"We'll worry about getting the Cup back after we're beyond the walls,"

Mallory said, starting for the door. "Come on--they're all in the banquet hall and as drunk as lords--they won't even see us go by."

She hung back. "But the warders, fair sir--they be not enchafed. And King Pelles, by my own wish, did forbid them to pa.s.s me."

Mallory stared at her. "By your own wish! Well of all the crazy--"

Abruptly he dropped the subject. "All right then--how _do_ we get out of here?"

"There lieth beneath the fortress and the forest a parlous pa.s.sage wherein dwells the fiend, the which I have much discomfit of. But with ye aside me, fair knight, there is naught to fear."

Mallory had read enough Malory to be able to take sixth-century fiends in his stride. "I'll have to take my horse along," he said. "Is there room for it to pa.s.s?"

"Yea, fair sir. The tale saith that aforetime many knights did ride out beneath the fortress and the forest and did smite the Saxons, Saracens, and Pagans, the which did compa.s.s the castle about, from behind, whereupon the battle was won."

Mallory stepped outside the chamber, the girl just behind him, and encephalopathed the necessary directions. After a moment, Easy Money came trotting down the corridor to his side. The girl gasped, and, to his astonishment, threw her arms around the rohorse's neck. "He is a n.o.ble steed indeed, fair sir," she said; "and worthy of a knight fitting to sit in the Siege Perilous." Presently she stepped back, frowning. "He ... he is most cold, fair sir."

"All horses of that breed are," Mallory explained. "Incidentally, his name is 'Easy Money'."

"La! such a strange name."

"Not so strange." Mallory raised his visor, making a mental note to see to it that any and all suits of armor he might buy in the future were air-conditioned. He got his spear. "Let's be on our way, shall we?"

"Ye ... ye have blue eyes, fair sir."

"Never mind the color of my eyes--let's get out of here."

She seemed to make up her mind about something. "An ye will follow me, sir knight," she said, and started down the corridor.

A ramp, the entrance of which was camouflaged by a rotating section of the inner castle wall, gave access to the subterranean pa.s.sage. The pa.s.sage itself, in the flickering light of the torch that the girl had brought along, appeared at first to be nothing more than a natural cave enlarged through the centuries by the stream that still flowed down its center. Presently, however, Mallory saw that in certain places the stone walls had been cut back in such a way that the s.p.a.ce on either side of the stream never narrowed to a width of less than four feet. He saw other evidence of human handiwork too--dungeons.

They were little more than shallow caves now, though, their iron gratings having rusted and fallen away.

After proceeding half a hundred yards, he paused. "I don't know what we're walking for when we've got a perfectly good horse at our disposal," he told the girl. "Come on, I'll help you into the saddle and I'll jump on behind."

She shook her head. "No, fair knight, it is not fitting for a gentlewoman to ride tofore her champion. Ye will mount, and I will ride behind."

"Suit yourself," Mallory said. He climbed into the saddle with a clank and a clatter, and helped her up on Easy Money's croup. "By the way, you never did tell me your name."

"I hight the damosel Rowena."

"Pleased to meet you," Mallory said. _Giddy-ap, Easy Money_, he encephalopathed.

They rode in silence for a little while, the light from Rowena's torch dancing acappella rigadoons on bare walls and dripping ceilings, Easy Money's hoofbeats hardly audible above the purling of the stream.

Presently Rowena said, "It were best that ye drew out thy sword, fair sir, for anon the fiend will beset us."

"He hasn't beset us yet," Mallory pointed out.

"La! fair sir, he will."

He saw no harm in humoring her, and did as she had suggested. "You mentioned something a while back about having been given guardianship of the Sangraal at your own request," he said. "How did that come about?"

"List, fair sir, and I will tell ye. But first I must tell ye of Sir Bors de Ganis, of which Sir Lionel is brother. It happed one day that Sir Bors did ride into a forest in the Kingdom of Mennes unto the hour of midday, and there befell him a marvelous adventure. So he met at the departing of the two ways two knights that led Lionel, his brother, all naked, bounden upon a strong hackney, and his hands bounden tofore his breast. And every each of them held in his hands thorns wherewith they went beating him so sore that the blood trailed down more than in an hundred places of his body, so that he was all blood tofore and behind, but he said never a word; as he which was great of heart he suffered all that ever they did to him as though he had felt none anguish.

"Anon Sir Bors dressed him to rescue him that was his brother; and so he looked upon the other side of him, and saw a knight which brought a fair gentlewoman, and would have set her in the thickest place of the forest for to have been the more surer out of the way from them that sought him. And she which was nothing a.s.sured cried with a high voice: 'Saint Mary succor your maid.' And anon she espied where Sir Bors came riding. And when she came nigh him she deemed him a knight of the Round Table, whereof she hoped to have some comfort; and then she conjured him: By the faith that he ought unto him in whose service thou art entered in, and for the faith ye owe unto the high order of knighthood, and for the n.o.ble King Arthur's sake, that I suppose that made thee knight, that thou help me, and suffer me not to be shamed of this knight. When--"

"Just a minute," Mallory interrupted, thoroughly bewildered and simultaneously afflicted with an irrational sense of _deja vu_. "This gentlewoman you speak of--would she by any chance be you?"

"Wit ye well, fair sir. When--"

"But if she's you, why don't you use the first person singular instead of the third?"

"I wot not what--"

"Why don't you use 'I' instead of 'she' when you refer to yourself directly?"

"It would not be fitting, fair knight. When Bors heard her say thus he had so much sorrow there he nyst not what to do. For if I let my brother be in adventure he must be slain, and that would I not for all the earth. And if I help not the maid she is shamed for ever, and also she shall lose her virginity the which she shall never get again.

Then lift he up his eyes and said weeping: Fair sweet Lord, whose liege man I am, keep Lionel, my brother, that these knights slay him not, and for pity of you, and for Mary's sake, I shall succor this maid. Then dressed be him unto the knight the which had the gentlewoman, and then--"

"Hist!" Mallory whispered. "I heard something."

For a moment the light flared wildly as though she had nearly dropped the torch. "Wh ... whence came the sound, fair knight?"

"From the other side of the stream." He peered into the vacillating shadows, but saw nothing but the darker shadows of one of the innumerable man-made caves. The sound he had heard had brought to mind the dull clang that metal makes when it collides with stone, and it had been so faint as to have been barely audible above the purling of the stream. Thinking back, he was not altogether certain that he had heard it at all. "My imagination's getting the best of me, I guess,"

he said presently. "There's no one there."

Her warm breath penetrated the crevices of his gorget and fanned the back of his neck. "Ye ... ye ween not that it could have been the fiend prowling?"

"Of course I ween not! Relax, and finish your story. But get to the point, will you?"

"An ... an it so please.... And then Sir Bors cried: Sir knight, let your hand off that maiden, or ye be but dead. And then he set down the maiden, and was armed at all pieces save he lacked his spear. Then he dressed his shield, and drew out his sword, and Bors smote him so hard that it went through his shield and habergeon on the left shoulder.

And through great strength he beat him down to the earth, and at the pulling out of Bors' spear there he swooned. Then came Bors to the maid and said: How seemeth it to you of this knight ye be delivered at this time? Now sir, said she, I pray you lead me there as this knight had me. So shall I do gladly: and took the horse of the wounded knight, and set the gentlewoman upon him, and so brought her as she desired. Sir knight, said she, ye have better sped than ye weened, for an I had lost my maidenhead, five hundred men should have died for it.

What knight was he that had you in the forest? By my faith, said she, he is my cousin. So wot I never with what engyn the fiend enchafed him, for yesterday he took me from my father privily; for I nor none of my father's men mistrusted him not, and if he had had my maidenhead he should have died for the sin, and his body shamed and dishonored for ever. Thus as--"

"_Shhh!_"

This time, Mallory was certain that he had heard something. The sound had had much in common with the previous sound, except that it had suggested metal sc.r.a.ping against, rather than colliding with, stone.

Directly across the stream was another cave, this one shallow enough to permit the torchlight to penetrate its deeper shadows, and looking into those shadows, he caught a faint gleam of reflected light.

Rowena must have caught it, too, for he heard her gasp behind him. "It were best that I thanked ye now for thy great kindness, fair knight,"

she said, "for anon we be no longer on live."

"Nonsense!" Mallory said. "If this fiend of yours is anywhere in the vicinity, he's probably more afraid of us than we are of him."

The cave was behind them now. "Per ... peradventure he hath already had meat," Rowena said hopefully. "The tale saith that and the fiend be filled, he becomes aweary and besets not them the which do pa.s.s him by in peace."

"I'll keep my sword handy, just in case he changes his mind," Mallory said. "Meanwhile, get on with your autobiography--only for Pete's sake, cut it short, will you?"