Lady Blanket is very tall and she has purple eyes and she’s very serious and she doesn’t laugh at a lot of things except for when I fall over and injure myself. She joined my knights four years ago, when she won the annual jousting tournament at the Harvest Festival (the event of the year, as you well know). It was a joust to remember. Sir Percy’s horse (who is called Ernie) refused to joust because he was tired and grumpy, enabling Lady Blanket to surge full-bonkers down the length of the lists and ping Sir Percy twenty feet through the air. He landed right next to my throne, bless him. I’d have helped him upright but he was already unconscious so I thought it best to let him rest.

The peasants (you) really seem to like Lady Blanket. They do a little half-song when she rides past on her horse. It goes like this:

Lady Blanket
Lady Blanket
Lady Blanket
Lady Blanket!

Obviously it doesn’t translate so well on paper, but the melody is quite good.

Anyway, I caught up with her at the fletcher (or ‘arrow maker’ for all you mud-squatters).

And: Action!

(That’s me saying action like, how they begin a stage play. Thought I might jazz up the format for this next bit, you know? I’ve always fancied myself as a writer. I often think, if I wasn’t King, I would have been a bard: growing a beard, roaming taverns, sitting on people’s laps playing the harp, quaffing, carrying-on, bawdy fireside singalongs. I mean I do all of that already almost every day, but it lacks a certain… rugged criminality I suppose (because everything I do is legal because I make the laws.))

Scene 1: The Fletcher’s Cabin

Enter King Athelstan

KING ATHELSTAN:
Good morrow to thee Fletcher Brightly! Lady Blanket, I see thou hast arriven prior. Good morrow equally, milady.

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
Hail, King! I welcome you to my humble craftshop, The Quivering String.

LADY BLANKET:
Hello.

KING ATHELSTAN:
How hast fared thine Quest thus far, Good Lady of Blanket, splendid Victor of the Harvest Festival Tourney ‘06?

LADY BLANKET:
It’s fine. He’s agreed to make lots of arrows for us.

KING ATHELSTAN:
A-ha! I knew t’would be so. Thine intellect is as piercing as thine gaze, methinks. Ripe for a city fair, wits fit for a knave most devious, and lucky we are indeed that thine choice was made kindly – perish the thought of our rivalry, hadst thou chosen not the right avenue!

LADY BLANKET:
What

KING ATHELSTAN:
A-ha!

King Athelstan picks up a crossbow and shoots an apple with it.

KING ATHELSTAN:
A mighty weapon, my lad.

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
Erm, could you please not shoot that indoors, Sire?

King Athelstan puts the crossbow down.

KING ATHELSTAN:
How many arrows willst we be able to rain down on our enemies, Fletcher Brightly? I would have the sun blotted out I would! BLOTTED.

King Athelstan does an impression of the sun being blotted out by arrows.

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
Well, at the last count, we have forty eight.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Forty eight thousand arrows! Thou are a marvel of a man, Fletcher Brightly. Lean forward, that I might lay a kiss upon thine brow.

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
I’m sorry Sire, not forty eight thousand. Forty eight.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Hundred?

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
Just forty eight.

King Athelstan looks at the fletcher for a long time, then crouches in the middle of the arrow shop and makes a high pitched noise. Then he stands back up.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Why?

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
I can make two hundred more by next week.

KING ATHELSTAN:
The barbarians are arriving on the morrow, you fat idiot.

Fletcher Brightly’s face goes like this: Ö

LADY BLANKET:
He’s doing his best.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Our whole city has forty eight arrows? HOW.

LADY BLANKET:
You fired them all last month trying to hit the seagull that got into the Great Hall. You said it had an irreverent sneer.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Shit.

King Athelstan collapses into a chair and flops around. It is time for a soliloquy. He faces the audience and the rest of the stage goes dark and a spotlight falls on him. He removes his crown and holds it in his lap, looking forlornly into the middle-distance.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Alas!
Close thy doors and windows, thine King would mope.
The gull of fate hast on mine Kingdom shat,
Terrible foes do knot a hangman’s rope.
Seest thou a throne and crown, or chair and hat?
The sorrowed blame is shouldered by us all
If more than forty eight of them arrive
Munt-Puggle, this fair city, soon shall fall
And I – thy King! – will soon be boiled alive.
Or pulled apart by horses, like as not
Or dipped in tar and feathered like a goose
Or fed to pigs, or stewed within a pot
Or bruised by moose until he’s naught but juice.
O! Woe is me. Woe is what I’m made of. Woe right to the bones! A naked Woe Boy, I am!

The King sighs and puts his crown gently back on his head. Then he stands back up, straightens his tunic and paces to the window with his hands behind his back. He clears his throat and turns to look at Fletcher Brightly.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Don’t tell anybody I called myself a naked Woe Boy or I’ll make you eat a bucket of worms and then fire you out of a cannon.

He looks at Lady Blanket.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Forty eight arrows. What are we going to do? Share them? Snap them into quarters? Send out an arrow-boy to retrieve them after each— actually that’s not a bad idea…

LADY BLANKET:
It’s an awful idea they’d be killed immediately.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Alriiiight, watch your tone, we’re just brainstorming here. A judgemental environment is not conducive to good ideas, thank you Lady Blanket. We’re all adults here, and adults work in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

FLETCHER BRIGHTLY:
You called me a fat idiot not two minutes ago.

King Athelstan stares at Fletcher Brightly for eleven seconds.

KING ATHELSTAN:
I have an idea. What about rope arrows? Arrows on string. We could fire them and then hoist them back in to be fired again.

LADY BLANKET:
Absolutely batshit.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Yeswellit’sbetterthannothingisn’tit. Fletcher Brightly, make our forty eight arrows into rope arrows, and have them ready and loaded or whatever the phrase is tomorrow morning at sunrise. You hear me? Sunrise. Or I’ll come down here and give you the scragging of your life.  THE SCRAGGING OF YOUR LIFE!

Exit Lady Blanket.

Exit King Athelstan.

Enter King Athelstan.

KING ATHELSTAN:
Forgot my sword sorry.

Exit King Athelstan.