The Edge Read online

  “And, Sir Bedivere, what is your quest?”

  “To return the Holy Wingnut to Camelot, it has been stolen by Morgan le Fay.”

  “The Holy Wingnut, bless its threads.” she said, bowing her head.

  “Bless its threads.” the two dozen other nuns echoed.

  Daphne stood up, “Our modest order has been entrusted with the safekeeping of the Holy Freewheel. Perhaps you would like to see it.”

  William said, “Holy bicycle parts? I don't understand.”

  Sir Bedivere explained, “When Joseph of Arimathea, who was the uncle of the sacred Virgin, came to Britain, he brought the Holy Bicycle, But there were many enemies about who desired the bicycle for their own, so to prevent it from being used by the unworthy, he dismantled it, and spread its parts to monasteries and nunneries far and wide, it is said that when He returns, he will gather all the parts together, and reassemble the Bicycle, and ride to the New Jerusalem, which, of course, is in Britain, to establish his Kingdom forever.”

  William asked, “How can you tell its parts from parts of other bicycles?”

  Daphne, Bedivere, and all the nuns stopped what they were doing. Daphne said, “There is only one Bicycle, a machine of such quality and precision, could never be made by the hands of mere mortals, it was given to Our Lord by God, the Father.”

  William could only say, “Oh.” He didn't tell them that he'd worked weekends and summers as a bicycle mechanic when he was in high school.

  The freewheel was kept in a locked box in a locked room deep beneath the nunnery, when Daphne opened the box, William saw that it was a standard 7-speed bicycle freewheel from the late twentieth century, “Shimano Hyperglide”, he said.

  “Yes,” said Daphne, crossing herself, “The ancient words, in an unknown language. No one knows what they mean.”

  William decided it was not his place to explain. When William and Sally were alone for a few minutes before bedtime, (couples, even married couples were not allowed to sleep together here, and they each had their own chamber with a small straw mattress) William told Sally about freewheels, and where and when it came from, “I believe that we aren't the first time travelers in this world, but whoever it was, they were not from my timeline.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “In my timeline, wingnuts were not used on bicycles anymore, they had been replaced with quick-release skewers long before Hyperglide was invented.”

  After they left the nunnery they had a few minor adventures, settling disputes, Bedivere had to joust with the indigo knight who would not allow them to pass otherwise.

  At one point Bedivere did slay an ogre, who really was a menace, and was about to kill and eat a damsel, this made him feel much better about himself.

  They came at last to the river Humber, which marked the southern borders of le Fay's domain. There were fewer towns and settlements in this region, so they made good time on the way to her castle, Bedivere was unsure of the way, but William pulled out a map which Bob had produced, and they found it just before sunset.

  Le Fay certainly had guards or spies who would be watching all approaching roads, so they rode through the forest, avoiding well-worn paths. They set camp, but did not start a fire, which would increase the chance of being discovered.

  They discussed the best way to recover the Wingnut. William and Bedivere decided that Sally had the best plan, since they had no idea where the Wingnut was, or whether it was even in the castle, Sally would approach the castle, pretending to be alone, and attempt to gain the trust of Le Fay. If she did not return in two days, William and Bedivere would go after her. They wanted to wait no more than a day, but Sally wasn't sure she could win over Morgan in such a short time. Sally and William did not tell Bedivere, of course, but Sally and William could keep in touch via the electronics in the battle suits.

  Sally did not feel the slightest trepidation as she rode toward the castle, which was really a small walled city, into which, a small but steady stream of people flowed. They were mostly peasants with bundles on their backs, others with pushcarts, and a few with horse drawn carts, were all carrying the food and supplies that were needed on a daily basis to support a castle of this size.

  As Sally rode toward the gate, the peasants, as well as a few better dressed merchants moved aside and cleared out of her way. She guessed that people saw her in her armor, astride the huge horse, and assumed she was a knight of some importance.

  Two men who looked to be soldiers or guards approached her on horseback, “Hail, Sir knight... or rather Lady...?” looking her up and down.

  “I am Lady Sally of Exni-Slodge, I seek an audience with your queen.”

  “And what is your business?”

  “Not that it's any of yours, but I wish to offer my services as a warrior to Her Majesty.”

  “Then you may follow us.”

  She followed them, not into the main part of the castle, as she had expected, but through a small, unguarded gate that someone on the other side opened for them, and which was closed quickly once they had passed through. They were in a large, empty courtyard, Sally suspected that it might be some sort of trap, but decided to play along, since she had significant technological advantages over anything they might try, and most likely, a vast intellectual superiority. One of the guards told her to wait there, and both of them left through a different gate. She waited patiently for a few minutes, and then heard a sound coming from behind her. She quickly turned to see a knight riding toward her at significant speed, his lance lowered. She had not even watched a joust before, much less engaged in one. She quickly lowered her own lance, turning a small hidden wheel with her thumb, which decreased the sharpness of the point to a minimum, and charged. She braced for the collision, and aimed for what she hoped would be a disabling, but non-lethal, blow. The battle suit compensated for most of the impact as the knight's lance shattered against it. The knight was not so lucky, the force knocked both knight and horse to the ground, and the knight was having difficulty breathing, Sally was not sure if he had broken ribs, or that his armor was dented so badly that it was pressing on his chest, or both. The horse managed to stand up and trotted away.

  She was about to dismount to help the knight when she heard another sound behind her, a second knight was bearing down on her, this time she positioned her lance a little differently, and pulled up as they hit, the knight was lifted out of his saddle, and over Sally, falling to the ground behind her.

  “Spectacular!” a woman's voice shouted.

  Sally turned, and looked up to see a woman in an ornate dress with a crown standing on a balcony.

  “Absolutely spectacular! You have defeated two of my finest knights, now let's see how well you do against my magic.”

  Sally was startled as small lightning bolts began emanating from the woman, whose hair began to rise. Then large lightning bolts shot from her hands, and struck the ground around Sally, who suspected that if her armor had actually been conductive, this harmless display of static electricity would have struck her before completing its circuit through the ground. Sally could not tell if the woman, who she assumed to be Morgan le Fay, was disappointed, or pleased, or both. Le Fay raised her arms again, held her head back, and said a series of words that Sally did not understand, but seemed to rhyme, and then pointed at Sally and said “Go to Sleep!”

  Sally shouted, “It's a little early in the day for a nap.”

  The woman looked at her sternly for a moment, and then smiled and said, “Okay, you can come in, but the horse stays outside.”

  Sally dismounted, and walked through a door that was opened for her, she looked back to see the two defeated knights being helped up, and walking away, she was relieved that they were both still alive.

  Le Fay greeted her inside. She was a stunningly beautiful redhead, “I am Morgana, also called Morgan Le Fay, Queen of Northumberland. I have been told that your name is Lady Sally, and that you wish to serve me.. you should be kneeling before me, I'm a queen.”


  “I only kneel before those I serve, and I do not yet serve you.”

  “And why do you wish to serve me?”

  “I have traveled through many lands, strange and wonderful, and they were all ruled by men, weak, pathetic, men. Only a strong woman is worthy of my allegiance, a queen such as the world rarely sees, such as Boudicca, such as yourself.”

  “But, you have strength, skill, and courage, you are even quite beautiful, you could be a queen yourself, why serve me, when you might have others serve you?”

  “I do have neither the wisdom nor the desire to be queen. I need the guidance of a woman who has those qualities.”

  “I suppose that there is a possibility that you would betray me and make yourself queen in my place.”

  “I could have killed you by now, if that were my plan.”

  “Don't think that I haven't realized that. I also realize that you could have easily killed my knights, if you had so chosen, but you let them live. I shouldn't trust you, but there's is something about you that makes me do so, I can't help but like you. So I think you should kneel.”

  “Kneel?”

  “Yes, you may now serve me.”

  Sally knelt, and hoped things turned out better than the last time she had been made to kneel before someone.

  “Now rise Lady Sally, personal guard of Queen Morgana of Northumberland.”

  Sally rose, “Personal guard?”

  “Yes, I always keep my best knight as my personal guard, it will be nice to have another woman around, I haven't really had any girlfriends since I became queen, having all these men around is nice when I want a lover, but sometimes a girl just wants to chat, now come along, I'm late for my morning bath, my servants will take care of your horse.”

  Morgana led Sally to another chamber with a pool that could easily have held a dozen people, Sally watched as three female servants helped Morgana undress, and step into the water. While Sally had seen other women undressed before, they had all been from her village, and their bodies very much different than the one at which she now found herself looking. In contrast to Sally's lean, dark skinned muscular body, which carried numerous small scars from living a primitive life in a forest, Morgana's was pale, almost white, as if it had never been exposed to sunlight, with no discernible muscle definition beneath her skin, which was smooth, and flawless, with light freckles on her chest, shoulders, and upper arms. Her breasts were high and round, while Sally's were more pointed and drooped a little, not as much as the older women in her village, but certainly more than Morgana's. Sally wondered if that might be from not wearing a bra until recently, while Morgana wore elaborate handmade supporting undergarments. Morgana appeared to be not much older than Sally, but carried some extra weight on her thighs, hips and buttocks, and her stomach was not flat and toned like Sally's but roundly protruded an inch or two. She wondered if Morgana's lovers had to be careful not to hurt her during sex, she looked so weak and fragile. Sally found herself strangely repulsed and fascinated at the same time.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Morgana, “Do you bathe, Sally?”

  “I love baths, and haven't had one for several days.”

  “Why don't you join me?”

  Sally was hesitant, she didn't see anything wrong with bathing with another woman, as a child, she had frequently gone swimming in the nude with other girls, and sometimes boys, when they would allow themselves to get in the water, but she still felt a little uncomfortable.

  Morgana said, “I don't know about you, Sally, but I like men, just in case you were worried.”

  Sally started to take off her armor, and Morgana motioned to her servants, who helped Sally with the armor, and the tunic and trousers she wore underneath. They helped her down into the warm water, and one of them began scrubbing her back and arms while the other two attended to Morgana who had been looking at Sally's body the same way as Sally had been looking at hers.

  “Look at the two of us,” Morgana said, “Our bodies quite different, yours the hardened body of a warrior, and mine, soft and pampered, befitting a queen, very much opposites, and yet both very beautiful.”

  The servants scrubbed every inch of Morgana, who explained that it was unseemly for a queen to wash her own private parts, but Sally only let her servant wash her back, arms, feet and lower legs, preferring to keep the rest to herself.

  After the bath, Sally insisted on wearing her armor, “to properly perform my duties as the queen's guard.”

  For the next two hours, Sally stood by as the queen held court. An hour was allowed for commoners to voice their grievances, and have their disputes settled, this was followed by an hour for the nobles to do the same thing, Morgana explained that the peasants went first because the nobles were lazy, and liked to sleep later. Sally was impressed with the wisdom with which Morgana ruled, if she had been familiar with the story of Solomon, she might have been tempted to make comparisons. She saw no evidence of her being the evil witch that Bedivere had described.

  After a sumptuous lunch, Morgana showed Sally around the castle. Here was the armory, the kitchens, the stables, the quarters for the servants, and for the guards, the library, ballroom, sewing room, where two dozen seamstresses were hard at work, and fifty other rooms, each with its own purpose, (“almost as big as the Winnebago”, Sally would later tell William) and buzzing with activity, at last they came to the treasury, which was guarded by fifteen men, each of them distrustful of everybody including the other fourteen. They even distrusted the queen, “could be an imposter”, they mumbled among themselves, Morgana had to whisper a different password to each and every one of them before they would allow her to pass. The room, deep below ground level contained vast treasures of all kinds, gold coins, precious stones, fine jewelry all of which were being cleaned, polished and organized by three old blind men.

  Sally felt confident that the time was right, “I have heard rumors that you possess a holy relic.”

  Morgana looked at her askance, “To what do you refer?”

  “It is said that you have The Holy Wingnut.”

  Morgana looked at her severely, while saying to the others in the room, “Leave us.”

  When they were gone, she continued, “Where's Bedivere? I know that he sent you.”

  “How could you know that?” Sally asked, she was not sure what to do now that her cover was blown.

  She smiled, “Arthur wrote me to tell me that he was sending Bedivere on a quest to retrieve the Holy Wingnut from me, just to get him out of Camelot for a while. We both constantly send knights out on quests for this or that, it's good to have knights out wandering the countryside, they get quite a bit done, and it helps maintain order, the object of the quest is just an excuse.”

  “So you will just allow him to come and steal the wingnut back?”

  “If only it were that simple, I don't have it, the courier who brought the letter was supposed to bring it, but he lost it while fording a river.”

  “Do you normally just send holy relics around the country like that?”

  “Let me tell you a secret, since for some unfathomable reason I trust you to keep quiet about it, it's something only Arthur, myself, and the Archbishop of Canterbury know,” she whispered, “the bicycle is not a relic, we don't know where it came from, but there was no mention of it anywhere before about five hundred years ago, Jesus rode an ass into Jerusalem. The bicycle was such an amazing thing that its finders, a group of monks, assumed that it had to be of divine origin, so they created a theory about it, which has grown into a legend.”

  “So what are you going to do about Bedivere?”

  “I don't know, if we had it, we would have let him steal it, with some difficulty, and he would take it back to Camelot, happy in his success, and blissfully ignorant that it was all a setup. Now, with nothing for him to find, he will fight to the death, convinced that we are just hiding it. It will be sad to lose Bedivere, he's a good knight, but he can't defeat all of my knights.”

  “We
ll, yes, but I think I might be able to help with the Bedivere dilemma.”

  “How?”

  Sally pulled out the Wingnut that Bob had given William, “He can steal this one, instead.”

  “Where did you get that? That's it!”

  “No, it's an exact duplicate, it was made by a friend who thought it might come in handy in helping Bedivere steal the real one. You can let him steal this one, instead.”

  “Sally, you're wonderful... I suppose this means you'll be leaving soon, won't you?”

  “Yes, I want to get back to my fiancé, William, and continue with our quest.”

  “You're on a quest? What is it?”

  “To find the edge of the universe.”

  “Oh... alright... good luck with that, anyway, I'm really going to hate to see you go, I really like you, can't you just stay a while?”

  “I can stay up to two days, that will help convince Bedivere that it's taken me a while to gain your confidence, and find out where the Wingnut is.”

  “Well, can you stay for the two days, and then just slip away with the Wingnut, and tell Bedivere you stole it? He'll be happy even if he didn't steal it himself, and I'll be happy that I had your company for two days.”

  Sally enjoyed her two days there, then bade farewell to Morgana, and slipped out of the castle before dawn on the third day. She found William and Bedivere engaged in a polite debate over whether the Sun revolved around the Earth or vice Versa. They were excited to see her, and Bedivere asked, “Did you locate it? How can we get to it? Can we sneak in and steal it, or will we have to fight for it?”

  Sally just smiled, and held out her hand, in her hand was a small wooden box containing the Wingnut. Bedivere fell to his knees in gratitude. While he was praying, William whispered in her ear, “Isn't that the one Bob made?”

  She whispered back, “I'll explain later,” then, louder, “We need to leave quickly, before Morgana, I mean le Fay finds that it's missing, she'll know that I took it, and send her best knights after me.”

  William said, “Yes, let's go.”