merchant who had been robbed of everything I possessed while I spent the night in an inn, and the innkeeper, instead of investigating the theft, had thrown me out without breakfast because I no longer had any money to pay for it!

There was a box in the tent that might contain gold, with a lock that looked so flimsy that any piece of wire would serve to pick it. Then again, did King Arthur actually have any money with him? I wasn't sure when the tradition that kings shouldn't carry money came in. My prince had always stood his round in the pub, and usually lent me money when it was my round, but that had been before he became king. Anyway, I wasn't going to think about him, or about anyone in my past life. I could manage on my own.

I crept forward to the box. It wasn't even locked, and there was a small amount of gold inside, with a map lying on top. The map showed much more forest, less farmland and fewer towns than I'd expected, and various places in the forest were labelled, 'dragons', 'giants', 'wicked baron who flogs people with thorns', 'killer rabbit', and 'knights who say Ni!' Most of these were crossed out, presumably because someone had dealt with the problem. There was even a route pencilled in up to the place where we were currently camped, near a small town. It looked as though King Arthur had left it there on purpose, to say, 'There you are – if you don't want to come with us, take what you want and clear off.'

Well, honestly! How dare Arthur assume I was such a villain that I'd steal from my hosts when they'd shown me nothing but kindness? I closed the box, and lay back on my sleeping-bag to think it through. Did I owe Arthur any allegiance? Maybe, considering he'd declared me a Knight of the Round Table last night. Should I trust him? Probably not. He'd been friendly enough this morning, but it was anyone's guess what he'd do when he came back from church, depending on what the sermon had been about and what part of the Bible they'd been studying.

The Bible is a strange book, and I don't see how God could have expected people to follow commandments like 'Thou shalt not steal,' and 'Thou shalt not commit adultery.' But if there was one commandment I desperately wished I had obeyed, it was: 'Put not thy trust in princes.' I tried to remember where that was in the Bible: somewhere in Psalms or Proverbs, I thought. Arthur's Bible was lying propped against his pillow. I opened it near the middle, and found myself at the beginning of the Book of Job, which is a magnificent tragedy, and one I hadn't read for ages. People who talk about 'the patience of Job' should remember that Job, who could be brave through a painful disease, the death of his family, and the destruction of everything he owned, couldn't endure his friends sitting around telling him he must have done something to deserve all his misfortunes and would be restored if he'd only repent. I know just how he felt – and Job found out that God is every bit as pissed off with religious people as Job was.

I closed the book quickly when I heard Arthur and Cheiron returning, in case they thought I was pious as well. Cheiron was in high spirits, and singing 'To Be A Pilgrim'. 'Hello, Jack,' he called, as I emerged from the tent. 'It's a pity you couldn't come with us this morning; the sermon was on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and it's one of my favourite stories.'

It was one of my favourite stories, too, but I couldn't admit that without sounding like a prig. 'I didn't know centaurs went to church,' I said.

'Well, no, I can't fit inside. But I stood in the churchyard and listened through the open door.'

'I mean, why are you a Christian, when you're from Greek mythology?'

'That's exactly why I'm a Christian,' said Cheiron. 'I've seen far too much of the gods in my own family to believe in them. Cronos, my father, became king of the gods by castrating his own father, the Sky-Father, so then Cronos was always paranoid that one of his own children would grow up to overthrow him. He didn't bother about me, because I'm illegitimate, but he ate my brothers Poseidon and Hades, and my sisters Hera, Hestia, and Demeter. Only my youngest brother, Zeus, escaped, and later on he disguised himself as a doctor and gave my father a medicine to make him vomit up all our other brothers and sisters. So then they chained my father up, and Zeus became king of the gods, married Hera and was continually unfaithful to her, and spent half his time quarrelling with her and the other half worrying in case another god came and usurped him. Do you realise, the reason Athene was born out of Zeus's skull was that he'd turned her mum into a fly and swallowed her to try to stop Athene being born at all? Mind you, Athene became his favourite of all his children once we'd bandaged his skull back together after she came out. Lovely, clever girl, and her dad adores her.

'But you can't worship someone like Zeus, when you've seen him one minute flattering his wife, and the next threatening to beat her up because she's caught him out in a lie. So, when I heard of a God who is both a Father who loves and trusts his Son, and a Son who loves and obeys his Father, and is the current of love flowing between them, I knew that was the God I would worship. After all, if there aren't any better gods than the ones in my family, God help us!'

'I'll have to tell Mordred he's my son, as soon as we get home,' sighed Arthur. 'He's probably guessed by now anyway. And he's certainly guessed that I don't really like him as much as my other nephews, and that I wish he wasn't even my nephew, let alone my son as well, and I know he can't stand me or Guinevere.'

'Oh, it's probably just a phase,' I said soothingly. 'Lots of teenagers stay out late, get drunk, hang out with friends you don't approve of, and get into trouble with the police. I still do, and I haven't been a teenager for half a century.'

'Yes, but Mordred is thirty-eight and he wants to break up my marriage and have my wife burnt at the stake. Dear knight, do you have any children?'

'Not that I know of.'

'Well, supposing you'd accidentally slept with a woman you didn't know was your sister, who was a witch, and then, many years later when you were married to someone else, your incestuous son turned up on your doorstep? What would you do?'

'Oh, take him down to the pub, get him really drunk and teach him to play strip poker, and chat up the barmaids, I expect.'

'You wouldn't feel ashamed?'

'Of course not! I don't see why there's this prejudice that people who are bastards in birth have to be complete bastards in character as well. After all, I'm from a noble family, but I don't behave the way a knight should.'

'You're a better man than I am, at any rate,' said Arthur, 'because I was ashamed. Oh, not about the illegitimacy – I'm illegitimate myself, and so is Cheiron, and so was Galahad, who was the noblest and purest-hearted knight who ever came to the Round Table. And even the fact that it was incest wouldn't have been the end of the world, if I'd admitted that I'd made a mistake, acknowledged Mordred as my son when he was born, and looked after him. But instead, I was so horrified when I found out what I'd done, and so terrified that he was going to grow up to overthrow me, that I had all the babies born at that time killed. Mordred was the only one who survived, and now he's got every reason to hate me.

'It wasn't as if I'd even meant to become king,' he went on, with tears in his eyes, as if he was pleading for forgiveness. 'It was only because I was trying to be a good squire to Sir Kay, when he'd left his sword at the inn and wanted to compete in a tournament and I happened to find a sword stuck in a stone. But when I found out what I was, I'd meant to try to be a good king, and then, a couple of years into my reign, I turned out to be a worse king than Herod. If I had any decency, I'd have myself beheaded, but that would mean Mordred would take over, and I hate to think of what the country would be like under him.'

There wasn't really anything to say in consolation, but I said it anyway. 'Look, if you'd been the best dad in the world, played football with him and read him bedtime stories every evening and taken him fishing every weekend, he'd still have gone through a phase of slamming doors and accusing you of ruining his life. It's only natural.'

'Yes, but I wish he'd had it when he was younger and got it over with, like chicken-pox. And I wish it wasn't literally true that I'd ruined his life. Still,' Arthur added, 'I'll have a talk with him and try to sort something out when we get home, and in the meantime, we might as well make the most of this holiday. I thought we might rest this afternoon, and go into town tomorrow morning to buy you some clothes and boots, and a sword, of course, and stock up on provisions, and have lunch in a restaurant. And after that, you're welcome to travel with Cheiron and me if you want – we'd probably only be walking a few miles in the afternoon, so it'd give you a chance to break your boots in – but if not, of course you can go where you choose.'

'I'll go to the market and the apothecary while you two are clothes shopping,' said Cheiron. 'But I need new shoes as well, so I'll meet you at the blacksmith's.'

'Do you think I'd better have a suit of armour made, as well?' I asked.

'You can if you want, but I don't think you'll really need it at the moment, and it's heavy stuff to walk in,' said Arthur. 'The country's a lot more peaceful now than it was when I came to power – I couldn't have sent so many men out on the quest for the Holy Grail if I'd still needed them to deal with rogue barons back home. We might meet a few giants, maybe the odd small dragon, but I can generally tackle them on my own. You ought to have a sword to be on the safe side, just as Cheiron's got his bow and arrows, but I don't really expect to run into trouble.'

'Oh well, you can rely on seasoned war-horses like us,' I said. I wasn't sure whether I was more relieved that the king didn't want me to fight for him, or confused because I didn't know what he wanted. If he'd been hurriedly rounding up every fighting man he could find, however old, unreliable, and irresponsible, because Mordred had destroyed the Round Table and seized power and there was war in the land – well, I'd have grumbled about not being on horseback, but I'd have marched in armour and tried to give the impression of being a willing soldier, and turned up nearly in time for the battle, explaining that I would have been there earlier, but I'd had to rescue a maiden from a three-headed giant, and whenever I chopped one of its heads off, another two grew in its place, so that it was an eleven-headed giant before the maiden remembered that we needed to cauterise the neck-stumps with fire, and anyway, when the eleven-necked corpse at last lay on the ground, the maiden had implored me to make mad, passionate love to her, and though I had been sorely tempted because she was absolutely gorgeous, yet I had remembered that I was now a Knight of the Round Table and therefore devoted to chivalry and purity, and so I had spoken gravely to her like a father and counselled her to find a husband of her own age, and anyway, I was sorry I was late, and I'd try to be more attentive to my duty next time, but still, the Adventure Of The Eleven-Headed Giant was going to be recorded in the chronicles, wasn't it, and incidentally could I borrow a thousand pounds? And Arthur – would either have laughed, or been furiously angry with me and told me never to come near him again. I didn't know him well enough to predict which.

But if he wasn't recruiting soldiers, what was he looking for? Was he another Lear, spurned by his own offspring, turned out of doors, and needing a Fool who would keep him company even in the wind and the rain? But he seemed gentle and penitent, as un-Lear-like as any man could be, and eager to ask his son's forgiveness. If anything, this was more like a reversed version of the Prodigal Son story – in which case, if Mordred, like Lear's daughters, objected to his father's choice of attendants, I might have to be sacrificed like the fatted calf.

By this time, Cheiron had built a fire and cooked 'lunch', which was a rather optimistic description of three bowls of lentil and barley broth with a bit of wild garlic. When we'd finished, and washed up in the stream, Cheiron said, 'You don't have to worry about the giants round here – they don't grow more than about ten feet tall in this country. But we used to have some terrifying ones in Greece, when I was younger. There was one I knew called Polyphemus, who was a nephew of mine, the son of my brother Poseidon...