The Thirteenth Knight

Chapter One

Jeremy Meets Pimm

            Jeremy was born on April Fool's Day, and although his mother promised him that that was an accident, it sometimes made him very cross. He was born in the little cottage where he still lived in Grumblehampton with his mother, his father, his brother and his sister. The cottage was very picturesque, and stood almost on the banks of the river. It had a white picket gate that opened onto the towpath at the front, and a rustic stile that led to a flowery meadow, at the back.

            Jeremy was twelve years of age, and he was pretty content with life. He got on well with his brother Tim who was eighteen and his sister Tania who was just sixteen (he got on well with his mother and father as well of course, but that doesn't really count). Both his brother and sister were too old now to be interested in adventures, and that meant that Jeremy spent a lot of time on his own.

            Luckily, ever since Jeremy had been quite small he had able to escape "at the drop of a hat" his mother used to say, into his imagination. It was true, he could easily slip into his imaginary world where he could be The Crimson Pirate sailing the Spanish Main, The Calico Kid with his six guns slung low on his hips, or best of all, a Knight at King Arthur's court.

            "You've not been the same," his mother used to scold him, when she got fed up with his day dreaming, "since you fell in the river and caused that funny little lock-keeper all that trouble." This used to make him cross, because it had happened a long time ago when he was still quite small. He ehad fallen into the river when he was watching the big barges manoeuvre through the deep and narrow water. Everybody thought he would drown, but the funny little lock-keeper had jumped in and pulled him to safety. When Jeremy had come to, spluttering and spitting out water, the lock-keeper had been so delighted and relieved that he had give him a curious bronze medallion on a chain. It was a sort of St. Christopher medal, except the picture on it was a small figure carrying an old man across a raging river.

            "In future, when you want an adventure," the old lock-keeper had said, "just rub this little fellow, he'll see to it."

Ever since that day, Jeremy found that he always, usually without thinking, played with the medallion that hung around his neck whenever he was going into one of his 'imaginings'.

            Outside his imagination Jeremy was a fairly ordinary twelve year old. He was quite tall his blue eyes peeped out beneath a fringe of blond hair that always fell over his forehead and across his eyes. His eyes were – "So big" his Aunt Bessie used to cry, just before she wrapped her great big wobbly arms around him and squeezed so tightly that he could hardly breathe. The only way that he survived Aunt Bessie's 'hello's and 'goodbye's' was by pretending that she was a great big wild grizzly bear in the middle of a frenzied attack, and he was Davy Crockett, the last of the Mountain Men, to whom even grizzly bear eventually succumbed.

            Yes, Jeremy was a normal, healthy good looking twelve year old (even though his sister said he had two front teeth that looked like tombstones). He was a boy who, inside or outside his imagination, had a great deal of fun. It was a rare occasion that found him bored or with nothing to do.

            Now, that was not quite true, there was just one hour each week when Jeremy got just the teeniest little bit bored. That was on a Sunday afternoon when he had to go to the church hall to Miss Colbran's Sunday School class. It wasn't that he didn’t' like Miss Colbran, she was good fun, at least she was most of the time when she wasn't being too serious.

            It wasn't that he found the stories from the Bible boring. Some of them, like Daniel in the Lions' Den, or Sampson pulling down the Temple, were almost as exciting as the Crimson Pirate. But to have to sit still on a hard chair, in a stuffy old church hall, for a whole hour. He thought this was a waste of a 'no school' day when there were so many exciting things he could be doing.

            Jeremy soon discovered that he could make the hour pass much more quickly if he made up 'imaginings' to help things along. Miss Colbran always arranged all the chairs in a sort of half circle for the children . She then sat in the middle where she could see all the children and everybody could see her.

            One Sunday Jeremy had been idly playing with the me