Read Online Camelot by Colin Thompson - Free Book Online Page A

was easily explained by the fact that his feet were a lot heavier than his head, which was fairly empty. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his heavy feet and his bigheart, he would probably have risen into the air and floated away, though of course with his endless good luck, he would have drifted down to earth in a field of chocolate-covered strawberries.
    When he had crossed the final bridge to the mainland Sir Barkworth took out his orders and read them several times. They said:

    â€˜Right, which way’s East?’ he said, looking for a signpost.
    There was a single signpost and it said: ‘The North’.
    However, there was not one which said ‘The East’. 38
    â€˜Um, tricky,’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘This needs some thought.’
    Thinking was not one of Sir Barkworth’s friends. In fact they barely knew each other and were seldom in the same room together. On the few occasions they were, Sir Barkworth was in the far corner while thinking headed for the door. If they did meet it usually ended in a headache and tears.
    Luckily Barkworth had his squire, Nymrod, to look after him. Had he not, his lordship would have got lost before he even found his horse. You would imagine that the last thing a young squire would want after leaving squire school was to work for anidiot like Sir Barkworth. But Nymrod was not your average squire. He had been the brightest pupil at squire school, certainly bright enough to realise that being very clever could place him in extreme danger. After all, the bravest knights always had first choice of the new squires, and obviously the bravest knights were famous for being the bravest by exposing themselves to the greatest dangers. On the other hand, a stupid knight would never be trusted with anything important so would be far less likely to get into any trouble. This was proved by the fact that very few brave and fearless knights lived much past thirty, but there were quite a few stupid and cowardly knights who were well over eighty. 39
    So Nymrod acted as dumb as possible in the hope he would end up with the most useless knight of all. He made sure he got every single question on every single test completely wrong, including the one where you had to write your name. On that line he wrote: No thanks, I’ve got one already .
    And it had worked perfectly. When all theknights had chosen their squires, Nymrod was the only one left. Sir Barkworth had been the last to choose on account of having got himself trapped in the toilet and having taken three days to find the door, quite an achievement in a room only two metres square. Nymrod knew that the greatest danger he or his master would be likely to face would be pricking their fingers collecting wild roses for one of the Court Ladies.
    Sir Barkworth got out a pencil and a piece of paper and tried to draw a diagram.
    â€˜Oh no, the pencil’s run out.’
    Nymrod took the pencil and turned it so the sharpened end was pointing at the paper.
    â€˜Try it now, master,’ he said.
    â€˜Wow, brilliant. Right, now leave this to me,’ said Sir Barkworth, unwisely.
    But a squire always has to do what his master commands so Nymrod sat down beside the moat while Sir Barkworth scribbled and calculated and chewed his pencil and tried to think and failed and scribbled some more. Then Sir Barkworth climbed back on his horse, adjusted his head so it pointeddirectly in front and rode straight into the moat.
    â€˜Who put that there?’ he said as he and the horse scrambled out onto dry land before the olms could get them.
    â€˜I think, master, that although you probably did some brilliant calculations, you did make one tiny mistake,’ said Nymrod.
    â€˜Do you think so?’ said Sir Barkworth. ‘I doubled checked all my sums. Where do you suppose I could have gone wrong?’
    â€˜I think, master, that you probably should have sat on your horse facing the end with the head on rather than the