Was that chivalry? “Hey Karl, was that chivalry?” I asked while scanning the teenager, who was smelling the flower, up and down. She was pretty—at least, I heard Tony and George say something about it when we took our seats—but certainly I would need more than a rose to make Andrius’s mom smile like that. She was an ice queen. I’d have to at least win a joust.
As I slurped down the last of my soup, the lights went out and a fog crept into the arena. A band of henchmen came storming out from the curtain, followed by a spot-lit knight dressed entirely in black.
“The Black Knight!” Karl and I yelled simultaneously.
I turned to George, the only one of us who had seen the show before, for some clarification, but he shook his head in amazement and said he had no idea what was going on.
The king bellowed at the knights to remain calm and keep their swords sheathed. I felt like I had been duped and had suffered the torment of the Green Knight for months. Looking at him in the far left corner, he didn’t seem so evil after all.
The Black Knight threatened to slaughter the realm if the princess was not handed over for marriage and then left the pit with his henchmen. The king explained that the tournament of sport and jovial spirit would have to take a turn of violence, and I sat back in my seat to take it all in. Karl questioned why wouldn’t all six knights join forces and fight the Black Knight together, but there was no time for such nuanced inquiries.
Immediately the squires helped their lords mount their steeds, and the knights rushed off through the curtain and out of sight.
“Pretty good, huh, Vito?” said my dad, leaning back in his seat so he could make eye contact with me.
I bounced in my chair, waiting for the first two knights to burst out of the curtain and line up for the joust. Joust, then hand-to-hand combat—that’s what George told us. And as I sunk my teeth into my half chicken and peeled off the skin, the Green Knight appeared from behind the curtain on his jet-black horse, followed by our champion.
I stood in exhilaration, raising my grease-covered hands into the air. The Green Knight stared at our section, and I yelled at him like my father yells at the Boston Red Sox. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George laughing with Tony and clapping under the table. I knew he was a traitor, a subject of the Green Knight who had infiltrated our bastion of purity.
The knights lined up to joust, and I felt a cocktail of nerves and angst form and turn in my stomach. The horses kicked back the tawny sand as slobber fell from the bits. And before I could fully comprehend the moment I had been waiting for—the battle between the knight who had preoccupied my daydreams and my newly appointed champion—the lances dropped and the sand flew and they were off. Splinters of wood went flying from our champion’s lance as the crack of metal reverberated throughout the arena. The Green Knight had been dismounted. He scurried in the sand as his squire handed him a flail. Our champion dropped from his horse with a shield and broadsword.
“Why would he do that?!” shouted Karl. “He has a much greater advantage from on the horse than on foot. I don’t feel good about this, Vic.”
“Dad!” I screamed down the table, startling my father, who was sliding the meat off the pork rib with his teeth. “Karl says he has a much greater advantage…”
“What? Vito, I can’t hear you, pal. Just enjoy the show.”
Show? Show? My father’s nonchalance was unnerving. He clearly did not possess the same loyal zeal for our blond-maned champion that I felt building in the balls of my feet.
The Green Knight whirled the chained ball of metal above his head and sent it crashing into our champion’s shield. In the moments before impact, I covered my eyes, fearing that one more crack against the shield would break his arm. But in a feat of unprecedented bravado, the Black and White Knight caught the chain of the Green Knight’s flail around his sword, and after a few pushes and pulls from side to side, sent his opponent soaring into the sand.
The Green Knight was defenseless but evaded each elongated swing and swipe of our champion’s attack.
“Just stab him! Karl, why won’t he just stab him?”
The Green Knight’s squire rushed to his aid with a shield and sword of his own—excellent squiring, it hurt to admit—and the two defenders of the realm exchanged blows to the cheers and jeers of the crowd.
Orange sparks flew from the blades on contact, and the Green Knight had our champion in a backpedal. He stumbled and fell into the sand after parrying a particularly wicked blow. He was on the defensive and I couldn’t watch. I had seen it too many times before—the imposing orcish horde ramming their way through my army of footmen and knights. I feared it was all over for my champion, and I licked the chicken grease from my fingers and sucked down the last sip of my Pepsi. (It was a “party,” so we were permitted soda.) But as an ice cube dislodged itself and smacked into my two front teeth, the Black and White Knight countered the Green Knight’s barrage, quickly rose to one knee, and struck the enemy in the abdomen with his sword.
Uproar.
The Green Knight stumbled backward before falling into the sand, never returning to his feet again. A white light haloed over our champion in the pit; Karl and I hugged.
The Black and White Knight would go on to win the entire tournament, slay the (actually) evil
