[Sir Andrew continues]

By the time we'd finished washing up after lunch, Cheiron was asking Erik to think about what he wanted for dinner.

'Skylarks?' suggested Erik.

'Hmmm – English people don't usually eat songbirds,' said Cheiron. 'I know there's no logical reason why it's all right to eat chickens and ducks but not larks or thrushes, but it's just not traditional in these parts.'

'Can we have trout with watercress, then?'

'That's a good idea. There's a river full of trout not far away, so if we catch some this afternoon, they'll be beautifully fresh. And have you had any thoughts about breakfast tomorrow?'

'Are you quite sure we can't get croissants or pains chocolats made with proper French wheat?'

'I'm afraid not. I could make fruit scones, though, if you'd like something sweet, and you could always have drinking chocolate to go with them.'

'You only let me have one mug of chocolate a day, at bedtime!' protested Sir John. 'Why's Erik allowed it for breakfast?'

'I don't want chocolate anyway,' announced Erik. 'I'd rather have an omelette.'

'Yes, you could use the protein,' said Cheiron. 'If you want to ride on my back, we could go down to the farm now to buy some eggs for tomorrow morning.'

'But the people at the farm always stare at me,' complained Erik, 'and now you've taken my bandages off, they'll be able to see my scars and they'll stare even more. Can't you go on your own?'

'Now, you know I'm supposed to keep an eye on you,' said Cheiron.

'I'll go, if you like,' offered Malvolio. 'Which way is the farm, anyway?'

So Cheiron gave Malvolio a purse of money and a shopping-list and sent him off, the King and Sir John went fishing, and I stayed behind to let Erik resume my music lesson, while Cheiron knelt on the ground, sewing, and made sure we were behaving ourselves.

'You need to learn to hear notes – don't worry about the words for now,' Erik began. 'I'll sing a note, and you sing it back. Aaah!'

'Aaah!' I sang back.

'Aaaaaah!'

'Aaaaaah!'

'AAAH!'

'AAAH!'

'Ah! Ah! Aaah!'

'D! D! G! D! D! G! DCBA, GABC, D! D! G!' I sang, as the tune was obviously 'Hot Cross Buns'.

'NO!' snarled Erik. 'If you're going to sing note names, you might as well be singing the words. I just want you to sing back precisely what I sing to you, or you can stop wasting my time.'

'Calm down, Erik, he's doing his best,' said Cheiron.

'No, he isn't; that's the trouble! Try again, English knight: Ah! AH! Aaah!'

'Ah! AH! Aaah!' I sang.

'That's it! You see, Cheiron, he can do it right! Now we'll try a song, but it'll have to be one you don't understand, so you're just concentrating on the sounds. Do you speak French?'

'A bit,' I said.

'Enough to understand what you're saying?'

'Sometimes. I can say, Je suis Anglais, donc je suis imbecile, which means, "Hello, it's lovely to be here." But I don't usually understand what people say to me in return.'

Erik cackled with laughter. 'Well, that's good enough for me! Now sing: Calme des nuits...'

'Karma day newts...'

'Fraicheur des soirs...'

'Pressure day sores...'

'Vaste scintillements des mondes!'

'Faster sentiments day mongrels!'

By the time the others came back with food supplies, Erik and I had broken the backs of Calme Des Nuits and Come Away Death, and made a start on Parisian Pierrot. I had been concentrating harder on singing than I had done on anything before, and was intellectually drained and more than ready to fall asleep, and, when Cheiron showed us the new tents and backpacks he'd made so that everyone could carry a fair share of the luggage, I felt even wearier.

King Arthur cooked a beautiful meal of trout in watercress sauce, and even Erik agreed to eat a small piece of fish, because, he said, he needed to keep his strength up if he was trying to teach me to sing. He kept his eyes closed while he ate, in case the sight of the rest of us eating put him off. Cheiron, who was a vegetarian, munched his way through a huge platter of raw watercress and bread, and afterwards King Arthur brought out a basket of berries for dessert. Finally, we began to sort out where we were going to sleep for the night, and then the trouble started.

'I can't go to sleep if there's a candle burning!' snapped Erik. 'You can use it to light your way to bed, but you'll have to snuff it out before you go to sleep.'

'Well, I can't sleep if it's pitch-dark,' retorted Malvolio. 'This cave is as dark as a madhouse.'

'You're not still going on about that, are you?' exclaimed Sir John. 'It was months ago! If I had a hang-up about every time someone had played a prank on me, I'd need to develop a phobia of rivers, laundry baskets, deer-horns, women's clothes, buckram cloaks, and waiters hovering in the background who turn out to be my friends in disguise spying on me to find out what I say about them behind their backs. I wouldn't be able to open my eyes without having a panic attack!'

'Come on, everyone knows you're a complete coward,' sneered Malvolio.

'When it comes to people with swords who are trying to kill me, yes! When you've run away from as many fights as I have, it doesn't leave room for worrying about being ridiculous.'

'What about fear of being rejected by someone you love?' asked Cheiron.

'Well, that's already happened,' muttered Sir John.

'It's happened to everyone here,' said Cheiron. 'Everyone is scarred by rejection, and if the worst effect it's had on Malvolio is that, for the time being, he doesn't feel comfortable sleeping in complete darkness, that's no reason to make fun of him.'

'It is pathetic, though, isn't it?' said Malvolio. 'It's wasteful leaving a candle burning all night, and it's a fire hazard, and it's extremely childish.'

'You could try reading by candlelight to help you relax, before you go to sleep,' suggested Cheiron. 'What are you reading? Silas Marner?'

'Yes. And I know it's an anachronism, but it's a beautiful book, even if it was written by a woman called George who lived with a man also called George who was married to someone else. I know woman George must have been a very wicked woman, but she must have had some good in her, to write a book like this.'

'Do you remember the bit where Silas's friends tell him that he has to punish his child when she's naughty, either by smacking her or putting her in the coal-hole? So he puts her in there for about ten seconds, takes her out and gives her a bath and sits down to get on with his work, and a few minutes later, Eppie's wandered off again? Because she wants to go on with this wonderful new game of playing in the coal-hole!'

'Yes – I suppose it's not really a punishment if Eppie doesn't know it's supposed to be scary,' said Malvolio. 'It's a lovely, happy book, isn't it?'

'Well, then, you think about Silas and Eppie before you go to sleep, and then you'll fall asleep feeling happy,' said Cheiron. 'And if you decide to sleep in one of the tents, that wouldn't be as dark as the cave. It's not likely to rain tonight, so you could have the tent flap open if you like, so you can see the moon and the stars.'

'I suppose I could,' said Malvolio dubiously. 'You know, some people think moonlight makes you go mad. That's where the word "lunatic" comes from.'

'Well, I've been a doctor for over two thousand years, and I can promise you it's not true,' said Cheiron. 'And the fact that I'm happy for you to sleep in moonlight shows that I don't think there's any danger of your becoming a lunatic.'

'Can I sleep in the tent as well?' I asked. 'Only I don't know anyone else here very well, and we're – well, not friends, but we've been enemies longer than we've known any of the others.'

'You don't fancy spending the night with Erik? I don't blame you,' said Malvolio.

Cheiron helped us to put the tent up, and we didn't say anything further until the others had retired to the cave. When we were in our sleeping-bags, Malvolio asked quietly, 'Do you want to stay with these people?'

'I like them,' I said. 'Don't you?'

'Not particularly. Cheiron seems friendly enough, but the fact is that he's a creature from pagan mythology. King Arthur is supposed to have been a Christian king, but his tutor who helped him become king was a wizard, and now, when he's old enough to know better, he seems to be deliberately surrounding himself with the vilest criminals he can find. Then again,' Malvolio added thoughtfully, 'it's possible that this is some kind of test, to separate the wheat from the tares. In which case, if I stay with him to speak up for honesty and decency, I can't fail to show to my best advantage compared to Erik and Sir John.'

'They're not that bad,' I said. 'They're probably just lost and lonely, like us, not really evil. Of if they are evil, maybe King Arthur wants to help them reform.'

'And that's the other reason I ought to stay,' said Malvolio. 'Because you don't seem to be able to recognise evil when it's staring you in the face, but I'm not convinced you're entirely evil yourself yet – or at least, I don't know for certain that you're predestined to eternal damnation. You generally just mimic the vices of whoever you're with. If I was a Catholic, I'd probably conclude that you were heading towards Limbo, but, as a Protestant, I have to accept that you're either going to Heaven or Hell, which leaves open the possibility that you might be one of the people God wants to save. In which case, I think I'd better act as your good angel trying to protect you from the influence of the fiends in that cave. Goodnight.'

I could hear the 'fiends' Erik and Sir John laughing loudly at something, probably Malvolio. I wished I was in the cave with them.