Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II

by Richard Monaco

  “Put her in the cage,” the madman said. “Let the rat spy the bait.”

  I heard that. Wondered about it. I hated rats. I loved sleep … sleep … sleep … All the things the voices said were silly…

  JESCHUTE

  We rode, and it was raining. The earth smoked. It was a wonder to me as if (because of all that terrible time in the underworld) I had a child’s fresh sight.

  And then the castle. The knight took me; I held him from behind — very like a child. My arms around his iron waist. I had no memory of this place. I kept hoping that time would clear the troubled waters of my life …

  PARSIVAL

  When I recovered, the rain was in my face and the blurry wall loomed above me. There was no more mist. The woods were dark and deep and wet. I knew the darkness had entered me. It was down there, unseen, untraceable. Like a bottomless pool in my mind. It was there like a wild dreaming, a choked-off scream from some childhood terror. The golden sword lay broken beside me. What had I broken it on?

  I’d been having a busy time of it. I’d quit the king (who’d tried to kill me already); killed a beautiful lady in a garden; chased my son at sea; descended volcanos; been struck by lightning … enough … I climbed up and over, almost as if to get away from what no longer had to chase me. From then on there would always be a spot of that emptiness in me. Or had it always been there? I’d seen too much as it was and despaired.

  It was like being ill. Everything took a little too much effort. I headed along the familiar road and tried not to think about anything. I marched on. Trees overhung the highway. Waded through stippled puddles. Climbed the gradual slope through open, rocky fields where late season flowers glowed violet and deep russet among the prickly upland grasses.

  A strong breeze freshened. Bowed and billowed the rain. Tore whitish streaks in the clouds. The day’s glow went dim and bright without rhythm. The subtle, bad feeling stayed, the sense of something sickly and dismal sunk in the well of myself. Ah, could but the rain wash it out of me!

  HOWTLANDE

  Whatever it had been was gone. And what next? What prospects? Another wild chase for phantom gain?

  I had to repair my fortunes. And this Lohengrin seemed a decent fellow with more common sense than his famous father.

  “I mean to go to London town,” I told him, as we straggled along the sound Roman road. Sunlight broke through here and there and flecked the treetops. “You’re welcome to come, young man. You seem a knight of uncommon enterprise and wit. “

  The nervous girl was shivering still. She huddled close to him. His expression was indifferent, I perceived. That didn’t bode well for her prospects.

  “And,” he wanted to know, “do what, exactly?”

  I touched my finger alongside my nose. “Make our way in the world, young man. Find profitable employment. Cease chasing mad goals with mad companions. Find ways and means of advancement. The key to life, young man, is to persist and when the chance comes, jump on opportunity. Rape the bitch.” He looked hard at me. Obviously my words had given him food for reflection.

  LOHENGRIN

  Nice, general precepts Howtlande had. But better, I reasoned, to join forces with this windbag than with someone I’d have to worry about. No sense retreating home empty-handed. I’d be worse off than when I’d started. And Morgan’s tale about my mother being in danger was likely as substantial as the rest of her notions.

  And then, I’d have to find something to do with this cloying girl, sooner or later. Perhaps I could leave her, like a babe, on some doorstep … “Yes,” I said. “A fair idea. But I may have a better. Yet, first, let’s find horses. I know a likely spot not far from here.”

  JESCHUTE

  I knew him. Even with the wild beard and visor closed and ruined legs hanging over the side of the stool they’d set him down on to face me in the rainy castle yard. The cool mud bubbled around my feet. I stared at him.

  I really had nothing to say. I waited. I’m not certain he was even paying attention to me. The men with him had cruel, pale faces. A thin, one-eyed advisor stood behind him. A bloatfaced fellow leaned on a sword, the rain running over his puffed cheeks and dripping into the black mud. Scavengers, bandits, but whom else would have followed him?

  All my memories had come back, and I was sorry. Sorry for the terrible things and sorry to have to remember. “I really hated you,” I suddenly said. “And then I just forgot.”

  He cocked his head inside the too-tight helmet with the ragged beard sprouting out the mask. But his cold and pebbly voice was the same.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “I even remember that too.”

  “Who, woman? I know you not.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I know that too. You never knew me.”

  I think I was crying.

  PARSIVAL

  Home. Finally. And I’d walked it. And the strange darkness was still in me. I tried not to notice. All the empty things I’d done had collected in a pool, a pit, a hole.

  I stood and stared up the slope at the old walls, the familiar fields, the soggy-looking huts in the valley. Home.

  When I tried to recall just what had happened to me, I brought back nothing but a shapeless, cloudiness looming overhead, sucking at me in winds of terror. There was a sense of something unspeakable being pushed into me in sickening violation that had sent soul and body into a frenzied spasm … Or was it just all the bad memories of all the ugly, wasted, meaningless things in my life flooding up from the pit of conscience?

  The golden sword had seemed to vaporize in golden flame. Maybe. I left the broken pieces behind. There were so many maybes in all of it: Morgana, Merlinus, the underworld adventure that might have been … what? More dreams? Fever? Bad water? Drugged food? So many maybes and then a hole in the blasted garden where fog poured and a woman or witch or both tried to stab me to death for supposed magical reasons which were full of maybes too …

  Oh, the golden flame flared and the darkness recoiled, I think. Unaccountable things always happened to me and then I’d seem to wake up into daylight sooner or later with a handful of air for my pains.

  Home. Home. Home. Just what I’d been wanting. Here I was, weary, drained, with a stain of darkness in me that wasn’t going to fade. My knee still hurt from the machine’s blow and my heel ached where Gobble had gnawed on it.

  Halfway to the gate, I knew there were too many men at the embrasures, and who’d hung a cage up there? Someone was inside the cage. It was raining again. I squinted through the grayness. It was a woman in the cage. A terrible punishment. She was huddled, naked on the barred floor, dripping hair long and dark. A thin woman.

  While I was trying to be sure, the side gate opened and a slender, pale, disheveled-looking woman emerged, holding a tattered cloak close around herself. The chill rain had picked up. Several streams sliced into the hill from where the foamy runoff impacted after spilling down the castle walls. She crossed one streamlet that looped in front of my feet before slanting down into the valley and the first line of soggy trees,

  She was a ghost of someone familiar. She stopped in front of me. Someone fatal: that was in her gaze. There were more men on the battlements now, watching. Something was terribly wrong, and not just the woman in the cage whom I was afraid to recognize.

  “You don’t remember me,” said the haggard lady, hair burned with streaks of gray.

  I was chilled and miserable. All I’d wanted was to come home, and I had come home and the curse had followed me. All my dreams ran blood, sooner or later.

  I sighed.

  “No,” I said, “I know you. You’re the lady I always see just before …” Before all dooms. She didn’t react much. Like the angel of all my pointless deaths. “Good day, angel,” I said.

  “It’s your wife in the cage,” she told me. I shut my eyes and nodded, letting the rain pour over my face. “They’ve been waiting for you.”

  “They always are,” I said, still not looking. I rem
embered her name, though I really didn’t believe it yet. “Don’t tell me your husband is inside.”

  I remembered him. Saw his contorted face, blood vessels burst in both eyes, chained to his horse, useless legs flopping as he rocked in the saddle and screamed in fury because he’d just broken the horse’s back trying to get me with his huge mace. He foamed and spat seething hate. I’d been too numb to really understand. He’d always believed I’d dishonored his wife. Yes, Jeschute. That was her name.

  “Yes,” she told me. She didn’t have to say much else. Morgana had gotten one thing right, at least. I opened my eyes to the consuming grayness. Years didn’t help either. Every time I moved, I left ineradicable tracks.

  “Curse it,” I said. “Curse it.”

  She just stood there, hair plastered flat over her shoulders. “They fear you,” she told me. “They ask you to lay down your weapons and go inside. Then, they say, she’ll be released…

  “They say this?”

  “He says it.”

  “Who is mad.” I looked through the blurring downpour that made a wall out of the air itself. I tried to focus on the blurred shape of my poor wife. The blurred shape of my guilt. There was no choice again and for once I was glad about the darkness of the hole inside me.

  She didn’t have to say: Or else she dies there in the cage and your children next, your daughters.

  “Yes,” Jeschute said. “I will help you.”

  “No one can help me.” Because I’d caused it all. It no longer mattered why.

  “I shouldn’t have let you leave my tent,” she said. “So long ago. I should have kept you there.”

  I almost smiled. So long ago and yet here it was back, in my face. Seventeen years old, dressed like a fool, blundering after King Arthur and a castle made of gemstones that I’d only seen with my eyes closed. Blundering into her damned tent! And here it was in my face again. “You’re right, Jeschute.”

  “Someone thought seeing me might change him,” she said.

  The rain crashed down harder and harder. “Into what?” I wondered. The gray sheets slammed down on the boiling earth and stung my flesh. She just stood there, neither waiting nor not waiting. Because there was no choice.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as I slogged past, heading for the gate, hoping I’d wake up in bed somewhere.

  LAYLA

  What a terrible thing. What a terrible thing. Shivering, cold, cramped in by the bars of a terrible nightmare and yet I wasn’t going to scream because there might be no way to stop myself… So I crouched until I was numb to the water and everything else, until the numbness spread into everything, until the world drowned in numbness … I didn’t want to care, so I sank with it … I’d always been in prison… He never understood that. … He never understood so many things … Even the pain of the bars became numbness too …

  BEEF

  Mother always said, and she said right, that father would come to a bad finish, following the moonshine on the water, and so I think he did, and I spat and swore my oath this time I’d follow him no more … No … I’d go home and set about my proper work, as any man would, and the hell with all else.

  I backed my way out of that damned place and never saw a living soul the whole time. Though I heard some music, I thought, somewhere in one of the big, long halls, but I might of been mistook in my mind … sweet music, I thought it, but, bah, as if anybody was to home in that dreadful place.

  Lovely tunes like in a church, faintly sounding off somewheres and very nice I’m sure but who had time for that? Get out and get back to the road, was my thought. If Veers turned up, well and good, but if not, one of us had to do a man’s duty… Think of poor Mother alone thinking God knows what with dread of us both being drowned dead.

  Once outside, in God’s blessed, sweet air, I right off knew which way to walk: away! And not to look back. And I didn’t look back, I’m here to say.

  Me father was a fool. I don’t know to this day now why he followed those mad noblefolk. No good was ever come of such misdreaming.

  Off he went, my father, like a pig to the bleeding block and never no word of him; and once I was home safe again by the misty sea, in house, drinking hot broth and sipping ale with me feet raised, curling my toes towards the fire, mother put it best like ever she did:

  “Beef,” said she, “it’s well he’s gone, if you reason it, for sooner or later that’s what it had to come to.” Trust her to see to the bottom of a thing. And one thing, I wasn’t the only one unhappy with what went on back there. No.

  “Mother,” says I, “hear something then.” It was good to tell the tale by the fire, guzzling a steamy mug of fish soup. “When I come out of that damned castle —”

  “Put it from your mind, son,” said she.

  “That I will, Mother.” Ah, mother. “But when I come out and walked not far I heard them fussing and steaming at one another. Well, I went and listened a minute. They were near the road. All dank mist every place, so nobody saw me.

  “Thank the saints,” said mother.

  “And so I heard their talk. It was the one they called the witch woman and her relative, the pale little nasty nubbin of a knight. Modead, I think he were called.”

  Mother nodded. “Give a wide berth to gentryfolk,” she said, setting down a trencher of hot meat.

  “‘Modead,’ says the witch, ‘I’ve got a fine plan.’ ‘Plan,’ says he, ‘I want no more to do with no plans.’ So he says, mother. Well, I had to laugh, and I did so. Their voices went all faint and muffled to nothing in the mist. I knew he was trying to get away, and she was at his heels. I had to laugh.”

  If madness were fish, what a place that was to cast a net, eh? What a place. Good riddance to it.

  PARSIVAL

  I stopped under the gate and looked up at my wife. If Jeschute hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known.

  “Layla,” I called up. She said nothing. “Layla!”

  There was a face at the gates lot. A big, white face pressed close. “You,” it growled.

  “I know,” I said, “my sword.”

  I wasn’t shaking inside yet. That would come later. I stuck my nice blade in the running mire.

  “Open up,” I said, “why keep me waiting out here?”

  The gate swung to. A cluster of troops gave me the nervous study from behind their weapons. I’d almost forgotten I made men nervous because I’d been forced to perfect something I’d been too good at in the first place. That and luck (where luck is God’s hand) had left me still standing on a thousand battlefields sick with the blood smell but still standing there, and that was one more reason why I caused it all.

  “Walk away from your sword,” a thin knight, all nose, demanded.

  “Will she be freed, in God’s name?” I asked. I wondered if I could snatch up the weapon and dive into them before the gate could be shut. Probably not. I’d skid in the mud.

  “Yes,” he said. Why not say yes?

  “Yet, how can I trust you?”

  The wedge of men parted and two wet, disheveled, miserable-looking girls were thrust through. My stunned and somewhat worn daughters. Christ! They stood shivering, sopping wet. What other females were yet to emerge today? My mother was dead, God rest her.

  “Here is surety,” I was told.

  “Go on,” I said. “Go on, Leena! Both of you. Run!” They came out to me, pale and panicked. “Father,” Leena, the elder, said. “Go to the village,” I told them. Then they were in my arms, and we all trembled together. Their smell was pleasant, almost as when they were babes. Regrets flooded me, and no rain could wash them away.

  My voice nearly choked me, saying: “I love you both, my dears, my sweet dears. I love you both.” One asked about her mother, muffled into me. It didn’t matter which. We were all the same now. All one thing in fear and grief.

  “She’ll be all right,” I said. Why not say it? “Go now. Go, I tell you!” Because I wanted to keep holding them. My arms didn’t want to let go. What a simple sweetn
ess to hold them after all the twisted passions I’d known. I had caused it all, say what you please.

  I turned and shoved them so that they stumbled off into the downpour, graying away as they went, blurring into mists, ghosts…

  I think Jeschute was still standing there. I hoped so. I walked inside without looking back again. As they circled and herded me along without getting within arm’s length, I felt the spot of darkness in me, like a speck of ink in a clear pool. The darkness was for them. For him. Orilus. I love you both, I thought. Yes, and Layla too. I was dying for Layla, wasn’t I? And Lohengrin. Don’t forget Lohengrin.

  The spot of darkness consoled me, because I couldn’t fight back. Everything would be blotted out, in the end, so what did it matter? I had the secret of eternal void inside me. So they couldn’t touch me. Except I didn’t dare think about my family. I wanted to be with them, even for the few moments the void allowed.

  “I love you all,” I murmured.

  “What’s that?” jeered one of the men-at-arms, sneering across the sheeting rainfall between us. “Wants mercy, does the bastard?”

  “Always curse your victims,” I said. “Makes crime more bearable.”

  “What’s he say?”

  More of them came out and stood around me. Now I could have used a magic sword. Oh, I might still have taken a few with me, if I had tried, but the void made it easier to submit. The blackness would well up within me soon and I’d be free of all troubles and care. The peace of utter emptiness was the only true peace. I knew that, at last. All else was woven subtly with hope, and from hope came despair and pain and ultimate defeat.

  “In emptiness there’s peace,” I told them. Why not?

  “You’ll soon know that,” one wag said. I was the center of fifty spears and staves and swords. Too many to bother with seriously.