The Serpent and the Grail (The Perilous Order of Camelot)

by Attanasio, A. A.

  Electricity. The word troubled his tongue. He, of course, recognized the cognates as electrum, the Latin term for amber, which itself came from the Greek name for the same substance, elektron.

  Then, with his amber wand, Merlin had disassembled Loki, demonstrating the general properties of electricity and its relationship to the mysterious lodestone. The scribe was familiar with lodestone, having taken transcriptions for the emperor Zeno from Moorish navigators out of Gujurat who had employed what they called a bait al-ibrah, a "house of the needle" to identify north: The device consisted of an iron splinter that had been in lengthy contact with a lodestone before being affixed to a cork afloat in water; no matter how it was spun, the splinter always aligned to point north.

  Using spools of silver thread and spinning a lodestone in their midst, Merlin had made the ends of the silver filaments spark and had even woven cold fire inside a glass sphere. He had told the scribe that a giant lodestone spun at the center of the Earth, generating huge currents of energy invisible to the human eye.

  The Dragon was a God-created creature made of this energy. It dwelled in this underground ocean of invisible currents and tides. Likewise, the wizard explained, an enormous sea of similar energy floated at the top of the sky, where the Sun's wind generated charged particles.

  To understand that celestial sea, one would have to know more about the structure of atoms—and there the scribe had raised both hands in dismay and stopped Merlin. He needed to absorb what he had already been shown, and he had come to this alcove to sort through the demonstrations he had witnessed in Merlin's infernal grotto.

  Athanasius' head swam with the many notions of scientia that the wizard had introduced, and he sat on the stone bench that jutted from the alcove wall, head cradled in both hands, muttering to himself. "Electricity. God's natural power in the world, so the wizard says. Indeed, what he showed me was as visible as bolts of lightning, fox fire, and no doubt the tongues as of flame that touched the apostles on the Day of Pentacost. Not fire, but like fire. It must have been electricity. And perhaps, too, the burning bush that spoke to Moses and was not consumed."

  A gruff voice intruded on his ruminations: "Fra Athanasius—may we have a word?"

  The legate looked up startled and adjusted his spectacles. Before him stood two tall, burly men with ruffian faces, pugilist eyes narrow and shielded by thick cheekbones and heavy browridges. One had a ponderous red mustache that covered his mouth entirely, and the other clean-shaven, a younger twin of the first, with a merciless mouth. Both wore their red hair long and tied to topknots in the fashion of the pagan Celts.

  These two brutes displayed Christian emblems: the eldest with a scarlet cross emblazoned on his overblouse, and the other, a golden cross of Celtic design on a thong that dangled before his black leather cuirass.

  "I am Kyner, chief of Cymru," the eldest introduced in a voice rough as gravel. "And this is my son, Cei, the king's seneschal."

  Athanasius stood, jittery as a deer in the presence of these imposing warriors. His first thought was that they had come to admonish him for speaking to their boy-king with such bold ire, and he nervously observed that both carried swords—the younger a giant weapon that could cleave armor, and the elder a thick saber with an ivory handle yellowed from use and with two intaglio Latin words written upon it: "Vita Brevis."

  "Sir, do not stand for us." Kyner motioned for the legate to seat himself. "We are humble servants of our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, and we are come to you in his name—for your blessing."

  Athanasius sat and demurred with a hand splayed upon his chest. "Sirs, you hazard mistakenly to seek blessing from my hand. The Church abides me for my services as a scribe and has conferred upon me no power of benediction."

  "Nay, you are too humble, sir." Kyner bowed slightly in deference. "You are the Holy Father's emissary and even now wear the attire of God's servant, which rightly displays your sacred purpose to any who set eyes on you. Your blessing would be significant to us as any from the pope's hand itself."

  "Verily," Cei added in a more confidential tone, edging a half pace closer, "the king has all my love. We were reared together by my father as brothers, and I know his heart as well as my own. Yet, I tell you, sir, I am gladdened to hear you reproach his tolerance of Merlin. That wizard is too like a demon for our good faith. And Bedevere—on my word, we had no knowledge of his sin—his alleged lust for catamites. Is this truly so, good sir?"

  "Of a certainty, Cei." Kyner glowered at his son. "Don't ask doltish questions. The legate speaks with the voice of the Holy Father. Bedevere, for all his bravery in battle, is a miscreant and a felonious debaucher. We will have none of him."

  Cei inclined his broad face toward the emissary. "Even so, several ambassadors from the Continent have confirmed that Bedevere fought barbarians on the Italic peninsula for Pope Gelasius. The king believes that the Holy Father himself is full cognizant of Bedevere the sodomite and has forgiven him. Do you know this to be true?"

  Kyner struck his son's shoulder with such force he turned the younger man half about. "How dare you pose such a flagrant question to the legate?"

  Cei muttered an apology and returned his strenuous stare to the cringing legate.

  "Hold your disapprobation, Chief Kyner." Athanasius rose and raised a restraining hand between the two Celts. "I am not offended by your son's question, for it accords with my own understanding of our most Holy Father, whom I served for several years in Ravenna. Gelasius has forgiven Bedevere the bane that the Enemy of Christ placed upon him. My sole objection remains that what the pope in his infallible wisdom can suffer to forgive, a boy-king—a boy—is by deficit of years too callow to comprehend. I fear the king stands in jeopardy of evil suasion."

  A laugh like a shout escaped Cei. "Arthur's no sodomite. If he were, we'd have seen that by now, eh, Da? All those years in the servants' hovels and soldiers' barracks when we thought him a rape-child! He was subject aplenty to evil suasion then, let me assure you. Miscreants abounding in those quarters. And I can attest from our travels through Gaul with Father, the lad has no suasion for men but a vigorous passion for the ladies. Well, not ladies so much as servant girls. Who else would notice him before we knew him royal?"

  "Enough, Cei." Kyner urged the legate to sit again. "Please, sir, we have not intruded on your meditations to pelt you with questions but to receive your blessing—the blessing of our Mother the Church, which the Holy Father has granted you to bestow on all worthy Christians."

  "How would I know you to be worthy Christians?" Athanasius asked, then shifted his weight uncomfortably under the worried stares of the two warriors. "Have you been baptized?"

  "By the missionaries, who delivered the good news to the hills of Cymru with Saint Non when I was a lad," Kyner acknowledged proudly. "Bishop Riochatus baptized both Cei and Arthur in their seventh and fifth years respectively, at the first five-year festival during the construction of Camelot."

  Athanasius nodded with satisfaction. "And do you renounce the heresy of Pelagius?"

  Cei turned a perplexed expression to his father, and Kyner rubbed his thick jaw. "We are not versed in theology, sir. We are simple Christians who have utmost faith in the salvation offered by our Lord and Savior."

  "Stout of heart and faith, you are," the emissary declared. "Of this, I can see for myself. Even so, I must try you against the most common heresy of this remote island, and so I ask you, is Christ a man, a child of Eve as you and I, or divine, an emanation of God Himself, Who existed before his physical appearance as a man?"

  '"Before Abraham was, I am.'" Cei quoted from the gospel. "Christ is divine." He shrugged as if this was obvious and looked to his father for approval.

  Kyner nodded. "To believe that Jesus was a man is the heresy of Arius. We in Britain have no faith in Arian blasphemy, for to believe that Jesus was a man is to say that he is separate from God—and that denies the one God and throws us back into the pagan chaos of polytheism. Jesus is God the Son, not
like God but God Himself, for only He Who is truly God can reconcile us to the Godhead and win our salvation."

  "Well-spoken, Chief Kyner—for a man unversed in theology. Now answer me this—" Athanasius thumbed his spectacles higher on his nose and paused to phrase carefully his next question. "Do you believe that our salvation comes to us by God's grace or through our own will?"

  "Our will, of a certainty," Cei answered forthrightly. "Unless we strive to do good, we are victims of Satan."

  The legate arched a critical eyebrow. "Do you concur, Chief Kyner?"

  "I stand by my son in this assertion, sir." Kyner squared his shoulders. "Our fate before God is in our hands. He has given us free will to choose between good and evil, and it remains entirely for us to determine by our powers of volition how we will live our lives when confronted by temptation in all its guises."

  "Such as I had suspected." The legate shook his head grimly. "Such as I had suspected, for Pelagius was also a Briton. The errors he found in this land he carried to Rome, Africa, even Canaan. Yet, for all his far-flung travels and hot debates with Augustine and the bishops of many nations, his falsehoods gained not one whit of veracity. Accursed wretch that troubled our minds with such skillful blunders, he has put your souls in jeopardy! Sirs Kyner and Cei, you are both heretics."

  "By our faith in Christ, we are not!" Kyner glared at the bespectacled man. "We are true Christians. In what way is our thinking false?"

  "You believe that your will can save you." Athanasius shook his curly head ruefully. "Fie! You are the thrall of your own instruments, the victims of your misplaced faith in human strength. You benighted souls! The human will is flawed. Abased by the original sin of Adam, the sin that has condemned us to the riot of this fallen creation, the will is weak. It succumbs. And so our Savior preached forgiveness and charity. Only God's grace can save us. Else we stake the eternal hope of the soul upon mortal foibles."

  "That's the faith of weaklings, cowards, and poltroons." Kyner jabbed a stout finger at the scribe. "You are obviously a man who has thought more than he has done. For a man of deeds, will is everything. Do you think it is God's grace that holds us fast in the heat of battle?" He turned to his son with a mocking grin under his big mustache. "What do you think, Cei? How much good is God's grace against a berserker swinging a battle-ax?"

  "How much good?" Cei pondered this with a tug at his ear. "God's grace in that situation is all one needs, Da—to enter heaven."

  "In truth, for God 'makes His sun rise on the evil and the good.'" Kyner fixed the legate with a harsh stare. "There are Christians here in Britain today, because we've a will to fight. Without our will, sir, God's grace would have to content itself with naked worshipers in blue mud and tattoos leaping about a bonfire singing praise to the Furor."

  Athanasius cringed behind his raised hands. "For all your fierce and disdainful lip, in the eyes of the Church you remain heretics withal."

  "Heretics?" Cei's square face darkened, and he would have lunged forward to grab the scribe had not his father restrained him with both hands. "We have defended our faith with our lives, you glassy-eyed ..."

  "Enough, Cei!" Kyner pulled his son back and stood between him and the legate. "Our love of our Savior is beyond reproach, and we do not require insults to defend what we love. We are men of deeds, not scribes who build their reputations on words. We will show you and the Holy Father that we are beloved of God."

  "Show me?" Athanasius' big eyes widened behind his lenses. He feared that these two massive men intended to pit their faith against his in some trial of endurance or suffering, and he tried to dissuade them with an apologetic smile. "We have sore mistook one another, brothers. I am no priest. I opine merely as a scribe. Please, go hence and put out of mind my unruly commentary."

  Kyner and Cei shared a look of bafflement. "We will go forth," Kyner asserted, pounding a fist against his heart. "And you will regret calling us heretics."

  "I am the king's seneschal." Cei glared in disbelief. "I cannot abide any slander of my faith. I will prove my sincerity to you, sir!'

  Athanasius bowed his head, mumbling, "It were wrong of me to say aught of heresy or faith. My post as legate has raised me above my harvest. I am simply a scribe, a man of books. All I truly know is that the sparrows have their heights, the wolf its horizon, the lowliest worms their kingdoms. I know naught of the soul's stature."

  "Every worm has its valor," Cei admonished the scribe. "We are all God's creatures and are to be judged by Him alone. Even a humble notarius should know this."

  Kyner bent forward and spoke strongly to the skullcap atop the legate's fleecy head, "We will bring you and all Camelot proof of the purity of our hearts and the strength of our faith. This day, two young Celts, Gawain and Gareth, have revealed a blessed vision, an encounter with an angel. This messenger of God has told them that the Holy Grail is to be found in Britain by true Christians alone and no others." He poked his thumb into the center of the scarlet cross on his overblouse. "I tell you now, my son and I are those true Christians. By God's grace and our undaunting wills, we will find the Grail and return it to Camelot."

  "With such high hearts and strong faith, I am certain you will succeed," Athanasius readily agreed, relieved they did not intend to challenge him. "I have intelligence of the Grail from your bishop Riochatus. It would be a sweet sight to behold and a wondrous achievement to report to Ravenna. Go forth, great chief and scion of the Celts, and bring honor to Camelot and our Savior by retrieving this sacred vessel."

  As the two hulking warriors departed, Athanasius removed his spectacles and wiped the perspiration that had beaded above his dark eyebrows. "Oh, Lord Almighty, when you had able Victricius, a learned and experienced bishop, in your service, why did you cut short his life and deliver me, an insignificant scribbler, to this distant land of manifold strangeness?"

  Even as he spoke his complaint, the unhappy thought occurred to him that Victricius had not been snatched away untimely but in truth saved. Angels had whisked him off and spared him the maddening experience of Britain, this bizarre threshold to hell, whereupon had been cast in the bishop's stead the lesser soul of Athanasius.

  PART TWO

  BOOK OF THE GRAIL

  Lord, how long will the wicked,

  how long will the wicked triumph?

  -Psalm 94:3

  Chapter 14:

  Crown of Fire

  A construction gang worked on the highway that fronted The Blanket of Stars. Men tamped gravel into potholes and chipped cobbles to fit precisely. "It appears better times have visited the road to Ratae since last we passed this way," Elder John said, turning his horse onto a cinder path where workers knelt to lay flagstones. "And the humble inn itself seems under repair."

  John Halt regarded with satisfaction a crew of roofers atop the inn unloading blue tiles from a pulley cart and hammering new rafters into place. "Perhaps the king has bestowed a widow's gift upon the kindly woman who dwells here with her young brother, unmarried sister, and elderly father."

  "Fortunate woman," Elder John noted drily, observing the pruned apple trees and the lime-washed wickets of a large and boisterous chicken coop. "An especially fortunate woman considering how many other widows throughout the land have received nothing from the king."

  "I suppose the king cannot help everyone in these difficult times." John Halt shrugged good-naturedly. "With the stucco repairs and fresh paint, this sad inn is beginning to look like the villa it once was."

  "Indeed," the one-armed merchant replied, and dismounted before a scaffold of laborers toiling to repair the building's two-story facade. At a trestle table, a craftsman bent over a star-shaped sign, meticulously chiseling smaller-faceted stars, framing the inn's name with the constellations of Orion's Belt and the Great Bear. "Blanket is now too humble a name. This hospice should be called The Palace of Stars, don't you think, John?"

  John Halt did not answer. One of the two main doors—big mahogany portals with panels carved in astral
motifs—opened, and a handsome woman stood at the threshold. Her honey blond hair flowed over broad shoulders and a bodice embroidered with hyacinths and braided vines of stephanotis.

  "John Halt and his master! It's me, Julia! Methought I saw you through our windows." With a strong smile, she motioned at the glaziers fitting hinged lattice panes into casements that the week before had simply been holes in the wall obscured by bean vines. "Is it not a wonder? The king's fund has bestowed a lordly endowment on us. For my poor Eril's life." She came forward and took the reins of the palfrey. "Would he ever have thought to be worth so much more away from us than here toiling at our side?" she asked with a sigh.

  Her young brother, no longer barefoot or in rags and hardly recognizable in his leather groom's apron and ankle boots, approached the master's giant horse and set about busily removing its burden of canvas-covered goods. "We've hearty feed now for your mount, sir. Not just hay but good oats. And new brushes. Your horses are sure to fare happier than last they were here."

  Elder John smiled and dismounted. He passed the reins to the boy and offered his one hand to his apprentice.

  "That wound is livid yet, John?" At the sight of the puncture with its blackened lips, Julia's thin eyes widened, showing their pale blue irises. "I'll want to send Georgie to Venonae to fetch a leech for that, I think. We'll get this gouge cleaned out and dressed by evening."

  John Halt eased himself off the palfrey onto his good leg. "Don't bother. My master had the finest surgeons look at it, and there's nothing can be done."

  "It looks no worse than last you were here," she admitted, taking his arm to walk him inside, "but no better. There's a wicca-woman lives at a stream nearby, a crone who does magic with herbs ... "