Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (11 page)

The leader in rust-red eased his pony backwards into the brush where a narrow trail intersected the paved road. The swart men fell in all around and Parsival nudged his mount forward. The leaves flared greenish-gold in the hot sunbeams. A sweet breeze cooled the sweat from his forehead.

“We go,” he muttered. “If they meant to kill us,” he went on, “they’d have tried already. I wonder where the bailiff is got to.”

Suddenly he felt a strange, old feeling attached to nothing, or something lost… long ago… lost meaning from lost years… sense of strange peace unconnected to this moment. He remembered stumbling across grass on infant feet in a warm dazzle of springtime light and enriched air, drinking in life unframed by any thoughts…

He shook his head; he was becoming detached from his immediate surroundings. His life had been poured into a cracked mold. He was suddenly afraid. He shuddered slightly and she felt it.

“Do you fear, Sir Knight who has not named himself?”

He was alarmed. She obviously was depending on his coolness. That’s sooth, I haven’t, he thought.

“Call me Sir Discontent,” he suggested. “Yes. I fear.”

Afraid to pass through the door. Afraid to stay inside…

He wished now he’d kept his armor. Wished he’d gone left instead of right… wished…

GAWAIN

By the time they’d reached the lowlands he’d decided to stay with raving John and his motley men. Until he solved the Grail problem, one direction seemed as good as another. He believed Parsival wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t have it, but sensed that he was afraid to look again.

Now I’m as big a fool as any for the Holy Lie and emptiness, he said to himself as they slowly topped a bristly hill on the wide, well-worn road to the city. In the middle distance, stood an old-style wood and rock castle (just one huge central keep with a low wall) a fat column of smoke rising almost straight up into the hot, bright, windless, midday summer sky.

They made way for several wagons loaded with cloth and rope, heading away from the city out towards the fiefs and fields. The sight of the evil-looking crew of unhappy, dusty, sweaty, partly-armed and armored rogues marching behind the little man on the one-eyed horse, made even the roughest carrier lay hand on dirk, stick or club for reassurance. When they saw cowled Gawain at the rear in well-worn mail and a priceless charger, they held out little hope for themselves and blessed Mary and the Saints when nothing untoward happened.

Admirable madman Gawain considered, he believes he will conquer this place with his ravings… Shook his head.

From the hilltop they could look down on the hundreds of mud and thatch huts, dozens of scattered two-story part-stone buildings and the big church which stood a few hundred yards from the rocky North Sea coast where awkward-looking too-high ships were moored while barge-like boats rowed to and fro. One sailing ship sat in the offing, motionless on the glassy water, sails flat and lifeless in the prevailing calm.

I’ll go to the whores and keep my face covered, he thought. Yes… and not think of her…

“Ha, ha,” he said, not laughing. The nearest man turned his raw-looking, reddened, too-long face around to study the knight.

“Eh?”

“I’ll not think of her,” he snarled at the man who, like most, believed Gawain both mad and deadly as a viper.

“A’ course,” the man said, uneasy. “That’s plain.”

“Am I thinking of her now?”

“Ah,” the fellow sighed. “There’s that.”

He squeezed his sole eye shut. Didn’t scream out the answer. What else do I think of? “Fuck you,” he said to nothing.

The man turned and concentrated on walking while Gawain’s troubled thoughts roiled on.

Parsival… I’ll find his path and be healed…

He groped back in his mind, looking for clues in the times they’d been together… the last, prior to the confrontation a few days ago, came back to him, about 15 years ago…

*

Fifteen Years Before

Moonlight had lain softly on the pale road Gawain followed without a particular purpose. He’d skirted the main battle lines where the massive fight between Arthur’s army and Clinschor’s black armored mutes had finally wound down. He wasn’t running; he wasn’t seeking combat, he simply didn’t care.

He’d heard that Lordmaster Clinschor had come from Sicily, Africa or some such place of darkness to despoil Britain and possess the Grail he believed was hidden there by one of Christ’s disciples. He believed it would make him immortal. Another damaged brain, Gawain had concluded, leaking nonsense like a cracked cup.

There were lines of refugees along the road. To them the knight seemed a phantom, taking shape from the ghostly, silvery glow. Some crossed themselves. Gawain reined up when he faced another horseman (he didn’t yet realize was Parsival) blocking the road.

“You mean to challenge me?” he asked.

“Nay,” Parsival answered. “Do you know me?”

Gawain raised his visor and let the moonlight angle into his face.

Turned the horribly slashed side to him.

“I don’t care a shit if I do,” he said.

Brought his eye to focus and showed his good side too. Even in the softening moonlight the effect was hard to look at.

“Gawain,” Parsival said, voice choking a little. “My friend the fool.”

“I hope I’m your friend.”

Now Gawain kept his ruined side turned away. The handsome profile looked pale and mysterious in the subtle light.

After a few moments, he said: “You’re changed.”

Parsival agreed. “Yes, Gawain.”

“Thinking I’m changed as well.”

“Well, time alters all things.”

Parsival was being careful. He shifted on his horse, looking around into the softly gleaming knight, half-expecting to see Clinschor’s killer mutes closing in. Gawain gestured with his right; chuckled, mirthless.

“That’s good. This is nothing, my friend. None still dare come at me from his side.” He shook his fist. Parsival waited. “So you think you know something now?”

“I heard the fighting is done.”

“No,” Gawain grunted. Parsival noticed the sour wine-reek on his breath; could see he was a little unsteady in his saddle. “You never stood up to me, you pretty little by-blow.” Dropped his hand to his swordhilt. “I’ve lost count of all I’ve sent on their fucking way.” He snarled with sudden, empty fury because he was breaking his rule and thinking about her; thinking, too how this still young blond knight could kiss and fondle and ram himself into his lovers as he pleased. “Or the bitches I’ve pried open.”

He turned his nightmare side back to the young man who wouldn’t look directly at it and shifted, uncomfortably.

“Yes,” Parsival said, quietly.

“I’m still a man. Think you are old enough?” His eye came back to Parsival and the two sides faced him together. “Want to try me?”

He kept thinking about her. Over and over. Saw her face, too.

Parsival shook his head and the eye looked somewhere else as the tortured knight cried out in pain the younger man mistook for self-pity.

“God curse it!” he was breathing as hard as if he’d been fighting. “God of filth and swine, curse it?” Drew his sword and ripped it through the night air, slashing at nothing. Parsival, reflexively, leaned away.

Gawain slammed down his visor and shouted something muffled. Parsival stared at the sudden, slivery blankness.

“Gawain,” he started to say.

Thinking about her, seeing her, Gawain shouted what seemed a wordless cry of pure suffering. They were words but they were his alone.

“Oh, Gawain.”

Gawain was past listening or speaking. Kicked his charger into a canter, thudded and jangled past his old companion and the attendants and refugees along the roadside, riding, Parsival felt, not just away but out of the world entire…

*

In The Present

Gawain kicked up the pace of his horse and rode past the column as they now were plodding down the reverse slope into the city itself. He paused, briefly, beside John of Bligh and his one-eyed, one-eared mount.

“Where will you and these dullards encamp yourselves?” he asked. “In case I decide to rejoin you later.”

John seemed surprised by the idea.

“We’re not here to camp but to raise an army,” he responded. “Ere the worlds fails and falls entire to the Antichrist.”

Gawain knew the story by heart: John was persuaded that Clinschor was the Antichrist promised in the scriptures and that, as the world was poisoned, boiled and broiled in the coming year, he would rule with magic and inconceivable cruelty. John believed that the wizard had retreated to an underground fortress. Only the Grail Sword, wielded by himself at the head of a host of transfigured believers, could cut down the Antichrist and his fell defenders.

“Still,” said Gawain, absently retightening his wooden hand in its screw socket, “even while saving the world, men need rest.”

The smaller man cocked his head up at the knight, rocking as his unsteady mount clip-clopped along the (now) pebble-paved road.

“You mean to desert me? Here, in the shadow of doom?”

“I owe you no service, Lord Madman. We’re on the same road, for the nonce.”

He chucked the horse ahead. There were carts and mules and burdened peasants coming and going.

“There is only one path for everyone,” John called after.

“Being so,” Gawain responded, not looking back, “nothing can part us.”

*

Later

Cowl in place, horse in a barn, the sun setting in a rapidly graying sky, Gawain stalked along what passed for a main street, stepping over offal mounds and reeking puddles. He’d had directions to a drinking place from the bearded, toothless, one-eared hostler at the stable.

The inn sat (or rather, sagged) in a pool of stinking mud and was accessed by a duckboard that squished and half-sank as the big knight crossed to the door. He hesitated. Almost went away in a spasm of self-disgust.

“Be fucked,” he said to the door; kicked it open.

It got the patron’s attention. Both of them. A fat bald man sitting on a stool in the middle of the dirt floor and a stringbean with orange-red hair at a tilted table bent forward to suck beer from a clay bowl.

Seeing it was an armed knight (or armed somebody) they watched and waited. He sat down, laid his scabbarded sword on the table. The host came in from the other room and bowed, slightly. He was round and smiling. Kept licking his lips as if some sweet taste lingered there.

“Yer honor,” he said. “Bring me a whore.”

“No drink, me lord?”

“Bring one hemlock and a whore.”

“What?”

“Ale.”

“Ah.”

“And a whore.”

“Yes, me lord.”

And I’ll be content as a man with lice on his balls… as a man with a bee-stung prong… a fishbone in his throat… content…

The innkeeper brought him a leather jack of drink and a few minutes later, a tall, tense, lean, dark woman barefoot in a shift came into the cave-like room, shielding a candle flame with her cupped hand. She came to his table and set the candle down. As she approached he’d been a little surprised by how good she looked. In the dimness her age didn’t show until she was close. She had high cheekbones and a faraway look in her eyes, hair touched with gray.

“G’day, me lord,” she said sitting down. He liked her voice. “Yes,” he responded.

With his head tilted inside the cowl the place was too shadowy for her to really see his features. When she moved the candle closer he pinched out the flame.

“Sir?”

“Our business wants no light, woman.”

He’d already changed his mind. Quaffed the ale in a long steady swallow. He already liked her.

“We can go out in back,” she suggested. He shook his head.

“Is he your husband?” Gestured towards the innkeeper who was slicing some cold meat and cheese at the far end of the low, smoky room, covertly watching him.

She made a disparaging gesture.

“I’ve borne him two sons and two daughters.”

“That’s near enough,” Gawain said. “Does he whoremaster your daughter as well?”

She creased her thin, long lips in a knowing smile. “So, that’s your pleasure, me lord?”

He couldn’t read how she felt about it.

“If they look as you must have,” he complimented, “they are rare beauties.”

She had no expression, saying:

“The eldest be seventeen and married to a good fisherman. The other fourteen and not for sale. But there’s a hag two doors down who’ll serve ya her babes.”

“Will she throw in breast milk?”

“Her dugs give old cheese,” she replied with a faint smile, this time.

“So he whores just you?”

Though he raped in war and had done violent deeds without count, the idea of the man selling his worn, pleasant, dignified wife bothered him.

She shrugged. “There’s others as work for him,” she said, expressionless, again. “But yer a fine gentleman knight, so he offers you his best.”

The ale was working in him. He gestured the man over. He didn’t quite scurry, holding a fresh jack of ale in one hand and a wooden trencher of meat, hard cheese and dark bread in the other, which he banged onto the battered table. He was sweaty and smelled of stale food and drink.

“Yer grace,” he said, round, reddened face uneasy, knowing and sly.

Gawain felt like breaking his head with his wooden hand. His mood baffled him. Why should he care? What point? But, as he sucked down more ale, he found his cold anger growing.

“Grace? I’m no Duke or Bishop, but I have gold,” he found himself saying. “True royalty,” Lying, “I crave your youngest child. Name a price, innkeeper.”

“Oh,” mused the man, uncertain but engaged. “Well …”

“No,” she said: bitter, furious, controlled.

“Come, come, peasant, you know I could take what I please if I pleased but my pleasure is to bargain. A price, I say.”

“A price, yes,” repeated the man, clearly lost in calculation. “But sire, with no disrespect, we here as knows how to defend ourselves. This ain’t the countryside.”

“No, I say,” she snarled, standing up. “You filthy, lying …”