A Midsummer’s Knight’s Ass
as told by Leofrikin the Scribe

by
Peter “Lou” D’Alessio
Copyright © 2013

In Memory: Sammy Davis, Jr., Monty Python’s Flying Circus,
And Jay Ward and Bill Scott of the Original Rocky & Bullwinkle Show

The appropriate way to start this tale would be ‘once upon a time,’ but to Sir Ivor of Swithun’s-on-the-Thames, the last remaining warrior of King Putitoff’s Knights of the Oblong Table (they wanted ‘round,’ but it had already been done by a neighboring realm), this was no fairy tale!

Unlike his comrades, Ivor had neither a noble steed nor staunch charger with traceable ancestry as old of the realm, but a solid piece of jackass flesh named Marvin that he had taken from his Uncle Chadwick’s plow forty years ago during a severe horse shortage.  Ivor and Marvin had roamed the realm smiting witches and warlocks, driving marauding Vikings into the sea, and doing battle with the Swithun’s-on-the-Thames community dragon—although in truth, he hadn’t done any of that stuff in a decade... or longer.  Swithun’s-on-the-Thames had burned out of witches and warlocks twenty years ago, the Vikings had moved on, and the community dragon had moved up the mountain and hadn’t been seen or heard in a dog’s age.  So Ivor had retired and gone on the lecture circuit as Swithun’s-on-the-Thames’ icon of the past, a more distressed time, a Knight on his Ass protecting the weak and downtrodden, always with a story worth a mug of ale on a hot summer’s afternoon.

But THIS!  This was a slap in the face, a challenge of the first order, an insult no self-respecting Knight could take!

He stood in the doorway of his cottage by the river (part of an early retirement package) on a clear June morn staring at what had once been his treasured jackass Marvin.  Over the long Swithun’s-on-the-Thames night, something had turned his beloved ass into a small dragon.  He knew it was Marvin.  He had never heard a dragon bray, so it had to be Marvin!  “Methinks ’tis the work of yon evil dragon up far mountain! ” Ivor said.  “I should have laid him low a dozen years past!  Now he has cast a spell upon my brave and gentle ass, Marvin.  I shall take from his scaly hide payment for this harm!”

For those of us never taken into the Knighthood, easier said than done.  Problems began immediately upon retrieving his armor from the mothball-laden box in the attic.  Sir Ivor found he could no longer lift the box (it seemed to have put on a few pounds since he’d used it last... whenever that was), so he had to drag the whole box down the steps—he thought this wiser than putting the armor on and falling down the two flights of steps to the first floor.  So drag he did.  Friend reader, there be nothing sadder in the realm than a knight in drag!

By the first floor landing, the box made an escape from Ivor’s grasp and tumbled down the steps, denting the Saint George out of his breastplate.  Only by standing and bouncing on the armor’s wound was Ivor able to pop it out enough to get the breastplate to fit.  He’d toyed with the idea of taking it to the village smithy who stood out under the spreading chestnut tree, but the humiliation of having dented his own armor was far to great.  After a go-round with said dragon, he could claim injury in battle, and that would be that.  Problem solved.  Now, on to the next task.

If you’ve never worn a suit of armor, you have no idea how difficult it is to put on, or so this scribe has been told.  There was a reason Knights had Squires.  Ivor’s had retired fifteen years ago and moved out to London to live with his son, a fish monger on King’s Lane.  Try as he might, Ivor couldn’t recall the order all the parts went on.  Did you start at the top and go down, or at the bottom and work up towards the helmet?  By the time he had figured it all out, the sun was setting, so he had to take it all off to go to bed.  Tomorrow would be easier... he hoped.

Ivor was up at daybreak, plus or minus a few hours (actually more plus than anything else if we speak truthfully).  It took a few more hours to get the armor on, so by mid-afternoon tea he was ready.  Right about the time he was geared up to sally forth, it occurred to him that his ass, Marvin, had been turned into a bloody dragon, and in that state was totally unrideable.  He decided he’d already wasted two days in the redress of the crimes against him so, armor and all, he began the long walk to the dragon’s lair, his dragon draggin’ behind him.  By nightfall he had triumphantly staggered to the edge of his property, and in joyous celebration he collapsed in a heap of metal that began to rust in the evening dew.

Our story might have ended there, but with daybreak Mortimer the Mushroom-Picker rode his cart past the heap looking for mushrooms to pick and sell to the inns in town.  He hoisted Ivor onto his cart and offered to drive him home, though he suggested removing Marvin’s bridle and letting him wander off on his own.  But the Knight gave him six grickles to take him out to the dragon’s mountain, and another four grickles to keep his mouth shut about it!  For ten grickles, Mortimer would have murdered the Crown Prince, so it was no problem.

Sir Ivor stood at the base of the mountain.  Years ago he would have heard the dragon smashing about, but it was so quiet now that one could hear the squirrels pissing in the grass.  As he began climbing the hill, Ivor became very aware just how badly his suit needed oiling.  He sounded like a brass band of tinkling cymbals, and to make it worse, his helmet was now too big, so when the wind blew he whistled like a teakettle.  As he stood there listening to a perfect C note blowing through his ears, he wondered how his helmet had managed to grow.  Then, as he realized the rest of his suit was sagging like a used tea bag, Ivor saw the ravages of time slamming against his very own drawbridge!  He was shrinking with age!  No matter; a Knight’s gotta do what a Knight’s gotta do!  With stiff upper lip, as was the tradition, Ivor began the final climb.  Well, it would have been a stiff upper lip, but the weight of his mustache pulled his lip down so far he kept getting it caught between his helmet and its face visor.  Through it all, his faithful ass, Marvin, followed.

At the top of the mountain he stood within a few feet of the dragon that was lying on his back, basking in the sun.  It was right here that Ivor had the epiphany of a lifetime, the great awakening, the realization that he stood on the line between life and death: he had left his sword in his other suit of armored pants!

The dragon turned his head and waved one of his short upper paws as if to say ‘keep your shirt on, I’m coming,’ and slowly crawled himself to an upright position, listing heavily to one side.

“Now varlet, I am here unarmed.  Charge me and be done with it!”

The dragon just looked at him.  “Aye, mate.  Been smacked in the visor once too often in the jousts, ’ave we?  I can barely walk, an’ you want me to charge?  Not a bloody chance in ’ell, mate, not even if I wanted to!  An’ I don’t.”  The dragon sort of tumbled down again in to a sitting position.  “Sorry to disappoints ya, bucko, but I gave up all that damn near ten years past.  I’ll bets ya made an ’ell of a long trip for nuttin’, mate.”

“But... but... one bite, and you could snap me in half!  Down me in two gulps!”

“Yo!  Merlin!  With what teeth?”  The beast gave a half-hearted smile.  It reminded Ivor of a Halloween jack-o-lantern.  “A guy in a suit of armor ain’t like eatin’ a peach!  Ya can’t be spittin’ the pits out without a real fight!  Besides, wad I ever do to you, mate?”

Sir Ivor just stood there, blinking.  “Uh... him?”  He pointed at Marvin, his ass.  The dragon looked over at the pint-sized reptile.

“Wad about him?”

“That’s my ass!”

“The devil ya say, mate.”

“N... No, not...  My jackass!”

“Huh.  Looks like a dragon ta me.  Kinda gives the impression of being like, ah, a pygmy, or like a Norwegian Blue.”

“Gimme a break, dragon, can’t ya hear him braying??”

“Ahhh.  I figured he was pinin’ fer the fjords.  And stop callin’ me ‘dragon.’  Me given name’s Alfred, but you can calls me Alfie, squire.”

“Are you crazy?  Who the hell names a dragon ‘Alfred’?”

“How’s ’bout me parents, Alfred and Ethelfritza.  They was sorta partial to the name, family tradition an’ all dat...”

“Enough.  ENOUGH!”  Ivor threw his hands down in disgust.  “I don’t bloody care about your family history.  You turned my ass Marvin into a dragon, I don’t have my sword, and it was a bleedin’ nightmare to get up here in this stupid suit of armor.  Now, are you going to charge and eat me or not?!”

“Not.”

Ivor wavered in front of the dragon for a moment, then melted down into a squat.  “But my ass?”

“Don’t look at me, mate.  I didn’t do it.”  The dragon stretched out in the sun again.  “But whoever did, well, it’s a hell of a job, ta say d’least.  Had me fooled.  I thought ’e was the real thing!  Like a minnie’cher, sorta.”

“Is there such a thing?”  Ivor was resigning himself to the possibility Alfie really didn’t have anything to do with Marvin being transformed.  The dragon, all spread out in the sun, half toothless and with a bum strut, just looked old.  “What happened to your leg?  An old battle injury?”

The dragon looked down at the bump on his right leg.  “That?  Naw.  I stumbled over a sheep in front a’ me cave.  ’Magine that.  Me!  Sheep in front a me cave.  Ten years ago, ya wouldn’ a seen a sheep in the county if they knew I was around.  Now I fall over them gettin’ up in the mornin’.  I don’t know ’bout you, but I think this gettin’ old stuff really bites the King’s wee wee!”

He looked over at Ivor, who exhaled deeply and nodded.

“My God.  Don’t I know it!  Past our bloody times, we are.”

“That we are, mate.  Ten years ago, I woulda had you on a bun with my secret sauce by now.  Today?  I’d have to send you out to be chopped into fish bait.”

“Same here, friend dragon.  Some lackey’d be hammering a spike on the King’s wall for your head by now.  When Marvin and I rode through the courtyard, lackeys would jump to assist us with anything we wanted.  I often used the King’s parking spot, and no one said a word.  These days, the King’s guards issue me citations for parking my ass too long by the pub.”

“No bloody respect for their elders.  Me youngins’ is the same way, mate.”

“Ach, don’t talk to me about children.  Moved out to Wales, they did.  Don’t even come a visitin’ on the holidays.  Well, maybe on Saint Swithun’s Day, if the rain ain’t too bad.”  Ivor pulled his helmet off; the whistling was driving him crazy.

A look of surprised came over the dragon’s face.  “ ’Ey, chum, I know you!  You’re the bloomin’ ripper wat was up my butt every other month for a year, down by the Thames.  Couple a times ya almos’ got me!  Good show, mate.  Weren’t many wat could do that!”

“Was that you?  I thought I was fighting the Beast of the Thames.”

“Nah, I used to go down to the river for a swim in the summer time.  The Beast was gone fer a couple hun’red years by then.  Oh man, you bloody folk ate that poor bastard!  Turned him into five hun’red pounds of liverwurst and knockwurst!  From the beast of Thames to the wurst of Thames in one flash of the barbeque pit!  An’ you talk about us?  What a way to go!  A sausage and pepper sandwich with onions!”

“I never looked at it like that.  Really sorry, old chap.”  Ivor’s world was falling apart and his face showed it.  The dragon patted him gently on the back.

“ ’Ere, lad, buck up.  Ain’t none’s us wats doin’ too well these days.  T’ain’t our fault.  We did wat was good fer us, wat we were ’spected to do.  Now it’s the next generation’s turn.  Do wat I does!  Sits back and watches ’em makes their own mistakes.  I gets a chuckle when some idiotic young bucko mouths off to me, then backs up into a lance!  A lance up the pooper!  Serves ’em right, I say.”

The Knight nodded.  He reached in behind his breastplate, took out some bread and cheese (he had a piece of knockwurst back there, but thought better of it), and offered some to Alfie.

“N’thanks, mate, gives me the wind.  But!  If ya don’ mind...”  He looked off towards Marvin, and for a moment Ivor thought the dragon was going to chew up his ass.  But the great creature merely reached past the smaller dragon and grabbed a pawful of berries from a nearby bush.  The dragon gazed in his paw, then looked at the Knight.  “Twenny-fi’ years a faithful service, an’ alls I gets is a mouthful of bush!”

“Better than I’ve done lately!”

It took a moment, but the dragon broke out in laughter at the Knight’s off-color innuendo.  Ivor had never seen a dragon laugh, and it cracked him up too.  It subsided and the two quietly sat, side by side, deciding what was to come next.

“Alf, old boy, you’re not a bad sort.  I wish I had known that twenty years back.  Could have saved us both a beating.”

“Water under the bridge, mate.  We’re two old rusted pieces now, with nothin’ t’show fer i’tall ‘cept our memories.”

“Well and good for us... but what do I do with him?”  Ivor pointed to Marvin, who was having a bit of a bad time trying to graze in a nearby patch of grass.  His new body design wasn’t lending itself to the situation, and he kept tumbling butt over head.

“I ’spose we can’t very well leave him like that.”

“NO, WE BLOODY WELL CAN’T!”  Ivor was jumping up and down now as if in a fit of Saint Vitas Dance.

“Calm down.  You’ll give yerself the stroke.”

The thought of that stopped Ivor’s gyrations.  “Oh my poor ass.”

“Did you do anything to piss off a wizard?”

“No.”

“A witch?”

“Not in the last ten years.”

“Ogre?”

“Nope.”

“A giant, maybe?”

“Not really.”

“Hows ’bout a troll?”

“Trolls?  I've never even seen one.”

“Well... that blows my load.  I gots no idea what happened to your ass, Marvin.”

“What am I to do?  My Marvin got turned into a bloomin’ dragon... no offense.”

“None taken.”

“What can I do now?  We were a pair, a set.  We rode through the countryside, slaying witches and Vikings and... no offense...”

“None taken again.”

“My jackass and I rode about slaying dragons!”

“Ever think a startin’ a trend, mate?  Might be a little tricky, but you could throw a saddle on his shoulders, jump up, and ride ’im through the countryside killin’ mules!”

“Oh, be serious.”

“Well, it’s a damned site better n’ killin’ dragons, chum.  No offense.”

“None taken again.”

The unlikely duo brainstormed all afternoon and, as the sun was beginning to set and the air to chill, old Ivor was obviously freezing his codpiece off.  So Alfie puffed a little fire and heated a rather large boulder until it turned red.  All and all, it made things rather cozy.  The dragon popped into his cave and brought out a small wooden cask.  “I got this off a Sir Sagamore about twenty years ago.  He offered it up when I was gonna charge an’ fight him.  Told me he didn’t have time to battle now—he was on a quest to find the Holy Grail and couldn’t waste time—but he’d come back to reclaim it.  Can you imagine?  A grown man, actually believing in the Holy Grail!  Well, I’ll tell ya, me n’ the fairies had a good laugh over that!  Needless to say, he never came back.”

Ivor pulled the cork on the cask and inhaled deeply.  “It’s bleedin’ brandywine!  And good stuff!  There’s enough here to kick both our asses and Marvin’s too.”

Alfie just looked at him.  “Why would I want to get my ass kicked, mate?”

The Knight hoisted the keg and took a long, hard swig.  He made a face that the dragon thought at first was dislike but, as he was to shortly learn, was merely the burn that went with a good brandywine.  “Why indeed, my scaly friend.  Mankind has been asking themselves the same question since the dawn of time... and we still haven’t come up with a good answer.  We just keep on doing it.”

“Sounds sorta counter-productive, chum, no?”

“Oh, no.  It helps us keep the Monastery of Saint Vidacandle at Swithun’s-on-the-Thames in business, what with praying for our sinful souls and all.”

“The Monastery of Saint Vidacandle at Swithun’s-on-the-Thames?  You mean that really ugly man-cave where all those crazy guys in the brown robes live?  Every once in a while, one of those idiots would ride up here on his donkey and tries to drive me out of the realm by yellin’ an’ cussin’ at me.  Gooooood eatin’!  What a gift!  No armor!  They went down real easy!  Boy, could I use one a’ them now, mate.”

Ivor was going to feign disgust, but truth be told, he hadn’t been in a church since the day he took his Knightly vows.  He really didn’t like those crazy (in his estimation) Bible-reading peaceniks; they were ruining the Dark Ages for everybody.  “I’ll see if I can send one or two up here for you.”

The dragon smiled his semi-toothless grin and rumbled, “Thanks, mate!”

Under the glow of an unusually luminous full moon, the two new compadres slept a fitful sleep while Marvin, Ivor’s dragonized jackass, wandered around looking for tall grass that he could reach.  With the coming of the dawn, the two woke up to a new day and a new idea.  By shear luck, Alfie managed to catch a sheep that had fallen asleep against Ivor’s back.  Roasting it over the boulder that was still glowing red, it made for an excellent breakfast—and plenty of breakfast conversation.

“Ya know, mate, as I sees it, old Marvin got his jackass jumped by a spell.  We got no idear by who ‘er by what.  I know ya don’t wants to be ’earin’ this, but I really don’t think we’re ever gonna be knowin’ wat caused it.  How’s ’bout we goes down the mountain to the ’ermit wizard what lives by Putitoff’s pond?  ’E’s a pretty smart old bird.  Rumor has it, ’e was an untenured professor at a Realm college...”

“Oh God, not another necromancy fantasy writer!”

“No, no-no.  The ol’ boy stuck wit wizardry.  If anybody’s gonna know ’ow ta turn ol’ Marvin back, it’s ’im!”

“Alfred, old bean, I have to say: damned civilized of you to help us.”

“It works fer me, too, mate.  I knows ’nuff dragons what managed to turn themselves into asses.  We don’t need an ass what turned ’imself into a dragon!”

Sir Ivor was surprised how easy the trip down the far side of the mountain was compared to the trip up.  Of course, the road the locals had built helped quite a bit.  Ivor wondered why his people on the other side of the mountain had never thought of that.  Alfred apologized for not being able to hoist the Knight up on his back, as his lumbago was really killing him today.  Sleeping in his backyard last night instead of his cave hadn’t helped his aching bones, either.  And Marvin the dragon was draggin’ up the rear.

By midday, they had reached the wizard’s hermitage.  The old boy was working in his garden cultivating a strange, tall weed of sorts.  When Alfred hailed him, the old man dropped his hoe, stood up straight, and tore off a leaf or two from one of the larger stalks.  As he walked towards his guests, he began to roll the leaves in a strange thin paper.  To Ivor’s surprise, he placed the long, thin cylinder between his lips.

“Oi, von a you boys got a flint and steel on ya?  I h’really don’t want a face full a’ dragon fire!”

“Ahh... no?”

The disappointed old guy flicked the cylinder back into his garden.  “Just as well, damn cheap rollin’ paper!  An’ EZ Wider won’t be invented for anudder thousand years!  Now!  Wadda you boys want?  You!  Ain’t you hot in dat steel jumpsuit?”

Ivor wasn’t really used to asking wizards for favors, and it showed.  He had put his helmet back on as formality dictated and was now whistling loudly as his loose-fitting armor reverberated like chimes in a cave.

The wizard looked at him.  “You.  The clown wearin’ the calliope.  Why are you botherin’, me?”

“Him!”  Ivor pointed to his ass.

“Him?  Take the friggin’ cigarettes away from him, they’re stuntin’ his growth.  He’ll be fine.”

“No, sir.  Three days ago he was an ass.”

“Yeah an’ three days ago I was getting’ banged by the fish monger’s wife from King’s Lane, so what?  We all make mistakes.  Let ’im be!  He’ll get—”

“You don’t understand.  He was a real ass.  He was my jackass, Marvin.  I woke up to find him a dragon.”

“Hey, you’re the idiot that’s been ridin’ around on his ass slaying things, right?”

“Yes!  Can you help me?”

“This is bad.  You can’t go around with your ass a dragon!”

“I know!  Can you help him?”

“Eh, who knows?  Grab him by his nose horn and take him into the ER.  We’ll see.”

The wizard worked all that day and most of the night while Alfred and Ivor sat on the front lawn and, after finding that strange cylinder the wizard had tossed away, managed to light it.  After that, they went a-roaming the country side for another sheep to barbeque, found one, cooked it, ate it, and spent the rest of the day playing ‘jarts’ on the wizard’s lawn.  But try as he might, the wizard could do nothing to free Marvin from the curse.  In the end, Ivor, bidding farewell to his dragon friend, sadly led Marvin, his one-time jackass and now dragon, back over the mountain.  His ass would remain a dragon forever.

After sending Brothers Ignatius Payola and Walt up the mountain to convert the dragon there, Sir Ivor soon drank himself to death on a cask of well-aged brandywine.  His beloved ass Marvin wandered the hills and became a tourist attraction as the world’s only braying dragon.  Ivor died quietly, which for a Knight of the Oblong Table was adding insult to injury.  People were moved when a dragon and a wizard showed up to mourn at his funeral.  People thought Ivor’s death was very sad, but not surprising.  After all:

You can’t go through life with your Marvin a Dragon!

THE END

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