“But the Imperial army,” objected Raimbaut, his outburst of bitterness suffocated by the other’s frenzy of negation, and trying not to lose his sense of proportion and to find a place again for his own sorrows, “the Imperial army, one must admit, is still fighting for a holy cause and defending Christianity against the Infidel."
“There’s no defense or offense about it, or sense in anything at all,” said Torrismund. “The war will last for centuries, and nobody will win or lose; we’ll all sit here face to face forever. Without one or the other there’d be nothing, and yet both we and they have forgotten by now why we’re fighting ... D’you hear those frogs? What we are all doing lias as much sense and order as their croaks, their leaps from water to bank and from bank to water ...”
“To me it’s not like that,” said Raimbaut, “to me, in fact, everything is too pigeonholed, too regulated ... I see the virtue and value, but it’s all so cold ... But a knight who doesn’t exist, that does rather frighten me, I must confess ... Yet I admire him, he’s so perfect in all he does, he makes one more confident than if he did exist, and almost”—he blushed—“I can sympathise with Bradamante ... Agilulf is surely the best knight in our army ...”
“Puah!”
“What d’you mean, puah!”
“He’s a made-up job, worse than the others!”
“What d’you mean, a made-up job? All he does he takes seriously.”
“Nonsense! All tales ... Neither he exists nor the things he does nor what he says, nothing, nothing at all...”
“How, then, with the disadvantage he is at compared to others, can he do in the army the job he does? By his name alone?”
Torrismund stood a moment in silence, then said slowly, “Here the names are false too. If I could I’d blow the lot up. There wouldn’t even be earth on which to rest the feet”
“Is there nothing salvageable, then?”
“Maybe. But not here.”
“Who? Where?”
“The knights of the Holy Grail.”
“And where are they?”
“In the forests of Scotland.”
“Have you seen them?”
“No!”
“Then how d’you know about them?”
“I know.”
They were silent. Only the croak of frogs could be heard. Raimbaut began to feel a fear coming over him that this croaking might drown everything else, drown him too in a green slimy blind pulsation of gills. But he remembered Bradamante, how she had appeared in battle with raised sword, and all his unease was forgotten. He longed for a time to fight and do prodigious deeds before her emerald eyes.
7
EACH nun is given her own penance here in the convent, her own way of gaining eternal salvation. Mine is this of writing tales. And a hard penance it is. Outside is high summer; from the valley rises a murmur of voices and a movement of water. My cell is high up and through its slit of a window I can see a bend of the river with naked peasant youths bathing, and further on, beyond a clump of willows, girls too have taken off their dresses and are going down to bathe. Now one of the youths has swum underwater and surfaced to look at them and they are pointing at him with cries. I might be there too, in gay company, with young folk of my own station, and servants and retainers. But our holy vocation leads us to esteem the permanent above the fleeting joys of the world. Which remains ... and if this book, and all our acts of piety carried out with ashen hearts, are not already ashes too ... even more ashes than the sensual frolics down at the river which tremble with life and propagate like circles in water...
One starts off writing with a certain zest, bHt a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life Hows, and life is all outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page one is writing, open out another world, leap the gap. Maybe it’s better so. Maybe the time when one wrote with delight was neither a miracle nor grace but a sin, of idolatry, of pride. Am I rid of such now? No, writing has not changed me for the better at all. I have merely used up part of my restless, conscienceless youth. What value to me will these discontented pages be? The book, the vow, are worth no more than one is worth oneself. One can never be sure of saving one’s soul by writing. One may go on writing with a soul already lost.
Then do you think I ought to go to the Mother Abbess and beg her to change my task, send me to draw water from the well, thread flax, shell chickpeas? There’d be no point in that. I’ll go on with my scribe’s duties as best I can. My next job is to describe the paladins’ banquet.
Against all Imperial rules of etiquette, Charlemagne settled at table before the proper time, when no one else had reached the board. Down he sat and began to pick at bread or cheese or olives or peppers, everything on the tables in fact. Not only that, but he also used his hands. Absolute power often slackens all controls, generates arbitrary actions, even in the most temperate of sovereigns.
One by one the paladins arrived in their grand gala robes which, between lace and brocade, still showed chain mail cuirasses, the kind with a very wide mesh, worn with dress armor, gleaming like a mirror but splintering at a mere rapier’s blow. First came Roland, who sat down on his uncle the emperor’s right, and then Rinaldo of Montalbano, Astolf, Anjouline of Bayonne, Richard of Normandy and all the others.
At the very end of the table sat Agilulf, still in his stainless battle armor. What had he come to do at table, he who had not and never would have any appetite, nor stomach to fill, nor mouth to bring his fork to, nor palate to sprinkle with Bordeaux wine? Yet he never failed to appear at these banquets, which lasted for hours, though the time would surely have been better employed in operations connected with his duties. But no! He had the right like all the others to a place at the Imperial table, and he occupied it. And he carried out the banquet ceremonial with the same meticulous care that he put into every other ceremonial act of the day.
The courses were the usual ones in a military mess: stuffed turkey roasted on the spit, braised oxen, suckling pig, eels, gold fish. Scarcely had the lackeys offered the platters than the paladins flung themselves on them, rummaged about with their hands and tore the food apart, smearing their cuirasses and squirting sauce everywhere. The confusion was worse than battle—soup tureens overturning, roast chickens flying, and lackeys yanking away platters before a greedy paladin emptied them into his porringer.
At the corner of the table where Agilulf sat, on the other hand, all proceeded cleanly, calmly and orderly. But he who ate nothing needed more attendance by servers than the whole of the rest of the table. First of all—while there was such a confusion of dirty plates everywhere that there was no chance of changing them between courses and each ate as best he could, even on the tablecloth—Agilulf went on asking to have put in front of him fresh crockery and cutlery, plates big and small, porringers, glasses of every size and shape, innumerable forks and spoons and knives that had to be well sharpened. So exigent was he about cleanliness that a shadow on a glass or plate was enough for him to send it back. He served himself a little of everything. Not a single dish did he let pass. For example, he peeled off a slice of roast boar, put meat on one plate, sauce on another, smaller, plate, then with a very sharp knife chopped the meat into tiny cubes, which one by one he passed on to yet another plate, where he flavored them with sauce, until they were soaked in it. Those with sauce he then put in a new dish and every now and again called a lackey to take away the last plate and bring him a new one. Thus he busied himself for half hours at a time. Not to mention chickens, pheasants, thrushes—at these he worked for whole hours without ever touching them except with the points of little knives, which he asked for specially and which he very often had changed in order to strip the last little bone of its finest and most recalcitrant shred of flesh. He also had wine served, and continuously poured and repoured it among the many beakers and glasses in front of him; and the goblets in which he mingled one wine with the other he every now and again ha
nded to a lackey to take away and change for a new one. He used a great deal of bread, constantly crushing it into tiny round pellets, all of the same size, which he arranged on the tablecloth in neat rows. The crust he pared down into crumbs, and with them made little pyramids. Eventually he would get tired of them and order the lackeys to brush down the table. Then he started all over again.
With all this he never lost the thread of talk weaving to and fro across the table, and always intervened in time.
What do paladins talk of at dinner? They boast as usual.
Said Roland, “I must tell you that the battle of Aspramonte was going badly before I challenged King Agolante to a duel and bore off Excalibur. So attached to it was he that when I cut off his right arm at a blow, his fist remained tight around its hilt and I had to use pliers to detach ’em.”
Said Agilulf, “I do not wish to contradict, but in the interests of accuracy I must record that Excalibur was surrendered by our enemies in accordance with the armistice treaties five days after the battle of Aspramonte. It figures in fact in a list of light weapons handed over to the Frankish army, among the conditions of the treaty.”
Exclaimed Rinaldo, “Anyway that’s nothing compared with my sword Fusberts. When I met that dragon, passing over the Pyrenees I cut him in two with one blow and, d’you know that a dragon’s skin is harder than a diamond?”
Interrupted Agilulf, “One moment, let’s just get this clear. The passage of the Pyrenees took place in April, and in April, as everyone knows, dragons slough their skins and are soft and tender as newborn babes.”
The paladins said, “Well, yes, that day or another, if not there it was somewhere else, that’s what happened, there’s no point in splitting hairs...”
But they were annoyed. This Agilulf always remembered everything, cited chapter and verse even for a feat of arms accepted by all and piously described by those who had never seen it, tried to reduce it to a normal incident of service to be mentioned in a routine evening’s report to a Regimental Commander. Since the world began there has always been a difference between what actually happens in war and what is told afterwards, but it matters little if certain events actually happen or not in a warrior's life. His person, his power, his bearing guarantee that if things did not happen just like that in every petty detail, they might have and still could do so on a similar occasion. But someone like Agilulf has nothing to sustain his own actions, whether true or false. Either they are set down day by day in verbal reports and taken down in registers, or there's emptiness, blankness. He wanted to reduce his colleagues to sponges of Bordeaux wine, full of boasts, of projects winging into the past without ever having been in the present, of legends attributed to different people and eventually hitched to a suitable protagonist.
Every now and again someone would call Charlemagne in testimony. But the emperor had been in so many wars that he always got confused between one and another and did not really even remember which he was fighting now. His job was to wage war, and at most think of what would come after. Past wars were neither here nor there to him. Everyone knew that tales by chroniclers and bards were to be taken with a grain of salt. The emperor could not be expected to rectify them all. Only when some matter came up with repercussions on military organization, on ranks, for instance, or attribution of titles of nobility or estates, did the king give an opinion. An opinion of a sort, of course; in such matters Charlemagne’s wishes counted for little. He had to stick to the issues at hand, judge by such proofs as were given and see that laws and customs were respected. So when asked his opinion he would shrug his shoulders, keep to generalties, and sometimes get out of it with some such quip as, “Oh! Who knows? War is war, as they say!” Now on this Sir Agilulf of the Guildivern, who kept crumbling bread and contradicting all the feats which—even if not told in versions accurate in every detail—were genuine glories of Frankish arms, Charlemagne felt like setting some heavy task, but he had been told that the knight treated the most tiresome duties as tests of zeal so there was no point in it.
“I don’t see why you must niggle so Agilulf,” said Oliver. “The glory of our feats tends to amplify in the popular memory, thus proving it to be genuine glory, basis of the titles and ranks we have won.”
“Not of mine,” rebutted Agilulf. “Every title and predicate of mine I got for deeds well asserted and supported by incontrovertible documentary evidence!”
“So you say!” cried a voice.
“Who spoke will answer to me!” said Agilulf, rising to his feet.
“Calm down, now, be good,” said the others. “You who are always picking at others’ feats, must expect someone to say a word about yours...”
“I offend no one. I limit myself to detailing facts, with place, date and proofs!”
“It was I who spoke. I will detail too.” A young warrior had got up, pale in the face.
“I'd like to see what you can find contestable in my past, Torrismund,” said Agilulf to the youth, who was in fact Torrismund of Cornwall. “Would you deny, for instance, that I was granted my knighthood because, exactly fifteen years ago, I saved from rape by two brigands the King of Scotland’s virgin daughter, Sophronia?”
“Yes, I do contest that Fifteen years ago Sophronia, the King of Scotland’s daughter, was no virgin.”
A bustle went the whole length of the table. The code of chivalry then holding prescribed that whoever saved from certain danger the virginity of a damsel of noble lineage was immediately dubbed knight. But saving from rape a noblewoman no longer a virgin only brought a mention in despatches and three month’s double pay.
“How can you sustain that, which is an affront not only to my dignity as knight but to the lady whom I took under the protection of my sword?”
“I do sustain it.”
“Your proof?”
“Sophronia is my mother.”
A cry of surprise rose from all the paladins’ chests. Was young Torrismund, then, no son of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall?
“Yes, Sophronia bore me twenty years ago, when she was thirteen years of age,” explained Torrismund. “Here is the medal of the royal house of Scotland,” and rummaging in his breast he took out a seal on a golden chain.
Charlemagne, who till then had kept his face and beard bent over a dish of river prawns, judged that the moment had come to raise his eyes. “Young knight” said he, giving his voice the major Imperial authority, “do you realise the gravity of your words?”
"Fully,” said Torrismund, "for me even more than for others.”
There was silence all round. Torrismund was denying a connection to the Duke of Cornwall which bore with it the title of knight. By declaring himself a bastard, even of a princess of blood royal, he risked dismissal from the army.
But much more serious was Agilulf's position. Before battling for Sophronia when she was attacked by bandits, and saving her virtue; he had been a simple nameless warrior in white armor wandering round the world at a venture; or rather (as was soon known) empty white armor, with no warrior inside. His deed in defense of Sophronia had given him the right to be an armed knight The knighthood of Selimpia Citeriore being vacant just then, he had assumed that title. His entry into service, all ranks and titles added later, were a consequence of that episode. If Sophronia's virginity which he had saved was proved nonexistent, then his knighthood went up in smoke too, and nothing that he had done afterwards could be recognized as valid at all, and his names and titles would be annulled, so that each of his attributions would become as nonexistent as his person.
“When still a child, my mother became pregnant with me,” narrated Torrismund, “and fearing the ire of her parents when they knew her state, fled from the royal castle of Scotland and wandered throughout the highlands. She gave birth to me in the open air, on a heath, and while wandering over fields and woods of England raised me till I was five. Those first memories are of the loveliest period of my life, interrupted by this intruder. I remember the day. My mother had left me
to guard our cave, while she went off as usual to rob fruit from the orchards. She met two roving brigands who wanted to abuse her. They might have made friends in the end, who knows, for my mother often lamented her solitude. Then along came this empty armor in search of glory and routed the brigands. Recognizing my mother as of royal blood, he took her under his protection and brought her to the nearest castle, that of Cornwall, where he consigned her to the duke and duchess. Meanwhile I had remained in the cave hungry and alone. As soon as my mother could she confessed to the duke and duchess the existence of her son whom she had been forced to abandon. Servants bearing torches were sent out to search for me and I was brought to the castle. To save the honor of the royal family of Scotland, linked to that of Cornwall by bonds of kinship, I was adopted and recognized as son of the duke and duchess. My life was tedious and burdened with restriction as the lives of cadets of noble houses always are. No longer was I allowed to see my mother, who took the veil in a distant convent. This mountain of falsehood has weighed me down and distorted the natural course of my life. Now finally I have succeeded in telling the truth. Whatever happens to me now must be better than the past."
At table meanwhile the pudding had been served, a sponge in various delicately colored layers, but such was the general amazement at this series of revelations that not a fork was raised towards speechless mouths.
“And you, what have you to say about this story?” Charlemagne asked Agilulf. All noted that he had not said, “Knight.”
“Lies. Sophronia was a virgin. On the flower of her purity repose my honor and my name.”
“Can you prove it?”
“I will search out Sophronia.”
“Do you expect to find her the same fifteen years later?” said Astolfo maliciously. “Breastplates of beaten iron have lasted less.”
“She took the veil immediately after I had consigned her to that pious family.”
The Nonexistent Knight Page 6