The Grail of Sir Thomas

by Yury Nikitin

  * * *

  The two of them sat by the fire. Chachar gnawed at the roast quail wing and Oleg sorted the herbs out, trying to let nothing but polite interest show in his face, when they heard a clatter of hooves. Far away, there was the gleaming figure of the knight.

  Thomas vaulted off, with an easiness that had always surprised Oleg. The knight looked paler than usual. He limped, his armor was dented in two places. The right side of his helmet was matted, his eyebrows stuck together with sweat, his sky blue eyes dark with pain. “I ran into them on my way,” he replied with vexation to the anxious looks of Oleg and Chachar. “I can’t make way for strangers! What if they’re of lower birth? The fools pushed forward on me. The last two of them guessed to make way, but it was too late…”

  Chachar dashed to the knight anxiously, helped to unclasp his heavy armor, dropping the pieces on her legs. “Damn the steppes!” Oleg said sarcastically. “So little space that one can’t turn round!”

  “Sir wonderer! That’s a matter of honor!”

  “Would you like to eat?”

  “I am saturated with the fight,” Thomas replied proudly, in the best knightly traditions.

  Oleg did not try to persuade or argue. He even seemed to be glad. “That’s well! Then you will drink a potion we made.”

  Thomas recoiled from the horribly stinking cauldron of black liquid, with floating yellow blades of grass that he would not throw even to his servant’s horse, and nasty bubbling foam. From time to time, sharp little claws emerged from inside, as if the wonderer had boiled bats or toads there. “Sir wonderer!”

  “You need it, dear sir. The Holy Virgin would have treated her knight to a cup of healing potion herself if only she was not that busy.”

  Chachar hurried to take a full scoop, brought it to Thomas, trying not to spill a single drop of the precious potion for which she’d suffered so much, got scared to a piglet’s squeal.

  Oleg smiled derisively, as if he had little belief in the knight’s valor.

  Thomas held his breath and took the scoop of nauseating potion with a firm hand.

  Oleg ate unhurriedly the meat around the bone. His strange green eyes looked slowly over the lawn, overhanging branches, the ground trampled by hooves and feet. Chachar sat on the other side of the fire, eating quickly and accurately. She took the bones with two fingers, sticking the little one out. She neither spat out the bones nor blew her nose at the table, holding each of her nostrils in turn, in the Saracen way.

  Oleg tossed the bone away, wiped his greasy fingers. “Thomas, it’s our good luck that Chachar got lost.”

  The knight started. “What’s the matter?”

  “We had guests. While we galloped over groves and gullies in search of the maiden lost, they rode up to our fire from three sides, to encircle us. Behind that tree, I found the track of a crossbow arc: someone was drawing a crossbow with its plate set against the ground. I think there were other crossbowmen as well.”

  Thomas jumped up, his eyes were searching around anxiously. “Where are they?”

  “They thought we had left fire as a lure before we rode away. By northern road, surely! At least their tracks go north.”

  “They went after us? Then they’ll see their mistake soon…”

  “You’ll have enough time to drink your potion,” Oleg assured. “Would you like some more of it? You are weak, and in this life you’ll need your strength earlier than you expect.”

  Thomas looked at pale Chachar, put his hand to his heart and bowed.

  Oleg got up, took the heavy bag off the saddle. “Three scores of well-armed warriors have been there. Chachar did us a great turn: she saved us from this fight. We must do the same for her.” He dropped the bag on the ground; it gave a ringing tinkle. Thomas raised his eyebrows, then his face lit up with a guess. Oleg untied the bag, his forearm plunged inside. “Sir Thomas, do we number in two or three?”

  “Sir wonderer,” the knight replied with great dignity, “the woman entrusted herself to our protection!”

  “Here we have five thousand in gold. I divide it in three?”

  “Women always need more, sir wonderer.”

  “I know it. Who doesn’t?”

  Chachar shifted a confused gaze between the men. Oleg poured the coins out on the ground, fingered them apart into three piles, one a bit larger than the rest. Thomas, with his broadest smile, placed that pile on a big kerchief, tied the knots. Chachar looked with embarrassment at Thomas rising up and tucking the kerchief of gold into the saddlebag on her horse. Meanwhile, Oleg poured the remnants into the bag they’d been in, tied it, started to pick up the cauldron and blankets. “What does this mean?” Chachar asked.

  “We see the city walls over there,” Oleg told her in a sweet voice. “It’s the city we promised to take you to. Sir Thomas and I would rather keep your company, but… you see what a dog’s life we lead? Sleeping on the bare ground, attacked by all the scum of these lands, as if we were smeared with honey… And there may be even worse nights waiting ahead, spent in bogs or on wasp nests.”

  Chachar shifted her indignant gaze to Thomas. The knight nodded and turned away to his horse, lest he see her accusing eyes. “Take your money back then!” she flared up. “Pious bloody men! You think I rode with you for money?”

  Oleg patted her with affection on the head. “We have to leave. The assassins may come back here.”

  At the fork in the road, Chachar whipped her horse and overrode them at once. It seemed to Oleg that she jerked her small nose up proudly only to prevent her tears from coming out. Her back was straight, her hair fluttered in the wind. Her horse trotted briskly, feeling the stables with other horses, fresh oats, and a long rest in the city soon.

  When Chachar vanished from sight, Thomas gave out such a mighty sigh as if he had dropped a heavy boulder off, a boulder he had carried for such a long time that he went oblivious of it. “How fine… Sir wonderer, do you grudge her the gold?”

  “I’m a pilgrim,” Oleg reminded him. “A wonderer. Do you?”

  “I’m a knight errant!” Thomas replied proudly, his back straightened up the same way as Chachar’s. “Sir wonderer, shall we number two all the rest of our way?”

  “If only you…”

  “Never!” Thomas said fervently. “I swear it on the cup, on my sword, on the hooves of my horse!”

  “Even in your Christian mythology,” Oleg pointed out, “the sin came out of Satan’s left ear and the woman was made of a left rib, that’s why she shall go on the man’s left, and the man’s left shoulder is seated by all the evil…”

  “By demon,” Thomas corrected. He looked at the wonderer with great respect. “So one shall spit over the left shoulder… Do you Pagans spit too?”

  “Sir Thomas, I have to upset you. We are turning our horses back to the south.”

  Thomas leaned back in the saddle, as if a log had socked him between eyes. His palm clapped on his sword hilt habitually, his face flushed angrily. “Sir wonderer…” he spoke in a constrained voice, hardly keeping his temper. “Krizhina waits for me!”

  “Sir Thomas,” Oleg persisted, “I promised to ride with you to Tsargrad… to Constantinople, I mean. That’s why I’m ready to make a hook and over, sharing the danger with you. It’s not me hunted. Neither me bearing the Holy Grail!”

  “Why south?” Thomas screamed in a blaring voice. He sounded as though in death throes. “My way lies north!”

  Oleg stretched his arm to point at the road. “Straight to the north, a big party of hired robber knights with a score of crossbowmen is coming on us. To the west, there are assassins waiting for us. To the north-west, some strange people lie in ambush: the charms only gave me a warning but did not show how they look… We will come back to the north. I live to the north myself. But we’ll have to round the city and its lands in a broad arc.”

  Cursing like Black God, Thomas drove his horse after the wonderer’s fast stallion.