A Bad Night In Bridgetown

Sir Cobb and the Moon Maiden

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All the people of the Hundred Kingdoms know that a wandering knight, of good heart, will do all in his power to rescue a maiden in distress. Rescuing maidens in distress is one of the main requirements common to the popular codes followed by knights of all kinds.

As such the 'rescuing' of 'maidens' who are 'in distress' tends to be universally viewed as a good thing. There has been the odd report of knights interpreting these rules somewhat broadly. Reading between the lines of certain accounts you can sometimes go as far as to say they may have completely taken the wrong end of the stick.

One day it may be time to tell the tale of 'Sir Macken and the Accidental Slaughter of the Kind Dragon Abducted by the Evil Princess'. That is, perhaps, a tale for a time when one wants to be appalled and amused at the same time. Your narrator is not confident of his capability to pull that off today.

So, instead, we will consider the more traditional tale of 'Sir Cobb and the Moon Maiden'. I am sure that you will find it to be far more suited to the needs of a cold winter day. A day when the cockles (not to mention the other sea-creatures) of the heart are in deepest need of warming.

Sir Cobb was a brave man and your typical knight. Well, mostly your typical Knight. If truth be told he was not as well-heeled as most knights are expected to be. This was mostly due to the unfortunate fact that he had not been born into a class of society where sons generally grow up to become knights.

Sir Cobb had, in fact, been born rejoicing in the name of Frederick Cobb, the cooper's son. For generations the Cobb family had made barrels in the village of Nether Morphus in the kingdom of Scatterthorne. For all those generations Cobb men had been burly and sweet and earnest in nature.

Until Frederick everyone of the Cobbs had also been humble and realistic in their expectations of life. They made barrels, they sold barrels, they lived, married, had sons who grew up to make barrels and so the world turned.

Nathaniel Cobb, Frederick's father, had not made many mistakes in his life. One of the few you could pick out was his courtship of Lorna Archer. a woman that most people agreed was somewhat above his station. She was certainly bright and beautiful. Neither of these are reasons for a cooper to turn away from asking for a woman's hand in marriage, rather the reverse. Nathaniel Cobb was a cooper, not a fool. So he had married Lorna Archer.

Little Frederick had been a delight to one and all when he had been born in the second year of Nathaniel and Lorna's happy marriage. He had remained a delight until the moment that he had become mobile, at which time the problems had started.

It was not that Frederick was a bad child, indeed he had inherited the sweet, happy and earnest nature of all Cobb men. The problem was that he had inherited his mother's imagination along with her desire to be helpful. Where he had picked up complete disregard for the opinions of others on the way a life should be lived is a matter still hotly debated.

From the time he first crawled Frederick was determined to help people, whether they wanted his help or not. Further, whether he was, in fact, capable of helping them or not. Frederick would see a loaf in a tin on a table and know that loaves needed to be turned out of tins. He would decide that someone had clearly forgotten this vital step in the process. He would determine that, despite the fact that the surface of the table was a foot above his head, he would be the one to complete the job. He would pull the tablecloth, he would have a hot loaf tin containing a cooling loaf land upon his head. He would sit and cry. The loaf would be ruined.