"I've brought them in, Nuncle," the man shouted. "For all the bleeding good they'll be. 'Twill all be for nought, I fear me."
Piers followed the man's eyes and saw at the head of a long table, propped up by pillows on a dais, the fisherman who had directed them to the castle. The fisherman wore a gold circlet on his forehead, a crown. With a slight wave, the fisherman king beckoned to Parsifal and waved him into a seat beside the dais. Parsifal took his seat, and Piers assumed his position behind Parsifal's chair.
"I am glad that you've come," the fisherman king said. His voice was grainy and weak. Ladies and courtiers who were gathered all around looked at him anxiously. One lady, who had an air of authority, waved an arm toward the great open door at the other end of the hall, and then began the strangest procession Piers had ever seen.
First, through the door walked a page, about Piers's age, carrying a long lance. As they drew close, Piers saw with horror that the point of the lance was streaming with blood, as if the blood were welling out of the lance itself. The fisherman king closed his eyes and looked away, then nodded. The page gently pointed the lance at the fisherman king's upper thigh. Looking hard, Piers thought he could see blood on the fisherman king's clothing there. Then, with a firm thrust, the page pushed the point of the lance into the king's leg. Fresh blood welled up from a wound, the king grimaced with pain, and Parsifal started to rise from his chair in alarm, but then the king relaxed. The page withdrew, and the king seemed to breathe more easily.
Before Piers had time to wonder about what he had just witnessed, two young girls came whirling wildly into the room. They seemed to be dressed entirely in flowers, and flower petals flew from their fingertips as they danced. A sweet perfume filled the hall. The girls left a shower of petals on the fisherman king and then disappeared behind him. Following on their heels, but walking much more sedately, came four regal ladies in matching white robes, each carrying a lit candelabrum.
Parsifal, who had reluctantly settled himself back in his chair leaned toward Piers. Piers inclined his head. "Do you think they'll explain all this later?" Parsifal whispered.
"I don't know," Piers replied. He was urgently curious himself. He wanted desperately to ask for an explanation.
Parsifal took a deep breath, then whispered, "If they don't tell us tonight, then tomorrow I will have to ask." Piers nodded vigorously. It was a good compromise, he decided, between good manners and good sense.
The ladies with the candelabra stood on the dais with the fisherman king, and two more ladies appeared, these in gowns that shone like silver, and they each bore a long, glittering knife. Piers could not look away from the two knives. At a glance he knew that they were perfectly balanced and from the glint on the edge he decided that they were sharp enough to slice a man's finger to the bone before he'd even felt the cut. They shone more brightly than any steel he'd ever seen at his father's forge, and he realized with a start that these knives must be made of silver. The hafts of the knives, or at least the part that showed beneath the ladies' hands, were curiously wrought with delicate metalwork that Piers longed to examine more closely. Had Parsifal not decided to ask for explanations in the morning, Piers would have been unable to restrain his need to know more about these brilliant blades.
Finally, one last lady entered, bearing something on an earthen tray. Piers stared, but he could not tell exactly what it was: the woman carried it on a tray as if it were a vessel of some sort, but it seemed to Piers more like a simple stone, roughly and irregularly cut, of the sort that anyone might find tossed aside by workmen at a quarry. The lady laid the stone on the table before the fisherman king, who sighed, looked once at the object, then lay back on his pillow and went to sleep.
Parsifal and Piers looked once more into each other's eyes, though neither spoke. The rest of the assembled company began to cry, sobbing softly. There was now food on the table, which had simply appeared when the stone was placed there. Parsifal hesitated, but no one made any movement to eat, and so, after waiting another moment, he took some food and quietly ate while everyone else wept.
Perhaps there was magic in the food, or else in the perfume from the scattered flowers, but Piers could barely hold his eyes open after the feast was finished. Neither he nor Parsifal attempted to discuss the strange sights they had witnessed, but instead both fell heavily into their beds, and when Piers opened his eyes, the sun had already risen.
He sat up and rubbed his eyes. There was no sound but a faint whistling of wind through chinks in the castle wall. Piers stretched and threw back his covers. The fire that had warmed the room when he had gone to sleep was nothing but cold, gray ashes, and Piers dressed hurriedly and threw his warm traveling cloak around himself to ward off the chill.
"Is it already day?" Parsifal asked, sitting up.
"Yes," Piers said. "And no one has come in to build the fire in the room this morning. Strange notion of hospitality they have in this castle."
"Strange customs all around," Parsifal said, swinging his feet to the cold stone floor. "Let's get dressed and go find someone to ask about last night."
"Yes, let's," Piers said. Parsifal pulled on his warm clothes and then, because they didn't know if they would be coming back to the room, Piers helped him put on his armor and belt on his sword. They left the room together.
"Hello!" Parsifal called. There was no answer. He called again, and still got no reply. The castle was as still as a crypt. "Is no one awake yet?" Parsifal asked. They found their way to the courtyard, which was empty, and from there found the stables. There were their own horses, but no others. The castle was completely deserted.
"Maybe everyone's out hunting or ... or something outside the walls," Piers suggested tentatively. They saddled their horses and led them out of the stables, their ears straining for any sound that they did not make themselves. They heard none.
"Let's go see," Parsifal said, and they rode out the castle gates. Immediately the portcullis slammed shut behind them, and the great oaken doors closed. Piers and Parsifal turned in their saddles and watched, amazed and uncomprehending.
"I told them ye'd be worth naught!" shouted a voice. It was the man in motley who had taken them to the banquet room. He stood on the wall over the gate, looking at them from the battlements. "Why couldn't ye ask, ye blithering gapeseeds? Why wouldn't ye say the words, even? Ye had it in yere hands to bring it all back to rights, but ye said nothing! Ye said nothing when ye saw the lance—tell me, ye wise fools, when ye've ever seen sich a lance as that? Ye wouldn't ask about the knives of Trebuchet, and then—ah, asses that ye are!—ye wouldn't ask even when ye saw the Grail itself!"
"The Grail?" Parsifal shouted back. "What is that?"
"Shut up!" the man screamed, dancing with rage. "Do ye think I've time for yere questions now? Why couldn't ye ask when it was time? Why couldn't ye even ask about King Anfortas? Ah, but ye never even knew his name did ye, the noblest king ever born, and do you know why ye didn't know his name? Because ye didn't ask!"
"I did not think it polite to be forever asking questions," Parsifal said. "Of course I wanted to know."
"Nay! 'Tis a lie! Had ye wanted to know, ye would have asked! The one who asks no questions only wants others to think him clever! Fools! Blocks! Fatheaded dolts!" At that, the man disappeared behind the wall.
With a low moan, Parsifal spurred his horse and began to gallop along the stream, around the hill, back toward the pond where they had first seen the fisherman king. Piers followed, but no one was there. "No!" Parsifal shouted. He wheeled his horse and raced back toward the castle. But when they came back around the hill, the castle was gone. Only a field of thin, early spring grass was in the place where the castle had been.
Parsifal was silent and brooding, and in truth Piers was glad of it. He was in no mood to talk either. A huge weight had descended on him, and everything he looked at seemed edged in a dark outline that he had never noticed before. He sensed, in a way that he had never sensed anything before, that
a great opportunity had just presented itself, and he had let it go. His mother had always made the life of a page sound so splendid, but it was not splendid to fail. And though he could not say exactly how he had done it, he knew he had failed.
Ahead of him, Parsifal stopped suddenly, cocked his head as if to listen, then walked his horse forward. Piers heard nothing at first, but then made out the sound of a woman crying. They rounded a bend on the forest path, and came upon a woman with long, tangled hair, mounted on a staggering, spavined old mare. The woman's clothes were little more than rags, and huge holes gaped on every side, revealing red, chapped flesh. When Parsifal rounded the bend, though, the woman sat up straight and tried vainly to pull her torn garment around her to cover herself. She must have known how futile was this pathetic effort at modesty, but she tried all the same.
Parsifal slowly approached the woman, reaching behind him to his saddlebag as he rode. "My lady," he said. His voice was gentle. "Permit me to give you this cloak. I am afraid you will be cold."
The woman shook her head abruptly. "No!" she whispered. "Please go away! If he sees you, he'll kill you."
"I don't know who you mean," Parsifal said. "But it little matters. Here, take the cloak."
"I cannot! If he sees that I've taken a cloak from someone, from another man, then—"
The woman broke off as a knight in ill-kept armor galloped madly out of the forest. "Aha!" the knight shouted. "I've caught you again! Consorting with another of your paramours!"
"No, no," the woman gasped, sobbing.
"Do you know this woman?" Parsifal asked the furious knight.
"Know her? She is my wife!" the knight screamed. Through his open visor, Piers could see froth on the man's lips.
"If so, you should take better care of her," Parsifal said grimly. "She is cold, and she has little to wear."
"I make no doubt you've gazed your fill at her, along with every other man who meets her. It is no more than she wants! She is a trollope, a wanton! She is friend to every man but her own husband!"
"No, I swear it is not true," the woman said pitifully. "It was all innocent!"
"You gave your lover my ring, didn't you?" the knight shouted. "The ring I had myself given you just two days before!"
"I swear I did not, my love," the woman cried. "He took it from my finger! He was a youth, ill-mannered and too foolish to know what he was doing!"
Parsifal was forgotten as the knight raged at his wife. "But you admit that he kissed you! Do you not?"
"Yes, my lord, he did. But he was too fast for me. I could not stop him!"
"Ha!" the knight snapped. He turned back to Parsifal. "Have you ever heard such a story? She claims that while she was awaiting me in a grand pavilion, set with a feast for my dinner, a strange knight came upon her, ate of my feast, kissed her, and took my ring from her finger. And in all this she was innocent! Doxy!"
The heaviness that had pressed on him all morning became almost unbearable to Piers as he looked more carefully at the ragged woman and, with difficulty, recognized the lady that Parsifal had encountered on their second day after leaving King Arthur. Parsifal reached into his saddlebags and drew out the ring that he had taken from the woman that day. "This ring?" he asked.
The knight screamed with inhuman fury and threw himself at Parsifal, drawing his long sword as he spurred his horse. Parsifal did not move until the knight was almost on him; then he caught the man's sword arm in one hand and grasped the man's armor with the other and threw him from his saddle. Then Parsifal dismounted deliberately and drew his own sword. "The woman speaks the truth," he said slowly. "I was young and did not understand about women. I meant her no harm, and I did nothing more than what she has said."
The knight scrambled to his feet, and his sword flashed toward Parsifal, but Parsifal parried it and stepped away. "The woman has been true to you, I say. I was a fool and made a mistake."
The knight attacked again and was turned aside again. He said fiercely, "And for that mistake you shall die."
"Maybe. Or perhaps you shall die for your mistake. I am in no mood to endure one such as you." Parsifal began to level his own attack. Everywhere the knight moved, Parsifal was there with a flashing sword or a heavy fist. Within five minutes he had knocked the strange knight down a dozen times. "Have you treated your wife this way ever since that day?" The knight did not answer, but Parsifal continued as if he had said yes. "That has been nine months, friend. I would kill a man for treating a dog in such a manner for so long. Have you any final words?"
The knight flailed weakly at Parsifal, who knocked his blade aside with a careless wave of his free hand and then struck a crashing blow on the knight's helm that sent him stumbling to the path.
"Madam, do you want me to kill this cur?" Parsifal said, raising his sword over his head.
"No! Please, no!"
"Why not?" Parsifal asked, his voice cold.
"I love him!"
Parsifal lowered his arm and looked at the woman. "Then you are a fool, madam. But for your sake, I will spare him." He looked back at the kneeling knight. "What is your name, you pig vomit?"
"I am Duke Orilus, and this is my wife, Lady Jeschute."
"Well, Duke Orilus, you are a vicious beast, and now you are a vicious beast who has been beaten. Know now that your wife was faithful to you and that you still breathe only because of her love. Get up." Orilus staggered to his feet, and Parsifal threw him roughly back into his saddle.
"Go to King Arthur's court, to the lady whom Sir Kai struck, and do honor to her. Then tell your story to the king, and tell it true, or I will hear, and I will hunt you down and kill you with my hunting spears, like the mad swine that you are. Go!"
Duke Orilus and Lady Jeschute began to ride slowly away, and Parsifal looked over his shoulder at Piers. "Go with them, Pierre. I want no more to do with pages." And then Parsifal leaped on his horse and rode away, and Piers was left without a master, without a position, without a dream, and a sorrow like none he had ever known settled on his shoulders and he wept.
VI. Malchance, Obie, and Obilot
Duke Orilus, Lady Jeschute, and Piers rode southwest toward Camelot, but a chance-met traveler told them that the king and his knights had gone to observe the Easter feast at Winchester, so they turned due south instead. For most of the ride, Piers was lost in his own somber reflections, but he couldn't help noticing his companions to some degree. By the time they found King Arthur's camp, Piers was amazed to see that Orilus and Jeschute had forgiven each other everything and were behaving like newlyweds. They made him feel ill.
Duke Orilus had no trouble gaining an audience with the king, and so for the second time, Piers found himself in the presence of the hero of England, wishing that he were elsewhere. Duke Orilus knelt before the king and said, "My liege, I come as I have been sent."
"Sent by whom?" the king asked.
"I know not, my liege. It was a red knight, of surpassing strength and skill. He has sent me here first to do honor to a lady, the lady who was struck by Sir Kai."
"Oh," King Arthur said. "Another one." The news clearly did not please him.
A knight with a wild red beard was sitting beside the king, and at Orilus's words, he looked up with surprise. "Eh? What's the tale here?"
King Arthur glanced at the knight. "Lady Connoire," he said. "While you were up north, she and Kai had a, ah, disagreement. She struck Kai, and he struck her back."
"Kai hit her?" the knight asked. "Was he drunk?"
"I was as surprised as you, nephew." The king glanced behind the red-bearded knight at a squire. "Terence, do you know where the Lady Connoire is?"
"I'll find her, sir. Bring her here?"
Arthur nodded, then looked back at the red-bearded knight. "As luck would have it, a country fellow was here wanting to be made a knight and he saw Kai do the deed. Well, that fellow—Peredur, or something like that—went and got himself some red armor. A few months later we got a couple of knights at court who had been
defeated by the red knight and sent by him to do honor to Lady Connoire. Put Kai in a black mood for a week."
"I'll bet," the red-bearded knight said, grinning.
The king sighed. "I do wish the fellow—Parzi-something—would stop sending his used opponents to Lady Connoire, though. Dash it, what was his name?"
Piers, who had been standing behind Lady Jeschute, stepped into the open and bowed deeply. "Your highness?"
The king looked at him with surprise. "Yes, lad?"
"The knight you're thinking of—his name is Parsifal."
The red-bearded man leaped to his feet. "Parsifal?" he asked quickly.
King Arthur raised his eyebrows. "What is it, Gawain?"
Piers gasped. This man was the great Sir Gawain, of whom so many tales were told! To look on Gawain was almost as overwhelming as to look on Arthur himself.
"I may know the fellow," Sir Gawain said. "But it's been years since we met, in ... in a different country. We wrestled each other one night."
Piers nodded quickly. "Yes, sir. He told me that. He said that he met a knight in ... in a different country, as you said, and that they wrestled and then he gave the knight some directions. Was that you, sir?"
"It was," Sir Gawain said. "And he came to become a knight after all, did he?"
King Arthur had been gazing intently at Piers. "Say, I know that red hat. Aren't you the page who brought Sir Ither's challenge to me?"
Piers knelt. "Yes, sire. I did so unwillingly."
"Yes, I remember that. Have you been with this Parsifal since then?"
"Yes, your highness. I was with him when he saved Queen Conduiramour and the Castle Belrepeire, and I was with him when he defeated Duke Orilus. He is, I think—" Piers hesitated, then continued with conviction—"When he is knighted, he will be a great knight."
"Then someone must find him and tell him to come and be knighted," King Arthur said mildly. "I wonder, Gawain, if—"
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