Knight’s Errand

THE SONG OF ROLAND

Sayers, Dorothy L. (translator; Penguin, reprint December 1957, ISBN 978014044075)

On the phone, she‘d told me that she’d driven the car on to a raised section of the concrete, where she’d had to leave it. It took the security guard and me half an hour to find it. I’d enlisted his help at the parking garage near the haematology building. I thought of him as the squire. Without his help, I’d never have found it.

“Cooey!” he yelled out.

I galloped over. I should’ve chastened him for taking our lord’s name in vain, but I couldn’t deny that he had beheld a miracle.

The car floated half a meter off the ground, balanced on a concrete road barrier that ran under its exact middle. Both axles hung over the edges, their wheels floating free above the pavement.

I felt certain that she couldn’t have done this just by driving the car. Wouldn’t any speed quick enough to get the car up one side have carried it down the other? I perceived at once the work of a giant. Perhaps the giant picked the car up to look under it and then plunked it back down on top of the road barrier by mistake.

“Pinabel,” I called out, “scout about for the giant. I shall telephone the RACV.”

An hour later, I watched two men with a winch drag the car off sideways with chains.

“So”, I asked, over the howl of the car’s underside grinding over the concrete, “do you find this sort of thing happens a lot?”

“Actually it does mate,” he replied, “but I’ve got to tell you the truth, I’ve never seen it a bloke do it before.”

“Oh,” I confessed, “uhm, to tell the truth my, uhm, girlfriend did, uhm-“

“Aha!” he shouted, “I knew it!”