Grail Prince

by Nancy McKenzie

  On the evening of the third day she rose unsteadily and came out to where Galahad waited by the finished grave. Her beautiful hair was gone, reduced to wayward tufts that stuck out at awkward angles. Without looking down at the gaping hole, she made him a reverence and spoke stiffly. “My lord, I would be glad of something to eat.”

  He gave her a bowl of the stew he had made, rabbit, mushrooms, and wild onions, the staple meal that had supported him and Percival throughout their travels, and watched with the solemn pleasure of the cook as she ate it all. It couldn’t be up to her own standards, for he did not know one herb from another, but she ate with relish and licked the bowl clean.

  “Have some more, I beg you. There’s plenty.”

  Soft brown eyes looked up at him. “No. Thank you. I shall be sick if I eat more.” She paused and lowered her eyes. “I must observe the mourning period before I . . . before I leave. You are very kind, and I have no right to ask it of you, but would you wait for me?”

  Galahad nodded slowly. “If you wish.”

  She rose, and briefly touched his hand. “Thank you. I owe you much and have given you little but grief. You are a good man.”

  Galahad flinched at her praise but she forestalled him by speaking again. “I would be grateful for your food, for I may not prepare it myself during mourning.” She smiled briefly. “This is where it is difficult, not living in a community. The isolation we two always treasured is a burden now. And I’m afraid it must fall on your shoulders. For I may not leave the house, yet he must be buried and sent to his gods with prayers. I know by your badge you are a Christian and will pray to no god but your own, for that is the way of such men. It cannot be helped. A mention or two of Llud of the Otherworld would please my father’s spirit. This is all I ask of you. Will you do it for me?”

  Galahad bowed. “I will do it.”

  Tears glimmered in her eyes as she turned toward the hut. “One more thing.” Her back was to him and he strained to catch her words. “You may let the fire die.”

  Every day for fifteen days Galahad prepared her meals and left them at the door of the hut. He buried the smith and said the required prayers. He fed and tended the horses, swam in the river, watched the wild geese flying south overhead, slept in the forge, and let the furnace slowly cool. It took twelve days before the last ember died. That night an autumn gale raged through the forest and he lay awake beside the hearthfire he had lit for warmth, listening to the wild roaring of the wind and the creaking protests of the trees. He let his thoughts slide idly by, paying little attention to them. This was a respite, he knew, between the agony behind him and whatever was to come. A time of waiting. A time of peace. He was content, so long as he could keep his mind empty of all but the sounds around him, the groaning forest, the flutter of the fire, the wind-whipped tumble of the river, the howling fury of the storm. He closed his eyes as the racket grew, and fell asleep.

  At dawn on the sixteenth day the girl emerged from the hut dragging a sack that held all her belongings. She was dressed in an old pair of woolen leggings, a leather tunic, and an overlarge, thick robe that Galahad guessed must have been her father’s. A kerchief knotted tight under her chin hid her butchered hair. She curtsied before him and smiled.

  “Today we leave this place, my lord. I know a track through the forest that will take us to the town at the watersmeet in only a week’s time. My uncle is the smith there and he will take me in.”

  “Where does the road go, then?”

  “To the same place, but it takes ten days. It curves, you see, following the river, but the forest track is straight.”

  Galahad nodded. “I will get the horses.” He bridled both animals and found a saddle and neck strap for the old gelding. When he led them from the shed he saw the girl standing over the frosted, raw earth of her father’s grave. But she looked up dry-eyed when she saw him and came away. The forge she did not enter.

  To his surprise she lifted his stallion’s feet one by one and examined his hooves. “I will pull his old shoes,” she announced. “He will go better that way. My uncle will make you a new set, for your care of me.” He fetched her the tool and watched as she pried off the shoes with expert skill and filed the crack in the bare hoof.

  “You must have been a great help to your father.”

  She nodded but avoided his eyes. “We were a support to each other. The only support either of us had.” She paused. “He was so afraid of the day I should marry and desert him. He was so fierce to all the young men who came this way.” A soft smile touched her lips. “Of course, I never would have left while he lived. Whoever wanted me would have to want him, too. I told him so often, but you know fathers. He never believed it.”

  Galahad lifted her onto the gelding, bound the sack to the saddle, and, taking both horses’ reins in his hands, led them along the path she pointed out. She never looked back.

  The journey through the forest proved uneventful. Galahad kept watch at the edges of the fire every night. Before dawn the girl rose, and he slept as she prepared his breakfast. It was a joy to eat her cooking; he blushed to think how proud he had been of his own preparations. His prayers, it seemed, had been granted, at least as far as concerned the girl, for her attitude was unwaveringly calm and cheerful and she often sang softly as she rode. On the fifth day out she sang a song that startled him.

  O hark and hear the sacred ravens sing

  For crownèd by the pricking blackthorn ring

  Alone and hidden under timeless stone

  Lies the hollow hill, Lord Myrddin’s home.

  Waiting as the water weathers

  Ringed by pillared stones alight

  The emperor’s most sacred treasures

  Awful in the burning white.

  We wait for him at Llud’s own secret gate

  For him alone the dark door open waits,

  The seeker comes! And lo, his blessing stays

  Upon our Motherland a thousand days.

  “My lord, you are pale.” She smiled at him. “Did you not care for my song? It’s an old one. I don’t know many that they sing now in the towns, but I find singing passes the time and leaves the mind too busy for other thoughts.”

  “No,” blurted Galahad, “it’s not that . . . I mean, your voice is charming. By all means, sing. But I . . . I think I’ve heard that song before. No, not the melody, but the words only. Where did you learn it and what does it mean?”

  She gazed at him curiously. “My father taught it to me. He learned it from the hillmen, the Ancient Ones. They often came down from their fastness in the hills to have my father sharpen their tools and pass on news of battles and kings in the Giants’ world.” She smiled. “That’s what they call us, you know. The Strange Ones, or the Giants. They speak to few, for few men know their tongue. Smiths do, who live in lonely places like ours, who serve only the road. They had nothing of value to trade him for his service, so he demanded a song of them each time they came. That’s how he learned it.”

  “And its meaning? Is it one of their legends, this seeker, this man who finds the treasure?”

  Her eyes widened at his eagerness. “Why should you suppose the seeker is a man? I have always thought it referred to Lord Myrddin himself, the god of the hollow hills.”

  “Why should it be so wonderful that Myrddin find something in his own home? Who is the emperor? Could it be Maximus?”

  She frowned in puzzlement. “Who is Maximus? I took the emperor to be Llud himself, King of the Otherworld. For Myrddin’s homes are gates to the Otherworld. Everyone knows that”—she smiled slyly—“except Christians, who take no time to learn another’s faith.”

  Galahad hardly heard her. He was back in Dane’s cave, fourteen years old, listening to the poem she had learned from the local hillmen. Surely they had mentioned Maximus, or Macsen, as the owner of the treasure. His heart sounded loud in his ears as the pain of yearning struck him. What he would not give to believe again that he could find the Grail! To have no stain upon h
im which made him unfit to lift his eyes so high! He could have wept with the agony of his loss. But the girl was speaking to him.

  “—thought you would have asked by now. Did you not wonder that I sing at all?”

  With an effort he forced his attention to her. “Yes, I did wonder. I admire your fortitude.”

  She laughed lightly. “Oh, no, my lord, it is not fortitude. It is something very much deeper than that—wonder at the gods’ ways, of the symmetry of things. My dear father died, but with your help I cared for him properly and sent his spirit on its way to join my mother in the Otherworld. I have done what I could for him. And even as he left this world, another life entered it, that I should not be alone but should have someone to care for me in my last years.”

  Galahad looked at her blankly. “Who?”

  She laughed again, a laugh of honest joy. “The Great Mother has blessed me with child, my lord. On the same day my father was struck down, this child entered my body.”

  Galahad stopped dead in his tracks, bringing both horses to a sharp halt. “Do you mean to say it happened when those ruffians raped you?”

  Pain washed her face. “Never mind them. That is a memory I prefer to keep dark. But that is the day the Mother blessed me.”

  “But . . . but . . . surely such a thing is impossible! One coupling only!”

  She frowned at him. “What is the matter, my lord? You are pale as a nether spirit. Of course it is possible. Was not King Arthur himself conceived in a single bedding?”

  “Yes, but . . . that was different. Arthur’s coming was foretold! It had to be!”

  “There is only one magic to begetting,” she replied gently.

  Galahad staggered as the prophecies of his childhood returned to him in a cold blast of clearheadedness. He, himself, had been foretold. In one single night of drunkenness Lancelot had lain with Elaine and begot upon her Galahad himself. The world spun around him. Let it not happen to her! Let it not be! A child! Dear God, the thought had never even crossed his mind! Sweat sprang on his forehead. It was too late for prayers. The thing was long past saving. If by some miracle she had conceived, he was already father to a two-year-old child!

  “My lord, make haste! We must reach yonder bluff before the sun sets, or we shall not make it to my uncle’s forge tomorrow.”

  The words forced him to action and he hurried on in silence, but it seemed to him that the shadows that had dogged his heels the last three years had suddenly taken on shape and substance. He seemed to hear behind him not only the steady plod of horses’ hooves, but the lively patter of a child’s step. His dishonor was complete.

  Late the next afternoon as the shadows deepened, they came down out of the forest into a shallow valley where a growing town had sprung up at the meeting of two rivers. They passed plowed meadows lying fallow, rounded pens of cattle, sheep, and goats, walled with earthworks and closed with tangled briar. They passed sturdy houses set hard against the road, yards full of chickens, kitchen gardens cut and bound neatly against the coming winter winds. They passed an inn with the tavern door flung wide in welcome, the scents of roasting meat and the sounds of laughter wafting out to greet them. At the end of the town stood the smithy, where the ancient road crossed the river. An old black gelding waited tethered at the door, his head low, his dull eyes half-asleep. Smoke poured through the roof hole and from within the forge came the steady clanging of the hammer.

  “Go on to the house,” the girl urged. “He’s busy. He’ll pay us no mind until the job is done.” Behind the forge, nestled in a stand of birch, sat a rambling wooden house. It was built in sections, each section added as the need arose, with little attempt at harmony with the existing structure. Yet it had a cozy look, with a fire going in the main house and candles lit against the fast-falling dark.

  A stocky woman opened the door and stood on the threshold, cleaning her hands on her apron. “Who’s there? Who’s come at this time of day? The smith’s busy and his dinner waiting. He can’t help you for an hour or two.”

  Galahad reached up and lifted the girl down. She made a pretty curtsy to her aunt. “Aunt Mab, you’ll not remember me, perhaps. I’m your niece Lynet, Savro’s daughter.”

  “Lynet!” The woman clapped her hands to her mouth, and then outstretched them as she hurried forward. “Child, I’d not have known you! How you’ve grown! When were you here last? Five, six years ago? Skinny as a colt, you were, and look at you now! My, you’ve turned into a beauty!”

  Galahad realized with a thrill of surprise that although he had lived a month with the smith’s daughter, he had never known her name. The two women hugged and chatted, both talking at once, with more to say, apparently, than time to say it. He headed toward the horse shed he had seen behind the forge. There were four animals there already, but room for as many more. He got the horses settled and fed, but when he came out he found the women had already disappeared inside the house. He hesitated a moment. A huge silhouette appeared at the forge door and bent over the gelding’s hind leg, a movement followed by the sizzle of burning hoof and the smell of hot iron. A dunk in the water bucket sent steam roiling upward. Eight smart taps and the nails went home. The gelding, lids drooping, was fast asleep.

  “Hey, now, Blackie, wake up there! Back to the shed you go!” The silhouette moved forward and melted into the dark. Galahad heard the gelding stir, heard the smith moving around in the shed, heard his heavy steps hurry by him toward the house. The smith threw open the door and cried, “Mab! We have a visitor! There’s a new horse in the shed.”

  Galahad followed him up the steps. The inner room was warm, filled with people and firesmoke. Mab, Lynet, and half a dozen children of various ages sat around the fire. Directly in front of him, the smith gesticulated eagerly. “A finer animal I never saw, delicate and strong—like the ones Pendragon used to breed! Who would own such a horse as that?”

  Mab rose. “Come, Sandrin, don’t excite yourself. No doubt it belongs to the lad who brought Lynet. Look who’s here! Your own niece, Savro’s daughter, come to us for safekeeping. But alas, husband, good Savro died a month ago.”

  That news steadied the smith. “Ah, no. May God rest his good-hearted soul. Of course we will take you in, Lynet, and glad to have you. Perhaps you can teach your cousin Merko some manners at last.” A ruddy-faced youth in his teens, whose eyes had not left Lynet since she walked in, colored radiantly. Sandrin laughed. “Well, there’s a silver lining to every cloud, they say. How did it happen, Lynet? Savro was a strong man and never sick.”

  “We were attacked by outlaws, both of us. A warrior rode down out of the hills to rescue us, only a moment late because his horse had thrown a shoe. He killed them all, Uncle, every single one. But he was too late to prevent the stroke that killed Father. He helped me with Father; he kept the forge going; he tended the horses and fed me, every day, through the fifteen Days of Passage.” The children looked puzzled at her reference to pagan rites; from where he stood behind Sandrin, Galahad could see a copper cross hanging on the wall. “He buried Father and led me by the forest trail all the way here. He is goodness itself, Uncle. I took him to be a gift from the gods, and asked no questions. I do not even know his name.”

  “Where is he now, niece? We must thank this man—and I must ask him about the horse!” the smith boomed, just as Galahad stepped past him into the light.

  The smith stared wildly at him, as if he had just materialized out of the smoke. He pointed a shaking finger at Galahad’s badge. “Sir, I know who you are! Every traveler upon the road has tales to tell of your doings.”

  “I beg you,” Galahad said quietly, “do not pass on those tales.”

  “But you are the Servant of God who travels across Britain in search of holiness! You are the savior of the helpless and the strong arm of the weak. Why, you are the talk of every village and watering place! All the people of Britain revere you for your kindnesses.”

  “Galahad,” Mab whispered. “The Grail Prince.”

  In
the stunned silence, Lynet slid to her knees and the children followed her example.

  “Please,” Galahad said, “please don’t.”

  Mab curtsied to the floor. Galahad grabbed the smith’s arm to keep him from bending his knee.

  “Good sir, I have done nothing for your niece any passing stranger would not have done. She is the one you should be praising. She survived an attack by ruffians, tended her father when her own wounds were not yet healed, bathed him and treated him, fasted when he died, shut herself up for two weeks in her grief, put it behind her and set off with a cheerful countenance to beg your hospitality. There is no other woman in Britain, save one, so courageous.”

  At this Mab wept openly and Sandrin bowed low. “My lord, we are honored to have you in our house. We would be honored if you would eat with us and stay the night. It is not a hardship—we have plenty of room— but if it were, we would gladly bear it all the same to give you ease.”

  Seeing the expression on his face, Lynet rose and went to Galahad. “Uncle, have a care. To a good man, praise is as painful as a wound. Treat him as if he were your own brother come to life and he will be comfortable enough.”

  Galahad reddened, but managed a small smile. “Thank you, Lynet. I am not responsible for the tales about me; I am not the man those tales describe. I am an ordinary person, like any one of you.”

  They all smiled at him politely and in perfect disbelief. They begged him to sit with them and sup; they gave him pride of place around the fire and served him the choicest morsels from their meager fare. Mab showed him his sleeping place and brought water from the well for him to wash in. She packed the children and the smith off to bed, bade Galahad good-night, and left him alone with Lynet by the fire.

  They sat in silence, watching the dancing flames. When Lynet finally spoke her voice was oddly hesitant. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? Why didn’t you want me to know?”

  Galahad shrugged. “I liked it better when we had no names.”