The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

“Whom? Ask me what?” Bonjio? What? His heart accelerated.

  “I challenged him.”

  Prang seemed remote, defensive, and dense. What was bothering him? He was very proud. And like most proud people Parsival had known, he was sensitive mainly to himself. He vaguely recalled a story Prang told him on the road here: something about his father … yes, his father played and sang music, mastered as a minstrel but was weak with the sword and was killed in an ordinary joust … Prang had declared a man must do only one thing, and that as perfectly as possible … He was proud and determined … forever sensing injury where none was generally intended.

  “No doubt you had good cause,” Parsival allowed. “Who is the unfortunate?”

  “Your pard, Gawain. But he said I had to ask you or he wouldn’t stand up to me … I don’t understand.”

  “Why did you challenge him?” Parsival stood up. “What offense did he give?” For an instant he feared this was indirectly aimed at him, but no, he trusted Gawain now. Without effort …

  Prang’s face showed nothing. He met the older man’s eyes directly. Parsival was certain he was angry now.

  “I mean to test his skill,” the young knight stated. “And you think his age will spare you?”

  “He said to ask you. Are you answering?”

  “What is it, Prang? What’s the matter?” He realized how much he’d come to like him. He was honest, strong, well intentioned … Hard to believe he’d once come to kill him, hired by some Duke he’d never named for reasons he didn’t know; and Parsival no longer troubled himself about the plot and plotters. He knew Prang expected him to gather men for revenge against Lancelot and to find the Duke himself with the aid of his broad hints … He wanted a new life, a life apart, yes, and with Unlea, and let the whole past lie as a filled-in grave! Yes … one blow and then counter-blow and then on and on into dull, warped, embittered old age — if he survived … no, never again …! A new life and Prang would come to see, if not share, it himself …

  “I meant to learn from you,” Prang was saying. “Perhaps I’ll learn from Gawain.”

  “Or have your head broken.” So that was it: Prang felt ignored. He knew that Parsival had recommended his services to the Earl. He felt unwanted … Was this what he’d done with his blood son? The insight jabbed into his mind. Had Lohengrin ridden off to spite him, too? He recalled a fragment, a conversation, an outcry: Lohengrin (about thirteen or fourteen) slim, dark, standing, brooding in the rain, wild black hair plastered down, face crisscrossed with trickles in which if there were tears, they were lost. Parsival, wrapped in hides against the storm, was turned on the stopped horse just outside the castle gate. The animal seemed mired in the muddy roadway.

  The boy had run from the main keep and Layla, his mother, was coming across the yard in pursuit of her raging son, who was now shouting, ‘Why don’t you answer? You never answer anybody!’

  And Parsival: ‘I have to go. It's my duty.’

  ‘Duty, shit!’

  ‘Lohengrin!’ his mother cried through the muffling rain.

  ‘You care for nothing! You care nothing for mother!’

  ‘No.’ Parsival remembered his blank anxiety upon hearing this. Why couldn’t this wild boy understand? He was of age. Layla would explain. She had almost arrived. ‘Go back with your mother!’ he shouted. ‘I’ve no time for this.’

  ‘You never have time!’ the boy raged. ‘Why don’t you go and chase the Grail again, you stupid fool! You fool …! You fool …! Fool …! ’ And then Layla caught him and swung her palm flat into his face with a resounding, liquid crack. ‘He is a fool!’ Lohengrin kept shouting out. ‘Everyone knows it …! Everyone knows it …!’ “Prang,” he said, “don’t make this error.”

  “Is it?” Prang asked. “But for which of us? They say he has an empty sleeve.”

  “A hand off only, but his sole arm is more than two for you, lad.”

  Unlea was studying them both.

  “What’s the harm,” she asked, “of a friendly bout?”

  “How friendly would it be?” Parsival wondered. “Or am I wrong?”

  “A fight is a fight,” said Prang.

  “Well,” Parsival said, “avoid this one, Prang. You’re not ready for such an opponent. I agreed to teach you, and you agreed to heed, so …”

  “Then we’ll go on from here together?” Prang said, relenting slightly.

  “I …” Parsival glanced at Unlea. Away. At Prang again. Away. “We’ll speak of this later,” he said lamely. There was no choice. He and Unlea had to be alone, if only for a time. The young man would understand this was a special case: his future, his heart, his soul depended on it.

  “I see,” Prang said distantly.

  My soul depends on it, Parsival thought. I have no choice …

  He touched Prang’s arm.

  “I am passing fond of you,” he said. “Never doubt it.” The young man was just watching him now. “We’ll speak of these things later,” Parsival finished.

  Because my soul depends on it …

  Prang said nothing. He allowed the hand to grip his arm. Watched his teacher’s face intently. Parsival released him, a trace awkwardly, and turned away.

  It does, he thought, it does in truth … it does …

  Except he didn’t talk with him again. There wasn’t time. Early that morning Unlea stole from her chambers and met Parsival in her sewing room. Barefoot, in sweeping gown and robe, she fled breathless through the dark, chilly halls. Need excused everything: no, not even excused, because that suggested consideration of a wrong, and, in fact, there was only need. She did not belong to herself. Her limbs and heart moved at his whim (which was stirred only by love), so there was no one to excuse. She accepted this fate with a strange fervor, so that even the shadow of doom that haunted these halls and her daily consciousness was no more to her than death to a martyr, who’s immersed in holy image and brightness like a moth with the brilliant, killing flame light … So it wasn’t lust, which would have been cautious, but rather a call, a necessity of blood and soul, a struggle for life itself, like the drowning reach for the infinite relief and bliss of breath … So she was given and was not her self’s self … she joined his will to move, to fill flesh and mind so that, coming in the doorway, shutting and half-closing the bolt, she was already tugging down her gown so as to be full naked for him instantly, flinging herself, wordless, burning hot and fierce, and limp, too, into his close, crushing, tender, frightened, frantic grasp …

  * * *

  Neither of them heard the door swing open or a footfall in the narrow room. They lay naked and silent, tangled in rolls and bundles of silk and samite cloth, a fluffy down and unseamed quilting so smooth that there had just been moments when Parsival not only couldn’t tell where he and she left off, but where the soft, sleek world around them began, either.

  So they lay, breathing themselves back to earth and ordinary time.

  And her voice was whispering, “I care not … I care not … all other moments are dried and dead for me … I am only this, my lover, and care for nothing else …”

  Her lover was half in a dream: the grasses grew waist-tall and were a soft gold that shimmered faintly; the sky was rose-pink and the air itself seemed to condense into rainbowed, vaguely winged brightnesses that flowered overhead; violet blossoms rang like music in the sweetly dipping, endless fields; he felt the soft sleekness of the fronds and rich air, and the hush of all things was like a tender voice; his body was smooth and easy and seemed without weight … then something behind him: he could somehow see it and spun around to confront a form black and red, like burning iron, a suggestion of armor, massiveness, of bowed and twisted limbs, of blackened weapons poisoning the scene, flowers and grasses withering and staining dark from its glowing drippings, and then the squat, toad-like shape lunged for him, seemed to cry out: “Die now! Die at last! Die with your secret!”

  And he awoke, gasping out distinctly, not comprehending his own words: “Are you the mirror of
me? Are you …”

  And he found himself staring up at a tall man in the dim light of the single lantern he held; heard Unlea moan with dread (though he didn’t know it was simply dread of having no more time with him, not of destruction itself).

  And then a male voice, both sympathetic and cynical, was saying, “I pray not … nor would I be so foolish as to stay in the bear’s cave to eat his honey.”

  “Gawain,” Parsival said.

  “How little you’ve changed,” Gawain reflected. “Nor do you yet appreciate my puns and wit and turned meanings.”

  “What do you intend?” Unlea asked practically. But, then, she had only the one fear, so all else was easy for her now.

  “What is hardest to stand,” he replied. “Advice.”

  “Advise, then,” Parsival said, sitting up.

  Gawain was shaking his head.

  “When ere we meet,” he remarked, “you are riding the same steed.” He dropped to one knee. “Even with your gifts, O Samson, you cannot win here. There are enough men to cut you down. And if you escape, what of her?”

  “My head has been far from clear,” Parsival admitted. He turned to her. “You said he knew.”

  “Yes,” she responded.

  “Why did you tarry here?” Gawain was puzzled.

  “I cannot say.” She clung close to her lover, unashamed of her nakedness.

  “Well,” Gawain urged in an intense whisper, “I say fly,” He nodded self-agreement. “Fly, in Jesus’ name.”

  He rode with them until the dawn, which broke as they were topping a high hill. The castle had receded to the middle distance in the long valley below.

  The lovers had come away with horses, a pack mule, and precious little to pack. The mounts were halted and everyone was still and silent here at the first moment of sunrise: the delicate rose tints and pale blues, wisps of streaked clouds, red, gold, and green leaves, the breathless hush of first light …

  “Well,” Gawain said, finally, “fare you well, though you’re mad as geese, withal.”

  Parsival reached over and grasped the knight’s bare hand.

  “And what of you, my friend?” he inquired.

  Gawain’s sole eye looked quietly from his improvised burnouse.

  “I mean not to wander and fight till the end of my days,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Nor I,” his friend said.

  “But I think there’ll be no escaping what’s to come. It may find you, Parsival-the-lover, go where you list. It may find you still.”

  “I want no more warring. No more.”

  Gawain nodded. Parsival released his hand now.

  “You want love,” he said. “Well, I want something myself. And I am hard to discourage.”

  “Want?”

  Unlea was looking back at the silver-green flow of the morning valley. The sun was just poking streams of rich light into the folds of unstirring mist. Fare thee well, she thought. For I cannot explain what I do … I care deeply for you, O my husband … She felt a string of tears. O, fare thee well, and hate me not … hate me not, sir …

  “If I gain it,” Gawain concluded, turning his horse aside to return, “I promise to let you know.” His eye smiled from the veiled shadows of his face. “In one world or the other.”

  “Aid the young knight,” Parsival said, in parting, “as you promised.”

  “I swear my word again.” And then he was heading down the long, steep slope into the shadow of the hill.

  Parsival looked ahead as they started forward. The trees were thinned out here and the view stretched wide before them, bright, fall-stained woods, a long, swinging, curve of river, soft, gleaming fields, a last misty hint of water among the horizon hills …

  I have but one lifetime, he was thinking, and no more to waste … no more …

  So this time it had to be everything, nothing merely pleasant, half-felt, part-intended; this time he had to burn, to taste and totally savor everything … everything …

  He looked at her as the brightening sun enhanced the honey of her face, her loose hair glinting under the wide-brimmed traveling hat, the slight parting of her rounded lips that he so cherished … savored her with his eyes. Yes, he thought, everything … He stretched out his arm and took her hand as they rode and said nothing …

  BOOK III

  WHEN BROADITCH AWOKE, the door was closed. He lay on the hard, bare clay floor in his mud-stiffened clothes. He decided he must have rolled off the pallet. He blinked, snorted, stretched his limbs … listened to the wind puffing and moaning through the eaves … thought briefly of waking up beside Alienor … thought of things they'd shared, of her barbed humor … smiled and was sad, too … He stared for a time, shook his head over and over before his consciousness really caught up with waking. He smelled broiling meat and realized he was famished.

  He grunted and eased himself upright. Every bone and muscle throbbed. His neck was out again, too. He sighed and started to massage it, roll it loosely, grinding the spinal buttons together. He stopped, staring at what he instantly knew was his host, as daylight and raw wind burst through the doorway, rattled pots, cupboard doors, and an astonishingly round man whirled in with fierce speed, dwarfing the room with his mass, holding two dead, skinned, bloody bodies (that Broaditch only later realized were full-sized goats) casually over his shoulder. The ball-like man, he saw, was nowhere soft. Broaditch had the feeling that any blow or full-tilt charge would rebound without marking a dent.

  He was suddenly motionless, studying Broaditch, who felt as if he looked up at the weight of the world looming above: the face was round, nose a bulb, mouth a puckered “O.” One eye was red-rimmed, perpetually widened, surprised, and furious. The other was a smear of inflamed, crusted scar tissue. The hairless head gleamed. The door rattled behind him as the draft clattered around the room and raised a smoky fog of dust, sucked and worried the fire. Then the door blew shut with a bang.

  “Good day,” Broaditch said hopefully, not rising. “God keep you, good man. I am called Broad — ”

  “What cares Balli for a thief’s name?” The creature’s voice was high-pitched, irritating, nagging.

  “Pardon,” Broaditch went on, getting painfully to his feet, “but I am a stranger cast up by the sea, and this were the sole shelter at hand, thus — ”

  Balli could stand no more. He knotted a fist nearly the girth of the other’s head and struck him. Only years of training and natural quickness saved Broaditch’s nose bone. He jerked back and, as it was, felt the blood spatter over his face, choked, stumbled, and sat down violently against the back wall.

  “You bastard!” he cried, spitting blood and holding his nose, feeling it swell into his fingers.

  “What cares Balli for lies?” the round being asked, tossing the two goats into a corner of the hut and advancing with that blurring fluid speed to the fireplace, where a whole goat body was roasting in its bubbling fat. Balli squatted there, tearing chunks loose (Broaditch wondered how his mouth could stand the heat), chewing, bolting, licking his fingers, seeming to suck the food into himself, burying his face in the steaming intestines now, sucking the long lengths continuously so that, the witness thought, for a moment it might have been his own innards coming out.

  Broaditch was so astonished by this performance that he didn’t think to flee at first, as the cooked flesh vanished with crunching and oozing noises. This was more disturbing, almost, than the pain in his nose … The blood had stopped trickling down his throat when he gathered his legs under him, picking a moment when the gross being was bending low, dipping his whole head into the belly of the ripped meal, and charged for the doorway. Balli, the last foot of colon flopping from his mouth, effortlessly sped to the door, which stuck as the fugitive tried to fling it wide. He simply tossed two-hundred-pound-plus Broaditch the length of the hut into the far wall with another crash, and sucked in the tube like a giant noodle.

  Then he spoke: “Balli knows how to deal with thieves.”

  Broaditch ha
d no doubt of this. He sighed. He’d cracked his head on the boards this time, adding a headache to his list of woes.

  “Listen, Balli,” he said after a bit, trying to communicate reasonableness, “cannot we talk this through as just men?”

  The single, round, glassy outraged eye peered at him from over the fingers the pursed mouth was sucking clean.

  “Never fear,” Balli declared. “Soon we hold trial.”

  “Trial?” Broaditch said.

  But Balli, still working a few last tasty fragments around his teeth with his tongue, was presently squatting his immense hams over a bucket and unwinding a coil of droppings that, for size, length, and stink, gave Broaditch a passing notion that only the great Homer of the Greeks (whose translated work he’d struggled through when he was taught to read) could deal with the scale of it …

  “Mary, save me,” he murmured, “a trial?”

  Valit was squatting on his haunches, peering through a screen of dwarfed, withered pines down the barren slope, over the herd of sluggish goats, at the windowless, sagging hut. He’d just watched the vast Balli enter, swinging the two carcasses like hares from his fist.

  Now, he was telling himself, was the time to run. Valit wasn’t superstitious, all things considered, but the sight of Balli raised basic doubts: if there were trolls, then that was one. So the thing to do was run, head inland and go back to London. He’d been an ass to begin with, following Broaditch. There was safety back there with those dull wits. Since the first, he’d been batted on the skull, half-drowned, attacked by serpents … He cursed and sighed, toying with a handful of pine needles, crumbling them to dust in his nervous fingers. Anyway, where could this farmer past his prime lead him? What profit would there be, in the end? A fool’s choice, no doubt of it … Still, the gray head was intelligent. Valit was tuned for traces of that. He felt, in that respect, he was often groping for precious stones in a chamber pot … Think how easy it would have been were I born of quality, he mused. But my fortune can be made, like Cay-am said, at any time if you watch and wait … But one certain thing — it won't be made back with me Dad and that ignorant lot.