The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

  “Where?” he asked.

  “I’ve been riding in and out and up and down the country,” was the oblique reply. “I’ve learned much.” Gawain seemed well satisfied that this was indeed the case.

  “No doubt … I haven’t seen you in … in, isn’t it decades? Two almost, anyway, and you renew our friendship, if that was what it was, with riddles.”

  “Decades,” Gawain mused. He sat back solidly. He seemed infinitely more patient than Parsival recalled. The eye that showed was still a sharp, biting steel-gray. “Well,” Gawain continued, “I met your son, for one thing. He must be older than you were when our paths crossed. Remember, in the woods, you knocked some bastard on his arse that day … I liked you, Parse, I always did …” He seemed earnest enough, the other decided.

  Parsival stared into the fire. You knew people and then they were gone. Still, he reflected, if you lived each time fully, then it was all right Then you didn’t regret or miss anyone or anything … as after a day’s good sport no one regretted the setting sun because the day had been enough …

  “So you met Lohengrin?" Parsival said, looking up. Half his face was molded redly by the firelight. It smoothed the wrinkles, blended the frowns of care, and, as he was again smooth-shaven, startled Gawain with the ghost of that lost, infinitely expectant innocence.

  “On the road.” Gawain’s mouth was covered, so only the eye showed that he smiled. “He's strong.”

  Parsival stared back into the flames that wandered and sputtered over the crumbling logs. The embers glowed, he considered in passing, like the floor of hell. For a moment his fancy saw tiny, dark figures moving where the shadows fluttered and flowed …

  “I have not seen my son in a long time,” he said at length, “though I’ve heard he fights well.”

  “He gave me a few bad moments … I recognized his crest.” And to answer Parsival’s anxious look, he said, “I left him alive. He favors tricks, as I did myself when young. Not like you … you were simple and terrible.”

  “Terrible?” Parsival was surprised. He’d never imagined himself in such a light.

  “My God, I was afraid of you. Didn’t you see that? And I really feared no man to any great extent.” The eye smiled again. “I was younger then. Now I fear them all.” He laughed and shook his head. “But you, Parse, you were so simple — no, not in the mind, in combat. You wasted no movement, like a killing beast. One mistake was all with you and the other was dead.”

  “I never saw myself,” Parsival said, “as others saw me.”

  “Few do.”

  “You saw my son … But I never knew you felt fear, Gawain.”

  “What an ass I would have been to let it show. Besides, I think I might have gone to the curtsy in a dance of blows with you.”

  Parsival nodded.

  “I have many regrets about my son," he told Gawain, who waited, sipping his drink. The fire popped and hissed steadily. “The time went by so quickly … I really was never close to my wife. I was just married … and then there was the boy and later the girl …” He stood up suddenly. “I regret so much now, Gawain, so much … though I’ve not often spoken of it.”

  “Times change,” Gawain said. “My God, You’ve changed. For years I was maddened by my hurts and I tried to use you then, as you know.” He shook his head. The eye was distant now. Parsival shrugged. “I thought only of the Grail,” Gawain went on. “You put it into my mind … Why, I would have flayed you alive and roasted off your limbs to get it in my hands, or whatever you hold it with …”He chuckled. “Mayhap you stand on it,” he snorted, “or sit. I know not.” He sighed and shook his head. “I was mad and there was only myself in my thoughts. Myself … myself …!” He slammed his scarred, knotted fist on the stained, warped planks. “I tell you I am weary of myself.” He snorted. “After so many years the company’s worn thin … Why, I wandered through Europe and the East and saw things and learned … bah …! It came to nothing … I thought I sought the cure for my face, but I know better now.” He laughed straight out. “I sought the cure for myself

  Parsival looked at him with wonder and a faint remnant of suspicion.

  “I understand you,” he said, pacing closer. “I understand. I too was cursed by the Grail. I gave my family almost nothing while I dreamed and stalked it … while I tried to forget it, too … but it was always there …” He leaned over the table, face to face with the other knight. “I looked in the sky while my garden withered under my feet!” He took a deep, uneven breath and straightened up.

  Gawain was intent.

  “And now?” he asked.

  Parsival shook his head like a man distracted.

  “I don't know,” he murmured. “I’d like to see my son at this moment …”He shut his eyes. “Love … I want to love and wipe away all dreams and sorrows and free my feet from the mud of life., …”

  They both remained in silence for a while. Gawain finished the wine. Left the pie. Parsival stood brooding by the waning fire. He was thinking about Unlea now. Though he knew he didn’t mean it, he almost wished he could run and ride away from her alone. Was she really what he hoped? Did she truly care? What had those words of hers really meant when she last said …

  “Parsival,” Gawain broke in, “let me try to be a friend. I’ve learned much, as I told you. Let me learn this, too, for the curse is spreading again.”

  “Which one?”

  “Yours. The Grail curse. Well, all right, then, ours …”He was serious. “Who will be king now? Who will squat in Arthur’s seat?”

  Parsival shrugged.

  “What care I,” he said, “where a dog shits?”

  “Where?” Gawain’s eye was ferocious. “It’s not just for the kingdom. I crave no power at court, either. It’s the Grail. The devil is back.”

  “This is the first I learned he’d ever left Britain.”

  “I mean,” his voice dropped, “Clinschor — the ball-less wizard.”

  Parsival grimaced.

  “After all these years? You jest, Gawain. What, did he crawl up out of some hole?”

  “Be like he did.”

  “With all those black knights?” He smiled. “Why, they must be older than you.”

  “I see no humor in it.”

  “At your years, neither will I,” Parsival said, enjoying this moment, of having the wit’s edge on Gawain himself.

  “Parsival, damn it, I fought them. I remember what they were like! We all had our … well, our excesses, I mean, in the army, the blood runs hot … But what those devils did I won’t even speak of!” He threw himself back in his seat. No face showed in the hood.

  “How do you know it’s Clinschor?”

  Gawain closed his hand and thumped it on the table. He was staring toward the fading embers now.

  “I smelled it out,” he said ambiguously.

  “Did you see him?”

  A pause.

  “No,” Gawain said.

  “Well?”

  “I smelled it out … I can’t prove it yet … In the south I met British and heathen knights moving inland together — together …!” He drummed his fingers on the planks.

  “Still, does that prove …”

  “No — not prove. But I tell you I’m right! I lay behind a screen of bush at night to hear what I might hear. And I heard two of this host speak as they marched by.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said someone they both knew had seen him”

  “They said his name?”

  “Ha! They dared not.”

  “That doesn’t prove it.”

  “Ha! You don’t want it proved.” He glared at Parsival. “You’re too busy with the lady, I think, to want it proved.”

  Parsival was certain he blushed but clamped his teeth together and ignored the comment.

  “I want no more wars,” he said, not quite looking at the other knight, who leaned back and seemed thoughtful.

  “I’m tired of combat,” Gawain said, turning his empty w
ine cup on the table. “I tried to be killed. Did you know that?” He glanced up. “No, how could you … It’s true, I tried and tried …” He shook his head. “But I lived, Parsival, I lived to this day. So I believe in something at last. I believe there is a reason.” He rocked in his seat, groping for expression. “I believe I was … was chosen … Oh, I know not by whom or what … I know little of God, for I’ve known too many priests to trust religion … but I believe I was spared for a purpose by something greater than my skill …”

  Parsival was interested. He sat down on the stool again, facing Gawain in his strange, white, bandage-like headdress.

  “I had fallen in battle on the great desert.” Gawain went into his story. “I stood to my knees in the hot sand, helmetless, gripping a shattered sword … Parsival, I was a dead man! And well I knew it … Those swarthy devils jostled one another to see who made the kill … I was dead, and I swear, I smiled with the half of this face that can show a human look …” — he gestured with a brief, choppy flick toward his head — “ … and said to myself: ‘So at last the dreary business is over.’ And, mark this, they thrust their spears and chopped their blades at my bare head …”He rubbed the right side of his face with his hand. “I shut my eyes and waited. That’s right! Gawain, the fearless terror … In the past I’d have charged and died with my teeth fixed in some bastard’s neck — why not? I was all pride” — he snorted a brief laugh — “save when I was cunning. If I could flee, I’d flee, but there I was done, as I said, and weary of everything, of blows and tricks and lies, and saw no other prospects … I was not even angry anymore, as when I knew you …”

  “I saw you were changed, Gawain,” Parsival put in.

  “So I stood there like a pig waiting for the serf’s notched knife …”

  “And? Did you die and become resurrected?”

  “Ah,” came the reply, the fierce eye seeming to flame deeper than the reflected light of the fire at Parsival’s back, “did I not?”

  Parsival frowned.

  “Well?” he pressed.

  Gawain shrugged.

  “I know not.” Gawain expelled a deep, almost racking burst of held air. “I know not … save that I felt the blows … I swear to you, I felt the steel smashing through my skull. Have I not felt lesser blows before …? I felt the blood burst from my brain and I sank from myself into the waiting, bleak land of death. I tell you …” — he virtually shouted, leaning over the table, the terrifically intense eye startling even Parsival, who imagined he’d seen all intensities in his time — “ … I tell you I was slain! And I awoke unhurt …! In the night … the sand had all but covered me … you know how it blows there and fills the armor joints and grits and grits to send you mad … but I was unhurt …! Unhurt …!” He threw himself back in his chair. He waited, as if to see if his listener dared even comment. He didn’t. He waited, too. He thought he’d understood, because though swords could not slice spirit, spirit could bend the keenest blade … unless he were fevered from the heat and dreamed it all …

  “Have you been to the land of the dead?” Gawain asked without humor.

  “No.”

  “Mmm,” whispered Gawain, letting his face tilt forward so that his eye was lost in a ridge of shadow, as if its luster had withdrawn into the obscure depths of his head. “So I believe there’s a reason, you see …? I have heard no voices, seen no light … but I’m watching for … for …”

  “A sign?”

  Gawain nodded.

  “Ah,” he affirmed, “I have no religion left, so I don’t know what to seek or look for. But now I’ve seen the devils are back and I think they concern me … I think the Grail concerns me, too, though I feel I’ll never see it.” The head tilted up and the eye flashed again, concentrated on Parsival’s face. “As you will.”

  “You still trouble me with that?” He was shaking his head. “I want nothing to do with it. You may say or do what you please about it, Gawain. I want no more.” He folded his arms across his wide chest. “It’s said the angels left it and flew back beyond the stars. Let them return and take it away, for all I care.”

  Unlea he thought, I long for you, to touch you … Unlea … Unlea … I love even your name, the trembling of it on my tongue!

  “We’ll see what we will see,” Gawain muttered. “But nothing will put me off! To the moment of my true death, I swear to you and to whatever God is: nothing will put me off!”

  His breathing was violent now, as if he’d run a great distance or fought a fierce combat.

  “Nothing!” he cried, standing up. He caught his breath, stood there. Parsival wondered if he might not be mad. “So,” Gawain said with a partial return of his old sarcasm, “you see what even an iron-head like me can come to, eh, Parse?”

  Parsival suddenly found himself stepping forward and reaching across the table to take his friend s hand, as if he meant to bodily wrench him from some danger. They stayed like that, silent in the dancing shadow light. Parsival didn’t completely understand why, but he felt tears burn in his eyes. The two powerful hands stayed locked in their now-speaking silence …

  Broaditch plodded on until his vision shook with purplish flashes and his lungs burned and seemed flattened to his ribs. He was conscious of Valit clinging to his massive back, mumbling continually, though Broaditch assumed the ramblings were from the random workings of his own fading consciousness …

  The firm shore was only a few steps away when he felt something fat and cold slip along his waist, and at first he thought he’d walked into a thick rope just under the surface, except it moved and he knew it coiled with sentience.

  Christ! he thought and suddenly sank in watery mud nearly to his chin as Valit screamed. It wasn’t much thicker than water here. They could have swum. He would have rejoiced, save for the reddish eyes that flashed in the moonlight set in a fat wedge of head arched on a long neck that was body, too. Christ! Has there ever been such a snake save in tales? There were fangs that flashed like curved daggers. It hissed and yawned its jaws. Valit didn’t even scream this time. He was already climbing up over Broaditch’s back, as if he meant to submerge him or perform an acrobatic trick. I want to go home, Broaditch’s mind was saying volitionlessly, God and the sweet saints, I want to go home!

  The dark creature wriggled massively through the muck. Broaditch realized he’d but felt the last coil of the seemingly endless tail. Straining, sloshing, gasping within three feet of the slimy bank, calling on unplumbed resources of energy and resistance, Valit clinging to his head and shoulders, h£ stretched out his arms as the jaws snapped down and the astoundingly long body churned the muck to foam. A reflex: the empty, burning eyes zooming close (resembling, his mind distantly registered, a ship’s lanterns looming over a drowning sailor), firmer bottom underfoot, Valit, superhuman in his panic, actually standing on his shoulders and head now, leaping onto the shore as Broaditch, without hesitation, as if his will was vast enough to disregard his panting, fainting flesh, heaved up from the slimy water and seized the huge, slippery neck, shouting something like a wordless and primal war cry, as if the sound itself could stun the terrible beast from the dark, submerged, mucky terrors of existence, smelling its stink and (in a strange insight) feeling its life as he might have with a harmless domestic creature, thinking in a corner of consciousness: it's not evil, it's just blind … Among a welter of dissolving impressions, feeling the immense strength, as if the black tides of the earth flowed up into it, his arms jerked, half-dislocated, pain, back muscles cracking, feeling himself lifted almost clear of the water surface, slammed against the bank, stinking swamp breath in his face, mind crying out: No! Not like this! Not in these idiot jaws! And somehow he got his feet braced again and threw himself into a berserk, scrabbling run like a mad bull, raging against it all, all muck and terror, and for a moment the neck gave and slipped aside and, feet digging in, sliding, plopping, straining to the verge of blackout, he reached the top of the mossy embankment and smashed his fist into one redly luminous
eye just above the snapping, hissing jaws, the impact deflecting the downstroke, which caught his shoulder glancingly and spun him over the top. He rolled into the clutching of a spidery hand and arm in the deep marsh grass. It locked across his chest. He screamed, threw himself upright, flailing to free himself as Valit was crawling on hands and knees deeper into the dense, mist-smoky reeds. He paused and twisted around to look through a thinning of the fog at the ghostly figure of Broaditch, black with muck and paled with mist, leaping and twisting in what seemed a violent dance with a flapping, clacking, living skeleton, the gleaming jaws snapping at his neck. Valit opened his mouth, then shut it, and kept on crawling without another glance behind into the stinking fern and reed …

  Broaditch, shuddering in his panic, conceived that the water serpent had transformed into this horror, reached blindly behind his back, staring into the fleshless face that gaped and grinned over his shoulder with empty eyes and flashing teeth, and, starved for breath, he staggered, vision ripping open, and his last thought was: so now he takes me, after all … And fell into unending darkness, fell through the misty, dim stuff of the world …

  He awakened and groaned: demons of the netherworld were jabbing their spears and daggers into his body. He knew this and so was surprised to see the moon still in the sky above the swaying reeds.

  He groaned and rolled over, plucking a sharp point from his side and another from his ample buttocks. Sticks, he thought, no, bones. Why, he’d fallen and crushed the skeleton that his fear had obviously animated.

  He groaned and sat up, sore and soggy with weariness and reeking of swamp. And at his age the muscles took longer to recover. He knew he’d be stiff for days.

  He looked around and listened, then probed the cracked skull at his feet with the toe of his shapeless, mucky boots.

  A fine omen, he said to himself. Anyway, where’s that foolish fellow? He’d wanted to learn about life, he’d said. Well, he was certainly finding out a few things.

  “Valit,” he called. He’d a hundred times rather have had Handler along than this peculiar, insinuating, sharp-tongued son.