Chapter IV:
Sir Kay and the Man Who Would Be Boss

I FORCED MYSELF to recall that here before me stood two pretenders, a thousand years removed from the original men, and I damped my magical impulse.

The man portraying Sir Kay was far too handsome: broad of shoulders, tall of stance, slim of hips, thick of limbs, with a magnificent, free-flowing golden mane, and arresting blue eyes. The Sir Kay of old was brawny, of course. Any man who lumbers through life bearing armor whose helmet alone weighs twenty-two pounds, to say nothing of the rest of it, must be well muscled to move even a single step.

In defense of women I feel compelled to assert that my royal crown of state weighed a full eight pounds, and on average my many layers of undergarments, overdress, cloak, boots, and sundry adornments weighed in total close to ninety. And men persist in calling us “the weaker sex.” Hah.

The Sir Kay of my acquaintance suffered squinty eyes and a twisted lip that molded his expression into a perpetual sneer made all the more grotesque whenever he heaped insults upon his chosen victim, which happened frequently. I could understand why Arthur chose to appoint Sir Kay as the kingdom’s seneschal, the discharge of which office necessitated his staying in and nigh Camelot when not riding off to war. Sir Kay’s was not the face or demeanor of an ambassador or even a collector of tax levies, as other, lesser-ranked knights were so appointed, nor did Sir Kay often partake in quests of knight-errantry as did his more well-favored comrades-at-arms. In jousting and swordsmanship he stood in rank far lower than the best and not far higher than the worst.

’Twas no small wonder, then, that Sir Kay had suffered as the butt of many jests.

Why Arthur had befriended the odious knight, I shall never fathom, even when considering the years Arthur had been fostered in the household of Sir Kay’s father. There is no accounting for taste.

This faux Sir Kay possessed swagger and insults aplenty in spite of his comeliness, which crafted a real enough illusion for the purpose.

The Hank Morgan pretender standing before me, however, could have been the original Boss’s twin: short, slight of build, stooped of posture, with unkempt hair, scuffed boots, stubbly whiskers, musty scent, dusty clothing, and a languid look in his eyes that tried to veil, with the illusion of boredom, that he was in fact evaluating his captor and the court amongst which he stood.

 

The Original Boss’s Twin

 

 

I remember the long-ago day quite clearly. It chanced that I had been visiting Camelot to learn what had become of my enchanted Horn of Adultery (Sir Lamorak, in his anger at Sir Tristram for besting him in a tournament, had diverted it to King Mark, where it proved almost as entertaining in the hands of Queen Isoud, though I would have paid my weight,—crown, clothing, and all—in solid gold to watch Guenever attempt to drink from it) when Sir Kay brought in the captive stranger. Most vividly of that day I remember the stranger’s shrewd gaze. I had realized that gaze signaled trouble, although had I foreseen the sheer magnitude into which the trouble would evolve, I would have insisted upon his immediate execution.

In those days, Arthur would have acceded to my request in spite of the politely disguised friction ever present betwixt him and me.

The comely Sir Kay of this era rambled on in appropriate length and breadth of detail regarding how he had captured the stranger: besting the stranger’s thirteen knightly companions in a three-hour-long battle—three hours being a quite impossible length of time to be hacking at each other with twenty-pound broadswords while clad in full armor, of course, but ’tis the standard length to inspire awe and respect in the listeners—and being forced to capture the stranger alive on account of the stranger’s enchanted garments protecting him from all hurt and harm.

When I refer to “the stranger,” the wisdom of centuries permits me to omit Sir Kay’s more colorful descriptive phrases such as “horrible sky-towering monster” and (my personal favorite) “tusked and taloned man-devouring ogre.” On the day I first heard Sir Kay’s tale, I had been too far occupied in privily plotting Sir Lamorak’s punishment for having intercepted my enchanted adulteress-revealing drinking horn to pay much heed to Sir Kay’s words.

On this day, upon hearing the tale told for a second time and with Sir Lamorak having long since been dealt with by my nephew Sir Gawaine and his brothers at my behest, it occurred to me how ridiculous it was of Sir Kay to have called the stranger tusked, taloned, and sky-towering. Clearly, the stranger was none of those things; and the man portraying him also possessed neither tusk nor talon, nor even a snaggled tooth or grubby torn fingernail.

In retrospect, I marvel that none of the other knights or ladies or Arthur or Guenever or even Merlin had questioned Sir Kay’s fantastical account. As I gazed at King Henry and Queen Anne and their court, they were responding in much the same fashion. I reckoned it to the natural stupor induced by the over-imbibing of ale, a tradition that never changes from age to age.

I also marvel that my brother had decided to elevate this untusked, untaloned, and otherwise unremarkable stranger to the status of second in the kingdom. On the other hand, whatever should I have expected from a man possessing so little discernment as to have married the unfaithful Guenever and befriended the fractious Sir Kay?

A man’s blindness leads him to his doom, and in that respect King Arthur stood no differently than any other man—or woman, alas.