Not for the first time that day, surprise and shock crept into Patrick’s chest. He bent over slightly to look into the face of the blonde boy who looked humbly at the ground.
“Charles?” Patrick said. “Charles of Flanders? Do I know you?”
The boy looked up and said, “We met briefly. Though you knew me then as Charles of the Danemark. I was squire to my Uncle Robert, Count of Flanders.”
Recognition dawned on Patrick and he said, “Yes, I remember you. I cannot say much for your uncle, I’m sorry to say, but you struck me as a very good lad. My goodness, you’ve grown much since then.”
“Thank you, Sir Patrick,” the boy seemed genuinely pleased to receive the praise.
“But you were almost ready to be knighted then,” Patrick said, confused. “What happened? You’re almost a grown man now and still a squire?”
“Let’s just say Uncle Robert picked the wrong side when disputing with Emperor Henry,” Charles said sheepishly. “My dubbing was put on hold. When my current master was assigned captain of the Cardinal Guard, he told me Avalon was the ‘Island of Second Chances,’ and then I saw you and knew it was true.”
Patrick couldn’t argue.
“Very well,” he said. “I would be honored to dub the lot of you.”
The boys stood and thanked Patrick excitedly, apologized for disturbing him, and scampered away.
Patrick shook his head in wonderment at their retreating forms in the gathering crowd on the deck. That’s when he noticed Aimeé standing by, watching with her arms crossed.
“What?” he asked.
“You’re going to let this go to your head aren’t you?” she said with a hint of a smile.
Patrick hesitated, then with a hint of his own smile, said, “Perhaps.”
With the mood lightened, Patrick allowed the smile to grow and let the warm feeling grow in his chest. He stepped closer to her and reached for her stomach, but people began to crowd the railing, separating them, as word spread the Isle of Avalon neared. Though only a growing wall of mist presented itself on the water, the excited youths jockeyed for position to be the first to see the legendary Isle when it appeared.
Any chance of having a private moment with Aimeé completely extinguished when a seven-year-old girl bumped into Aimeé and dropped her doll in the press of bodies. Aimeé bent to retrieve the doll for the girl, but the child’s eyes widened with fear and she disappeared into the crowd.
“Oh the poor dear,” Aimeé said, picking up the ragged and dirty item. “I better return this to her.”
She slipped into the crowd in pursuit of the little girl.
“Dammit,” Patrick grumbled.
“I’m taller than you,” a voice said next to him.
Patrick looked down and saw an odd-looking fellow standing next to him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m taller than you,” the stranger said again.
Patrick scowled at the man who stood at least a good head shorter. At first glance he seemed to be a child, but his wizened and lined face with receding hairline said otherwise. An idiot’s grin stretched from ear to ear. Rail thin and with narrow eyes, he had an oversized head with a mouth full of perfectly straight yet oversized teeth. Though obviously not a changeling, Patrick still felt certain he belonged to Teodorico’s candidati.
“I’m taller than you,” he continued to insist.
“No, you’re not,” Patrick replied.
“Yes I am.”
“Are not.”
“Am too.”
Patrick groaned and put his face in his hands.
“You are taller than him,” a new voice behind them said, “but you know who is taller than you? The cardinal.”
“He is not!” the little man retorted.
“I’m afraid so, you best go take it up with him. You can find him on the captain’s deck,” the newcomer suggested.
Patrick felt the little man vacate the space next to him in a hurry.
“Thank you...” Patrick started to say, turning to his savior, but froze when he laid eyes on the man.
There stood Lucan, the dead man from his past.
#
Most everyone crowded the sides of the boat to watch for the island’s appearance, leaving the deck largely free of people. Aimeé tracked the girl to a pile of crates and watched her disappear among them. She called vainly to the child, telling her she only wanted to return her doll.
She circled the crates until convinced the girl must have somehow climbed inside one of them.
Not knowing what else to do, the French girl got down on her knees and crawled among the crates herself, revealing a warren of narrow pathways. She squeezed along them until she found a hollow space where she could stand. There, sitting on top of the highest crate next to the ship’s mast, was the girl.
“No, don’t run please,” she said gently. “I just want to give you your doll back.”
The little girl may have been blonde once, but dirt and grime colored her hair. The rest of her wasn’t much cleaner, and her dress was in tatters, like the rag doll.
Aimeé held out the doll and shook it gently, saying, “She’s lonely. She wants to go home.”
Grave mistrust flickered in the child’s eyes and she pulled away at first, but then quick as a viper she reached out and snatched the doll. Then just as quickly she disappeared from Aimeé’s sight.
“Well, you’re most welcome,” Aimeé said, her eyes lingering on the empty space.
She hunkered down and crawled out of the crates. When she emerged, she bumped into a gray robed man, smacking her face into the thorny-cross emblem on his robe.
“Excusez-moi,” she apologized to the man.
“That is quite all right, my child,” the man with the long white beard said, though his attention was fixed on something in his hand. It looked like the gray paper made by bees in their nests.
“What is that?” she asked.
The old man tried to neatly fold the item and slip it into a pocket, but it disintegrated in the sea breeze.
“I’m not sure,” he replied distantly. “I found it on the deck. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t seen you follow that little girl. You crawled right over the top of it.”
His eyes followed the fluttering remnants blowing out to sea, face drawn into a mask of deep concern.
#
“How is this possible?” Patrick asked, dumbfounded at the sight of the man.
“How is what possible?” Lucan responded, smiling casually against the rail and leveling his eyes at Patrick.
Mist engulfed the ship, limiting vision to only a few feet. The chatter of the crowd around them and the rhythmic splash of the oars one deck below was eerily muffled.
As tall as Patrick, the man wore the red surcoat of the Cardinal Guard, complete with chain mail armor and long sword belted at his hip. A crimson cape trailed down his back.
At first glance, one would have guessed him to be thirty-something years of age, but his weather-lined face and a peppering of gray in his brown hair made his actual age difficult to discern. With his lantern jaw, he was not a bad-looking fellow, but with brown eyes and an unremarkable nose, he could probably disappear in a crowd without trouble. Unless his face had haunted you for years.
“I saw you die at Antioch,” Patrick said, scrutinizing the man’s face closely, making sure he was not mistaken. He was not.
Patrick fixed his gaze on the man, afraid Lucan might disappear as he had the previous days.
“Ah yes, Antioch,” Lucan said, looking out into the mist along with the other spectators who jostled around them. “That was a while ago. When I heard it was a crusader who had discovered the cup, I didn’t imagine it would be one I recognized. After all, were there not something like a hundred thousand of us? Well, it sure seemed like it. What are the odds, you think?”
“The same odds as watching a man run through with a half-dozen swords and lances and then be talking to me today. Again, how is that poss
ible?”
“Are you sure of what you saw in Antioch?”
“Yes,” Patrick didn’t let the man’s disarming smile deter him. “You rode next to Count Raymond of Toulouse in the battle freeing us from siege. I was not far behind, mad with hunger and sickness, but I remember well enough.”
Patrick’s memory wandered to the past, remembering when he and the crusaders found themselves pinned down by a host of Muslims, besieged behind the very walls of Antioch to which they had won access only days before. Already low on food and supplies, their own siege lasted a month, ushering in desperate times when knights had been reduced to eating their horses. Even rats became scarce.
During the siege, Peter the Hermit, a vagabond priest and self-styled leader of the commoners among the crusaders, claimed to have had a vision of Saint Andrew who led him to a Christian church in the city. There, so the story went, the saint beseeched him to dig, telling the priest he would find the tip of the spear that had pierced the side of Christ: a holy object. Peter did as instructed, and with the aid of the noble Count Raymond, they found a fragment of metal.
Even with Raymond’s endorsement, and a sliver of hope, Peter met with resistance when he suggested the holy relic would lead them to victory should they charge out the gates to battle. The papal legate, Bishop Adehmar, mocked him and insisted that someone from his own staff—a warrior-scholar, chronicler, and relic expert—authenticate the object as a true relic.
That person was Lucan, and he did authenticate it, giving hope to the beleaguered crusaders.
“You led us out the gates, an army of ragged scarecrows, with that bit of rusty metal tied to a staff, calling it the Holy Lance,” Patrick continued, “and when you fell under a swarm of Turks, along with the lance, we fell into a rage. The Turks fled before our fury. When we cleared the bodies, you and the lance were gone. We assumed you trampled to a pulp in the mud.”
Lucan leaned forward and his brown eyes peered deeply into Patrick’s. “What else did you see that day?”
Patrick hesitated to respond.
“You saw them, didn’t you?” Lucan said, not waiting. “The Heavenly Host fighting side-by-side with us to defeat the enemy. I know... Later, others said it was the delirium of hunger, or the tainted rat meat making us see things, but you know the truth. Don’t you, Sir Patrick? The Holy Lance flared with a light of its own and the angels and saints fought with us.”
Patrick’s eye twitched. Images of ghostly warriors danced across his mind, but he questioned his memory. He questioned reality. And something else. Something nagged at his mind, and when he tried to focus on the memory, an ice pick stabbed his brain.
“It’s hard to say,” Patrick said at last. “It’s as you say. We were starving.”
Lucan smiled wryly. “Then you easily could have mistaken the gravity of my wounds.”
“And the Holy Lance?” Patrick asked.
“Taken into Heaven by the host,” Lucan replied with a shrug, “or lost in the mud. I’d rather believe the former.” Lucan looked out into the mist again as it swept over them. A gull cried.
“You remember me, then?” Patrick asked, shaking off the memories and the pain in his head.
The man held out his hand and Patrick shook it.
“In truth? I only knew your name from the cardinal’s reports. It wasn’t until today I recognized your face, though I daresay you look much healthier these days,” Lucan said apologetically.
“Let me guess. You are here as part of Cardinal Teodorico’s entourage to once again act as relic expert, to validate the cup?” Patrick surmised.
“Precisely. With my credentials, Pope Paschal assigned me as captain of Teodorico’s Cardinal Guard and his resident scholar,” Lucan said. “Interesting times are ahead of us.”
As if to punctuate this, the crowd along the rails gasped in wonder when the mist suddenly broke and Avalon appeared.
Chapter Four
Mooring the boats at the Avalon docks took little time. From the height of the ship Patrick noted the Avangarde’s waiting archway of lances. They formed a corridor of strength, inviting the Guests to a new life in the Keep at Greensprings. The two hundred and fifty knights made for an impressive show with silvery helms, mail, and spears polished to a high sheen, glinting in the sun. Black surcoats ruffled in the breeze with contrasting white swan emblems blazing on their chests. Likewise, those same swans adorned their tear-shaped shields.
The previous arrival, he had been one of the mounted knights—though just a Reservist—and he remembered the arrival as a noisy affair with Guests chattering excitedly as they walked down the gangplanks to be greeted by the senior Greensprings staff. Sir Wolfgang von Fiescher, Father Hugh Constant, and Mother Superior each offered their greetings at one of the three respective boats. This time, however, a quiet awe surrounded the crowd, creating a strangely subdued atmosphere.
As a Reservist, he had struggled in all manner of tests; physical, mental, and social. He rarely knew of the tests’ existence until after the fact, which infuriated him, and for the longest time the tangible symbol of the office—the swan—remained out of reach. In retrospect, he understood why the Avangarde used such a discerning process: and seeing the mounted knights now in all their glory, he was proud to be one of them.
He made his way down the gangplank from the cardinal’s ship to meet Wolfgang’s outstretched hand. Patrick clasped it strongly.
“Wilkommen,” the German-born Grand Master of the Avangarde Order greeted him. “It is good to see you again Patrick. You look well and I look forward to hearing the tales of your adventures. That is one of the drawbacks of being the leader of the Order—its duties take me away from Avalon too often. To hear about my knights’ exploits through correspondence is no substitution for hearing it from themselves over a pint.”
“A problem easily remedied tonight,” Patrick responded.
Wolfgang grunted a noise of approval through his white beard and mustache. His equally white eyebrows lifted in greeting at Marcus who came up behind Patrick. They too clasped hands and exchanged words.
“After your mounts have been unloaded from the ship, join your brethren,” Wolfgang gestured towards the dual columns of mounted knights.
With that, Wolfgang turned back to his greeting duties as he turned to Lucan who came next in line, followed by the nun and her candidati charges.
#
The wagon journey proved long and ponderous, but with plenty of daylight left to reach their destination, the travelers felt no urgency.
The new arrivals drank in the Avalon scenery, which was awash in golden sunlight that brought out the most vibrant colors. Even when traversing the shade-steeped forest, the ferns and mossy stones were luminescent with an emerald glow.
The day’s loveliness made Patrick wish he had time to walk in the grass, hand in hand with Aimeé so that they could talk. She had almost warmed up to him on the boat. Now, as his gaze located her among the wagons, he did not know when the next opportunity for a private moment would come.
The long caravan stretched over the landscape. The hundred or so armed Roman contingent mostly clung about the cardinal’s colorful wagons at the center of the caravan, though several of their mounted men also roamed as scouts. A third of the Avangarde rode in front of the caravan, a third at the back, and another third were staggered among the wagons. Though attack was highly unlikely, the Avangarde prided themselves on maintaining proper armed escort protocol. The extraordinary did happen, as a year ago when creatures attacked the keep. Therefore, it was best to be prepared.
The formation also allowed some of the Avangarde to start early on the other aspect of their duties: brotherly mentorship. To that end, Patrick inserted himself among those knights riding along the wagons, doing his best to work on his weakest Avangarde skill—conversing with Guests. He wanted to work his way up the column to Aimeé’s wagon slowly without being too obvious about it.
“I’m glad you’re with us, Sir Knight,” said a young
man. “If I were to try and find my way from the harbor to the castle by myself, I surely would be lost.”
“It is essentially a straight path,” Patrick responded. “There is but one path from the harbor to the keep. Only once does the road fork, and that other road follows the coast to Aesclinn. You want the path leading inland.”
“Yes, but it seems the path meanders in every which direction, almost as if we were going in circles. Am I mistaken?” The young man looked behind and forward again, eyes squinting, trying to find his bearings.
Freshly returned to Avalon from a long absence, Patrick understood what the young man meant. The island’s wonder struck him just as it had the first time. As they plodded down the dirt road through an open field, Avalon enchanted with a surreal quality he found one moment crisp, but then hazy and dreamlike the next.
“No, you’re not mistaken,” Patrick admitted. “The island has a mind of its own. She is alive and aware of your presence. She will mislead you if she can.”
Monolithic standing stones at the bend of the road seemed to lean in and listen to their conversation.
“Really, why?” the young man squeaked in a hushed voice. He looked around and then jumped in his seat, face to face with a gnarled oak tree whose trunk held the semblance of a wizened old man.
Patrick smiled. “Because she wants to send you down difficult paths to test you, to make you a better person. Be vigilant, make the right choices, and you will always find your way home.”
The air shimmered as if on a hot day, causing the path to bend and twist. Distant ponds appeared ahead, only to fade as they approached, then reappear behind them as they passed.
“And if I don’t?” The young man’s already high-pitched voice rose an octave.
Patrick let memories wash over him. “Then you will end up with more time on your hands than you ever wanted. Trust me, you most likely won’t need to worry about any of that.” He winked. “All the real excitement is in Greensprings. Now, if you’ll excuse me—Reinholdt, is it?—I must introduce myself to others.”
Ripples in the Chalice: A Tale of Avalon (Tales of Avalon Book 2) Page 11