Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (25 page)

As he followed, he took off his helmet and set it in his lap, forcing his horse forward past the downed men, so he never saw the last one, headpiece crushed and dribbling blood from the faceplate, spring up as he died, like a trodden snake and strike a last spoiling blow at his head from three-quarters behind.

The blow was blinding, his skull exploded into white fire. He may or may not have screamed before he went down, nearly half his face sliced away.

He’d awakened in moonless darkness, face down, shivering in a pool of blood and vomit. Heard voices and assumed they’d come back to finish him off. It seemed distant and reasonable and meaningless. He’d dropped away again under the terrible pain…

As it turned out, a passing farmer had loaded him into a cart, after stripping the weapons from the dead, and taken him to his village where his wounds were treated and bound in poultices. He recovered and, forever after, wished he hadn’t.

He never went to Camelot again though he heard, more than once in days to come, that Arthur had disappeared, left on an unexplained trip or pilgrimage, unattended and hadn’t been heard from since.

He never looked for Shinqua. He never knew she’d set out after him or that, in the end, she went back to her husband and had a son she didn’t dare name Gawain.

Partly opened his eyes and watched the blurs again. Sucked down some more wine.

“I’ll find the Grail,” he muttered, “heal myself and find her again.” Or maybe just wait for the return of Christ next year and sing angelic hymns of holy, sexless praise beside her, if, by some grotesque mischance, I should be one of the chosen blest…

Now he really laughed. Wanted to vomit too. Kept his eyes tight shut. This is my life…why, what a fucked, dreaming fool have I become, merely because my fucked face was chopped off some years ago… merely because my love is forever lost, and, for all I know, fat as a sow with ten sucking piglets at her teats… merely because I follow idiots to Stupidland… O God, please cause these fools to read aright and see this entire stink and puke of a world purged with flame and terror, cindered and gone forever even if I needs must be pitched headlong into Hell for all time…

Except he couldn’t ever quite give up. No one who loved so absolutely could ever fail to hope. And, he had a new idea: one of the pilgrims recently joining their march had, according to John’s latest vision, brought the final sign from heaven that he, John, had been awaiting. Now their course was clear, the battlefield fixed ahead, the great test just pending.

The new pilgrim was a tall, red-haired woman who wore a golden half-mask and a nun’s black and white habit, save for the headgear. She explained that a vision of the Holy Mother had expressed to her that she must seek out the prophet John and bring him God’s message. She wore the mask, she explained, because Mary Mother-of- God had told her to cover her face until the second coming of her son. It made, Gawain reflected, as much sense as anything else he’d heard recently.

John was excited and delighted. Here was external proof of his mission. His followers were stirred up, those who paid attention, in any case. She brought a map showing where the enemy was hidden and where the Holy Grail was now secreted - on the isle of Avalon.

Gawain closed his eyes tightly again.

Why not? he thought. She’s got some force about her… all in all as good a lost cause as any other I’ve come upon…

Arthur would be there, he decided, if he were anywhere. It would all come together in Avalon. And if there were a Grail he, Gawain, would lock it in his hands long enough to squeeze out whatever truth was in it…

The tall, red-haired, golden masked woman was now up on the rock beside John and suddenly more and more of the armed mob settled down to listen, as the furious little priest indicated her with one clawed hand, shouting:

“Here is the messenger who brought the map! The map will guide us to the Grail! The Grail is the perfect sword with which I, John, will drive back the black doom of the Antichrist and turn aside the fist of death already falling from Heaven to crush all sinners under its hideous weight.”

LOHENGRIN

“The fool was my father,” he said after her.

The girl kept walking into the moon dappled shadows. She called back to him:

“Is your father here?”

“I doubt it,” he replied. “But he was famous for it. He was renowned for it.” He rubbed his beaked nose with his knuckles, a little too hard, thinking about his father.

He stood up. He could just see she’d stopped.

Bah, he thought

“I think you should follow me,” she said. “Why not save yourself?”

“Leaving aside whether I deserve saving, I’ll follow. Come and ride with me.”

He went over and mounted. Walked the animal over to her where she waited, partly shadowed. She pushed back her hood. The silvery glow sketched her pale, oval face on the deep, mysterious background.

“Fine,” she said.

She ignored his helping hand and sprung up behind him with easy grace.

“Welcome to my noble steed.” He noted the sweet length of her leg where the dark dress had ridden up.

“Follow the road,” she told him.

He kicked the horse into a fast, steady walk. She put her hands lightly on his mailed sides.

“And we’ll come to?”

“The others,” she replied. “Already have we seen villages and even castles deserted with only the dying and dead within. There are devils loose in this land. There is poison and plague.”

Lohengrin nodded, looking at her leg. “And we will find safety?”

“Your horse tilts,” she pointed out.

“I had it of an unbalanced knight. But how will we know the path to safety, if all the world’s afire?”

“We have been vouchsafed a map.”

“What fortune.”

“Yes. Death closes in on all sides. The doom is invisible. No army can overcome the Antichrist any more than we can stab a phantom in its insubstantial form.”

He let his bare hand glance along her thigh, as if to stretch. She didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m not too worried by phantoms,” he said. Wasn’t sure just what he meant. “But where is this place of safety?”

“The map shows us.”

“Do you have the map?” She shook her head.

“Our leader is the only one who can read it,” she explained.

“So he tells you?”

“You will see when you meet him. You will understand.”

“Your father is a knight?” he wondered. She was, obviously, not low-born.

“My father is a dead knight, sir.”

He kept thinking about her thigh. Wanted openly to stroke it. “What is this leader’s name?” he asked, just to keep the conversation active.

“A holy man. He uses no worldly name.”

His hand glanced down and rested lightly on her knee. She didn’t seem to notice.

“What otherworldly, then?” he pressed her.

She shrugged and belatedly brushed his hand away. “We call him the leader,” she said.

“The leader.”

They went on in silence. The road was a whitish vagueness that gently rose and fell as they passed under thickening trees. The woods were silent except for breeze rustle and the dinning of insects.

“How far have you come back?” he wondered. He’d assumed, incorrectly, that she’d just left the main body of pilgrims.

“Not far. I waited for a day in the village after they left.”

The moon was high by the time they came to open country. He was trying to find a plausible excuse to stop and make advances. They’d been quiet for awhile now. She made him unduly polite, he noticed, and a little awkward. He liked her though he hadn’t said so, even to himself yet.

“Why don’t we wait until morning to catch up?” he finally asked her.

“I’ll walk on, if stop you must,” she said.

“That’s senseless.”

“I must.”

“Why?”

“A vow.”

“A vow of silliness?”

“I mean to be saved.”

“You truly believe the world will soon end?”

In such case, he thought, rehearsed, we may as well make as much country love as possible…

“I believe that God has spoken to my leader,” she explained, “and taught the way to salvation. And I would save those I can.”

The conversation was not going the way he’d have liked. She reminded him of a young nun, a cousin, who used to visit and endlessly try to persuade his father (who didn’t care) that the Grail had never been brought to Britain, that the quest was a heathen heresy. She had twisted, buck teeth and a chalk-pale face. His father would stare, faintly smile and nod, meaninglessly, while she went on. As soon as possible, he’d excuse himself.

But what would he have done had she been pretty? he wondered. Except he knew that too.

“I am anxious to meet your leader,” he lied.

“Of course,” she said. “It will not be long.”

PARSIVAL

They never bothered to enter the castle. They never actually saw it. In any case, the fog remained dense as a wall and only thinned slightly as they worked their way downslope. By the time they got to the road, it was dawn and visibility gradually increased as they went back east along the valley.

The day stayed gray all morning, although the mists were gone a few miles from the castle hill. A light drizzle pittered down from the dull sky.

Both of them were bleary, chilled, and tired. Parsival couldn’t believe he was actually wearing the red armor again. If it was a copy, it was perfect in every detail, even to rents and punctures he’d had closed by a smith years before.

It’s the same, he decided. Chafes the same…

They rode until noon, slouched in morose silence. By then, they were out of the long valley again and climbing through a strand of dark pines that blotted the light rain away.

“Rest, my Lord?” Lego suggested.

Parsival nodded and they dismounted on a gentle slope beside the road which, here, had gone back to a scratchy track. They stretched out on the dried and drying fallen needles.

“My Lord,” Lego asked, staring straight up into the dim and soothing matrix of limbs and shadow, “where are we now bound?”

His lord put his hands under his head. He wasn’t even hungry, he realized, though it had been hours since last eating.

“The east coast, as near we can strike it.”

“Then embark for Brittany?”

Lego had been there once. He’d done service for a French prince in a small war. He’d learned that whoever died or was wounded in a skirmish or in a history-changing battle died the same and were maimed the same. A serf, crushed by a runaway cart or stabbed in a drunken melee died the same or scarred the same.

Parsival had tucked the parchment map under his swordbelt. He unwound his arms and unfolded it, rolling on his side to lay flat on the soft needle bed.

“Well, my Lord?” Parsival shrugged.

“On to the coast,” he said. “We need no map for that. Find a ship and head north.” He drummed his fingers.” Most of this shows the Northern seas and lands unknown. The way points to cold.”

“Unknown?”

“Save maybe to the Norsemen.”

Lego popped his eyes in mock disbelief.

“To those nasty lands?” he wondered. “Where dwell those crazed beasts who live only to rape and burn?”

“We’ll need a few to sail us. Who better?”

“Is that it, then, my Lord?” asked Lego.

“Is that what?”

“You mean to follow this toy?” Parsival rolled onto his back again.

“Have you a better course?” he asked. “Anyway, I gave the witch my oath.” Snorted. “Am I not the perfect knight? An angel pure in my blood and fire-colored gear.”

“I follow you, my Lord.”

“You need not. You may return to your home; you know that.”

“You offer this every seven steps I take, Sir Parsival. I follow you. No more to say. Am I a bird what sings only on sunny days?”

Parsival smiled. His eyes didn’t smile because he was worrying about how to find and pay the Vikings he would need. If need be, I’ll pay them with their lives, he thought.

“You may as well offer fresh meat to a horse,” Lego was saying. “It goes untouched.”

“Good fellow,” Parsival decided to explain, “I follow this map because it is, by far, the most senseless quest I’ve yet discovered.” He smiled without really smiling again. “All Britain will sink under plague and other doom while we sail to imaginary lands. Will this not fulfill the purpose I was born for?” He sat up, violently. Clutched a fistful of pine needles and crushed them to pulp in his amazing grip. “Hah. Have I a choice? I wanted to be my old self again and so this fool’s mantle has fallen on me. Fitting. Without Arthur, the truant, royal self-pitier, we have no more force than madmen shouting in the marketplace. Even if believed, we have no power to collect his vassals much less set them to war. And how to fight it?”

Parsival tossed the piney clump away and rubbed his sticky hand on the grass. Lego grunted.

“Aye, lord, well reasoned. This is a war without an open army in the field to tilt against.” He was sitting up, massaging his stiff left leg, where an old wound had hit bone. “It’s all shadow, stealth and poison.” Winced as he worked his thick fingers into the scar. “And witchcraft.”

Then they were silent, each alone with it; the light rain a distant softness. Lego thought about his family back at the castle. He kept imagining the little poisoners bringing their loads of death closer and closer. The unseen darkness of plague spreading and seeping into the land.

Parsival was thinking about the black knight who’d leaned over him when they had fallen into the hands of the little warriors. Was he one of the tyrant Clinschor’s murderous army who’d escaped from their general defeat some fifteen years ago, or just somebody in borrowed armor and silver, beast-faced helmet? None ever claimed Clinschor had died. Some believed he’d fled back to Sicily or the Middle East. Others felt he was hidden in Britain, waiting his time to strike again.

These midgets could be his men or allies, the knight considered. This terror his devise… mayhap he even be the “king” they clamored for… yes, he lost his war so now he sneaks and poisons, ambushes and sets shadows on the world, while men fear the end is upon them, the Last Judgment not bursting down from the skies in a rain of ruin but seeping from the polluted earth and tainting the very air… he may well have earned the name of Antichrist…

He rubbed his cheeks and nose. Blinked hard, as if to clear his mind. He felt a grim responsibility. It was one thing to ride away from his family in frustration and play with notions of retracing his life as if his youth were really important and profound to any but himself; now, his choices were no dreaming game, but might check or free clouds of terrible evil on the world. Many would have gone home and let no strangers within miles until there was sure word the plague was done.

I have no choice now save go forward, as I told good Lego, or flee home… the witch, for witch she was, who set me on this road fools no one… maybe Arthur’s own sister or some emanation of her spirit… but she’d want the kingdom intact so it will be her own, and thus far do I trust the whore…

“Bah,” Lego suddenly said. “What, captain?”

“They play with us, my Lord.” Parsival smiled.

“True, captain,” he agreed. “The fates and men alike.” Squinted one eye. “Yet games and wars are won and lost in surprises. Play on. Play on.”

A little later they were back in the saddle again. The trail (were the map drawn true) hooked through a narrow belt of sharp hills before opening into a broad, flat plain that ran to the Channel sea.