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a dim view of attempted desertion. The truth of the matter was that his dwarfish genes wouldn’t let him. Stand By Your Knight, the old dwarf song goes.
    Boamund was knocking on the door. ‘Anybody home?’ he called.
    Silence. Boamund tried again, with the air of a man who knows that the proper way to do this would be to sound a slug-horn, if only he had such a thing about his person. Still nothing.
    â€˜It must be the wrong place,’ Toenail said. ‘Look, let’s just go away somewhere and think it over, shall we?’
    Boamund shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I think this is the right place after all. Look.’
    He pointed at something, and Toenail stood on tiptoe and looked. He could see nothing. He said so.
    â€˜There,’ Boamund said, ‘can’t you see, on the doorframe, very faint but it’s there, definitely.’
    Toenail squinted. There was, he had to admit, the faintest possible pattern or design, crudely scratched on the paintwork. He stared at it for a while, until his imagination got him thinking that it could be mistaken for a bunch of roses, their petals intertwined. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘What’s that, then?’
    â€˜It’s a waymark,’ Boamund replied. ‘Part of the Old High Symbolism. Must mean that there are knights here.’
    â€˜Is that what it means, then?’ Toenail demanded.
    â€˜Strictly speaking, no,’ Boamund replied. ‘What it actually means is, “No insurance salesmen or Jehovah’s Witnesses; beware of the dog.” But reading between the lines ... Here, what’s this?’
    â€˜Another one?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ Boamund muttered. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He rubbed away a dried-on pigeon dropping, scrutinised the doorpost carefully and then chuckled to himself. ‘It’s definitely a waymark,’ he said. ‘Look.’
    â€˜This time,’ Toenail said, ‘I’m going to have to take your word for it.’
    â€˜It’s the ancient character designed to let bailiffs know that you’ve moved,’ Boamund observed. ‘We call it the Great Self-Defeating Pentagram. This is the right place, I reckon.’ He thumped on the door so hard that Toenail reckoned he could feel it wince, and then called out very loudly in what Toenail would ordinarily have guessed was Bulgarian.
    Several seconds of complete silence; and then a window above their heads ground open.
    â€˜We’re closed,’ said the voice. ‘Go away.’
    Boamund was staring, open-mouthed. ‘Bedders!’ he yelled out joyfully, and waved. ‘Bedders, it’s me.’
    Toenail looked up at the man in the window; a round-faced, bald head with a big red nose. ‘Bo?’ it replied, and its tone of voice implied that this was better than pink elephants or spiders climbing the wallpaper, but still uncalled for. ‘It can’t be.’
    â€˜Bedders!’ Boamund repeated rapturously. ‘Come and open this door before I kick it in!’
    This, Toenail surmised, was entirely consistent with what he knew of the way knights talked to each other. Apparently, under the laws of chivalry, the way you expressed warm sentiments of friendship and goodwill to another knight was to challenge him to put on all his armour, be knocked off his horse, and get his head bashed in with a fifteen-pound mace.
    â€˜You touch that door,’ the head replied, ‘and I’ll break both your legs.’ An expert on courtly repartee would immediately have recognised this as being roughly equivalent to our, ‘George, you old bastard, how the devil are you!’, but Toenail decided to hide behind the bike, just in case.
    â€˜You and whose army, you drunken ponce?’ Boamund replied tenderly. The head grinned.
    â€˜Stay right there,’ he said, and the window slammed.
    Boamund turned round.
    â€˜What are you doing down there?’ he