Tale Tether

A Company of Giants
Opportunity Lost
One man for sure knows the awfulness of a lost opportunity, and he regretted letting it slip
through his fingers every day for the rest of his life. The story of poor Potter Thompson is a
cautionary one, that you, dear reader, do well to take to heart if you should ever find yourself
presented with an unusual opportunity that could lead to fresh fields, good fortune, or eternal
happiness. If you could speak to Potter he would tell you the same thing, but as he has been dead
and buried for almost three hundred years you will;understand that he doesnt say very much
anymore.
Potter Thomson lived in Richmond, an ancient town on
the River Swale, whose ruined castle dominates the
cobbled town square that is lined with a church, shops, and
houses. If you visit the inn and sit near the groups of old
worthies and overhear their talk, you will hear some
amazing stories of olden times, but the story of Potter
Thompson has been long forgotten, and so I tell it here. It
is
easy to feel sorry for Poor Potter, as the townspeople called him when he could not hear them,
because in spite of being a most unusually cheerful fellow for most of the time, he was as
impecunious as an ecclesiastical rodent, and was married to a shouting woman who made his life
a misery who called him good-for-nothing and complained about him whether he did anything
wrong or not. Mostly he did not do anything wrong.
One day she was so severe with him that he donned his cap and struck out through the door to try
to walk off the foul mood that had descended on him when his good lady treated him badly. Not
wishing to bump into anyone who might ask him how he was faring, he took the road to the
bridge and clambered down to the rock-strewn path at the rivers edge to walk in the silence
beneath the high crag at whose top the castle towered.
The silence was disturbed only by the gentle murmuring of the
river as it sported over rocks that strewed the river's bed. It was
his special place to be alone when life bore down on him,
which was when his wife broke his peace with her never-ending
faultfinding and moaning, like today!
Potter loved the silence because it helped him straighten out his
mind and get things clear in his head and imagine better things than his miserable home life.
Although he did not know it, he was an escapist, and the rocky shore was his place of solitude,
his retreat, his hermitic cell, his peaceful spot, his safe place.

As he made his way between the rocks his spirits were elevated. This place held the power to
elevate his thoughts and bring peace to his troubled mind. He was enjoying his return to
cheerfulness when his eye was taken by a dark opening in the cliff face a few yards ahead of
him.
I have never noticed that before, he remarked to himself. I wonder where it leads. How is it
that I have excursioned around the castle so frequently but not seen that doorway before? I
wonder where it goes?
Now, gentle reader, it is at this point that Potters story takes an interesting turn. In all his years
up until he stood before that doorway he had been condemned to live an uninteresting life, but all
that was to change, just as our lives change when we ask ourselves the right questions, such as,
I wonder what, or where, or how . ? at the right time. Knowing when the right time is can
be detected by the hair at the back of your neck standing on end, just as Potters hair did as he
put his first foot inside the dark opening, and slowly began to walk inside.
Poor Potter peered into the passageway as far as he could, but it was very dark, and he began to
feel the piercings of terror in his soul, and they had a strange effect on his knees. So affected
were his knees that they started to buckle, and then leaned against each other for support before
beating a tattoo against each other that the poor fellow was sure would be heard at
Knaresborough, and he was sure that his feet creaked as he walked! Still he pressed forward into
the deepening darkness, feeling his way by running his hand against the rough stone wall until at
last he saw ahead of him a glimmer of light. Aha! he exclaimed, Theres light at the end of
the tunnel! Had he lived a hundred years later he might have worried about being run down by
a steam train, but Potter Thompson predated steam-powered locomotives by a good century and
so the idea never entered his head.
As he moved further into the tunnel the illumination grew brighter. How extraordinary, he
thought. Theres a light underground. Perhaps it is an old mine that I have stumbled across. If
so, then someone has left a candle burning!
By this time his fear and his curiosity were evenly balanced so that neither prevailed and he went
on only because he was moving anyway and the light had given some strength to his spirits and
charged his interest, although it would be saying too much to say that his courage had increased
because his knees were still trembling. They trembled so much that they wore holes in his
trousers at the point of contact. He ignored the damp chill that found its way through the holes
onto his clammy skin because he already had enough to think about.
He came to a corner, and rounding it found himself inside a large hall, bigger than he had ever
seen. The splendour of the great hall overwhelmed him, and he stood with his hand to his mouth
taking in all the richness of the scene his eyes beheld.
The room was fully a hundred and fifty feet wide and two hundred feet long with a high vaulted
ceiling from which hung a cresset on which was suspended an oil lamp that lit the place with a
warm yellow glow, gleaming on what he thought were collections of rocks laid about the floor.

Potter cast his eyes slowly over the magnificent appointments of that room until they rested on a
massive granite table that occupied its centre. His wide eyes grew even wider when they saw the
exquisite sword in a bejewelled scabbard that on the table lay, and beside it a horn richly inlaid
with ivory and gold. Such splendour he had never seen before, not even in his imagination.
As he moved towards the table he almost stumbled over the rocks. But imagine his surprise
when he found it was not rocks, but sleeping men, and not only men, but giants, and not only
giants but knights in armour, each with his sword, lance, mace, and dagger by his side, and his
head laid on his shield for a bolster.
One knight had atop his helmet a golden crown such as a king wears, and Potter knew that he
had come upon none other than King Arthur and his Knights of the Fellowship of the Round
Table!
Poor Potter was fearful that he
giants, and he did not know
thought about what could
almost wished that he was back
because although he didnt like
reason, she made him less afraid
wanted to run and he wanted to
unsheathe Excalibur and blow
a few inches from the table and
he did so, the blade whispered
restlessly, making his armour
the cavernous hall, so he pushed

Arthur
The Once and Future King

might make a noise and wake the

what would happen then, but he
happen and it was not pleasant. He
at home with his nagging angry wife,
it when she ranted at him for no good
than he felt just at that moment. He
stay, but most of all he wanted to
the horn. Gently he lifted the scabbard
began to draw the mystic blade. But as
and one of the knights moved
clank on the floor and echo throughout
it back in and laid it back down.

He waited for the knight to settle back to sleep, and lifted the heavy horn to his lips. He was
going to blow through it, but not make it sound, but as it touched his lips another knight rolled
uneasily in sleep and his armour rattled and resounded as if all creation would awaken, so back
down went the horn. When all was still again, Potter Thompson sneaked towards the halls
entrance into the long passageway, and set off running for the outside world again. He had heard
stories told when he was a boy that King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table slept beneath
Richmond Castle until England would have need of them again, and now he knew for himself
that what many thought to be a baseless myth was indeed true!
As he ran for his life towards the sunlight streaming in through the entrance he heard a sound
like the rushing of the wild wind, and an eerie voice chanted close by his head jeeringly,
Potter Thompson, Potter Thompson,
If thou hadst either drawn
The sword or wound the horn,
Thou hadst been the luckiest man
That ever yet was born!

So the disappointed man went back home to his angry wife who called him a good-for-nothing
just to begin with when he put his foot across the threshold before he had time to doff his cap,
and she got much worse after that.
Ever after he dreamed of returning to the Great Hall of King Arthur where he and his Loyal
Knights waited for England to call them into action during her hour of need. If I find it again,
he told himself, I will draw Excalibur, stand like a King of England, and blow the mighty
horn! Im, ready for some good luck!
He often traversed the bank of the Swale under the steep walls of the Castle, looking for the
entrance but he never found it. He had had his chance, his good fortune had been within his
grasp, but fear had overcome him. Well had he learned the lesson that opportunity does not
make return visits when once it has been ignored. In his later years, Potter Thompson was often
seen sitting on a bench in the town square with his eyes closed as if remembering something afar
off, and occasionally sighing, Ah, me. If only never finishing the sentence, but saying it in
a tone so mournful that no one durst ask him what ailed him.