“Rest and we’ll speak later,” he called down. “Else you may object to my point.” He meant his sword. They got it. He smiled, because he was, after all, their host. “Give me your message,” he said, “from my sovereign liege. Then wait upon yourselves.”
“We expected a more gracious —” one began to say. Parsival cut him off.
“Enough of this babble,” he snarled, “my head aches with it.”
“King Arthur calls you to service,” the red-haired, long faced leader snarled back.
“Ah ha. For my singing?”
“Will you say nay to him?” the burly one wanted to know.
“I agree to attend upon the king and sing holy chants. My fighting is off-pitch these days.” Out of the mode, he thought.
He pushed back from the deepest windowslit and let himself sink back into the bed.
The next thing Layla will find me here and my torments will mount… I need no summons to spill blood. Yet I’ll go to him and speak it to his face… He yawned and rubbed his eyes. I’ll strike only who first strikes me… if I cannot run away… Shut his eyes and tried again to concentrate on what had happened that morning.
“First I was fucking that lady and she made sounds like a pig which is what I’ve come to,” he whispered aloud.
My life is a barnyard…
He lost focus. Sleep lapped at his thoughts and there was a flutter of darkness, a lapse of sound and time… and then he tensely jerked awake again.
“Christ,” he whispered, “fucking and then set upon by Gawain and those witless …” Sighed, feeling sorry for Gawain. Sighed again, feeling sorry for everybody.
When I sleep all is real, he thought, when I wake all is real… what would happen if they came together?
He brought himself back again to the point where he’d expected to die and tried to recapture the… what? The floating up? The widening? The blast of light? Tried to bring it back. Held his breath. Imagined his soul was soaring among the angels…was that dreaming? Was it both?
He was still just lying there with a headache. Tried to calm himself deeply, asked God to bring that lost moment back. Prayed with all the humble sincerity and simplicity he could muster. Waited… fell asleep again… shook awake with a worse headache.
He sighed.
“Everything slips away,” he told heaven or just the vaulted ceiling. The way his childhood had slipped away. Which he really always missed the most. Maybe he’d lost the Grail, maybe he hadn’t; but he knew he’d lost his childhood and that had been the most real of all places, in his memory it was all one seamless summer, dappled fields awash with pure dazzle and the scent of rich, ripe sweetness… endless time… energy and interest without bottom… as if he’d wandered in and out of time like a wounded angel.
He shut his eyes.
I don’t want to be young again, he thought. I just want to find those days again and walk in them now…
Opened his eyes. Sunbeams slanted across the fine dust in the air giving the light golden substance. He imagined the fanning brilliance was a bridge and that he could make himself small and weightless and ascend that span of light and follow it to mysterious golden realms. A daydream. But it hurt. Because he remembered lying there thirty years before watching the dustmotes. He believed there were small, misty, effortless beings who fed on sunlight. He used to imagine their world where clouds were solid as earth.
By Saint Stephen’s nether eye, he thought, I cannot rest… He blinked and the chamber was just dull stone and sunlight again. No magic kingdoms of air…
He heard a footstep outside the room.
“Who’s that?” he demanded, afraid it was his wife. A neutral female voice responded:
“Marga, my Lord.”
He pictured her: young, slim, freckled, nervous.
“Marga,” he said, “go and fetch my man Captain Lego. Tell him to ready two good horses. Tell him to cinch and bit himself for a long journey.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
He had the idea and instantly approved it: get away without having to deal with Arthur’s emissaries or his family.
He was out of bed and getting ready in one movement. He splashed water on his face, took a drink from a mug of honey wine he kept in the niche by his bed. It had to be nearly noon now, he decided.
He could reach the broken hills by sunset this time of year. An easy ride. Just himself and Lego. Men without women. No apples to bite; no sweet fruit of doom.
“Now where are you off to, you bastard?” Layla inquired from the doorway. She wasn’t shouting anymore he noted, just simmering ferocity. If he didn’t stir her, he hoped she wouldn’t boil over.
“I must heed my liege lord’s summons,” he lied.
“Ha, ha,” she said in that tone that was not encouraging. “Why do I doubt you?”
He paused, halfway to the doorway, watchful. “I will return as soon as I —”
“Spare me the list of foods I never eat. Return when you will or never. You are no husband to me.”
He brushed past her now, heading into the corridor. The air was cool there. He didn’t want to leave on a bad note. He tried again:
“I would like best to be a good father.”
“You were too late to the feast,” she said.
“Yes, but I’ve come,” he said, pausing in the dimness, looking back into the room. The sunlight angled behind her, falling just short of where she stood so that she seemed a dark outline, depthless as a distant shape in the evening.
She was shaking her head. She was thinking about how three months ago she had been ready to fall in love with him again.
It was the spring, she thought. I can’t help being a fool in the spring…
They’d gone to the little lake and swum and made love despite the nightchill. Talked about taking a trip together to the seacoast with their daughter… let themselves dream a future for a little while; then Sir Gaf and his family arrived and settled in and the weather went cool and rainy and the mood got lost somewhere…
She sighed.
“Too late,” she said. “Too late. I will not trust you again, Parsival.”
“Let me teach my son to trust me,” he said. “Let him attend me and go where I go for some days.” He was thinking out loud.
“And even though you tied him to your mount,” she said, from the depthless image that was herself, “I ween he would chew himself free from you like a snared wolf.”
He considered that. A feeling sank in him that almost forced tears from his eyes.
He swallowed, without a voice from the moment, Layla knew she’d hit home and said nothing more.
LAYLA
Next Morning
In the first grayish vagueness of pre-dawn Layla awoke because the bed sagged and a man grunted and breathed too hard.
For a moment she thought it was her husband and was mildly annoyed, thinking he’d come to try and apologize once again. She was curled to one side; felt a hand stroking her bare belly under the light summer satin coverlet. She brushed at it and twisted away.
The hand followed and next a wiry beard was pricking her neck and she inhaled Gaf’s sour-milk smelling breath.
She pushed him off as she sat up, big masses of pillows behind her. When they moved the thin canopy poles swayed. The bed was old, she tangentially noted, and needed some repair.
“What do you want here?” she asked, almost snarled.
He knelt on the fluffy, crackly mattress wearing a puffy, dun-colored robe. Where it parted she could see his genitals, swaying. She’d seen them before. With the sun coming up, she had no desire for the view in blunt daylight.
“I want what you have granted me before,” he declared, voice thick with (she thought) either drink or heat. His member seemed, she noted, uncertain. She remembered him topping her two nights ago, crushed down under his weight, feeling him poke at her until he found the place, at last.
“I’ll grant you leave to go,” she said.
“Aha,” he said. “Come to m
e, my sweetness.” Knelt himself forward, tipping the bed like a boat.
She got out on the far side and tossed the sheet up over him. While he lashed at it, struggling to get free, she simply left the chamber, saying, over her shoulder:
“Return to your wife and mother, Sir.”
“Bitch dog,” he called after her, catching in the sheet so that he knelt out of the high bed, cracking both knees on the tiled floor, the thin rug offered little protection so that the hurt Parsival had given him was doubled into blinding agony. He yelled, without words this time. Layla was gone.
HAL
An hour later, the sun streaming in everywhere, King Arthur’s three emissaries were washing their faces from the bowls held by servants in another wing of the medium-sized castle. The slit windows faced east and looked across the morning fields that seemed to shimmer in sheer freshness.
Sir Gaf hobbled in, leaning on an undrawn sword for a crutch, darkbearded face sweaty with pain.
“The great coward has fled,” he announced, too-loud. “He fled me and you as well.”
“What’s this?” wondered the red-haired, long-faced leader who stood shirtless, water dripping from his face. “Who fled?”
“Great coward Parsival,” Gaf snarled and winced. “The cuckold has run.”
“Cuckold?” the stocky, olive complexioned knight said, looking up from where he was rinsing his mouth and spitting into a bowl.
There were two servants attending, both male and about fifteen, pages-in-training loaned to Parsival’s household by a noble neighbor some ten miles south. One was small with a deformed upper lip and slight limp; the other was stocky, strong, flaxen-haired, blue- eyed and murmured to the other, smaller fellow:
“There be more cuckolds in this castle than flies on cheese.” The other smirked, bobbed his head, nervously.
“Aye, Henry,” he whispered back, “and this one’s the captain of them.”
“And Parsival the King.”
At the same time Gaf was saying:
“Track him and kill him, as I will myself so soon as I am healed of my hurts.”
The stocky knight made two fists and stared at his leader. “You see, Alinn,” he said, “we should have gone straight to —”
“He cannot have gone far,” Sir Alinn of the red hair cut in. “Dress and we’ll eat as we ride.” Looked at Gaf. “Look you, fellow, say cuckold all you please, for any man may be deceived; but say not coward of a knight second only to, maybe, Lancelot. Pray you never meet him in anger.”
Gaf glowered at him, then limped out, sword click-clicking down the stone corridor, echoing as he struggled away in silent fury.
“Must we slay him?” the thin, third man asked, from where he was now urinating into a copious bedpan. Sir Alinn was rubbing his long nose, thoughtfully.
“His Majesty wishes us to give him every chance to see reason,” he yawned and said. Belched. “And killing such a fellow is not lightly contemplated.”
“Well then?” asked the stocky, dark knight. Alinn shrugged.
“We follow,” he said. “We keep talking sense to him.”
“And finally,” the third said, “we talk with a mace blow for I fear his ears are stopped.”
Alinn sighed and shrugged again, gesturing to the pages for the jug of buttermilk Henry the blue-eyed Saxon held. Took it and swigged, staining his chin with the pale richness.
“What think you of your lord Parsival, boy?” He wanted to know.
“A famous knight,” he replied.
“Ah, yes. Still, why do you imagine he refuses his service to his liege lord?”
Henry shrugged, uncomfortable.
“I know not Sir Parsival’s mind, Sir,” he said, creasing his wide, normally smooth forehead. He was looking at the buttermilk left in the bowl Alinn still held, absently. “I know it is a great offense to refuse service.”
The knight nodded. Noticed the young man staring covertly. “Would you like some? he offered the bowl which Henry (or Hal as friends called him) took at once, without ceremony, and gulped down major swallows, amusing Alinn and the others. “Don’t they feed you here, boy?” Alinn asked. “You seem stout enough.”
Coming up from air, Henry answered:
“Yes, Sir. Why they set a good table here.” The three knights were grinning now while the other page rolled his eyes. “This buttermilk is rich and tangy. My friend Lohengrin likes to say I have an understanding of food.”
The stocky knight guffawed.
“If you ever come to be knighted,” he said, “on your arms you’ll wear a goblet crossing a stuffed goose.”
They laughed and then Alinn commanded:
“We’re off within the hour so ready yourselves.” To Hal: “Pack us food for the road and mind you, eat it not before you deliver it.” Grinning. “Not even a mouse’s nibble, do you hear me, boy.”
PARSIVAL
His armor was packed on the mule tethered to Lego’s saddle. The beast swayed reluctantly behind the mount. Parsival rode in front at a walk up the twisting narrow trail. He felt neutral. He planned to stop at the top and nap for an hour. The rocking of the big dappled gray horse was soothing.
A wall of huge clouds was slowly starting to cut off the sky. The sun was arching down at two o’clock and would soon be swallowed by the massive greenish dark thunderheads. He could see distant flickers of lightning around the immense bases. They were still too far away for the atmosphere to tense yet. He reckoned they were still hours away.
“My Lord,” Lego said, behind him.
“Yes, Lego?”
“Why did you bring your knightly gear?” Parsival didn’t look back, replying:
“You mean if I intend to retire from the field?”
“Aye” Lego could have happily dispensed with the balky, stumpy mule.
“Mayhap,” Parsival said, “I will offer my steel to the saints.”
Or maybe I mean just to do something dramatic… he thought. I have to be careful of that, of mere gestures…
“To a new life.”
“I have not worn out my old one, my Lord.”
“My new life. You are to be a witness.” Parsival glanced back. “Then you can go home with the testimony.”
“My Lord …” Lego began.
“Yes?”
The captain brooded now. Reached back and jerked the mule’s halter. “Stinking dung!” he said without venom. “My Lord, you ought to have …”
“Yes? I ought to have struck my son?” Parsival looked back at his companion. He respected Lego very much and was willing to consider any advice, at this point.
“Maybe,” Lego knitted his thick eyebrows together. “Yet the beaten horse but strays the further.”
Parsival nodded.
From here he could see the long valley and his home in the distant mist. He thought he understood why monks choose high places; not so much as to see God, but to escape from men. He already felt the events of the morning had happened years before, and were melting into memory’s mists…
“You’re just a witness, Captain Lego,” he reminded him. “Once you’ve seen what you see, you will return alone.”
“Hah. Give your sense to Frenchmen, jokes to Germans, calmness to Italians.” He thought a moment. “Soap to the infidels.”
Parsival smiled appreciatively. “What’s this advice, Captain Lego?”
“Only give to those incapable of receiving.” Parsival chuckled.
“If they tried to take, Captain Lego,” he added.
Lego smiled and spat into the dust. He had two daughters; no sons. He scratched around his beard. Went back to thinking about getting the youngest married. At fifteen she was ripe, he thought, for trouble, and she ate too much. Always chewing down bread and honey. He always said she should have been a nobleman’s child. As soon as he came back from this expedition he would look into the situation. He nodded to himself.
He might have thought it better to have had sons except for his lord’s example.
To get his mind on something else, he asked:
“Where are we bound?” Because Parsival had been so mysterious. He seemed to be dodging Arthur’s emissaries but there had to be more to it.
“These seem dark sayings,” the soldier observed. “But dawn will come apace,” the knight told him.
The hilltop was rocky, barren except for stringy bushes and pale, spiny-looking flowers. Parsival realized just how elevated his castle actually was because they hadn’t climbed more than a mile and suddenly they were above the tree line.
The monastery was just ahead. It had massive walls and timbered roofs. The stones were grey and wet-looking. A strange silence, Lego thought, seemed to infuse the place. No chanting, no bells, no barking dogs, no voices on the breeze.
“My Lord,” he asked, as they dismounted in the courtyard and watered the horses at the trough.
“Yes, Lego?” Parsival was scanning the building, the slit windows showing nothing but shadow.
“Do you mean to enlist here?” Lego wondered.
“I mean to ask a question,” was the knight’s reply. “What I do depends on the answer.”
Lego rested his arms on his mount’s saddle. The late sun was still hot on his face.
“Mayhap, you will speak to the stones here, my Lord,” he offered.
Parsival went to the door. It was iron with brass overlapping straps. Slightly polished and rustless. He pushed hard. It stood solid. He drew his sword and knocked with the hilt. The door must have been hollow because it rang like a gong, rich, resonant as if the whole dull building were ringing sweet and deep.
Parsival just stood there, leaning into the sound. His memories were haunted. Pictures came: a field of bright misty-silver grass and milky flowers like recrudescent dreams. And across the gleaming field, a wall of translucent stone and a crystal gate that was just opening; movement beyond a haze of gold, figures that might have been dressed in golden armor moved and seemed somehow portentous, mysterious, profound…He shook his head as if to clear it. The sound was dying away now.
“Well,” said Lego, “that bell should stir them. It would bestir the dead.”
Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon Page 4
