Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon

by Richard Monaco

  GAWAIN

  He went back to the dock area. In the mists ahead, he made out the outline of the woman in the golden mask. She was on the beach in a backless wooden chair without arms, the type used in noble’s tents.

  The small waves were slapping the beach, unseen in the deep fog. She was alone. After his troubling conversation with Lohengrin he’d had to improve his blackened mood: his mood was improved, for now, by swigs from a stone wine jug. Was feeling the familiar tight alcohol heat suffusion.

  He stood over her on the gritty sand. As the fog filled and thinned in the breeze, so at times he could only see her outline. She was facing the water and chose not to turn when he spoke.

  “See much?” he asked.

  “Yes. Much, indeed.”

  He stepped around and stood between her and the invisible surf. Reached for the mask with his wooden hand, not quite touching it. She didn’t react.

  “You show me yours,” he quipped. “I’ll show you mine.”

  “What do you want, knight?”

  She kept staring, more or less, at his midsection since she hadn’t shifted her gaze when he stood in front of her.

  He shrugged.

  “Many things,” he replied. “Right now, to see the truth.”

  “My visage is the truth?”

  Shrugged again. “Mayhap, a start,” he said.

  Now she looked into his hood. The mist seemed to fill it.

  “I have no particular interest in seeing you clearly, sir,” she said. “You make too much of yourself, I think.”

  Gawain nodded. He liked her, suddenly.

  “Well said,” he agreed. “Why are you leading these fools? I’d still like to see what you are hiding.”

  She looked away again.

  “I may be dangerous,” she said. “I might have some power to harm you.”

  He laughed. “Excellent, my lady. What will you do? Shear my arm off? Cut my face in half?”

  She took it in.

  “You don’t believe in the great goal,” she said.

  He cocked his head to the good side and lifted the cowl away, showing his absolutely handsome profile, rugged and chiseled. Where Parsival had a magnetic, head-turning attractiveness, his nose was too long, lips too thin and so on; Gawain was perfectly proportioned. Any actor would envy him – half of him, anyway.

  Even the masked, stern woman was impressed. “Well,” she said, comprehensively. “Well.”

  “We’ll marry then?” he asked. “Is it settled?”

  She surprised him by chuckling. slightly. “You wish to post banns?” she wondered.

  He nodded, closing his hood again. Tilted up the jug.

  “I’ll get a left mask of silver,” he declared, burping, “and we’ll clash them together as I hump above you.”

  This time only her eyes showed amusement.

  “I sit on men,” she told him. “None top me, Sirrah.’ He nodded.

  “I accept your terms, my Lady Mask.” He dropped to one knee before her. “How long must I wait before I am sat upon?” he wanted to know. “I am all eagerness. A thirsty horse before water. A starving beggar outside a feast. A —”

  Whatever was next was cut off by John of Bligh’s arrival. He came up like a gout of fog spilling into small, nervous shape, already pacing before them as he said:

  “You, lady, have joined my forces. As much as I respect your wisdom and dedication, yes, yes, because the cause is first and above all else, and —”

  And she then cut him off as Gawain let himself sit down sidewise on the sand, chainmail surcoat scraping, enjoying the scene. He set the jug before him.

  “You mean to complain,” she said, “when you come around to your point, that I have ordered a new ritual to be observed.”

  John nodded, vigorously. As he paced he kept thinning and thickening.

  “That’s the way of women,” she added in, “undermining a man.”

  “Exactly,” John said, ignoring Gawain. “We must not confuse the people.”

  “Then,” said Gawain, “you should fall permanently mute.”

  She was, he noted, amused again. He watched her eyes above the carved gold that hid the lower half of her face.

  “These people, this army,” John went on, “are the last hope of the world. Beyond this there is only —”

  Again she cut him off:

  “Save your speeches for the ‘hope of the world,’” she advised. “Without the map and my guidance, there is no hope for any of you!” She tilted her head up, eyes fierce. John quailed, slightly.

  Gawain was delighted. The meadwine had floated him to humor. “Yes, yes!” he cried. “The map! Don’t forget the map! The map inscribed by the wisest Jew of all, great Solom himself! A guide to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory between, I say. Ah, forget not the map that even Jesus Christ himself consulted ere he dared rise, with the angels, into his Father’s shining Kingdom!”

  Gawain was laughing so hard, now, that he toppled sidewise and was spitting sand from his mouth.

  The map, he thought. Ah, God’s devise… but her mask… I must know… I think I’ll possess her if she but have space even for a mandrake root between her legs… even if not, her bunghole alone would suffice for relief…

  “I love you, masked lady,” he said, face parallel to the sand, “though you have no nose.”

  This actually distracted her from the confrontation (one-sided as it might be) with John. She looked down at Gawain.

  “What stupid nonsense,” she snapped at him. “Unlike you, dull knight, I have nose, lips, chin, both ears and all.”

  “I mean to marry her,” he said to John and the sand and the fog, shaking with silent laughter. “I needed to know if she comes with a nose. Her slitted quim might be stopped or sewn closed…this could I work around…there are other paths or, better, doors to ecstasy. But, lacking a nose, why that’s a hard detriment in a woman… or any other, if it comes to that …”

  John looked around like a baffled sheep. “What is all this senseless —”

  Cut off, again:

  “Be still,” she snarled, this time. “I conceal my features to prevent the mad, hopeless love of mortal men from cluttering the path I must follow.”

  “I knew it,” cried Gawain, rolling over on the sand that squeaked under his steel outside. “My future wife is a goddess!”

  “Gawain, be still,” John cried; then, to her: “We must confer together before deciding —” And again:

  “I do what must be done,” she said, standing up and looming over him. Gawain was flat on his back now, hands locked behind his head, enjoying himself. “You are with me or not, as you please.”

  “Suppose, instead,” John railed back, “I cut off your senseless head!”

  She snapped out one lean arm and caught his neck in the long, spiky-nailed fingers. He gagged as she lifted him to his tiptoes, effortless, at arm’s length, her strength amazing the knight. John flopped like a fish, blood running down into his chest.

  “Listen,” Gawain called over, “Show me just your nose, to settle my mind, and I swear I’ll not drop before you. Surely the sight of your nose alone is not enough to —”

  Now he was cut off, or, rather, had not even been listened to in the first place. He didn’t care. He watched John strangle and thought how many times he’d almost served him thus.

  She dropped him and he fell backwards, gasping, thrashing around, rolling towards the water and almost disappearing. She stood there, dramatically, holding her arm out straight before her, as if in salute to the unseen waves.

  “Just two-thirds of your nose?” Gawain asked her. “I promise not to clutter.”

  She looked down at him. Her arm went back to her side. She shook her head. He knew she was still amused.

  “Have you ever surrendered?” she wanted to know.

  “Only to beauty.”

  Meanwhile John had regained his feet, standing, almost invisible, in the fog, raging. He croaked instead of shouting. Frustrated, he picke
d up something and hurled it at her – except it sailed in a curve and Gawain realized it was a clam shell.

  “Traveling with you people,” he said, sitting up, reaching for the jug, “is better than a king’s troupe of entertainers.”

  LAYLA

  She blinked and tried to resurface. Her head seemed to vibrate like a bell: light and dark flashed with each peal. There was a roaring sound all around, that seemed like sea or wind; wild wind and voices or the crashing of mad flame and voices… screams… shouts… curses… clashing like smashed trees or voices… voices…

  What asked her mind. What?…

  And then blackness tolled again and she was gone under and away…

  JOHN

  Racing along the firm, damp sand where the small waves were just curling into foam, charging back towards the waterfront, mind shouting:

  We sail at once!… At once… once… sail…

  He felt all might be lost. Memories kept flashing back from his life, scattered, irrelevant: refusing to study knighthood when he was nine or ten, standing on a trough in the castle yard to face his father eye-to-eye, steady, chill rain coming straight down from a low, tin-colored autumnal sky, drenching them, his bowl haircut plastered flat while he jerked his 14-year-old hands in the air and yelled:

  “I hate your life! I will be a priest!”

  His father, laughing. His sister, Layla, watching. Both from the shelter of the tunnel-like passage to the gate. She was big-eyed, dark-haired, slim, supple, a few years younger with a quality of petulance crossed with depression. People thought she always looked trapped.

  “The priests don’t want you. Nobody wants you.”

  “The Church is corrupt and full of evil! All men are brothers in God, yet men are enslaved and trodden down!”

  The father looked around, waving his arms in the sheeting rain that blurred anything more than a few feet away as if a large audience were watching.

  “See, see,” he cried. “I have whelped a mad boy!”

  Now, running into the nearly solid fog, other memories kept flashing, unbidden: a few years later, after joining a band of wandering monks who drove him away with stones and kicks when they tired of his trying to convince them to preach rebellion to the serfs and then lead them in a war to overthrow the nobles… befriending a mad hermit he’d discovered in a cave who said He was John the Baptist come again, the pair of them, in filthy rags marching into London Town (still called Lundenwic by some) spewing speeches and diverse prophecies and ending up dumped in a latrine pit from which they were rescued by several obese whores from a nearby stew; after washing John off with a bucket or two (the prophet having fled, terrorized, as someone quipped: “Back to Jerusalem”) one dainty delight sat her two hundred plus pounds on him and ground away at his manhood in front of an approving crowd of local color until, red-faced, suffocating, begging, he finally managed to get, what another called, “a hanged man’s stiff’un,” and spent his seed to great public scorn and amusement… needless to say, this experience had left him more leery of sex than ever.

  Suddenly he was splashing into the low tide, shallow water, absorbed in the vivid memories that kept opening before him, unaware that he’d slanted out into the bay and was aiming away from the dock area, seeing (as if reentering the past) the first time he strode into a village, bearded, digging a staff into the road, kicking up a reddish-yellow dust into the rich, summer-heavy air, already speaking to the peasants who were piling and binding early wheat in the square. He’d told them how they’d worked hard and their lord was going to take it for himself, as always, except, this time the people reacted, gathered around, stamped and shouted raw approval… Then they’d followed him, heading for the castle which (in what he took for a special providence) happened to have just been successfully assaulted and half-gutted by Clinschor’s warriors. The dazed and wounded survivors fell easy victim to the furious mob who’d been doubly fortunate in that they had crossed the open fields missing the enemy who’d hurried off to their next target. After this they believed in John’s special vision and power. The idea spread as they followed behind the raiding invaders like, some said, buzzards and wild dogs…

  Now he went out with the ebbing tide, lost in memory-visions that he would only later suspect had been caused by the masked witch. He was following a long strand of damp sand, now, that humped out into the water like the back of a whale or some snake-like sea monster.

  Because visibility was near nil, he believed he was following the shoreline near the ships when, in fact, he was running on an angle out to sea, still shouting commands to the followers he thought could actually hear him, voice croaking through his hurt windpipe:

  “Cast off! Cast off! We sail at once!”

  I’ll need no map, his mind said. God will guide me!

  Except the yelled words were lost in the fog and splashing of his frantic feet and came out sounding more like:

  “Broak oak! Broak oak! Wroak ogg! Wroak ogg ogrog!”

  GAWAIN

  He stood up looking straight at her, the still, hard eyes above the mask, not really amused anymore. The mist whipped around them. He wobbled a little. The tight warmth within had dissipated. Nothing was funny, now.

  “You are a delight to know,” he remarked. “Most gentle.”

  “You want to hump me?” she asked, voice neutral. “Is this your pleasure, damaged knight?”

  The idea was suddenly sour, unamusing. He shook the jug. Nothing. Tossed it into the shifting, seamless gray that was air and water. Heard the splash.

  That bottle, he thought, has a fairer chance than these mad dullards to reach the sacred goal…

  “What do you really mean to do with these people?” he responded.

  “Lead them,” she said, eyes showing nothing, “away from their troubles.”

  “To others worse? Or are you a saint?”

  “Far from it.”

  “As far as reason from religion, I’ve no doubt. Aye, you act more like a pope. You’ll rip out a windpipe to stop an argument.”

  She stepped closer to him and he waited for those deadly hands to move.

  “Fear not,” she assured him.

  “I don’t,” he said. “Do what you must.” He was wondering if he could rip the mask away before she could react. Doubted it.

  “If I show you my face, Knight, you will never leave my service.”

  “Another caveat.”

  She began walking, slowly, parallel to the splashing surf. He kept pace with her. Thought he heard John’s voice somewhere out in the grayness. He understood she was seriously following some incomprehensible agenda.

  “This world,” she explained, “has been poisoned and is dying.

  We are going to a place that is safe.”

  “Safe. At long last.”

  “A woman will rule.”

  “A queen? You?”

  She actually chuckled, this time. Took his arm and stopped him.

  He felt as if her very nearness was, somehow, tugging at him.

  “You are better than a jester, Gawain,” she said. “Morgana will rule, of course.”

  “Ah,” he murmured, looking almost on a level into the hot blue eyes above the mask. “Arthur approves this?”

  “He has deserted his people. He went to seek his dear Merlin. He despaired of ruling, tired of his slut wife and the failure and betrayal of his knights.”

  “I certainly failed,” said Gawain. “I deserted the court for love of darkness. I lost my face and my dark love.”

  She was tugging at him, without touching. It might have been sexual but he wasn’t aroused. They stood there, sealed in the fog without reference of direction or mark of time as if their feet pressed the undefined soil early in creation’s first week.

  “That is well-known,” she commented. “Arthur always forgave love, did he not?”

  “It cost him. It cost me …” Grinned with what lips he had. “To lose yourself for love of squat Lancelot with his monkey-long arms. Women have a po
wer to overlook faults past conceiving.”

  “Else a bony, hairy, crude and awkward beast like thyself would have found few beds to revel in.” She brought her face closer, as if to kiss him.

  He touched the mask’s cool chin. “These lively lips allure me,” he told her, trying to move the mood.

  “Be content that I save living flesh for last.”

  “You leave things out,” he said, as she started walking again. “There’s more here.” Something lost in fog; dark and unformed. He followed her, a step behind.

  “Of course,” she agreed. “Much more.”

  LAYLA

  She opened one eye. Nothing. Dull bright, blankness. Her first idea was that she was dead and in the grayness between worlds. She’d heard about that. Her next idea, blinking both eyes now and realizing she was lying face down with her cheek flat in the dirt, was that she’d been blinded. After that the headache closed in with steel fingers and she moaned and shut her eyes again. Must have passed out because the pain went away to be replaced by a dream, an image, anyway, a pale woman beautiful in her agony, naked in a huge, satiny bed, straining to give birth, a dragon’s head emerging from her distended vagina, a clawed forelimb clutching at her thigh, blood spattered everywhere.

  “Aiiii,” cried Layla, coming to again, taking the spiky pain in her head and struggling to sit up, this time. And still the brightish gray closed in tight around – except she saw her arms and legs this time and knew she was not blind, just lost in dullness.

  Sitting up, she realized she hadn’t gone anywhere. Remembered the attack, the blows. Touched the swellings and dried blood.

  “Holy Mary,” she said.

  She saw nothing but the sealing fog – then a bare leg, flat on the ground, poking toward her. She strained her aching head and came up with fragments: small, brownish, oily-looking little men dancing, darting, slashing and stabbing, rolling over the believers and their fat leader who’d bolted. She had a flash of him barreling through followers and attackers alike, bouncing, leaping, rolling and shouting in his croak voice…