Prince Accolon (A Children of the May Short Story - Book 1.5a)

Chapter One: Accolon and Ontzlake

Once there were two friends, Prince Accolon of Caerleon, and Ontzlake of the Dolorous Garde. They were not, in truth, good boys, but given the examples they had around them their behaviour might have been worse. Both lads were bitter young things; each felt that their birthright had been stolen from him.

Accolon was a slender lad, red of hair, with large green eyes that seemed ready to pop out of his head. As if to make up for his strange appearance he always dressed very richly, in a fine red coat of a richer colour than his hair. His ambition was to prove himself the greatest knight in the land by taking back Castle Caerleon, which King Arthur had seized from his father in the War of Eleven Kings.

Ontzlake was small and on the chubby side. He was not as well dressed as Accolon, although he always claimed he would have been if his younger brother, Sir Damas of the round table, had not stolen away the Dolorous Garde, their family’s great castle at the heart of Forest Perilous. When Damas defeated his elder brother in a duel after their father’s death he gave Ontzlake no share of the family coin. Damas was vicious in the way he extorted rents from the tenants on his farms and villages. Ontzlake said he would be a much better master when he won back his lands.

These two disinherited boys rode around the flat, marshy lands of Gore in the east of Britain, a long way from Castle Caerleon, but close to Ontzlake’s home. They told tales to each other of the fights they would fight to reclaim what was theirs. For two years they had been having the same conversation over and over again:

‘Next season, my friend, I will plunge into the forest, slay my brother Damas, and become lord of Dolorous Garde.’

‘Yes, old bean, and I will face Arthur in single combat. I will cause him to spill blood like the underfed swine he is. If it hadn’t been for that dashed sword in the stone. I tell you... If I’d been there that day I would have shown them all the rightful king of Britain. The sword would have slid out of that little rock like my knife from a pat of butter.’

‘I know it, Accolon. Your arm is stronger than Arthur’s. You will be a just king, and give me back my castle.’

They repeated this talk from one spring to the next, but their words were but words. They were young boys, and unused to combat. If the boys ever happened upon a full-grown knight, one or the other of them would develop a mysterious ailment, and allocate an hour some days later, when they would be able to face Sir Lamorak, or Sir Tristan, or even Sir Dagonet. Alas, neither Accolon nor Ontzlake were particularly well-organised, so these chivalrous appointments were always forgotten and never kept. During their journeys together they had managed to fight only against opponents of the lowlier classes: villagers and farm boys who came at them in taverns and at markets, landlords chasing their unpaid bills, outraged fathers of country daughters. And even though they bore strong swords and fine armour, far excelling the weapons any peasant could wield, Accolon and Ontzlake did not always win these fights they started. One night in particular they humiliated themselves in front of a tavern filled with poor villagers from Gore’s marshes. They had been picking on a young fair-haired girl, the daughter of an eel-catcher, who was sharing a bowl of fish stew with her father.

‘What a fat little thing,’ Accolon had pretended to whisper, although he intended the whole room to hear.

‘I know,’ said Ontzlake, ‘it is a cruelty for the father to feed his daughter so. Starve her, good father, if she’s ever to be married.’

Accolon and Ontzlake laughed as the pretty young girl’s spoon dropped from her hand to her bowl, and tears welled in her fair blue eyes. But their laughter soon ceased when the father, a tall and well-built, much used to a rough life, scraped his stool hard against the tavern’s wooden floor and stood to face them. The whole parlour fell silent. Accolon and Ontzlake tried to ignore the change in atmosphere, and the eel-catcher’s heavy footsteps as he came towards their table.