Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon

by Richard Monaco

  “I must long? Should I force myself?”

  He kept his grip on the two forearms. The long, thick fingers closed tighter around his shoulder blade and he winced.

  “Be not like my wooden hand, boy,” the knight almost snarled.

  “I see,” Lohengrin said, resisting the vise-like pain.

  Gawain snorted, furious. “You see no better than the eye in my ass,” he said. He jerked his hands away.

  “What do —”

  But Gawain cut him off:

  “I am forever sliced away from all I long for, boy. Like an old man cut off by age alone from a love that seizes him too late and can never be.” He raised his wooden hand to his face and hooked the carved fingers under the cowl. “A hopeless longing. Out of season. Pointless.” His breath hissed in and out. “Be not like my wooden hand.”

  “Yes,” said Lohengrin, wincing under the grip. “I see.”

  Gawain released him and at the same moment pulled back the cowl and showed his face.

  “No,” he said. “Now you see.”

  He did. He blinked both eyes a couple of times and then Gawain covered his face again. Lohengrin knew better than to even comment on the ruined features.

  “Gawain, I cannot make myself feel what I do not.” He was annoyed with himself for trying to explain or apologize.

  “No, you cannot,” the famous knight said. “But it will come to you too late.”

  The young man kept seeing the afterimage of that sliced head: the exposed teeth, the halved left eye, the chipped jaw, the missing ear and planed temple; the almost beautiful right side.

  “So,” Lohengrin said, “you long to be healed.”

  Gawain shook his head. “I cannot be healed.”

  Lohengrin looked back at Hal and Jane by the fire. Jane was looking over at him and Gawain; really at him. Hal was watching her, trying to keep her attention, jealous of her focus – only Gawain read it.

  “What then?” Lohengrin wondered. Gawain was already walking away from them, heading back towards the village. “What do you long for, Sir Gawain?”

  The famous knight made no reply. Walked into the dense sea mist. Melted away.

  In this place, he considered, a few steps away all are ghosts… like the Greek knight who went to the land of the dead to question shadows and got mist for reply…

  The young man just stood there, staring at the couple by the fire. Jane was smiling at him and saying something. Hal looked alert and uncomfortable and was still not eating.

  What is it they feel? he asked himself, probing, thinking about Gawain too. He reviewed things he had felt: helplessly aching with need, as when the woman in the tent had him in thrall; walking around with an uncontrollable erection under his codpiece, looking for a peasant girl or maybe just a shady bush to relieve himself behind; thinking about a woman he really wished he could fuck… That must be longing… Unless they meant the Chivalry and pure love people talked about, the worship of women. Some women.

  He tried to imagine what that love was about: he loved his mother, he decided, because she was nice to him; his father frustrated and infuriated him so he certainly didn’t love him and, anyway, he wasn’t a woman.

  Frowning and annoyed, he went back to the fire and sat down next to Jane, facing his friend.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  He shook his head. Looked at Hal. “Do you long for her?” he wanted to know.

  The stocky Saxon went bright red under his faded, wheat-colored hair. “Lohengrin, you great ass!”

  “I mean,” the hook-nosed youth explained, “is there something you want more than fucking her?”

  “What? What?”

  Jane just sat there, misreading his meaning. “Is there some feeling you —”

  He was cut off as Hal dove across the fire, flailing his ham-sized fists as Lohengrin jerked back, taking a glancing blow that rocked the landscape and rolled him sidewise into Jane who was trying to embrace and protect him, crying out:

  “Oh, my love, my love, you need not be jealous!” Holding him now so that Hal couldn’t strike again. They were all tangled together.

  Lohengrin looked up past her shoulder, feeling his cheek swell, dark eyes amused, saying:

  “You long for blood, which I can understand.”

  Began laughing as Hal now struggled (in embarrassed outrage) to extricate himself from the unintended embrace they now all shared. Lohengrin gripped him by the upper arms, keeping him pressed against the girl who was trying to push free. Hal thrashing from side to side, the three of them rolling over and over away from the fire across the gritty, weedy sand while Lohengrin, trying to stay on top and pin Hal, laughing and saying, gasping:

  “I long… for you both… I have you… love is… triumphant …”

  “Diseased madman!” cried Hal. “Unnatural …”

  Lohengrin lost his position and went over again, saying laughing, as Hal finally broke free:

  “Your wish is granted… why do you flee?” And Jane:

  “Are you hurt, my love? Are you hurt?”

  He just lay there now, on his back, Jane in his arms, watching Hal melting away into the mists, not-quite-running. She looked at the lump on his face and kissed it, gently.

  “Now,” he said, “I have experienced love-longing. At least, I’ve borne witness to it.”

  And she, tenderly caressing his bruise: “My poor love. Oh, my poor love.”

  MIMUJIN

  He retracked back down the long valley. He was thinking about the woman riding the pale palfrey behind him. He wondered if he’d taken some kind of deadly bait. Maybe a witch, too. When they camped, he’d study her. Watch and wait. Question. He was sure his people, would not be deceived…

  His semi-amputated finger was throbbing again. He’d have to make a new poultice soon or risk fever. Frowned, grunted, felt uneasy, impatient. His simple plan to follow and kill already had a knot tied in it. Rubbed his divided nose.

  Let his pony drift back until he rode beside her. She didn’t attract him, much; he preferred the dark, angled jet eyes and goldish skin of his own women. Her body was rounded and friendly-looking; face pale, lips thin, nose long and edged (he thought) like a blade.

  She waited for him to speak first. Her pale eyes were like shallow, grayish water. She wore a rough, gray, shift-like dress, traveling cloak and shoes that resembled half-boots.

  “Witch,” he said, “my people no believe word of woman.”

  “I am no true witch, barbarian, sir. My powers are small.”

  “Hmm. Bad for you. What you tell my people?”

  “What Queen Morgana bade me.”

  “Queen. Ho, ho. What tell?”

  “To follow me to the Channel sea, there to join her.”

  “Bah. Me spit. And what more?”

  She looked away from him, staring down the long valley to where the low hills blurred away into grayish haze and fog. The clouds were like a dull wall to the east.

  “I know not. Save that from there we will discover the sacred place where the Great King waits.”

  “Hooooa. Mn. Great King. Great King. We see. We see.” Muttered in his own (she thought) foul tongue.

  LAYLA

  They’d been on the road all day and this time, after a meal break, they simply kept on, under a full moon that rose blood-red and then gradually faded to a pale copper. The land stayed flat and she thought, towards midnight, when they finally called a halt, she could smell the sea.

  Because she’d tried to escape during the sex ceremony the night before, she’d been forced to walk after the meal. Her ankles were swollen and she wanted only to sleep. The plump girl was still her watchdog and shook her shoulder when she lay down and rolled herself up in a blanket on the grass.

  “No sleeping,” the girl said.

  “Fine, no sleeping.”

  “You have been called to confess.”

  “Called?”

  “Yes,” she almost snarled. “The leader favors you.” Her envy was
open. “I cannot see why.”

  “He favors me. What happens were I on his bad side?”

  She winced with a sudden abdominal cramp. She vaguely hoped it was her moon blood come round at last. She liked to think this a false pregnancy.

  She stared up at the reddish moon, eyes a little blurry so it was a featureless hole in the night, like a dull ember.

  “I don’t doubt but you’ll find that out,” the girl said.

  She kept her unfocused eyes on the moon: an eye, she imagined, of dull fire. Maybe an omen of the year 999. Maybe nothing at all…

  A little later she was called. There was no fire this time. She was walked into the center of the camp and made to face his divine roundness with others, the faithful, in a loose circle around them. They were all chanting something that sounded to her like children imitating frogs.

  Brroack brroack brroa, she thought.

  The chief amphibian came close to her, pale and bulbous under the dulled moon, his loincloth like a shadow under his belly.

  If he touches me I’ll pop out his frog eyes…

  She liked the image. She decided their true goal was to return to some far-off swampy pond where no one would notice or even care if the world did end.

  “You know,” she said, unbidden, more or less to the spiritual fatness before her, “I went down the hill to visit the wise crone and since then I’ve been continually abducted. I’ve grown sick of it. I’m ready to kill and maim. I want my husband to join me for the first time in years. You know how desperate I must be?”

  “You’ll need no husband,” he told her. “You are the bride now of holiness.”

  “I need my husband to cut you all into fine pieces. He does it so well you’d have to admire him.”

  “Foolish woman, kneel before the spirit.”

  She was gripped on both sides by the girl and a skinny, harsh-fingered man and forced to her knees on the stony ground.

  “If you pull your frog cod from your frogpiece,” she said, “I promise I’ll bite it off and spit it back at you.”

  Her remarks (as usual) were lost on the armorer’s daughter and ignored by the leader.

  “You,” he boomed, suddenly and she now believed his neck really puffed out as he spoke or croaked, “are guilty of the sin of pride and self-love?”

  The question voice was back. “Am I?”

  “Silence!” he blew at her. “Confess your sins?”

  Standing above her his sleek roundness loomed. She was afraid he might fall on her. She imagined the suffocating mass of his puffy flesh plugging her mouth and nose.

  “I confess,” she cried, furious, disgusted, “that I slew one of your brothers, not a fortnight past.”

  “What? What?”

  “As he was hopping back to the stream my mare trod him under to a pulp.”

  “Trod? Trod who?”

  “Your bloat green brother.”

  “I have no brother?”

  “Then have I much offended a blameless creature???”

  He looked straight down at her over his belly. The plump girl and the skinny man shook her in outrage. She’d had enough by now. Of everything.

  She flailed her right elbow into the girl’s thick throat and sent her gasping onto her back. She wasn’t able to hurt the skinny, hard-handed man who kept his grip so she contented herself with leaning up and sinking her teeth into the leader’s bellyfat. He screamed. She held on. The skinny man pounded her head. She held on.

  The leader kept screaming and fell sidewise. She tasted his blood. Fine. She bit harder and harder until her locked jaw ached. She barely felt the blows from the man or the others who ran over, yanking and strangling her until she was almost unconscious, mouth now full of blood and flesh, blows raining all over her and, as she fell into a dark pit with no bottom, she heard him still screaming…

  PARSIVAL

  Their horses secured in the bow of the longship, Parsival and Lego sat in the stern, backs to the gunwale, watching the fog billow and flow as the rowers rhythmically heaved the ship forward across the grain of the chop, the sail virtually useless at their present angle to the onshore wind. At times, the prow was almost invisible in the dense grayness.

  “I hate the water,” Lego was just saying. “Can you swim?”

  “Would it matter out here?” Parsival nodded.

  “Good point,” he admitted.

  “They mean to kill us once we get wherever we’re going. How will we get there in any case, since we can’t see a pecker length ahead?”

  “Much depends on the pecker,” the knight said, grinning. “Could be a difference of half a thumb. These fellows, I’ve been told, find their way at sea like hounds find a rabbit.”

  “You mean they smell their way? They smell ripe enough themselves.”

  The knight shrugged.

  “They are quite sanguine,” he said. “Anyway, we’ll try to avoid being killed, if we can.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  The wide, English-speaking Viking walked across the bouncing deck to them as if, Parsival thought, he strolled on a garden path. “Well, Briton scum,” he said, cheerfully, “we’ll soon see, won’t we?”

  Parsival was getting tired of him. He cocked an eyebrow.

  “I’ve refrained from killing you,” he said, friendly, “but my mood is shifting.”

  “Brave words.” They were on the leeward side so the man leaned up on the rail and urinated into the waves. Shook his stubby pecker when finished. “If you told us a wild tale,” he remarked, “you’ll find yerselves afloating home like the turds yer are.” Chuckled.

  “No,” the knight said laconically, “more like we’ll be alone on this craft hoping the wind blows fair.”

  “My Lord,” said Lego, “Let’s let the sailors sail, eh?” He was queasy and the thought of being alone on a ship in the foggy heavings of the North Sea stirred his stomach bile.

  “He an’t so dumb as seems,” the Viking said.

  “You don’t sound like some Norser,” Lego said, trying to be conversational.

  “I growed up in Lincolnshire and was took by a raiding party when I was a lad. Raised as one of ‘em. I am a Berserker, by Odin, an fear no man or divil.”

  “Well, then,” said Lego. “Very good.”

  “I’ve known dogs that feared not wolves,” said Parsival, “and died bravely.”

  He was looking into the mist ahead.

  “My master here,” Lego put in, “is more or less a Berserker himself, you might say.”

  As they moved up the Channel they were starting to pick up ocean swells which were getting to Lego. Everything was starting to slowly tip and spin and his stomach was responding. Parsival was generally unaffected. If asked, he might have quipped that he’d spent his whole life at sea, one way or another.

  “What truth in your tale?” He sat up on the rail, holding a stay for balance. On board, he had no duty but to fight. “The great treasure ya bent the chief’s brain with?”

  Lego shrugged. “There’s the map,” he said. Closed his eyes. That was worse. “Is it always this rough?”

  The Berserker laughed.

  “This be dead calm, landsman,” he said. “Wait until we’re in the Dragon Sea.” Laughed again.

  Lego said nothing. Sighed. Knew he’d soon vomit.

  Parsival was enjoying the ride. He was tired of thinking and planning and fretting and frustration. The die was cast. No back-looking. The world was behind him again. Maybe for good this time. This was what his family disliked about him; but what choice was here? Who knew where his wife was… probably home, he decided.

  This has been forced on me… in any case, I meant to leave for good when I set out… I’ve been forced into armor… tricked by an unnatural defeat… that witch… I used to follow Merlinus’ mystic pointings… I’ve consulted monks and wizards and fools and visions… and here we are entering the Northern sea of mystery and doom…

  “What’s your name?” he suddenly asked the Viking.

 
“They clept me Gralgrim, Briton. An you?”

  “Sir Silly,” he answered. “Once we land on the island I will show you what must amaze you.”

  “The amazement is our brave chief thinks ye’ll lead him to the sacred land.”

  “He didn’t mention that.” Parsival was startled. How would they know that was the secret destination? Their fancy, no doubt: the pursuit of what-you-will mists shaped like what-you-will that they all pursued. “What sacred isle?”

  Gralgrim rocked himself back and forth to balance the increasing push of the waves. Said:

  “No one says tis an island or no. The land of Thule.”

  “I’ve heard of that,” Lego started to say but at this point, a slow swell tilted the ship at a slightly steeper angle, and he gagged, clawed around and up the side, got his bilious head over and sprayed all within him into the gray sea.

  “Pity the fish,” roared Gralgrim, delighted.

  MORGANA

  Morgana, Modred and their entourage were now on the same road, a day after Mimujin and Alyal had passed. The sky was solid gray. The misty hills ahead were behind a solid curtain of fog.

  The boy rode a black charger with a tendency to drool but had a gait so smooth the rider hardly rocked in the saddle. He wore one of the half-masks. His mother rode beside him.

  “A castle boy spoke to me,” he told her. “And?”

  “He said I could never be a true knight because I was trained by a woman. He said I –”

  “This woman could defeat half-a-dozen true knights, at once,” she responded.

  “But he said I could not be knighted by a woman so –”

  “You will be king and dub thyself.” She looked around at her women. “We are not bound by forms.”

  “Aunt, where are we going? I don’t like long rides.”

  “To meet your father.”

  Ahead was a wall of viscous gray. “What about the king, mother?”

  “Him too, my child as I say.”

  While the little tribesmen sought the lair of their dark lord she believed was Clinschor, they rode as far north as land permitted, staying close to the coast to avoid the highland Picts, if possible. Morgana didn’t fear them, particularly, but why complicate things?