[told by Sir John]

I wish I could tell you of all the monsters and giants Arthur and I fought over the next few weeks, and how many times we saved each other's lives, and how many beautiful maidens we rescued. But you, gentle reader, would never believe me, and you'd be quite right. We didn't have any adventures, unless you count my struggle to keep walking, Arthur's battle with guilt, and Cheiron's efforts to look after us.

We did see several dragons, but only small ones the size of foxes, sunning themselves on the road, who scuttled into the undergrowth when they heard the clank of Arthur's armour and the thud of Cheiron's hooves. Once we came upon one that was sleeping too soundly to notice us, curled up with its spiny neck and tail woven around each other so that its snout was resting on its haunches and the bunch of spikes on its tail-tip were under its front paws. I drew my sword to stab it before it woke, but Arthur said, 'Leave it alone! It's not doing you any harm, is it?'

'But I thought knights were supposed to kill dragons,' I protested. 'And if I wasn't a very valiant knight back in my world, probably it was because there weren't any dragons left to fight by the fifteenth century, so, now I'm here, I ought to practise.' As I blustered on, my brain stood by incredulously, watching my mouth make a fool of itself. What if Arthur called my bluff by commanding me to fight a gigantic dragon that was awake, sixty feet long, and trying to fry me alive? Probably he knew that I'd just been trying to impress him with how brave I was, and now he thought me even more of a coward for offering to kill a sleeping foe.

'The big ones are nearly extinct even now, at least in this area,' said Arthur. 'There are some of the red ones left in Wales, but they mostly eat coal and sheep rather than maidens. And the biggest species – which was flightless, didn't breathe fire, and only ate trees – was hunted to extinction centuries ago by big-game hunters who couldn't tell one kind of dragon from another. But these little shimmering blue-green ones with the lacy black wings don't grow much bigger than this, and if they're in plain view, it's generally best to let them sleep. When you need to go into the bushes, though, it's a good idea to poke around the bracken with a stick – you might startle a sleeping dragon, but that's a lot better than accidentally treading on one. They can scorch your ankles quite nastily, if you're not careful.'

If the dragons didn't give us any trouble, the insects made up for it. The midges and mosquitoes bit us, but the clouds of gnats who followed us for miles on end were nearly as bad, flying into our eyes or up our noses or drowning themselves in anything we ate or drank. Admittedly, I'd been grumbling about the lack of meat, but I didn't think barley and gnat stew with midge tea was worth the additional protein. Cheiron, because he had two bodies and no clothes, suffered the most, swishing his tail at the horseflies around his hindquarters, while using his hands to waft the midges from his face, which left his withers and forelegs undefended.

The weather was growing hotter and we were constantly drenched in sweat, which encouraged the insects even more. Whenever we passed a spring or stream, Cheiron, whose centaur senses were sharper than ours, would decide whether the water was safe to drink fresh or only after boiling, and then, when we had drunk and refilled our water bottles, Cheiron and I poured water over ourselves. This didn't stop the insects scenting us, but did mean that, for the next quarter-hour or so, those who flew into us would drown in spring water rather than sticky sweat, which was probably a cleaner death. Arthur, who couldn't splash himself with water for fear of rusting his armour, kept wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, and said nothing.

We made very slow progress, especially in the first couple of weeks after I joined Arthur and Cheiron. They could have walked twenty miles a day, but I was struggling to cope with a third of that. We broke camp and set off early each morning, before it was too hot, and walked three or four miles, frequently stopping so that I could catch my breath, or sit down on a fallen tree, or ask, 'Have we got a very long way to go?' At this rate, by the time we'd found a comfortable place to lie down in the shade, and I was groaning in pain and barely able to take another step, and even Arthur had to admit that one or two of his bones were creaking a bit, it would be lunchtime, so we would collapse for a few minutes to recover our strength, then eat.

After lunch, we took a siesta that lasted all afternoon, and woke to walk a few more miles in the coolth of evening. Long before it was dark, we would decide we couldn't manage to go any further, so we found a campsite and pitched the tent, and Arthur and I took off our boots and checked each other's feet for blisters and Cheiron's hooves for stones. Then it was time to light a fire, cook dinner and eat it, and tell each other stories before retreating into our sleeping-bags. The next day, the whole thing happened all over again.

It was a life as routine-laden as a child's, complete with afternoon naps and bedtime stories. But then, when you are dropped into a different world, with no idea how things are done there, or what is or isn't dangerous, you are a child, depending on people who know their way around that world to teach you and protect you. Arthur and Cheiron were good foster-parents to me, and, after all, isn't it better to be loved like a child than hated and rejected like a man?

After a while, I began to notice that I was coping better with the journey. I wasn't getting out of breath as quickly, and by the end of the day I wasn't aching all over my body, but only in selected areas. Arthur seemed less anxious over whether I was going to survive, and, instead of fussing over whether I was feeling all right, would say casually, 'We've made a fair distance this morning,' or, 'It's good to be up on the high ground, isn't it? We've left the flies down by the stream.' And I'd look down at the meadow where we'd camped last night, and realise that a month ago I could never have attempted to climb a hill like that, and couldn't have squeezed through the kissing-gate at the edge of the meadow anyway.

Cheiron seemed pleased with my progress, but I was still his patient, and he continued to be very strict about what I wasn't allowed to eat or drink (again, it was like being back in the nursery). On Saturdays, we usually arranged to camp near a town or village with a church, so that we could go to church on Sunday. Before a church service, Arthur would explain quietly to the priest that, as a penance, he had taken a vow that he and his companions would not taste wine during this journey, so would it be all right if we were given only bread at Communion? This was a bit of a fib, but Arthur was hardly going to say, 'I don't trust this follower of mine not to swig down the entire chalice and demand a refill.'

Most priests agreed cheerfully. Some asked whether we'd like them to pray for us after the service for any problems we had. One admitted that he served beetroot juice instead of wine, as so many of his parishioners suffered from damaged livers, and that he hoped God didn't mind. And one, who evidently hadn't recognised King Arthur, told us that if we had so little faith, we should think about whether we ought to be taking Communion at all.

Arthur asked whether we could come in to hear the sermon, pray, and sing hymns, but stay in our pew during Communion, but Cheiron decided to help him. 'My friend has faith coming out of his ears,' he said, 'but he's doing this to give me moral support. You must have heard how centaurs go mad at the mere smell of wine, let alone the taste of it, and start attacking everyone and everything, and he wants to help me behave myself.'

'That's right,' I said, 'and I'm part satyr, so the same goes for me. I'm mostly human, but we mixed creatures have to be careful, you know.'

The priest frowned. 'Do you know why Christ was incarnate as a man born of woman?' he asked Arthur.

'Wasn't it to save us from our sins?' said Arthur.

'Exactly! To save men and women from their sins, because God made men and women in His own image. Not centaurs. Not satyrs. Not trolls or dwarves or hobgoblins. Those creatures don't have souls to save. If you're human, you can come in, but I'd rather you left your animals in the churchyard.'

Arthur blushed deeply, and glanced at me to see whether I was hurt. Seeing that I was on the verge of laughter rather than tears, he turned back to the priest and said, 'Thank you, but I don't think I could be responsible for my pets if I left them unattended. I'll take them back to their stable.' The three of us set off back towards the campsite, and tried to make sure we were out of earshot of the churchyard before bursting out laughing.

'"Leave your animals in the churchyard"!' repeated Cheiron. 'How did he know we weren't going to eat the flowers off the graves?'

'You quite often stay outside anyway, if the door's a bit low,' I pointed out.

'Yes, but then the priest brings the Communion bread out to me, after serving the crippled grannies in the back pew,' said Cheiron. 'Well, at three thousand years old, it's not surprising if I'm disabled!' He stamped his four chestnut legs, all gleaming with health and vigour.

'Anyway, if I haven't got a soul, I can't be held responsible for my actions,' I said. 'In which case, there are a few judges I could sue for false imprisonment.'

'Come on, Jack, we all know you've got a soul,' said Arthur.

'Yes, but it's worn through in places – needs cobbling back together,' I said.

'Oh well, if you hadn't admitted to being part satyr, the priest might have let us sit in for the first hymn before sending us off to Sunday school.'

'I dare you to go back and show him who you are!' I said. 'Be austere and terrible in majesty; tell that churlish priest you've made me Prime Minister and Cheiron Archbishop of Canterbury, and then let us demand to know what he has to say for himself. And then we'll put him in the stocks in a dungeon overnight, and in the morning – or in two or three days, if we feel like it – we can decide to be very magnanimous and let him go, but only if he kisses Cheiron's hooves.'

'Oh, don't be daft!' said Arthur, laughing. 'What kind of a king would I be, if I used my power to bully anyone who was rude to me?'

'You're not a king, you're a Monarch, because you're amused,' I said. 'In my world, anyone who was crowned king or queen immediately had to vow to be Good but Not Amused. So it was a pig of a job to force on anyone who'd had a sense of humour before he was king, because the only people having any fun were the ones having slanging matches in scruffy pubs. I used to have a really cool friend called Hal who just happened to be the King's oldest son, and his father didn't approve of me – partly because he thought I was a bad influence because I was older than Hal and because I drank too much and because I was a thief, but those weren't reasons, they were just excuses. Hal's dad didn't disapprove of his having disreputable friends, he just disapproved of his having friends, full stop. Every time Hal went home, he got the full nag: "Don't you realise that if you have a social life like a normal teenager, people will think you are a normal person, and then they won't be impressed with you, just the way they weren't with the king before me, which was why I was able to get rid of him, but you've had it soft, why can't you be a self-made man like me, what have I done to be landed with a wastrel like you for a son, what wouldn't I give to find out that you weren't my son after all, oh I know you're just waiting for me to drop dead so you can have things all your own way, and why is it that you seem to prefer being anywhere else rather than at home?"'

'We dads always get things wrong,' said Arthur. 'Obviously, I've been a much worse father to Mordred than your friend's father was to him, but sometimes I think there isn't a right way to be a parent, just a very wide choice of wrong ways. I know I was much luckier in my own childhood, because I was placed with a foster family, and no-one except Merlyn knew that I was the heir. I just assumed that I was going to spend my life being squire to Sir Kay, and if we couldn't be as close friends when I was his squire as when we'd just been brothers playing and fighting and getting into mischief together, at least I could still love him and serve him.'

'Why were you with a foster family, though?' I asked. 'Were your own parents that bad?'

'My father was. You see, my own birth is much worse than Mordred's. He's illegitimate, and the result of incest, but I was the result of rape. My father, King Uther Pendragon, made war against the Earl and Countess of Cornwall, murdered the Earl of Cornwall and raped his wife, the Countess Igraine, who gave birth to me. Well, having me to look after must have reminded her of everything she'd suffered, and she couldn't bear it, so Merlyn took me away, and so Sir Ector and his wife looked after me along with their little boy, Kay.

'And then, of course, when we were a bit bigger and Sir Ector was starting to worry about finding a school for us, Merlyn came back to be our tutor, but he protected me from knowing who I was. So he couldn't tell me that the Countess Igraine's three daughters, Morgan Le Fay, Elaine, and Morgause, were my half-sisters. And they were all much older than me, anyway, so that it didn't occur to me that they might be my sisters. Morgause's four older sons – Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, and Gareth – are only a few years younger than I am, and then there's about an eleven-year gap, and then – well, I met Morgause, when I was eighteen and had just defeated her husband, King Lot of Orkney, and she'd come to visit me to ask me to be merciful to him. I don't think I was quite as wicked then as my father – at least I didn't kill King Lot or rape Morgause – but somehow we wound up sleeping together anyway, and Morgause gave birth to Mordred, and I turned out to be far more evil than my father, when I drowned an entire ship-load of innocent children just to try to kill my own son. I don't see how I can ever put things right, after that. Were your friend and his father ever reconciled, do you know?'

'I don't want to talk about them for now,' I said. 'Can't you tell me a cheerful story instead? One that isn't full of death and guilt?'

'I'll try. Have you read the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?'

'Not exactly.' There had been a poem about Sir Gawain published in my time, and the reviews had said that, with so many modern poets like Chaucer indulging the fad for rhymed poetry, it was refreshing to see the Pearl Poet reviving English alliterative epic in a work which would still be being read when crowd-pleasers like The Canterbury Tales were long forgotten. Which seemed fairly clear reviewer-speak for 'It's unreadable.' But Arthur was beginning his version...