Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (31 page)

MORGANA

She’d turned north and led her group towards the coast leagues above where Parsival and Lego had met the Viking raiders. They’d pitched their tents on the stony beach at the base of the cliffs that overlooked the Channel Sea.

Modred was sick with the green runs. He lay on his pallet in the tent, held his belly and groaned; then he’d jump up and run outside, crying, and squat where the choppy waves broke, sighing, gasping while his Morgana looked on.

The fog had closed in all around, wet, muffling.

“Ohahhh,” he cried, the small waves splashing his pale behind.

“Peace, my boy. The potion I gave you will soon bind thy innards.” He staggered to his feet and she helped him adjust his linen breeks around his waist after wiping him with a piece of rag she then tossed into the water. “You need to clean yourself better,” she said.

He groaned and staggered back to the tent. The baby surf broke steadily. She leaned into the wind, listening to the unseen sea, the mist streaming around her, melting and reforming her outline as if she were an exhalation of the billowing vagueness.

“Come inside,” he whined.

“A moment,” she said impatient, dismissive.

There’s the wind, she thought. There’s the wind… it is time… time…

SHINQUA

I do not care how long it has been, she said to herself. I do not care what stupid things are said to me…

She was thinking, as she stretched out on the soft pile of rolled bedding in the back of the cart full of food and possessions she’d packed quietly for days.

The moon was just rising, fat and reddish-yellow. The wheels rolled softly in the deep dust and loam of the pretty smooth road that led east away from the castle. The big glow silhouetted the driver who sat solid, wide, hunched and uneasy at the reins. He kept glancing behind without being able to quite see her, dark clothes and face blending.

Just her eyes and teeth, sometimes, he said to himself. Can’t tell what she’s thinking… In a few hours his wife would know; her husband and the lord too. What a mistake this was. I had no more than a squeeze on the hand and a kiss on me cheek…

Remembered the kiss, the wild, sweet scent of her flesh and hair that had left him giddy as she moved back before his arms reacted and came up to hold her.

They were now climbing a shallow slope out of the utter darkness of the valley woods. She propped her bare feet above her head and tilted back, looking at the massed stars, enveloped in the thick, warm summer air.

He twisted back to look at her again. The moonlight only hinted her high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. He’d been smitten and his wife already knew it.

“How sweet is that black whore,” she inquired, “that you’d carry a bucket of mule shit for her?”

His wife was small, round and freckled. They’d been working in the stables where he was the lord’s Master of Horse, a position about equivalent to Shinqua’s husband, the armorer. Valued vassals, social equals – except the African girl’s undoing of the great Gawain gave her a kind of legendary status and few friends.

“I did no such thing,” he’d answered. Not that it made any difference. He’d helped her clean off droppings from one of his mules that had heaped on the path to her dooryard. While they lived on the castle grounds, both families held land in the village and had what amounted to “summer huts” there with lush flower and herb gardens and serf-farmers to tend the crops. They’d become personally friendly, after that and his wife hadn’t missed it.

“Are you alright?” he found himself asking her, half-twisted to try and see her as the cart rocked softly, aware of her scent again.

“Yes, Wilfred,” she replied.

He will expect it, she thought. Like others…

She knew she’d handle it later. When the time came. She’d ease him past it or, at worst, reward him with a little favor. She curled and uncurled her toes and sighed, relaxing back. Her children would be fine with her mother and sister-in-law. She had no concern there. Later, with her hero, she’d return for them.

Shinqua had little fear. She was strong, confident and had been trained in dagger fighting by her husband and improved by Gawain. He’d been delighted to discover she could really fight. He taught her to use two blades together and once watched while she stood off a pair of men-at-arms in an inn yard where they’d gone together for a secret night upstairs. She’d driven them back through the gate, blade in each hand, having stabbed and sliced them more than once. “We saw their heels, that even,” he always liked to say, afterwards, laughing.

She was remembering him, lost in the stars, still a young woman, still dreaming.

Now, on the reverse slope, they started down into the wide valley that led towards Camelot, the first place to look. Wilfred started. There was a fog below and ahead that seemed as wide and deep as the sea. The risen moon gleamed mysteriously on the surface which lay about 100 feet downslope.

“It’s a spell,” he said, blurted in sudden guilt,

“What?” she asked, happy with the stars and thinking how stupid the stories were people told about Gawain being crippled. Jealous lies, she thought.

“To keep us here,” he went on.

She looked at him now. Set her mouth. “Nothing will keep us here,” she told him. She sat up and looked at the silvery mass that lapped like soft surf at the hillsides.

“But see,” he insisted.

She knelt herself up next to him, knees on a lump of cloth. Touched his arm with her long, strong, delicate fingers. “Go on,” she said, quietly, allowing him nothing.

“We’ll be lost, woman.”

“Stay on the road,” she said, “and go on.”

PARSIVAL

Parsival had dozed, not long after sundown. The last thing he heard as he went under was Lego trying to vomit again for the fiftieth time. When he woke up, it was pitch black and the ship was tilting wildly. Worse, he could barely distinguish the nearest torch in the chill, massed fog. This was supposed to have cleared, he thought, according to these experts…

Lego lay, huddled, by the thwart, half-sleeping, groaning. Parsival listened to the steady bump and scrape of the oars, as the steersman kept the prow angled into the breaking seas. He couldn’t see the rowers.

Poor Lego, he thought. Smiled, as he lay back down and tried to get comfortable again. Smiled because this was what he should have expected: just tossed out into the ocean like dice. Small wonder I don’t plan much… He suddenly had more confidence in the outcome. Blind and lost, surrounded by enemies, how can I possibly fail?

“Sail on,” he said into the puffing, unsteady, salt-laden wind. “What matters where?”

LAYLA

Eventually there were no more bodies. Her best idea was to not circle. Since there was just enough vague glow in the sky to show where the sun was, she aimed herself roughly north.

Her feet had hardened. She was used to walking, now. She’d been overloaded emotionally so she was effectively relaxed. She still had the sack of food they’d made her carry.

So she rested, ate, went on into the blankness, passing scrubby trees that suddenly seemed to reach at her as if the fog were animate and angry. Several times it started to lift, literally like a curtain rising and she could see wheatgrass, trees, rocks, the gradual slope of the terrain and a sudden brightening which gave her a little hope until it dropped again.

No bird sang that she heard; glimpsed a lone hare that vanished at once; passed deer tracks…

The grade made it easy and she went on until after dark since she couldn’t see anyway. She walked into a few trees and tripped a few times before finding a clump of bushes that gave some shelter and settled down for the night.

Asleep, she didn’t even dream. Kept waking up and then there was only the damp, lumpy, soft earth… only darkness pressed into her face… going in and out… then waking up, seeing the stars, the fog clinging close to the ground… dozed again and then the even, bright, filtered blankness was back.

She felt the fog was, somehow, like the flood of Noah. She got up, did what she had to do, vomited, as usual, then ate and drank… went on…

“Dear God,” she prayed, kneeling. “I confess my sins. I wish not this babe I carry yet I must preserve it if I can. I ask Thee to preserve me despite my most grievous sins.”

She rose and went on. North – more or less; locked in her little circle of sight, scared and trapped… went on…

LOHENGRIN

Hal had been gone for awhile and the fog had closed in around Jane and Lohengrin. The fire was crumbling into embers. The banked sand was comfortable and he stretched out with her still on top of him.

She was nuzzling his neck and sighing. In a reflex he was already tugging her loose dress up and running one hand between her legs. Went with it as she sighed and hissed how she loved him.

He let himself get lost in her mouth, shocking sleekness, softness, salty-sweet. Enjoyed the play of her hands down where it mattered. She kept repeating that she loved him.

Her legs came open, loving him, and he found his way between them. It was just that. No great thing, practically automatic. If she’d rolled the other way nothing would have happened. Her passionate whispers might have had no words at all. He was rocking into her now and her leg came up around him…

HAL

Locked into his little cell of grayness he’d stormed back almost to the dock before stopping, more embarrassed than angry. He felt ridiculous. Rubbed his face and paced around in a small circle, as if the fog actually bounded him physically.

“I shouldn’t let his jibes sting me,” he murmured. Kept murmuring as his mood and purpose shifted. “I looked a fool… yet, I think she was well pleased with me up to that point …” Kept seeing her face when they’d be talking alone; she seemed interested in asking him questions. The trouble was the questions were about Lohengrin, pretty much. Yet, he’d felt she’d liked him. “It were mere politeness …” He went back and forth with that for awhile. Didn’t resolve it. Didn’t want to. “We but just met.” But then, he’d heard true love was instant, needing no time to grow. “But Lohengrin… could she care for such a… such a… silly fellow?” Went back and forth on that. “She can see I’m stout of heart and not silly …” There was hope.

In any case, I must go back and apologize for my temper, baited as I was by that sharp-tongued Jack…

He turned with sudden resolve and headed back the way he’d come, more or less. He was already planning a speech. He pictured her (with unaccustomed imagination) listening carefully as he explained his emotions, gradually building to the force of his love for her. Heard himself saying:

“I love you, Jane.”

Suddenly he was walking into the water. Stopped and listened for voices, looked around as if he’d be able to actually see the fire. Knit his brows. Should have paid more attention, he thought. This cursed fog seems unnatural… why did I leave home to wander with that damned, silly… Couldn’t find the noun for Lohengrin. Save, then I would not have met her…

It gave him pleasure to say her name. “Jane.”

Tried a new tack, slanting up the beach, concentrating, listening, staring into the cup of blankness that kept pace around him.

He drifted up as far as the road, finding nothing but a pair of goats tethered to a bush; zig-zagged down and nearly walked into a latrine pit the size of a small pond; coming upwind he really hadn’t smelled it.

Circled and cursed and sweated: crisscrossed the area until he suddenly heard sounds… voices. He turned, very close now, the wind softly billowing the cloudy stuff around him.

Was it Jane? Heard groaning and gasping and then they were suddenly within his little capsule of mist and he thought she was being attacked, seeing the bare legs kicking and struggling, a wide-shouldered man with his tights tugged down, on top of her as he, still rushing forward, about to rip him away, then, seeing her face as she groaned and sighed:

“Ahh… oh… ahhh, Lohengrin… Oh my love… ahhhh!”

Skidded, twisted at the last moment, stomach sinking from embarrassment, hurt while at the same moment, furious, wanting to kick, cut, kill… anything to release the conflicting energies within him.

Lohengrin, arching back in orgasm, glimpsed the big, shadowy form as Hal actually jumped over them, fell and rolled across the sand back into the blanking fog… rolled, got up, ran, tripped… up again… running, fleeing the actual sound of her voice because he was downwind and still heard her and (now that he knew what it was) each sound stabbed into him.

So he ran in his little gray hole, snapping through, rebounding off thin scraggly trees and brittle bushes, plunging inland, sucking wind and keening under his breath, a sound that might have suggested a hurt dog and a sobbing woman… running, falling into blindness across a treeless field, suddenly following a narrow, sluggish, muddy stream, twisting with it into gray nowhere. Miserable, lost, heart (he believed) torn forever, chasing on into emptiness, having now been in love only once…