CHAPTER FIVE
King Conor's Secret Adviser

King Conor reached into his desk and produced two silver goblets. He poured a measure of mead into each and pushed one over towards the jester as he raised his goblet.

I know my secrets are safe with you Farbeg dear friend, and yours with me. That includes the greatest secret of all, that you are my secret adviser and chief counsellor. Indeed I often suspect you can tell what my problems are before I confide them to you."

Farbeg, paused to blow his nose noisily in a bright yellow handkerchief.

"Yes, I know you have two difficult decisions to make right now. "Bricriú's invitation, for a start. You know he will have at least one ulterior motive for that; and you know what a consummate mischief-maker he is."

Conor, reached his more comfortable crown from a table nearby, pulled it onto his head and regarded the jester shrewdly.

"Correct. I must accept or decline evil-tongued Bricriú's invitation. Therein I am placed on the horns of a whatchamacallit. If I accept, he will use the feast to sow seeds of enmity among my knights and my courtiers. If I refuse, he will have his revenge in some subtle way."

Farbeg stood up on his chair and stepped lightly up on to Conor's oaken desk.

"A shrewd analysis, majestic Con. And my advice: better to fight him in public at an appointed time than fall foul of a surprise attack in the dark."

"And the second problem?"

He sat down on the desk and crossed his stumpy legs tailor fashion on the desk as he answered gravely:

"The second problem is this, you have to decide soon which of your three favourites is to receive the honour of The Champion's Portion."

"And that is a problem because .... ?"

"It is a problem because your decision will make one firm friend and two disgruntled knights, even, perhaps, two undeclared enemies."

"How perspicacious you are my wee friend. Neither must I forget that Cúchulainn is my foster-son and my nephew. That raises monumental difficulties in the context of vested interests and impartiality and charges of nepotism. But of course you will go away and dream up a solution."

"I have the solution now, dear Con."

"Then come on then, don't hold out on me. Give me reason to sleep soundly tonight."

"First of all, be assured that Bricriú is much more than the tawdry, shallow egotist a cursory analysis might lead one to believe he is. He is that and much more. He is immensely intelligent, resourceful and he wields power over people which might well suggest that Bricriú is far mightier than the sum of his parts."

Conor stared into the middle distance

"Are you saying that there may be magic involved?"

"Call it that if you will. I prefer to say that he is in possession of some arcane knowledge, skills not yet universally available."

The King leaned forward in his chair, one eye half closed.

"Tell me Farbeg, how and where could one come by such revelatory data as these?"

The jester tapped the side of his nose and grinned roguishly.

"Someone small enough and nimble enough to move freely in and out of places not accessible to men of stature, places such as under the dining tables of Ulster's great halls."

Conor picked up a walnut and bounced it off the dwarf's head.

"I'm glad you're on my side, you unmitigated scoundrel! Now predict for me how this logic of Bricriú's will work against me. I know full well that the invitation to his lavish feast is only part of his scheme to upstage me, to diminish and demoralise my people."

The dwarf's face lit up with delight.

"Ah, I see you are aware that this is not his scheme, that petty vanity is not his major motive. His plan is to set your three invaluable champions and their wives at each others' throats."

"How?"

"First of all he will dupe your three would-be champions. His henchmen will go to each of the three knights in turn with what purports to be a leak from Bricriú's court to the effect that he is to be served the Champion's Portion at Bricriú's feast. As you can expect, the three men and their retinues will clash with a ferocious argument in the dining hall that could well lead to violence. Each champion will insist that the honour is meant for him."

Conor threw off his crown and began, flapping his spread hands as though flagging down a galloping horseman.

"Whoa there! Whoa! Rein in a minute, how can Bricriú have thought up such an elaborate plan before I've accepted his invitation to the feast? And by whose authority will he adjudicate between my knights?"

Farbeg executed another brief headstand on the desk. A back-flip landed him in a hunkered position. Gesturing to the King he said softly:

"Just listen until I've finished.

"In the same fashion Bricriú will dupe the wives of the three champions. Each will have heard through their ladies-in-waiting grapevine that she is to be honoured as foremost lady of Ulster at Bricriú's feast. Each lady will believe that she must be the first to re-enter the hall and when she does there will be a fanfare of trumpets and an announcement that she has been judged First Lady of Ulster. You can imagine what a spectacle that will cause. Hell could not sustain the fury of three women so ignominiously scorned."

The King leaned forward slowly, placed his elbows on the desk, his hands under his jaws, and brought his face close up to Farbeg's. but before he could speak, Farbeg cut in:

"How does Bricriú know I will accept his invitation?"

"He doesn't. You are going to send him a note of acceptance first thing tomorrow."

"By whose authority will he adjudicate between the three champions?"

"Yours. You will ask him to act as neutral arbitrator because, Cúchulainn being your nephew and your foster son there is a serious conflict of interests. Right Con?"

Conor nodded slowly, his eyes burning with questions.

"How do you know about his plan to set the knights and their wives at loggerheads?"

"That is the way Bricriú's mind works," said Farbeg with a hint of exasperation.

The King, perplexed, shook his head.

"Why should I help Bricriú to cause division in my own camp?"

Farbeg stretched his legs and recrossed them.

"Bear with me Con, you can turn Bricriú's treachery to your own advantage. After the feast you will have a clearer assessment of the integrity and purity of motive of your three champions and their ladies. They will either have vindicated or condemned themselves, saving you the anguish of doing it. They will have learned the lesson that The Champion's Portion itself is not the goal but rather what it symbolises, a heroic commitment to all the knightly virtues. At the cost of a little public embarrassment you will have, in effect, a whole new and contrite court."

"But Bricriú's judgment .... "

"You will pre-empt his judgement by publicly denouncing the shameful behaviour of your knights and their ladies and by disqualifying them all. By so doing you will have nullified Bricriú's judgement without any breach of diplomacy and Bricriú will also have exposed himself more publicly than ever before as the vindictive and ambitious villain he is."

After a lengthy silence, Conor threw back his head and laughed loudly.

"Oh, Farbeg my friend! What a king you would make but, I do confess, I'm at a loss. What must I do next?"

"If you accept his invitation without conditions he'll smell a rat. So you will accept his invitation on one special condition: that he and Gráinne, that foxy wife of his, must not breathe the same air as the court of Conor Mac Nessa, King of Ulster, during the feast!"

"But will he not take offence? Won't the whole of Erin learn how ungracious Conor Mac Nessa has been towards the great Chieftain of Dunrodraige?"

"Bricriú will laugh at the gesture, thinking that you think his potential for mischief has been neutralised. Besides, Bricriú knows the price of everything. He will willingly pay, even in the coin of diminished esteem, to get his way."

Back at the Asylum in Ossageel '''

Cúchulainn awoke to the sound of strange music. When he opened his eyes he thought he was still in close contact with the bulrushes of his bed in the cavern. Instead, on drawing back his head, he was looking at a dark green fabric with an intricate floral pattern. On sitting up, one eye open, he saw that he was in a small, low-slung, luxuriously padded throne.

Laeg and Amtashtalee, and a couple of dozen other men, were similarly accommodated.

He opened both eyes and surveyed his mysteriously transformed surroundings more closely. Gone was the high vault of the cavern. In its place was a smooth, white ceiling with several rectangular panes of translucent glass that emitted a ghostly white light. He saw that he was in a large chamber with three tall windows along the far side. The smooth, highly polished floor was paved with bright quadrilaterals of light from the windows.

Through those windows he could see a grassy space enclosed by tight rows of yew trees; beside the trees was a woman with red hair and a long white coat.

He tested the air like a deer or a hare, his nostrils twitching delicately. There was a whole cocktail of alien odours and scents. There was the faint, after-stink of cooked vegetables competing with a sweet scent he could not know was wax floor polish. As well as the miasma of body gases usually present among a crowd of sleeping human bodies there was another not unpleasant odour competing valiantly with the others. A twentieth century man could have told him it was disinfectant.

All along the walls of the chamber there were padded thrones like his own, each holding a sprawled figure more strangely garbed than he'd ever seen before. Although they were all dressed in a colourful variety of striped tunics and trews, they all wore the same blank, bemused expression on deathly pale faces. Strangest of all these strange characters was a tall, muscular man with a battered face who rose from his place suddenly and began to waltz around the polished wooden floor in time to the music.

An enraptured, gap-toothed smile fractured his chipped granite features. He was dressed in a floor-length, scarlet garment, which revealing most of his hairy chest, had no visible means of support. As he danced he held his arms outstretched at shoulder height, hands drooping from the wrists, his scarred, shaven head swaying from side to side in time with music that seemed to come out of the air.

When Cúchulainn stood up he felt momentarily dizzy, as though the floor had lurched. His head throbbed slightly. Before he could steady himself, the dancer smiled at him and glided towards him, arms outstretched.

"Come, my dear," he said huskily, "let's dance."

Not sure how to react, Cúchulainn held his hands out defensively in front of him.

"Glory be! Our mystery man has arisen, Alleluia!" exclaimed the dancer. "We thought you were out for the full count. But now you are up and ready for the next round. Come now, sweetheart, relax. Go with the flow. Listen to the music. Dance."

The dancing man promptly took one of the Ulsterman's hands and gently guided the other around his waist. Deciding that the big man, he was as tall and as muscular as himself, meant no harm, and that he was 'As go bráth leis na sidheoga' (Away with the fairies), he tried to dance in unison with him.

As they glided and sometimes stumbled around the floor Cúchulainn noticed that the music came from a small black box on a table in the corner. It had dancing, winking coloured lights in the front and two strange boxes on either side.

The recumbent, semicomatose men began to take a muted interest in the dancing couple.

"I see your colour is red," said the battered man. "Same as me. I simply adore red dresses. I have red shoes too, with high heels. I'll show you when we've finished dancing. I'm wearing other nice red things too," he said, fluttering his lashless eyelids. "I'll show you if you like."

The dance was interrupted by a loud guffaw from Laeg, seemingly more amused than amazed at his surroundings. Cúchulainn, with ill-disguised petulance, broke free from his partner and scowled. The big man recoiled, a hurt expression on his punished face. Cúchulainn, turning to Laeg, demanded:

"All right then, how would you have dealt with him?"

Before Laeg could answer, Amtashtalee was on his feet and walking towards the couple on the floor.

"Come now, we're all friends here."

Stepping between the two large men in red he took each gently by the hand.

"Cúchulainn, meet my friend, and everybody's friend, Ginger. His real name is Matt Rogers, former Irish and European heavyweight champion. We call him Ginger because .... well because his name is Rogers and he loves to dance."

In response to Cúchulainn's uncomprehending stare, he added:

"I'll have to explain that more fully, but some other time. Now shake hands."

"And come out fighting," croaked one of the onlookers with a snigger.

Everyone laughed loudly at that, except the mystified Cúchulainn and Laeg.

The big man took Cúchulainn's hand in a gentle grip and, smiling toothlessly, pumped it up and down vigorously.

"Ginger," said Amtashtalee, continuing the introductions, "this is Cúchulainn. And that man in the yellow dress is his charioteer, Laeg."

"Yeah," said Ginger, soothingly, "you can be anyone you like in this place. Nobody will laugh at you. Here we have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Brian Boru, Fionn Mac Cumhail, Oisín, Oliver Cromwell .... "

Cúchulainn continuing absently to dance, in a lumbering way, with the ecstatic Ginger. The old fighter, eyes closed, lapsed into a state of reverie, muttering incoherently, a fatuous grin on his scarred face.

"A dear lady came visiting us here one day," he said, his eyes still closed, that beatific smirk still on his scarred face. "Told me she was the President of Ireland! She was so beautiful, so gentle and so charming that I almost believed her."

Ginger gave a long, open-mouthed chortle before continuing:

"Quick as a flash I told her I was a first cousin of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor!"

Ginger broke into howls of tearful, snorting laughter, showing off the gaps in his stumps of black teeth. They had danced on in silence for another round of the room when the boxer suddenly stopped, eyes wide open, his face transformed momentarily by a transient blaze of intelligence, due, perhaps, to a brief, adventitious surge of blood to the damaged part of his punch-punished brain. He fixed Cúchulainn with an arresting, imperious gaze.

"I was lying, of course, but then, so was she."

Before Cúchulainn could think of a suitably neutral response, Ginger added:

"So if truth were a quantifiable commodity my claim to kinship with personages in high office was equally true!"

While the Ulsterman was still puzzling over Ginger's uncharacteristic profundity, the boxer closed his eyes, smiled and resumed both his waltzing and his less than coherent monologue.

Only half listening to his ramblings and looking past him into the grounds, Cúchulainn caught a fleeting glimpse of the woman in a long white coat coming towards the window. As she came into view again nearer this time, passing the second window, she tossed her hair away from her face and looked in towards him.

Cúchulainn started in astonishment, pointing dumbly in the direction of the third window in anticipation of seeing her again.

"That woman, Ginger, who is she?"

Following the pointing finger, Ginger turned his head just in time to see the woman passing the third window, leaning back against the wind, hair once more fluttering around her face.

"Doctor Emer," said Ginger, smiling brightly, "Emer Farrell. She's the nice doctor. We all love her 'cos she's kind."

"Emer," repeated Cúchulainn, almost inaudibly. "Emer Farrell, Farrell, why, Forghal. Forghal the Wiley, of the Tuatha de Danaan is Emer's father!"

Ginger's eyes lit up and he gave Cúchulainn one of his gap-toothed smiles.

"De Danaan! They're a fabulous Irish trad group. Emer's Dad, is he the fiddle player? Or is he the one that .... ?"

Cúchulainn shook Ginger by the shoulders.

"Why? How did she? What is she doing here?"

Ginger had opened his mouth to reply when Amtashtalee placed a hand on the fighter's arm.

"Sorry to interrupt you Ginger, but Cúchulainn and Laeg are in a great hurry to get home. Besides, I've got to get them out of here before the morning medicine trolley arrives."

"Oh, well, OK Cúchulainn and Laeg," said Ginger agreeably, raising his hand shyly and wiggling his fingers in a child's bye-bye gesture. "Hope to see you soon again. Safe journey home."

Suddenly the door opened and a tall, sharp-featured, authoritative looking man in a long white coat strode through the door. He had receding red hair slicked down with oil and severely back-combed. He paused to sweep the room with a penetrating, imperious gaze. Ginger cowered in the face of the withering glare and sank meekly into a chair. Cúchulainn's mouth fell open and his eyes popped in amazement as he studied the man.

"Laeg," he whispered, nudging the charioteer. "It can't be! It's, it's .... "

"It's Bricriú!" gasped Laeg, "Bricriú of the venomous tongue!"

"Bricriú, Taoiseach of Dún Rodhraighe," added Cúchulainn, staring in disbelief."

Amtashtalee gave a knowing nod.

"Indeed, the Chieftain of Dunrory."

"It's the Head Doctor, Doctor Brick," whispered Ginger, "I see you've learned his nickname already. We call him Brick Rua on account of his red hair."

The doctor caught Cúchulainn's eye, as far as Cúchulainn was concerned it was no other than the cynical Ulster chieftain. Brick Rua smiled, his eyebrows raised in an expression of mock surprise. He strode quickly across the room, his hand outstretched in greeting.

Cúchulainn, by now had guessed the meaning of the gesture, strangers, enemies or rivals took hold of each others' weapon hands in a gesture of mutual distrust so that there could be no sudden drawing of a dagger or a sword. He took the doctor's hand and held it tightly.

"Can it really be you? What are you doing here?"

Doctor Brick roughly extricated his hand from Cúchulainn's grip with a supercilious leer, tapping the side of his nose with his forefinger and winking slyly.

"I was about to ask you the same question, but since you are here and I am here, a word in your ear, brave Cúchulainn: I have invited King Conor and all his court to a feast in my new banqueting hall at Dún Rodhraighe to celebrate Baal Teine. That, you realise, is tonight!"

Cúchulainn, realised with alarm that he should be back in Eamhain Macha in time for the observance of the feast.

"Bealtaine! I must get there at all costs, you must help me .... "

Ignoring Cúchulainn's concern, Brick Rua went on:

"Not alone has King Conor accepted my invitation but he has asked me to use the occasion to adjudicate, arbitrate, if you like, and nominate the recipient of the Champion's Portion."

Bricriú, or Brick Rua whichever he was, moved to Cúchulainn's side and placed his arm around the warrior's shoulders. Turning him gently they moved away from the others. He continued to talk softly as the pair paced slowly away from Ginger, Laeg and Amtashtalee.

"The said Champion's Portion which I shall prepare," he said in his unctuous tone, "will be much more than a miserly slice of roast pig. Oh, yes. It will be the most lavish portion ever seen, a feast sufficient to feed an army."

He turned his head, thrusting his narrow, bony face close to Cúchulainn's.

"Be sure and be there, try to look surprised and delighted on learning that the prize is yours. You should waste no time in preparing your modest, self-effacing acceptance speech. You know, you being only part of a wonderful team; how you owe everything to your tutors. All the usual platitudes."

Brick Rua withdrew his face, and hunching his shoulders, raised an admonishing finger.

"This very moment, in your time-frame of course, King Conor and his élite Red Branch Knights and their retinues are already in procession to the feast."

Taking Cúchulainn's arm and placing his lips close to his ear, he whispered.

"Beware of your friends, the knights Conal and Laoghaire. They are hell-bent on thwarting each other, and you no less, in their ruthless scramble for The Champion's Portion. Be assertive. Assertiveness, that's the key to success."

Cúchulainn was looking around frantically for Laeg. And he needed Amtashtalee, his only hope of getting home in time. In time?

"Now, you must take your special medicine to get back to the real world," Doctor Brick whispered.

"Your medicinal mode of transportation is, even as I speak, coming down the corridor."

Before Cúchulainn could reply, Brick Rua gave him another of his sardonic grins, accompanied by a sly wink. Then, turning abruptly with a squeak of his rubber heels on the polished floor, he retreated swiftly across the room. Pausing for a moment, stroking his chin as though struck by an important afterthought. Half turning, he regarded Cúchulainn over his shoulder.

"Oh, about your speech, you will of course make some suitably laudatory references to me, won't you?"

Then the door clicked shut behind his swishing white coattails and the rapid squeak-squeak of rubber-soles faded as he disappeared down the corridor. Ginger rose and hurried to Cúchulainn. Placing his scarred lips close to the Ulsterman's ear, he whispered.

"Watch out for him. He's a nasty piece of goods. Needle-happy sod. Keeps us cock-eyed with shots and pills. Evil-tongued trouble maker. On the other hand you can be sure of oul' Amtashtalee there. He's a batty oul' goat but he's a sound friend. He may be eccentric but he's a clever man y'know. Used to be a Professor of Celtic Studies. Nowadays," he added with a giggle, "he's a Tuatha de Danaan Druid and a special consultant to Ossageel. But as I said, you can be anything you want to be in here."

Ginger's rocky face lit up, his small eyes, framed in globs of scar tissue, glittered with innocent fun. Cúchulainn kept silent, smiling approvingly at the fighter. There was information on tap here. He wanted to hear more that might enlighten him as to the nature of his strange experience of the unnatural pink tunnel and these odd people.

"So you are who you say you are," Ginger said with a wink. "Right? You are Cúchulainn, great warrior of the Red Branch. It was the Christian Brothers that nurtured me ambition to be a fighter with their tales of yourself and yer other man, Fionn Mac Cumhaill."

Ginger gave a strangled chortle.

"No offence me oul' son," he croaked through his suppressed laughter.

Seeing Cúchulainn did not seem to share his amusement, Ginger's gaze shifted to the floor for a moment, his grin dissolving. Coughing to hide his discomfort, he leaned forward again and resumed whispering in Cúchulainn's ear.

"Amtashtalee may be as crazy as the rest of us, but I'll tell you one thing, he has that bitter oul' Head Doctor well sussed out. We all think the Doc is crazier than any of us. He's really the only dangerous man among us. Thinks he's a powerful Ulster Chieftain. In his better moods he tells us of his plans to become High King of Ireland, then Emperor of Europe, and finally Monarch of the whole world. Even our Adolf over there."

He nodded in the direction of a morose little man, with a paintbrush moustache and a dark, cowlick fringe, seated in a corner between the door and a window.

"Even he's not nearly as power-hungry as oul' Brick."

Then, abruptly, patting Cúchulainn gently on the cheek, he hissed:

"I hear the pill wagon in the corridor, here they come."

"You'd better get goin' if you don't want to go on the same trip as the rest of us."

Ginger winked again and shuffled back to his seat. Before they could make their exit a tall, cadaverous, middle-aged man plucked at Laeg's sleeve with large bony fingers, eyebrows raised in astonishment.

"Legs?' he said in a hoarse whisper, "I thought it was you! And be the hokey frost, it is you! Legs Diamond!"

"I'm sure you must be mistaken," said Laeg, politely.

"No, I don't think so. Legs Diamond wasn't your real name of course. It was a nickname you had in Donegal town."

Laeg frowned quizzically at the strange, corpselike man. His large, dark, sunken eyes open wide, the pupils glittering wetly and alarmingly dilated. The conviction in his cracked voice filled Laeg with a niggling, inexplicable unease. Yet something about the man provoked his curiosity. Perhaps it was the way he pronounced 'Legs' as 'Laegs' the northern way.

"Laegs Diamond?" asked Laeg, by way of encouraging the man.

"Aye, after the famous Chicago gangster, y'see. Not that you were ever anything but a decent, hard-working man of course. Your real name is, was, Legg. Jimmy Legg. At school the other kids used to call you Peg-leg to annoy you. In later years you used to station yourself with your pony and trap in the Diamond in Donegal town, offering to take visitors on a tour of local places of interest. You always wore that scanty yalla kilt and the greeny-blue cloak. That's why we used to call you 'Legs.' Clever, eh? Legs Diamond. It was better than that other name they gave you, Betty, wasn't it?"

The man nudged Laeg in the ribs and looked down at his legs as though he shared some embarrassing intelligence.

"Betty?" Prompted Laeg. "I don't seem to recall .... "

"Sure, I understand. You'd rather forget that. It was your legs again, y'see. You know, the fillum star Betty Grable and her million dollar legs? Not really a compliment to a fully accredited young male like yourself."

Laeg was too busy trying to make sense of the bony man's reminiscences to formulate a reply. But there was no need. The man was talking again.

"Often wondered what became of you, just disappeared. And what ever became of the pony and trap? I remember you painted it gold to attract the customers."

The man stopped talking and stared out of the window.

"That was all a wee while before I had to come here." He added abstractedly.

The introspective digression seemed to act like a post-hypnotic trigger, because his eyes suddenly went out of focus and began to flit sightlessly from ceiling to floor. Without another word he shuffled away, muttering incoherently. Laeg stood staring open-mouthed after him as he shuffled across the room to join the others by the medicine trolley, what he'd heard them refer to as the 'Nirvana Express'.

A chorus of farewells brought Laeg out of his confused reverie.

Amtashtalee hurried the two Ulstermen to a door in the corner of the room wrenched the door open and urgently ushered them into a tiny room crowded with mops, brooms, bottles, jars and buckets.

"We mustn't let those pill slingers see us."

The door closed behind them they were enveloped in almost total darkness. They heard Amtashtalee pop the cork from the silver flask.

"Quickly," he urged, "you must drink some more of this."

"What diabolical ingredients are in that stuff?" Cúchulainn demanded.

The old man thrusting the flask into the warrior's hand.

"If I told you that you might not want to drink it."

"Then I'll not drink it this time," growled Cúchulainn sulkily.

"But you must. We must. It's our only chance to .... "

"Tell me one of the ingredients and I'll drink it."

The old man sighed.

"All right then. I use mushrooms. Now, drink it before we're dragged out of here and chemically castrated."

"Tell me what you call it then," urged Cúchulainn.

"Bottled Lightning?" Laeg commented, curling his lips sourly.

Amtashtalee nodded vigorously.

"Bottled Lightning, you must drink, please!"

Each man in turn drank the fiery liquid. Then, eyes closed tightly as it seared their vitals, they felt themselves being pushed gently through what felt like a rough, rocky crevice in the wall of the broom cupboard.

When they opened their eyes again they were back in the pink ante cavern. The horse, his nosebag in place, was contentedly munching his breakfast of stone-crushed oats. There was no trace of Amtashtalee.

"Let's get out of this place, fast, we have little time to make it to Bricriú's feast and I must claim The Champion's Portion." said Cúchulainn through clenched teeth.

Taking the horse by the bridle he interrupted the animal's meal and, followed by a bewildered Laeg, he made for the cleft that opened out into the main tunnel.

"Cúchulainn," said Laeg in a frightened tone, as he hurriedly harnessed the horse to the chariot, "I saw him in there"

"You mean Bricriú?"

"No, no! I mean HIM," he said pointing with a shaking finger to one of the severed heads swinging from the chariot rail.

Has Cúchulainn finally broken the curse and wrenched his ownself from the asylum, back to ancient Ireland? Will he make it to Bricriú's feast and if he does, will he find out about the treachery afoot before it is too late? Log on every Sunday for further chapters.