Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon

by Richard Monaco

And then the door swung silently inwards and a little monk with a narrow, reddened face like (Parsival thought) a ferret, was tilting his neck around the jamb.

  “May you speak?” Parsival asked.

  The monk shook his head, and motioned the knight inside.

  Parsival followed him.

  “I’ll wait for you out here,” said Lego. “I have little taste for the monkish mysteries.”

  The knight followed the monk down a high, narrow corridor that suddenly sloped steeply upward. There was a single step so high they had to half climb to gain the incline.

  It must mean to have a humbling effect, he thought. The monk bounded, silently, up the extreme slope. Parsival followed feeling the strain in his legs.

  At the top they entered a square, windowless chamber. On what the knight took for a carved stone coffin sat a man he assumed would be the Abbott: bold-faced, middle-aged fellow with short arms and a razor thin nose. His eyes were lost in his cheekfolds and squinted brows.

  “Do you speak?” Parsival wondered.

  The face was a strange combination of ascetic and worldly: The full, purplish lips, contrasting the edged nose; the fleshiness of the face against the bony head and sharply pointed jaw. A fat-thin face the knight decided.

  “I speak,” the monk said, his voice high-pitched.

  “Did you expect me?”

  The Abbott smiled, for Abbott he was. “Did you say you were coming, Sir Knight?”

  Parsival smiled, scratched behind his ear, and took the situation in. “I expect mysteries,” he said. “Perhaps too often. Perhaps I miss them too much.”

  “Man is certainly a mystery. That such a divine and marvelous work should sink so deep in self-made mire.”

  Parsival sighed and nodded. He looked and there was nowhere to sit unless he were meant to perch on the coffin or whatever it was.

  “I despaired of my life,” he said. “I lived sealed behind a fortress of errors.”

  The Abbott nodded brightly. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “That is a good beginning,” he said. “You’ve got to remain despairing for much longer, however, if you hope for results.”

  “A mystery?” Parsival wondered.

  “Hardly that, my son. You clearly want to repair your life, not wash it away in a sea of prayer and meditation. But only when the tooth rages do we seek to pull it out.”

  Parsival thought about that. He scratched behind his other ear. “You may be right, Father,” he said. “And afterwards I may swim. Isn’t that so?”

  The monk smiled. He tilted his head to one side. “You might,” he agreed. “But you might merely drown.”

  “Do you have any suggestions?” Parsival wanted to know.

  “You came here for suggestions.” It was a statement to the possible question. Parsival nodded. Shrugged. Scratched again.

  “You had better start over, Sir Knight, don’t you think? You clearly missed your way.”

  Parsival nodded. “Yes, I took a wrong turning twenty odd years ago.” He closed his eyes to collect his thoughts. “I saw something, just this morning.”

  “Saw something?” The Abbott reached down into the seeming coffin, and Parsival realized it was hollow and open, the monk just braced on the thick edge. He came up with a small loaf of bread and golden goblets.

  “Maybe it was a mark on the trail,” Parsival continued. “Here,” said the Abbott. “Are you not thirsty?”

  Parsival went over and sipped the wine. It was sweet, red, scented with a spice. It burst with slow heat in his belly. “What signpost did you see, Knight? A vision?”

  Parsival shook his head. Had another sip. It seemed to strike him softly behind his eyes so that his sight was blurry and the windowless chamber, lit by oil lamps seemed suddenly brighter. The Abbott lost his outline, for an instant, and seemed just a softly covered shape without sharp features or certain edges. It was interesting. It was pleasant. He liked the wine.

  “No,” he replied, “not a sight… it was a feeling… something perfect and beautiful – a great solitary power filled me …” He drained the goblet. The floor seemed to tilt like the deck of a ship in a slow swell. He wanted to say more. The wine made it very easy and poetic. “What have you given me?” he wondered.

  “What have you asked for?” the Abbott returned.

  “Nothing yet… but to be resolved in my mind …”

  “The mind teases itself to confuse you. That is not what you are asking for, Sir Knight.” The depthless outline seemed to gather the unsteady shadows into itself so that the Abbott appeared to be a human-shaped hole in the dim chamber. “The mind can never, of its own working, be resolved.”

  The warmth stayed even as he swallowed more wine. The stone flooring remained tilted but didn’t shift.

  Strange drink, he thought. This is somehow like the mysteries of my younger days when I would wander into and out of portents at will…

  “I think I really hoped,” he said, expository, because there was no connection personally with a shadow, “I hoped that… somehow… I would find my way into a place without death in it.”

  The Abbott (such as he truly was) may have responded; he couldn’t be sure for a moment because of the strange drink and the tilting and the dimness.

  “What?” Parsival asked.

  “If I were you, Knight, I would try again.” said the Abbott sagely.

  Parsival nodded, half-hearing, setting down the goblet on the stone with a faint clink. He sighed and turned away. Shut his eyes. Felt what had to be the priest’s hand on his shoulder although he hadn’t been standing that close to him. Then felt what he was certain was a soft, deep, heavy blow in the center of his back that seemed to stun his heart. Frightened, he tried to open his eyes… couldn’t. Tried to move; couldn’t. Couldn’t feel the floor or his feet… nothingness…

  His mind was fast, lucid though he couldn’t feel his body… next he was standing on a fog-shrouded beach of chill-looking, gray, gritty, glassy sand, ice crusting the shoreline with massive, freezing surf crumbling just behind him. He felt nothing. The mist billowed and shook in the windblasts.

  What desolation, his mind said.

  Found himself moving inland though he couldn’t actually see his body, as if he were merely floating eyes. There were little creatures, furtive shadows in the mists, seemingly armed and savage… he had an impression they were, somehow formed from the fog and ice. He glimpsed their faces: long mustaches and oblique eyes which seemed to glare, reddish, feral… they moved constantly, seeming to melt in and out of substance as the fogs filled and shifted…

  Mist creatures? his mind wondered.

  He drifted inland, steadily as if the wind propelled him and he kept passing over the little creatures without really perceiving any purpose to their activities… he paused over a pit that seemed slashed from the harsh, frozen soil. Glimpsed three mutilated bodies laid out head-to-head at the bottom.

  Then the fog was gone and there were green fields all around: bright, tiny blue flowerets; clumps of spiny, twisted trees… he was rising now, soaring into a clear sky.

  He saw a line of people in mixed dress led by a single knight in red armor, too high to make out features, moving in single file, twisting, zigzagging as if following some unseen and needless path on that perfectly flat plain. He had an impression the leader in red was reading a map.

  Rising higher he discovered this was an island, vaguely rounded or heart-shaped: foglost shore, a green band surrounding the center that was just blurring, no cloud, no surface, as if his eyes simply failed to focus.

  Higher… higher… the isle was a spot on a vast, shrouded sea… a speck… gone…

  His eyes popped open and he was staring straight at the vaulted roof, flat on is back in the stone “coffin.”

  What? asked his mind. What?

  He sat up. Then stood, as if in an empty bath. The monk was watching him. The floor seemed level again.

  “What happened?” he wondered.

  The monk was across the
room by the entrance. “You lay down,” said the monk.

  Parsival blinked. His sight was clearer. He could see the round, thin-featured face quite well. The floor was firm. He heard a fly buzz near his ear and flicked his hand at it.

  “I thought I’d come here and be told something,” he murmured, climbing out of the tub-like artifact.

  “Told what?”

  “I don’t know.” He felt sober. Dull and sober. “I don’t really know why I came here.” Rubbed his face. “I just had a dream.”

  “Well, sleepers do dream,” the monk said, without emphasis. “Are you now awake?”

  The tall knight went over beside the little man. At the doorway he stood at the too-steep ramp. He had an impression that if he slipped he’d slide to the bottom like a child on a slicked board.

  “I suppose I’m just running away again,” he murmured.

  “Go back the way you came,” the monk said, as if giving casual directions.

  “Back home?”

  “No. The way you first went. Go back that way. It won’t be the same.”

  Parsival wondered if the Abbott meant he wouldn’t be the way he was when he first left his mother or if the road would now veer differently. Or both. Or neither. He reached for the man’s arm as he asked the question except the fellow had moved, slightly and silently, like a shadow. In the dimness he seemed to float back across the room to the coffin.

  Parsival felt too weary to follow or even go on talking. He turned towards the stairs. He didn’t want to look back and find the mystic had disappeared or shifted shape or something…

  Hours later Parsival and Lego were working their way back down, facing the sunset. The horizon hills cut a wedge into the speck of hot sungold that burned into the gathering clouds.

  “Aim always at the sun,” he remembered and smiled. Lego noticed it.

  “Something, my Lord?”

  “My wife’s father once gave me advice. An age ago when first I met her. I took it.”

  Lego grinned. He considered the matter. “Always a mistake,” he said.

  “Nay. It led me in circles. Her father told me to ride always into the sun and so I went east at dawn and west by dusk.” He chuckled and shook his head. “My error was finally riding straight. I came home and fell into misery.”

  “It is easy to find the lumps in the bedding,” Lego said, “but a man must make the best of his life. It passes like piss in a stream.”

  Parsival was looking at the sun. It was so perfect, he felt, beyond thinking. The way the colors toned and blended, melted the clouds into a twilight mystery of light and dark.

  “Bad cheese, my Captain,” he said, “is still bad. There’s no way to keep it on your stomach.”

  I’m going to do it again, he thought. I’ll get to aim at the sun again… He noticed something: a puff of dust down where the trail flattened into the valley itself. He read it at once.

  “Ah,” he said, “here comes the other side of chivalry.” Lego frowned leaning up toward his horses neck.

  “I was taught,” he said, “to heed the proverbs of the serfs but otherwise to keep my distance from them.”

  “And to be courteous to all.” Parsival added, grinning. “To trust no one. To break open heads. To defend the helpless. To war for the good to the gates of the Holy City itself.”

  “The proverbs never failed.”

  “Here’s one,” Parsival responded, watching the horses coming toward them out of the hoof dust. “trust not Greeks bearing gifts.”

  Lego pondered this. A Greek merchant had sold him a saddle once at a very good price. He supposed that could be like a gift.

  “Why not?” he wondered. Parsival shrugged. Considered. “Know you not the tale,” he replied, “of the knight Ulys who hid in a horse?”

  “Nay.”

  “A horse of wood. I heard it of a minstrel at court. Sir Ulys and his men hid in the horse which was left at the gate. When his enemies dragged it into their castle out they leaped and slew the lord and most of his men.”

  “Out from a wooden horse?”

  “So runs the tale.”

  “It was hollow as a cask?”

  “I imagine.”

  Lego turned over the idea. A few points occurred to him. “How long were they within the horse?” he asked at length. “I know not.”

  “Were it overlong, they’d have to void piss and shit within.” Parsival smiled and agreed. He was watching the riders come. “Tellers of tales,” he commented, “often leave a few pegs out of the bridge.”

  “What a stink that would be,” Lego posited, watching the riders. “Are these Greeks coming here?”

  “No. Knights of Arthur’s table. They intend to practice chivalry on me, I think.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “They’ll tell me if I say no to the king — which I have every right to do — great sorrow will be my fortune.”

  “Well, we all have had the lesson: be courteous to all, but fear everyone.”

  The riders were close enough to them now to see the glint of arms and armor. Between the heatshimmers and the dust the men seemed to be forming their substance out of some vague, intermediate stuff.

  “I have a proverb,” Parsival said. “If they press me too closely: Be not the lamb who bites the wolf.”

  Lego nodded and chuckled. He appreciated that. “They’ll shortly be nipped, my liege.”

  “Nay.” he said. “Not nipped.”

  Because he knew what he was going to do. It was suddenly clear. Mad, but clear. He smiled at himself.

  It was mad. He watched them coming and considered it. He felt a rush of laughter bubbling up within him instead of cold rage. He shook his head and kept grinning as the three knights reined the bulky chargers up in a jingle, clip-clop and clitter of arms.

  Parsival and Lego had already stopped. Captain Lego watched as his master dismounted, stood there and began stripping off his clothes and tossing them into the bushes until he stood in what amounted to a loin cloth.

  The mounted men opened their visors. The leader removed his helmet and set it over his saddlehorn. Lego saw that, indeed, these were the emissaries sent by the king. The lean, sour-faced, red-haired leader looked puzzled but determined.

  “Parsival,” he said, “what does this nonsense mean?”

  “It means I am mad,” the famous knight returned, “or a fool.”

  He kept on his sock-like buskins. He fell on his knees in the dust. “Are you angels of God?” he demanded.

  The leader raised both eyebrows. He didn’t like this much. He glanced at the other men.

  “Were we such,” he replied, “we would call you to heaven instead of to his majesty.”

  “A shrewd answer,” said Lego.

  “I don’t recall the rest,” Parsival said, standing up again. “What say you?” the knight wondered.

  “You’re made of shiny stuff,” Parsival told them, half smiling. “You must be angels after all.”

  “Enough of this,” said the wider knight. “Will you come to your lord or no?”

  “What makes a man a knight?” Parsival asked. Deadpan. He heard Lego guffaw up behind him.

  “Honor.” said the leader. “Have you forgotten, perhaps?”

  “Who makes a man a knight?”

  “The king to who —” started the second man then caught himself in fury. He didn’t enjoy being baited. Who would?

  “If you be not a knight within yourself, none can cause it from without,” overrode the leader of the three. “Do you mean to mock us Parsival?” Parsival shook his head. He wasn’t quite smiling. He looked past them now at the sundazzle on the fields where the dust of their passage was still puffing out steadily and thinning away.

  “Nay,” he answered him. “I mock nothing. I will start afresh. I want the king to make me a knight again, from without. Perhaps it will take away the curse of the first time.”

  “Curse?” The second, the wide one said. “The pride of heaven, a curse?”

/>   Lego chuckled, looked down and couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. “That’s good,” he said. “The pride of heaven is good.”

  Parsival remounted. He kicked his horse lightly and rode past them without looking back. Lego followed. The knights watched them go, dustgouts spurting under the hoof impacts.

  “We will follow at a distance,” the leader said. “I think he’s mad,” said the second man.

  The third, short and wide with a bull-like face, had another view:

  “It’s his cunning and craft. No more. He means to deceive us.”

  “What matter?” said the leader, thoughtfully stroking his long nose with his forefinger, squinting. “He’s no man to provoke. We’ll follow at our leisure.”

  GAWAIN

  He watched the backs of the mismatched men at arms and bandits marching behind John of Bligh, who was now riding a dull gray, one-eyed, one-eared horse that he’d decided perfectly represented the half-blind, half-deaf Christian churchmen of the world. He’d announced this, greatly to Gawain’s amusement and the men’s incomprehension.

  They were several days march away from Parsival’s castle (where they’d left him standing naked, holding the spear with their comrade sprawled at his feet) but still way up in the rugged Welsh highlands, following the road to the sea and the only settlement resembling a city north of England itself. It was perpetually misty here. The last two days it had drizzled steadily and was chilly as autumn. The men were unhappy and getting hungry. They’d been promised loot and fresh converts – which meant women.

  Here the fog was rising and thickening as if the earth were coldly smoldering. Looking from the rear, John on the gray horse was no more than a bulging and thickening of the mist itself and the men seemed to be following him into increasing insubstantiality.

  Disgusted with them and himself, Gawain was half inclined to just turn back the way they’d come. There was no way to ride very far from the road here on that jagged mountain ridge so you only had two choices of direction. He decided to wait until they reached the lowlands. He knew his hope was probably vain. He’d always been a realist – until that terrible wound had cut him off from life and love, not so many years ago. It had taken months for his face to heal as much as it ever could, and before he left to ride off into brooding fury and isolation, he’d curse those who’d saved him.