“Be you truly a knight?” Katin asked, looking straight part the mount’s neck.
“Not so truly as once I was,” he replied, shrugging. “There’s everything wrong with it.”
“You’re the first to say so,” she said.
“Yet it’s but the fool in the armor,” he reflected, “so it’s the same as all other work I suppose.”
Hubert was weary and irritable. He glanced over.
“Why do I doubt you?” he wondered. “Do you really believe this fellow?” he asked her. “I take him for a fraud. Where is your knight’s stuff?”
Parsival was amused.
“It weighed me down,” he answered. “Aye, as you fled from battle?” Parsival nodded. He liked that idea. “I suppose I am fleeing from battle.”
“What is your famous name, then? Some fine knight. Bah.” Hubert spat into the dust and watched the spittle roll into little balls. “Fly shit.”
“You guessed right,” Parsival said.
“He seems a knight to me,” Katin put in.
“Oh, aye, to you he would. And he can do great deeds and then come back and stick it in you.”
She tossed her head.
“Pay him no heed,” she said, “he be low and dark as the Devil’s shit.”
“Which famous one be you?” queried Hubert. “The great Lancelot or the mighty Parsival?”
“The mighty Parsival,” the knight declared, grinning. “And Lancelot the squat? I fought them both. Parsival is easy.”
That was too many for Hubert and he shook with chuckles, dropping to one knee.
“Oh yes,” he got out. “To be sure… and you still alive and unbroken …”
“It’s a living death, fellow.”
They were passing a crumbled hove near the road, the first sign of habitation in some time. The roof had fallen in and birds perched on the crossbeams.
Parsival squinted through the sagging doorframe into the inner dimness. Leaks of light hinted at lost shapes of long-lost life…
Everything seems strange but familiar, he thought. Like first love… They’d gone on. The forest had closed in almost completely there and the road was fairly level, though twisted and seemed to be succumbing to the undergrowth in places.
Everything seemed to remind him of long ago. Everything was like the sights of childhood, suddenly fresh and charged with gathering promise; promise without a cause or purpose…
He pulled himself back from his reverie and decided to try a new tack. Not that he had to try anything; he could have booted Hubert in the hind end and chased him. But he knew women enough to think she might have left with him; wasn’t his style, anyway.
“Look you, Herbert,” he began.
“Hubert,” corrected the man.
“Pardon me, I …”
“There it is,” the man interrupted. “What is?”
“A knight begging me pardon.”
“It’s just words, you ass,” she said. “Some lords are like that. It’s the training.”
“Look,” the knight went on, “it doesn’t much matter what I am. Let us pass on our way in peace.” He nodded, satisfied with his point. “You, Hubert, what is your trade?”
The man had stooped, picking a few from a red scatter of wild berries he’d spotted by the road; straightened, kept walking a little behind them, now, nibbling, staining his fingers and lips.
“Don’t offer none such,” she commented.
“There’s scarce enough to plug the bung of a bug,” he returned. “That’s his true trade,” she said, “pluggin’ bungs.”
“Oh, hear her. You had yours plugged aplenty.” He chortled. “Well sir It-Don’t-Matter-What-You-Be, I’m a bailiff, or was, more properly.”
“More properly,” Katin muttered.
A bailiff was the highest rank of peasant, a man privileged to take meals and sleep in the lord’s manor house, steward of his lord’s affairs and property when the master was absent. Years might pass without a noble paying a visit if he happened to hold many villages, which was common enough, so long as his profits were collected and passed on to him. So Parsival assumed, at once, that this fellow had probably tithed himself a little too well and drew unpleasant attention.
Still studying the brush for more berries, Hubert had drifted behind to the edge of earshot.
“Well then,” Parsival said, “I can imagine what befell.”
“The reeve was a thief,” she told him. The reeve, among other things, collected and tallied for the bailiff.
“I believe that to be common,” Parsival said, judiciously. Actually, his knowledge of manor affairs was sketchy, like most fighting knights. His seneschal did most of his business and he held only a single fife, in any case. His wife had much to say on that subject since he’d rejected holdings in the south offered by the king for his war service. Parsival didn’t want to feel beholden because he always meant to quit fighting. After lust, this was his favorite inner conflict and self-indulgence.
“My ass of a husband had to bear the blame,” she said. “So we were cast out.” She seemed amused but with a bottom note of hysteria. “Vagabonds …” Bitterness, too. “Who could have foreseen this day?”
Parsival took this in. The road twisted sharply back and forth. The trees were massively old, densely green with humped, gnarly roots.
“He was fortunate not to have gone into the dungeon.” She sniffed.
“The reeve went under the castle, as the saying is. God curse him. Now we wander the cold world like Tom O’ the hedges.”
“Your husband knew not of his crimes?” She laughed. Her hair flicked across his chin and cheek. “He is the bird who let the snake warm her eggs.” she said.
Parsival was considering the case when something caught his attention: a glint of metal among the branches. He squinted, leaned closer. From a middle branch a rust-rotted chain hung straight down, suspending nothing but an iron collar. Convicts were often hanged that way after a slow death elsewhere. He sucked his lips, feeling it somehow meant something.
He vaguely hoped her husband would sort of somehow fade away, because she was leaning back into him. His nose was full of the scent of her sun-heated hair and the rich, soothing smells of the hot earth. She was slender but he had a feeling that her body would be a surprise. He kept trying to picture her naked… would have liked to run his hands under her clothes and feel the sleeks that always took his breath away.
He sighed and rolled his eyes. Tried to concentrate on the weaving road and cool silence under the trees.
“Nothing new,” he said.
The road was suddenly paved with wide stone blocks. He realized that was as far as the old builders got. He was used to coming on Roman handiwork left over from the centuries-ago occupation.
We all only get so far, he thought, on any road we build or follow… Snorted at himself, his strangely reflexive, didactic mind. Should I have been a priest? The idea was troubling.
The hooves clunked dully on the stone.
“Bound to be a village ahead,” he said needlessly.
“Or a castle town,” she added.
Because the road showed use; the grasses were crushed down between the blocks and worn to dirt in places.
So he was busy studying the surface as they rounded yet another sharp bend, still following the course of the now, unseen, river. He was startled to see the horseman sitting his motionless mount as if he’d been waiting for them.
The red armor surprised him. The branches parted there and the hot hard sunbeams sprayed around the figure. Parsival blinked and squinted, automatically easing the woman down from the saddle in case of a fight.
“Wait,” he told her, glancing around for her husband who hadn’t turned the bend yet. He edged his mount closer to the knight whose visor was down.
I am on the road of ghosts, he thought, remembering the day he met the Red Knight, Sir Roht, whom he eventually killed for his armor. He was young then, younger than Lohengrin.
He eased the hors
e a step or two closer, into a splinter of sunlight. The armor wasn’t really red, just totally covered in rust.
“Have you never heard of grease?” he couldn’t help asking.
The visor was closed, flat and dented. It looked like it couldn’t fit over the man’s nose.
“You come,” the metal-muffled voice commanded. Parsival thought about that.
“I come?” He lightly touched his chest where the pale linen shirt fell loosely open.
There was an overgrown, mossy wall just in the underbrush. Perfect cover for an ambush. He wondered if they’d all have rusty armor and would the joints stick when they struck blows?
New idiots, he thought. Always new idiots… He estimated the distance to the wall. Scoop her up and ride.
“Come closer,” he murmured to her. “Nonchalant.”
“How?”
“Slowly.”
“She die,” the armored man declared. Parsival couldn’t place the accent. “No doubt, but when?” he asked.
“You come or she die.” Gestured with his rusty head. “Follow, unbeliever.”
The woman was close to the horse’s flank. “Unbeliever” made him hesitate. He’d seen bowmen from the Holy Land. The range was hopelessly close were there any behind that wall.
“Mount up behind me woman,” he instructed. “Nonchalant.”
As she did, a row of heads popped up behind the wall and he saw the short, deadly bows. Not Muslim but nomad. He’d seen those too.
“We come,” he said, soothingly.
“What does this mean?” she wondered. Glanced back, looking for Hubert.
“We’re making new friends on the road.” He felt her fear.
“Will we be slain?” she asked. “Will I be raped?”
“The infidels I knew hated women,” he said. “You may be safe as long as there’s a loose goat.”
Unless they were nomads. But how did they get to Britain?
They came over the wall and out of the bushes. There had to be twenty or more, dressed in rag-tag fighting gear. Parsival had the feeling they’d looted a long-deserted castle or a mass grave on some battlefield to judge from the condition of the gear. He supposed they were in disguise. He wondered how many blind beggars they’d deceived so far. The men were mostly dark with oily-looking hair and beards.
The leader in rust-red eased his pony backwards into the brush where a narrow trail intersected the paved road. The swart men fell in all around and Parsival nudged his mount forward. The leaves flared greenish-gold in the hot sunbeams. A sweet breeze cooled the sweat from his forehead.
“We go,” he muttered. “If they meant to kill us,” he went on, “they’d have tried already. I wonder where the bailiff is got to.”
Suddenly he felt a strange, old feeling attached to nothing, or something lost… long ago… lost meaning from lost years… sense of strange peace unconnected to this moment. He remembered stumbling across grass on infant feet in a warm dazzle of springtime light and enriched air, drinking in life unframed by any thoughts…
He shook his head; he was becoming detached from his immediate surroundings. His life had been poured into a cracked mold. He was suddenly afraid. He shuddered slightly and she felt it.
“Do you fear, Sir Knight who has not named himself?”
He was alarmed. She obviously was depending on his coolness. That’s sooth, I haven’t, he thought.
“Call me Sir Discontent,” he suggested. “Yes. I fear.”
Afraid to pass through the door. Afraid to stay inside…
He wished now he’d kept his armor. Wished he’d gone left instead of right… wished…
GAWAIN
By the time they’d reached the lowlands he’d decided to stay with raving John and his motley men. Until he solved the Grail problem, one direction seemed as good as another. He believed Parsival wasn’t lying when he said he didn’t have it, but sensed that he was afraid to look again.
Now I’m as big a fool as any for the Holy Lie and emptiness, he said to himself as they slowly topped a bristly hill on the wide, well-worn road to the city. In the middle distance, stood an old-style wood and rock castle (just one huge central keep with a low wall) a fat column of smoke rising almost straight up into the hot, bright, windless, midday summer sky.
They made way for several wagons loaded with cloth and rope, heading away from the city out towards the fiefs and fields. The sight of the evil-looking crew of unhappy, dusty, sweaty, partly-armed and armored rogues marching behind the little man on the one-eyed horse, made even the roughest carrier lay hand on dirk, stick or club for reassurance. When they saw cowled Gawain at the rear in well-worn mail and a priceless charger, they held out little hope for themselves and blessed Mary and the Saints when nothing untoward happened.
Admirable madman Gawain considered, he believes he will conquer this place with his ravings… Shook his head.
From the hilltop they could look down on the hundreds of mud and thatch huts, dozens of scattered two-story part-stone buildings and the big church which stood a few hundred yards from the rocky North Sea coast where awkward-looking too-high ships were moored while barge-like boats rowed to and fro. One sailing ship sat in the offing, motionless on the glassy water, sails flat and lifeless in the prevailing calm.
I’ll go to the whores and keep my face covered, he thought. Yes… and not think of her…
“Ha, ha,” he said, not laughing. The nearest man turned his raw-looking, reddened, too-long face around to study the knight.
“Eh?”
“I’ll not think of her,” he snarled at the man who, like most, believed Gawain both mad and deadly as a viper.
“A’ course,” the man said, uneasy. “That’s plain.”
“Am I thinking of her now?”
“Ah,” the fellow sighed. “There’s that.”
He squeezed his sole eye shut. Didn’t scream out the answer. What else do I think of? “Fuck you,” he said to nothing.
The man turned and concentrated on walking while Gawain’s troubled thoughts roiled on.
Parsival… I’ll find his path and be healed…
He groped back in his mind, looking for clues in the times they’d been together… the last, prior to the confrontation a few days ago, came back to him, about 15 years ago…
*
Fifteen Years Before
Moonlight had lain softly on the pale road Gawain followed without a particular purpose. He’d skirted the main battle lines where the massive fight between Arthur’s army and Clinschor’s black armored mutes had finally wound down. He wasn’t running; he wasn’t seeking combat, he simply didn’t care.
He’d heard that Lordmaster Clinschor had come from Sicily, Africa or some such place of darkness to despoil Britain and possess the Grail he believed was hidden there by one of Christ’s disciples. He believed it would make him immortal. Another damaged brain, Gawain had concluded, leaking nonsense like a cracked cup.
There were lines of refugees along the road. To them the knight seemed a phantom, taking shape from the ghostly, silvery glow. Some crossed themselves. Gawain reined up when he faced another horseman (he didn’t yet realize was Parsival) blocking the road.
“You mean to challenge me?” he asked.
“Nay,” Parsival answered. “Do you know me?”
Gawain raised his visor and let the moonlight angle into his face.
Turned the horribly slashed side to him.
“I don’t care a shit if I do,” he said.
Brought his eye to focus and showed his good side too. Even in the softening moonlight the effect was hard to look at.
“Gawain,” Parsival said, voice choking a little. “My friend the fool.”
“I hope I’m your friend.”
Now Gawain kept his ruined side turned away. The handsome profile looked pale and mysterious in the subtle light.
After a few moments, he said: “You’re changed.”
Parsival agreed. “Yes, Gawain.”
“Thinking I’m changed as well.”
“Well, time alters all things.”
Parsival was being careful. He shifted on his horse, looking around into the softly gleaming knight, half-expecting to see Clinschor’s killer mutes closing in. Gawain gestured with his right; chuckled, mirthless.
“That’s good. This is nothing, my friend. None still dare come at me from his side.” He shook his fist. Parsival waited. “So you think you know something now?”
“I heard the fighting is done.”
“No,” Gawain grunted. Parsival noticed the sour wine-reek on his breath; could see he was a little unsteady in his saddle. “You never stood up to me, you pretty little by-blow.” Dropped his hand to his swordhilt. “I’ve lost count of all I’ve sent on their fucking way.” He snarled with sudden, empty fury because he was breaking his rule and thinking about her; thinking, too how this still young blond knight could kiss and fondle and ram himself into his lovers as he pleased. “Or the bitches I’ve pried open.”
He turned his nightmare side back to the young man who wouldn’t look directly at it and shifted, uncomfortably.
“Yes,” Parsival said, quietly.
“I’m still a man. Think you are old enough?” His eye came back to Parsival and the two sides faced him together. “Want to try me?”
He kept thinking about her. Over and over. Saw her face, too.
Parsival shook his head and the eye looked somewhere else as the tortured knight cried out in pain the younger man mistook for self-pity.
“God curse it!” he was breathing as hard as if he’d been fighting. “God of filth and swine, curse it?” Drew his sword and ripped it through the night air, slashing at nothing. Parsival, reflexively, leaned away.
Gawain slammed down his visor and shouted something muffled. Parsival stared at the sudden, slivery blankness.
“Gawain,” he started to say.
Thinking about her, seeing her, Gawain shouted what seemed a wordless cry of pure suffering. They were words but they were his alone.
“Oh, Gawain.”
Gawain was past listening or speaking. Kicked his charger into a canter, thudded and jangled past his old companion and the attendants and refugees along the roadside, riding, Parsival felt, not just away but out of the world entire…
Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon Page 9