Title: Tiny Knights in Shining Armor

Summary: In which pretend is played, a war is waged, and an innocent life is saved

Rating: PG

Spoilers/Timeline: First book ~ 1986 (+ some retrospection)

Characters: Nik, Rufus, Geoff, Alan, Gael, Mel, Adge, Ben, Roger

 

 

Tiny Knights in Shining Armor

 

On the Christmas they were seven and Melanie’s cousin Rufus came to visit, it snowed all day, soft flakes filling the sky like feather bursts from a thousand pillow fights. This little blizzard continued well past bedtime, when they looked out the window the next morning, their field was blanketed with fresh snow, as if it had been wrapped in layers of glittery white paper. One last belated Christmas gift they were eager to open. So, after a very hasty breakfast, the six of them—Geoff, Alan, Mel, Adge, Gael and Rufus—pulled on their snowthings and set off, filled with pent-up energy and leftover candy.

 

The cold only energized them further. Soon, the seven-year-olds were half running, half jumping across the smooth bright landscape, reveling in the soft wet crisp of snow underfoot.

 

“So what do you want to play?” panted Alan. The wind had turned his cheeks pink as peppermint stripes.

 

“How about knights and stuff?” Mel suggested, remembering the beautifully illustrated book of King Arthur stories she’d gotten for Christmas.

 

“Brilliant!” said Adge. “Castles and swordfights and wizards!”

 

“We’re off to see the wizard,” sang Rufus.

 

“It’s Camelot, not Oz,” Geoff pointed out. Rufus swung his arms from side to side.

 

“The wonderful wizard of Camelot!” he crooned, holding the last note until he was completely out of breath.

 

“So what should happen in the game?” Gael asked.

 

After a few minutes of plotting and discussion (“The town can be over here” “Who’s gonna play the bad guy?” “Hey, we can use icicles as swords!” “Rufus, stop singing and decide who you’re gonna be!”) they were finally ready to start pretending in earnest.

Suddenly, the valley was echoing with the sounds of imaginary horses as two knights, one red-haired, the other blond, galloped toward a foreign village. Accompanied by their faithful (and parakeet-haired) sidekick, they were prepared for any adventure that awaited them.

 

The blond knight was the first to notice the approaching townsperson, a kind-looking fellow with honey-green eyes and a dark green scarf.

 

“Greetings, travelors!” hailed Gael. “Who are you?”

 

“Greetings! I’m Sir Galahad, and this is—” Geoff paused, realizing he had no idea who, in fact, Alan was supposed to be. He decided to improvise. “This is Sir Alan…the Flaming-Haired.”

 

“I’m Lancelot,” Alan hissed.

 

“Of course,” Geoff said smoothly. “This is Lancelot. Sir Alan the Flaming-Haired is just his nickname.” Alan frowned, but it was an accepting sort of frown.

 

“And I’m a troubador,” Rufus announced, grinning. ‘Troubador’ was a term they’d recently learned, and immediately fallen in love with. The word was irresistible: its rhythm and roundness, the way the syllables bounced out of one’s mouth like a superball. They all used it whenever possible.

 

“What’s your name, troubador?” asked Gael.

 

“I’m called Edgar. Edgar the Troubador.”

 

“And a brilliant troubador he is,” Geoff added.

 

“It’s a good thing you lot are here,” Gael said, growing serious. “We’re under attack from an evil warlord, Benvolio the Wicked. You might be our only hope. Come on! The town’s South of here.” He led the three onward, while Alan, not wanting to miss out on the fun, lagged behind long enough to mutter,

“Troubador.”

 

Gael, Galahad, Edgar, and Lancelot/Alan-the-Flaming-Haired galloped down to the tree, where a dignified, dark-haired figure stood with his back to them.

 

“Your majesty, I have found some knights and a troubador to help us in our quest,” Gael announced. Adge turned around.

 

“Who is this ‘your majesty’ you’re refering to?” he asked. Taken aback, Gael said,

 

“Um, you are. Remember? You’re the king?”

 

“Of my merry men, perhaps. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Robin Hood. I rob from the rich and I give to the poor.”

 

Geoff and Alan exchanged a look. For the past six times they’d played pretend, Adge had insisted on being Robin Hood—even when the game was ‘astronauts’. They all knew Robin Hood didn’t belong in Camelot any more than he belonged in space, but they also knew there was no use in arguing it. He and Mel both had this thing about staying in character once the game had begun—convincing Adge to switch back to King Arthur would be impossible because, until they officially stopped playing, the boy simply was Robin Hood.

 

“Greetings, Robin,” Rufus said at last. “I’m Edgar the Troubador, that’s Galahad, and this is Lancelot.”

 

“Have you come to help us fight Benvolio the Wicked?” Robin Hood asked. The others nodded gravely. “Good. We’ll need all the help we can get. Benvolio is a bad, bad man, capable of anything. Evil. He’s in league with the Sheriff of Nottingham, you know. And Dracula.”

 

“Where’s Guinev—I mean, where’s Maid Marian?” Alan interrupted, before Adge could mix in any more stories.

 

“She’s on a mission,” Robin explained. “Spying on Benvolio’s camp to learn what they’re up to.”

 

“When will she be back, do you think?” Geoff asked.

 

“How about…now?” came a voice from the left. Mel stood there, looking regal despite her fluffy white coat and blue snowpants. “Maid Marian, at your service.”

 

“So, what have you discovered about Benvolio’s plans, darling?” Robin asked. Maid Marian put a hand on Robin’s shoulder.

 

“It doesn’t look good,” she reported. “He’s training an army. They’ve got all kinds of spells and curses. Things I’ve never heard of before. You’d better come and see.”

 

“The camp is right over this hill,” Maid Marian explained after a five minutes’ journey. Sure enough, down in the valley below, they could see Benvolio the Wicked himself, along with John and Roger. “His main generals,” she explained in a whisper, although she didn’t really need to bother with stealth. Benvolio’s army was much too busy pelting a huge snowbank with ice and snowballs to notice. “Target practice,” according to Maid Marian, and she was probably right. Whenever one of their projectiles struck the snowbank with extra force, the nine-year-olds whooped and cheered. “Those are the spells they plan to hit us with.”

 

“Not if we hit them first. SURPRISE ATTACK!” Robin Hood yelled, brandishing a mighty icicle. The others followed his command, and soon six kids were charging down the hill.

 

“What are you doing?” Ben shouted at them.

 

“Getting ready to defeat you, Benvolio the Wicked!” cried Maid Marian.

 

“I already told you, I’m not playing your stupid game.” Ben glared at the children. “We’re busy—go the bloody hell away or else!”

 

“Retreat!” Robin Hood commanded. “It’s too dangerous! Run away, run away!”

 

As the older boys returned their attentions to the snowbank, Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Geoff, Alan, and Gael all scrambled back up the hill. But Rufus wasn’t moving.

 

Rufus stood on the side of the hill, scarf fluttering in the wind, eyes fixed on the huge pile of snow Ben and his “henchmen” were assualting. There was a viciousness to their attack that didn’t make sense. If it was merely target practice, why the cursing, why the malice, why the obvious hatred seething behind every throw? Ben and his friends lacked the imagination to get so worked up by a mere abstraction. And then, for a second, Rufus saw something. From behind the snowbank, a glimpse of a glimpse of a face—blond hair and wide blue eyes peering out—and then Roger lobbed a sharp-looking piece of ice, and the face ducked out of sight again.

 

“Retreat, Edgar, retreat!” Rufus could hear his friends’ frantic whispers from the top of the hill. “Benvolio will get you!” “Edgar, you’re in peril!” Still, Rufus didn’t move. A blur of blond hair, a pair of eyes, scared and blue—how could he run from that?

 

“We got to save Edgar!” Alan was saying.

 

“Maybe he’s been turned to stone,” Maid Marian breathed.

 

“I’m going back for him,” announced Robin Hood.

 

“We all will,” said Gael. “We can’t leave him behind, he’s our troubador.” And the five of them crept back down the slope.

 

“Edgar, are you alright?” whispered Geoff. “Can you—”

 

“There’s someone in there,” Rufus interrupted quietly. “In the snow—that’s not a snowbank, it’s a fort. There’s a guy inside, our age, alone, and Ben and the others, they’re throwing—” He looked up at his friends with a shaky smile. “Fancy a rescue mission?”

 

Thirty seconds later, the six friends were working out a strategy.

 

“Our poor ally down in that fort” Mel said. “They outnumber him so much that he never has time to fight back—between the three of them, at least one can always be attacking.”

 

“Then we give them a taste of their own medicine,” announced Robin Hood. They were no longer whispering, having crept up out of earshot of Ben’s gang. “We’ll each grab an armful of weapons—” he paused to indicate a snowball, “and then we’ll creep around so we’re surrounding Benvolio’s army. Two of us’ll aim at each one of them—me and Maid Marian will target Benvolio, Galahad and Lancelot will take Prince John, and Gael and Edgar will target Rogerius. If we keep it up, they won’t have time to hit us back. Without a fort protecting them, they’ll have to surrender. How does that sound?”

 

“Maybe this time, when we’re getting ready to do our surprise attack,” Geoff suggested, “we could try not yelling ‘surprise attack’ first.”

 

“We need to make sure they don’t see us sneaking up,” agreed Alan. “We’ll need to be really, really, really quiet.”

 

“We’ll need a distraction,” Rufus said suddenly.

 

Surely the fort was starting to weaken by now.

 

Like sharks smelling blood in the water, Ben, John, and Roger attacked even harder, hurling snowballs the size of small cannonballs, missiles that took off whole chunks of the blue-eyed boy’s shelter.

 

“The little foreigner’s probably pissed himself,” snickered Ben, and his sidekicks laughed too, barking laughs like hyenas.

 

“’Allo, Benny!” a voice called.

 

The three smug boys turned around to see Rufus waving at them, twirling two wool scarves in each hand—Mel’s striped one, Geoff’s red and black one, Gael’s dark green one, and Rufus's own fuschia. For a moment, Rufus silently let the scarves spin like rainbow nunchucks. Then he swallowed, looked straight at this trio of older, stronger boys who clearly wanted to hurt him, and gave the shortest, most harrowing performance of his career.

 

“BuhBuhBuhBennie and the Jets!” he sang, charging at them with scarves flying.

 

For an instant, the three bullies were stunned motionless. “Bennie, Bennie and the Jets!” Rufus continued at the top of his lungs. From the corner of his eye, he could see the blue-eyed boy cautiously peeking out again, and Rufus shot him a quick wink before launching into the finale. “Bennie, Bennie, Bennie, Bennie, Bennie and the Jets!”

 

“Get lost, you stupid pansy!” stammered Roger. Ben snatched up an icy snowball, wound back his arm to throw it at the strange, scarf-waving singer dancing before him—and that’s when Mel’s first snowball hit him, right in the back of the head.

 

What followed was the most thrilling, dangerous, and invigorating snowball fight ever witnessed in that valley. From the very first THWACK of snow colliding with Ben (“Great shot, Maid Marian!” Adge had shouted) to the positively farcical way Ben, John, and Roger had fled, as they struggled to preserve their nine-year-old-boy pride by pretending it wasn’t a defeat at all, that they’d simply gotten bored and decided to leave (“This game is stupid, let’s go watch cartoons,” Ben shouted as they limped away, faces stung red with snow and shame), it was a victory King Arthur himself could’ve been proud of. The ‘Great Snow Battle of 86’, as it would later be known, was filled with inspired tactics, daring exploits, and some memorable close calls—the kind of material that could occupy a troubadour’s mind for years.

 

Which was why it was almost too bad that Rufus never saw it. Of course, Rufus had other things to think about. Around the time Mel’s first snowball was diverting the older boys’ attention by exploding against Ben’s skull, Rufus had dropped to the ground and started army-crawling towards the fort, and just as his noble seven-year-old allies were launching their main offensive, the little troubador reached the carefully constructed pile of snow. With a quick, sprightly jump, Rufus leapt over the icy barricade—and landed crouching next to the blue-eyed boy.

 

For a moment, the blue-eyed boy shrunk back, clearly believing this sudden dark-haired visitor to be one of Ben’s gang, someone sent to hurt him.

 

“Don’t be scared. Hullo, I’m Rufus,” said the visitor, giving the blue-eyed boy long enough to take in a few important details—parakeet hair, kind smile, multi-colored assortment of scarves—and relax.

 

“You are the boy from before.” The blue-eyed boy spoke in a strange, musical accent, choosing words with the care of one just learning a language. “With the—” he faltered, paused, and finally resorted to pantomime: moving his hands in circles to suggest twirling scarves.

 

“Yeah,” said Rufus. “That was me.”

 

“Thank you,” said the boy. “I am Nikolaj.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Yes. I am okay now. Thank you.”

 

“You already said thank you,” Rufus said, smiling a little.

 

“I—I do not…have…many other words for it yet,” Nikolaj replied, smiling back.

 

“So, what did you do that pissed off Benvolio and his henchman so much?”

 

“I—ah, sorry, I do not know all of your words. What is ‘Benvolio’? What is ‘henchman’? What is ‘piss off’?”

 

When Rufus had finally explained all three concepts, chiefly through the use of pantomime and impressions (his ‘Benvolio’ impersonation in particular made them both giggle like mad), Nikolaj told the following story:

 

“Today in the early, I think, ‘I will go…out of my house for to play in the snow. So for many hour I build this…snow-house. But then, Benv—Benvo—how do you say it?— (“Benvolio, and his henchmen,” Rufus supplied)—yes, those. They come and they say, ‘Give to us your snow-house’. And I say, ‘No, it is my snow-house, I built it for many hour, with hands.’ And then Ben-vol-io say,” (and here Nikolaj took on a look of intense concentration, struggling to remember the exact words used) “Ben-vol-io say, ‘You foreigner, go…wear your…wooden shoes somewhere else.’” At this point, both boys involuntarily glanced down at Nikolaj’s shoes, which of course weren’t shoes at all, but rubber-soled boots.

 

“Wooden shoes are of Holland. I am of Denmark,” Nikolaj said, more puzzled than hurt.

 

“Well, Ben’s crazy,” Rufus replied. “What happened next?”

 

“They say, ‘Go’, and I do not go, and then they—” Nik did a quick pantomime of throwing a snowball “and then you come, and now—this.” He paused, trying to convey the incredible niceness of this moment: just to sit, laughing, with someone his age. He felt a giddying relief, not only from Ben’s onslaught but also from the quietly aching loneliness he’d battled since leaving Denmark, saying goodbye to the language he fully understood and the friends he loved. Amazing how a brief snatch of conversation could mean so much. He wanted to tell Rufus, but that kind of English was still far beyond him, and although he thought and thought, going over every English word he knew, the closest expression he could find was ‘good’. “This is good,” he said.

 

“Never darken this valley again, villains!” Robin Hood roared as Benvolio’s army limped toward the house.

 

“We’ve won!” shouted Maid Marian. “Huzzah!”

 

“Huzzah!” the other four shouted back.

 

“Any war wounds?” asked Gaél.

 

“I think we’re okay,” Alan replied.

 

“Better than okay,” said Geoff. “Did you see my last throw? That snowball him square in the nose!”

 

“Yeah, and we also saw it when you threw that other snowball and it somehow hit the tree behind you,” countered Alan with a fond smile.

 

“It was a diversion,” Geoff retorted.

 

“Speaking of which, where’s Edgar?” asked Maid Marian.

 

“The last time I saw him, he was crawling to that fort,” said Gaél. Cautiously, the little band of warriors made their way over the snow-strewn battleground to the mysterious fort. Its snow walls were battered, but still holding up, even glimmering a bit in the noonday sun.

 

“I hope the vampire bats didn’t get him,” Robin Hood whispered. But when they peered over the wall, there were no vampire bats to be found. Instead, a grinning, cross-legged Rufus sat knee-to-knee with the blue-eyed boy.

 

“Hullo,” said Rufus. “Allow me ta introduce Nikolaj of Denmark, where people don’t wear wood shoes. He’s our new friend.”

 

Years later, that fateful winter day would serve as a comfort, like a mental sip of chamomile tea, warm and nostalgic. It was something they all shared—a memory of adventure, rescues, and snow boots; a connection to something simpler and freer—although they each thought about it for different reasons.

 

Geoff remembered Alan: galloping, exuberant, lobbing snowballs with surprisingly good aim, drinking hot cocoa, rosy-cheeked—but above all, safe. It was the last time Alan would ever play so carefree in the snow. The rest of that year was too warm, and by next December, things had changed. Alan was orphaned and bruised; the cheery, laughing Lancelot for now, just a memory.

 

Mel remembered a time when fear only added adrenaline to their games. She pictured the way Ben’s face had looked when he’d snarled, “Or else!” and morbidly wondered what would’ve happened to Nik if Rufus hadn’t intervened. But back then, Mel and her friends had no idea how deep hatred could run. They’d been so ignorant. They’d been so happy.

 

Adge remembered faith in a storybook ending. That utter conviction that the Robin Hoods of the world would always triumph against the forces of evil, that every day could end this way, with new friends and mugs of hot chocolate. That nothing could ever come between friendship or love.

 

Alan remembered his friends—even at that age, how astonishingly themselves they’d been. Geoff: lively, mischievous, and endearingly skeptical. Mel and Adge still so connected, coexisting in the same imaginary land. Rufus the troubadour, charging into the world armed with retro music and attitude. Nik, choosing words carefully, a warmth under his reserve, sharing inside jokes with Ru. And (this was the painful part, the part that bleached so many memories bittersweet) Gaél, looking after everyone, even then: “We can’t leave him behind, he’s our troubadour.” (But yet Gaél, who had been so much, was the one left behind, and there was nobody to save him now.)

 

Rufus and Nik remembered each other, and the joy of their meeting smoothed somewhat the memory’s sharper edges. Surely, as far as “how we met” stories went, there was hardly a better opener:

 

“He saved my life, actually.”

 

“Yes, with scarves and Elton John songs and questionable judgment.”

 

And sometimes in a quiet moment at home, Nik would sling an arm around Rufus’s shoulders, saying, “My knight in shining armor,” and Rufus, leaning against him, would respond, “Your troubadour.”