Authors: Anne Eliot Crompton
Bee Sting comes up, ready between fingers.
But wait.
White fallow doe. Just such a one led the Lady and me into Counsel Oak's shadow once, where I received and rejected good counsel.
Just such a one swam out past Percy and me as we rode our coracle toward the Kingdom.
Turn back
, she signaled. But I misunderstood her.
How many snow-white deer may there be in this forest?
This may well be the same one as twice before.
She looks back at me, flicks tail again, steps forward again.
I push Bee Sting back into belt. I rise up out of snow and follow her.
She takes the straight, trodden track as a Human would. Come to think (despite hunger, weariness, and chill), this is a Human kind of track.
I am guided.
Mary's Clearing opens before me.
My guide steps aside among snow-laden young pines and vanishes.
Ahead, Mary's bower stands humped under snow. Alanna stands humped before it, reed broom in hand. Brushed-off snow lies flung to both sides, but Mary is still invisible under snow. I am glad.
Walking up gently, I hear Alanna pant and mumble.
Standing close I notice how she has aged. Her braid is white, shoulders hunched and shrunk. In this light I cannot see her aura; but I feel it small, close to her figure, gray.
Softly, I snap my fingers. Alanna's hearing is sharp as ever. She turns to me, peers at me. A moment, and she knows me.
“Little Lili? It is you!”
Little Lili; like little Ranna.
This is how Alanna sees me?
“I thought you went away with Percy.”
“I did so, Alanna.”
“Little” must refer to my height.
“Ah. And now you're back.”
“Here I am.”
And Alanna knew me truly little.
Gray eyes widen. “Percy's back!”
I feel her invisible aura expand and swallow me. She drops the broom and dances herself around, awkward as a captive bear I once saw forced to dance in Gahart's Hall. Her gaze sweeps around, past and over me. “Where is Percy?” She cries, “Percy!”
I tell her, “Percy isn't here.”
She quiets. “Where?”
“Out in the Kingdom.”
“Dead.”
“Oh, no! Very alive. He's a Knight of the Round Table, Alanna. Questing the Holy Grail.”
“What! What?”
“The Holy Grail.”
I feel Alanna's aura crumble. Fast as it expanded, now it shrinks away to a black veil over her face. I remember Sir Agrain's dying aura.
She murmurs, “The Holy Grail. Knights go after that, they never come back. Never seen again. Or if they are seen, they drool and dream. Mad as sick wolves.
“The Holy Grail,” she says. “Percy will never come backâ¦Before, there was hopeâ¦but nowâ¦Now I might as well⦔
Alanna pulls a good, sharp knife from her belt and punches it into her left breast.
What I should do now; I should turn and go away.
If Alanna wants to die, that's her decision. No right to interfere.
The knife is good and sharp, but it doesn't go far in.
Alanna yanks it out. Shudders deeply. Bleeds a bit. Holds up her left hand and sets knife to wrist.
What I do is, I reach and grab Alanna's right wrist. Take the knife away. Throw it aside.
Now I throw my arms wide and high and close them, almost, about Alanna's waist. We reel together off-balance, and collapse in the snow. Alanna's arms come around my shoulders. Her warmth enfolds me. Her tears drench my cheek. Alanna's tears, Alanna's grief, catch me like plague. I cry, myself.
For Alanna spoke truth. Percival will not come back.
Afterwhile, when both our tears have slowed, I whisper in Alanna's ear what the Goddess told me the night before the combat. “That's why I came back.”
Alanna sits up straight. She dries her eyes on her poor old gown. (Now I know how poor it is!) She staunches her wound with it. She says, “Then I must live.”
“Me too.”
“We have work to do.”
I dry my own strange tears on my tunic. I ask her, “What has happened here? Where is Ivie?”
“Ivie? Oh, Ivie. Her time came, to bear her child, and she disappeared.”
Aha.
In Fey fashion, Ivie hid herself away, alone with the Goddess, and her child. If she has not been seen since, she is most likely dead.
“I would have helped,” Alanna says sadly. “I would have cared for her and the child. But she went away. Ivie turned Fey, and Sir Edik turned Human.”
What?
“Sir Edik was always Human.”
“Only half.”
“Sir Edik is half-Fey?” Come to think, I should have guessed that. His small stature, his skillsâ¦he always finger-talked with the best. So he turned to his Fey half, and tried to forget the other. And now? Alanna means, now he has turned back to his Human Heart. “How has he turned Human, Alanna?”
“Heâ¦Iâ¦We are wed.”
“Wed!”
“Aye. I would never lie with him otherwise.”
“But wedding needs a priest! Witnesses!”
“Not so. True wedding needs only a promise. Holy Mary witnessed ours.”
I learn more about the Kingdom, even here!
“A good thing you stopped me just now, Lili. No matter my pain, I had no right to leave my dear husband alone.”
Husband!
This is what the Human Heart leads to! Obligations. Rights and counter-rights. Now poor Alanna has not even the right to die!
Merlin warned me that the Human Heart may be its own price. Counsel Oak warned me.
A price is paid for every quest.
Still embraced, we kneel up together.
Alanna murmurs, “And now, Lili, I have no right to leave you alone either.”
Something moves in my breast, in the area where Alanna tried to stab herself. Something in there opens like a flower, but suddenlyâas if spring came and sun shone and flower bloomed all in a moment.
Astonished, I hear myself say, “I won't leave you alone either.”
Alanna lets out a soft cry. “Holy Mary!”
Embraced together, we turn to Mary.
Mary has melted away Her disguising mantle of snow. She stands clear and distinct. Sun glows on faded paint. Hollow wooden eyes watch us.
Alanna breathes, “Miracle!” She knows how much snow was still there to sweep away.
But she does not even see Mary's steady lightning spread through the whole clearing.
Last time I saw this lightning I scrambled down yonder yew tree and fled away.
It holds no terror for me now. Mary's wooden gaze holds no terror.
I only bow my head to Her in solemn greeting, as Ivie used to do, when passing back and forth with wood or water.
Green soldier lifts a shining shield,
Golden gleam in clouded field;
Sun in green grass.
Gold shield becomes a mist of light
That glows alive; a gleaming white
Cloud in green grass.
Wind tears and bears away white cloud.
Green soldier shrinks in leafy shroud,
Gone from green grass.
In distant days and distant fields
Will gleam and glow a thousand shields;
Suns in green grass.
Knight of the Quest
Nay!” Gawain shouted, “I told you! It is the vessel of the Last Supper!”
“And I tell you,” Lancelot repeated almost patiently, “it is the vessel that held Christ's blood from the Crossâ”
“Might could be both,” Percival pointed out. He stood a little apart, looking down over the spring countryside spread all green below.
Newly awakened, the three hungry, unarmed Knights had been rolling up cloaks and packing saddlebags when this dispute broke out. Lancelot's Fey Mell had gone scouting for food. Percival remarked sourly to himself that the Fey made by far the most useful travel companions.
Gawain turned on him. “And you, Percival? What did you say it was?”
Percival shrugged. “A magic vessel. It brings forth honeycakes and other food, according toâ”
Lancelot snatched up a stick by his feet and broke it in two. “Magic! By St. George! I haven't quested through the winter for any magicâ”
“You haven't quested at all,” Gawain broke in. “You've drifted along in a royal dream ofâ”
Lancelot swung half his stick at Gawain's head.
Gawain ducked and sprang on Lancelot.
Lancelot beat Gawain's sides with both sticks.
“Here!” Percival dived in between them. Lancelot cudgeled, Gawain wrestled him. “Hey!” He gasped as they crashed to earth in a flailing pyramid. “Ho!” As they rolled halfway down hill. “Hey-ho!” As they lay in a panting heap.
Percival opened squinting eyes.
Boots stood before his nose. Looking up the boots, he found Fey Mell smiling down, close-mouthed. Over one shoulder Mell held a bulging sack.
“Food!” Percival pushed a knee off his chest and sat up. “Here is our magic grail, Sirs. Bringing forth food according to our desires.”
The other two sat up and disentangled.
Softly, Mell remarked, “Hungry man, angry man.”
“Man?” Lancelot rose to his knees. “Me, I turned back into a boy!”
“What came over us?” Gawain wondered, standing up shakily.
“Starvation,” Lancelot decided. “Show us your wares, Mell. We'll talk later, on full stomachs.”
Later, last crumb and scrap devoured on the hilltop, they talked.
Gawain said, “Seems to me we're questing for three different things.”
Percival: “Which we don't even know what they are. Could be a cup, a dish, a bowl. Supposed to be made of goldâ”
Gawain: “But from what I've heard of Our Lord, His life, more likely is horn or wood.”
Mell finger-talked to Lancelot. Percival watched and understood, more or less.
“Oh, aye.” Sadly, Lancelot translated. “If the grail is magic, we each have an equal chance to find it. But if it is holy; if it has to do with Our Lord the Christ, then I'm out of the running.”
Gawain admitted, “I'd thought of that.”
Percival had not. “Why?” He asked his friend. “Why are you out of the running?”
Gawain and Lancelot looked away, downhill. Mell signed to Percival,
Queen.
Queen. Gwenevere. Sin. Oh, aye.
A short silence fell among them, which Lancelot broke. “You might do better without me.”
Gawain said, “Could be, we'd do better each alone. Each on his own merits.”
Percival nodded. All winter an uneasiness had followed him like a cold shadow. What would his companions say if they knew
why
he sought the Holy Grail? Keeping this secret had taught him something about Humanity. He had learned some caution, suspicion, judgment, to keep some distance between himself and his close friends. If he himself kept such a secret, why, maybe they kept their own secrets!
He asked Lancelot, “But why did you come on this quest at all?”
This long, deprived, winter quest!
“You thought the grail was holy from the first.”
Lancelot opened his mouth to answer, and closed it.
Mell signed across him to Percival,
Find grail. Prove no sin.
Goddamn!
In high, stiff language, Lancelot proclaimed their silent decision. “Let us now ride apart, questing each his own Holy Grail. But swear we now brotherhood forever, together or apart.”
And so it came to pass.
Percival rode his red charger downhill and away, baggage behind saddle, sword and lance at side and Bee Sting under belt.
Lili had left it for him. Waking after their quarrel, he had found it in her place on the floor. He knew she had not simply forgotten it. This was her last gift to him, and he treasured it as such. Also, though not at all Knightly, Bee Sting remained his favorite weapon.
Once more, Percival found himself transformed. Before this he had thought his goal reached, only to rise, surprised, to a new height. Now at last, he felt himself truly a questing Knightâtotally alone between spring earth and sky, without even Lili's Victory ring to help him!
Now my victories will be all my own! No ring, no spells, no magic, no friends, can steal the glory that will be mine!
Lo, here I am.
Slowly he entered Lord Gahart's known fields. He let the red plod quietly along, gazing about him at fields and fold, herd and plowed earth, wondrously delighted. So might a worthy soul enter Heaven.
“Go! Bring me here a golden ring
And set it on his finger.
Put satin slippers on his feet
And bid him bide and linger
The while you kill the fatted calf
My son was lost; he's found again!
Let harper play, let jester laugh.
My son was dead; he lives again.”
So sang the minstrel in Gahart's Hall; and so was it done for Percival. Robed richly again, ale flagon in hand, he sat at Gahart's right hand while cudgellers, boxers, and wrestlers competed; nor was he asked to compete, himself. All these contests he watched intently, squinting against firelight. These were the men he would one day command.
Late at night, a servant escorted him outside the hall to a small wicker bower built in a small pear orchard. Pear blossoms scented the air and drifted down like snowflakes, shadows across the full moon.
The bower contained a wide soft bed, lamp stand, bench, and chest. Left alone, Percival laid robe on bench and armor on chest. He blew out the lamp and stretched gratefully, naked, on the bed.
Lili came to him.
“Where have you been?” He asked her, making room in bed.
She slipped in beside, against, and entwined with him. She embraced him and breathed down his neck.
He asked her, “Shall we play our game you showed me?”
Her little fingers tingled his skin. Manhood stirred like a sleepy snake.
But at the same time, “Wait!” Percival caught her hand, held it still. For a long time he had been without Lili, and without the protection of her Powers. Of necessity, his senses had sharpened. Now it was he who whispered, “Someoneâ¦comes.”
Someone breathed outside the bower; someone touched the leather curtain at the entrance.
Fey Lili vanished.
Percival sat bolt upright, dream-dazed eyes wide. His fingers sought wildly across the bed for the Bee Sting he always kept close.
He had left it aside. On bench? On chest?
Someone lifted the leather curtain. Full moonlight shone in the opened space. Dark against silver light, a small, slight figure crept within.
Crept in, besides, pear-blossom scent, and another, overwhelming scent, such a scent as to wake body and render soul unconscious.
Percival sighed relief.
No need for Bee Sting.
The leather curtain dropped into place, cutting off moonlight. In darkness, a robe rustled as the small person tugged and drew it off. Now her perfume filled the place of air in the bower.
Pale in the dark, she glided to him, bent to him, whispered, “Did I wake you, Sir Percival?”
And Percival remembered Lili's angry words.
Who will keep the women off you? They'll eat you alive.
Rejoicing, he grabbed the pale, warm figure, pulled her onto the bed, crushed her in arms far too long empty. Rolling with her, he nuzzled a wave of scented hair aside and growled in her ear, “Eat me alive!”
She giggled delightedly. “That I will, Sir!” And fell to.
Not for long were they on the bed. Somehow they found themselves on floor rushes. Sometime later, Percival sat on the bench. The girl came onto his lap. Straining to enter her, for the first time he saw her; long pale hair; childish, honeycake breasts; huge eyes reflecting silver moonlight.
Moonlight?
Percival's hair rose. Manhood fell.
A bear snarled in his earâone deep, deadly snarl, quickly swallowed.
Moonlight flooded through the entrance where the leather curtain had been ripped away.
Bear-big, clad in a linen nightshirt, Gahart stood over Percival. Moonlight glinted harsh on a sword gripped in his left paw, a dagger in his right.
With a stifled cry the girl slid from Percival's lap to the floor.
“Ruin my girl, will you?” Gahart grunted. “God's teeth! Ruin you!”
He drove the dagger into Percival's naked right shoulder.
But I'm unarmed!
Percival felt the blow impact. He felt warm blood gush, but no pain.
Round Table Knights don't attackâ
“You're hound food!” Gahart yanked out the dagger and raised his sword.
The girl knelt up, reached both hands, caught Gahart's sword wrist and hung on.
Percival sprang up and seized Gahart's dagger wrist. For some reason his right arm would not work. With only his weakening left hand he held Gahart's dagger away from his heart.
From the floor the girl muttered, “Father!”
Gahart rumbled, “Him first. You next.” He managed to slash Percival's right arm and side. Holding feebly to Gahart's wrist, Percival felt each slash, and warm blood erupt, but no pain.
“Father,” the girl said, clearer, “I'll scream.”
If Percival had the strength, he would laugh.
Strangely, Gahart stepped back away. Stranger, he gave off stabbing Percival's right side. Wondering, Percival hung on to Gahart's sword wrist with all his fast-ebbing strength.
“Father,” she'd said.
Goddamn! Gahart's daughter. Lili told me.
Daughter. Stray words from his new education flashed like lightning through Percival's head. “Sin”⦓obligation”⦓duty”⦓rights.” “Daughter.”
Holy Michael, I'm in the wrong! He's caught me like a thief in his treasury.
“Father,” the girl said, wrestling with Gahart for control of his sword. “I'll scream. I'll wake them all up. They'll all know. Father, let him go!”
Panting, Gahart turned back to Percival, who still gripped his dagger wrist. “Goddamn you, go! Beforeâ”
Blood flowed warmly down Percival's right side. He muttered, “Arms. Clothes⦔
“Go. Now.”
But. What happens to Ranna? That's her name. Knight of the Round Table must protect the weak. Even the guilty weak?
“I'll go now, Sir. But don't kill her.”
“You argue withâ”
“I'll screamâ”
Once more, this silly threat weakened Gahart. He growled to Percival, “You come back, kill you.” His teeth glinted like daggers. “Only way you come back, with Holy Grail.”
“I'm going. But don'tâ”
“I get grail, you get girl. Girl for grail. Get it?”
So. He won't kill her.
Percival glanced at her past Gahart's trembling, thirsty dagger. Face whiter than moonlight. Eyes like empty platters.
She must know her father. Maybeâ¦maybe all this has happened before!
Percival gasped, “Sir, I'm letting go. I trust in your word.”
“God's balls, man, go!”
Percival let go of Gahart's dagger wrist.
Gahart lost balance and staggered back.
Swift and smooth like a Fey, naked Percival ducked out of the bower into moonlit orchard.
***
Naked Percival slumped over his horse's neck.
As soon as he escaped from Gahart's sword and dagger, his wounds began to hurt. Percival had little experience with pain, but instinct told him that soon this hurting would cloud his mind and fill his world.
Quickly, while he could still think, he made for the stable where his red charger was stalled.
Thank blessed Mary! If he were out to pasture, I could never catch him.
He had neither strength nor time to saddle the horse. He bridled and led it outside, then climbed up from the mounting block.
Out of hereâ¦awayâ¦
The red was used to spurs and whip. Feeble kicks from naked heels barely moved it along the track. Now and then it would stop and graze; and Percival, fainting into its mane, would wake and kick and haul on the reins till it moved on.
We must be past Gahart's borderâ¦Pray God we're past his borderâ¦
Through the night they plodded, through fields, along forest tracks, past herds and flocks. Percival sank into a sea of pain and dreams. His right side seemed paralyzed. He could not lift that arm. He ached up and down and deep inside. His muscles contracted, bunched and rippled, as if to shake off pain. Now and then blood leaked down his side, warm against shivering skin. He could scarcely breathe for the fire of pain in his ribs.
Light came around them.
Dawn
.
The red stopped; lowered its neckâPercival almost slid down over itâand burbled. Drank.
Water. We're standing in waterâ¦if I could drinkâ¦if only I could drinkâ¦but I'd never get back up here.
Percival hung on to the red's mane, slumped, and dreamed.
He dreamed a dawn-bright lake, reeds, teal, and geese flying up in flocks before the charger's wading hoofs.