Read Playing Hearts for Free Online

own horse into a furious gallop again. My first feeling was one of
relief. Maybe I could sneak away while they were fighting each other. The
second was one of sudden terror: both knights had somehow utterly missed each
other with their lances, and the red knight was still bearing down on me. I
yelled and tried to leap sidewise again, but I was too slow. The red knight’s
lance slid between my shoulder and the strap of my backpack, burning me with
its speed, and hove me off my feet.
    For the briefest of
moments I flew. Then my weight dragged the point of the lance into the grass,
and a red, shouting, clanking heap of metal sailed over my head and into a
tree. There was the clashing of metal and wood, then a brief silence, during
which I discovered that I was pinned to the grass by my backpack strap.
    “Bravo!” shouted the
white knight. “Oh, well played, madam! A rout indeed!”
    “ Help! ” I said in
annoyance.
    The white knight at once
dismounted. “A thousand pardons, madam! At once, and immediately!”
    At once and immediately
was not exactly how it happened. The white knight turned out to be incapable of
helping me until he had removed his helmet and his gauntlets, which took far
longer than it should have taken. Then he stopped to apologise for the
necessity of touching me to remove the lance (which he called ‘rude weaponry’).
    “ That ’s all
right,” I said, eyeing his enormous white whiskers in fascination. “Just take
it out, please. Why do you keep calling me madam?”
    The white knight looked
at me uncertainly. “Should I, perchance, address you as sir ?”
    “What? No! I’m a kid. I’m
not even a miss yet. I’m Mabel.”
    “A great pleasure to meet
you, Mistress Mabel,” said the white knight, at last plucking the lance from
the earth beneath me. “I am Sir Blanc, wandering knight.”
    I took the hand he held
out to me and rose to my feet a little shakily. “Thank you, Sir Blanc. You
showed up just in time.”
    “Alas!” sighed Sir Blanc.
“My interference has brought no glory! I have failed to bring about the
downfall of my enemy.”
    “Well, neither did I,” I
said, throwing a look up at the red knight. “He went up, not down. And he did
it to himself, anyway. Why did he attack me?”
    “You approached his
square,” said Sir Blanc. “It was ever thus in the Chessboard Woods. He was
honour bound to challenge you; as was I to challenge him. And yet, I failed!” He
sank down on a fallen tree, a crumpled little tin can of sad eyes and drooping
whiskers. “It’s all of a piece,” he continued, as if I wasn’t there. “A failed
knight, a failed inventor, always to be thwarted in my search.”
    He looked so woebegone
that I was prompted to ask him: “What are you searching for?”
    “My wits,” he said sadly.
“They wandered away and now I can’t find them.”
    I said: “Oh,” because
there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. In an effort to be helpful, I
added: “Do you remember where you last had them?”
    “I was envisioning my
latest invention,” said Sir Blanc meditatively. “Oh, very clever, it was! I’ve
no idea what it’s for now , but back when I had my wits about me I was a
very clever fellow!”
    “Your wits,” I prompted,
hugging my backpack.
    “Indeed, indeed. I let my
thoughts wander for a moment—pondering something devastatingly intelligent,
methinks—and when I looked around my wits had wandered away.”
    “Just walked off, did
they?” I wasn’t quite sure that Sir Blanc wasn’t making fun of me.
    “The Queen had been
waiting for just such an occasion,” said Sir Blanc, his pleasant face
darkening. “She swooped on them and took them away, and I’ve not seen them
since.”
    I thought about this for
far too long, until it occurred to me to ask: “Hang on, if the Queen has them,
why are you looking for them here ?”
    “I know not,” said Sir
Blanc, even more sadly. “Forsooth, I’ve lost my wits! Alas the day! Once such a
bright