Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (5 page)

“I would like best to be a good father.”

“You were too late to the feast,” she said.

“Yes, but I’ve come,” he said, pausing in the dimness, looking back into the room. The sunlight angled behind her, falling just short of where she stood so that she seemed a dark outline, depthless as a distant shape in the evening.

She was shaking her head. She was thinking about how three months ago she had been ready to fall in love with him again.

It was the spring, she thought. I can’t help being a fool in the spring…

They’d gone to the little lake and swum and made love despite the nightchill. Talked about taking a trip together to the seacoast with their daughter… let themselves dream a future for a little while; then Sir Gaf and his family arrived and settled in and the weather went cool and rainy and the mood got lost somewhere…

She sighed.

“Too late,” she said. “Too late. I will not trust you again, Parsival.”

“Let me teach my son to trust me,” he said. “Let him attend me and go where I go for some days.” He was thinking out loud.

“And even though you tied him to your mount,” she said, from the depthless image that was herself, “I ween he would chew himself free from you like a snared wolf.”

He considered that. A feeling sank in him that almost forced tears from his eyes.

He swallowed, without a voice from the moment, Layla knew she’d hit home and said nothing more.

LAYLA

Next Morning

In the first grayish vagueness of pre-dawn Layla awoke because the bed sagged and a man grunted and breathed too hard.

For a moment she thought it was her husband and was mildly annoyed, thinking he’d come to try and apologize once again. She was curled to one side; felt a hand stroking her bare belly under the light summer satin coverlet. She brushed at it and twisted away.

The hand followed and next a wiry beard was pricking her neck and she inhaled Gaf’s sour-milk smelling breath.

She pushed him off as she sat up, big masses of pillows behind her. When they moved the thin canopy poles swayed. The bed was old, she tangentially noted, and needed some repair.

“What do you want here?” she asked, almost snarled.

He knelt on the fluffy, crackly mattress wearing a puffy, dun-colored robe. Where it parted she could see his genitals, swaying. She’d seen them before. With the sun coming up, she had no desire for the view in blunt daylight.

“I want what you have granted me before,” he declared, voice thick with (she thought) either drink or heat. His member seemed, she noted, uncertain. She remembered him topping her two nights ago, crushed down under his weight, feeling him poke at her until he found the place, at last.

“I’ll grant you leave to go,” she said.

“Aha,” he said. “Come to me, my sweetness.” Knelt himself forward, tipping the bed like a boat.

She got out on the far side and tossed the sheet up over him. While he lashed at it, struggling to get free, she simply left the chamber, saying, over her shoulder:

“Return to your wife and mother, Sir.”

“Bitch dog,” he called after her, catching in the sheet so that he knelt out of the high bed, cracking both knees on the tiled floor, the thin rug offered little protection so that the hurt Parsival had given him was doubled into blinding agony. He yelled, without words this time. Layla was gone.

HAL

An hour later, the sun streaming in everywhere, King Arthur’s three emissaries were washing their faces from the bowls held by servants in another wing of the medium-sized castle. The slit windows faced east and looked across the morning fields that seemed to shimmer in sheer freshness.

Sir Gaf hobbled in, leaning on an undrawn sword for a crutch, darkbearded face sweaty with pain.

“The great coward has fled,” he announced, too-loud. “He fled me and you as well.”

“What’s this?” wondered the red-haired, long-faced leader who stood shirtless, water dripping from his face. “Who fled?”

“Great coward Parsival,” Gaf snarled and winced. “The cuckold has run.”

“Cuckold?” the stocky, olive complexioned knight said, looking up from where he was rinsing his mouth and spitting into a bowl.

There were two servants attending, both male and about fifteen, pages-in-training loaned to Parsival’s household by a noble neighbor some ten miles south. One was small with a deformed upper lip and slight limp; the other was stocky, strong, flaxen-haired, blue- eyed and murmured to the other, smaller fellow:

“There be more cuckolds in this castle than flies on cheese.” The other smirked, bobbed his head, nervously.

“Aye, Henry,” he whispered back, “and this one’s the captain of them.”

“And Parsival the King.”

At the same time Gaf was saying:

“Track him and kill him, as I will myself so soon as I am healed of my hurts.”

The stocky knight made two fists and stared at his leader. “You see, Alinn,” he said, “we should have gone straight to —”

“He cannot have gone far,” Sir Alinn of the red hair cut in. “Dress and we’ll eat as we ride.” Looked at Gaf. “Look you, fellow, say cuckold all you please, for any man may be deceived; but say not coward of a knight second only to, maybe, Lancelot. Pray you never meet him in anger.”

Gaf glowered at him, then limped out, sword click-clicking down the stone corridor, echoing as he struggled away in silent fury.

“Must we slay him?” the thin, third man asked, from where he was now urinating into a copious bedpan. Sir Alinn was rubbing his long nose, thoughtfully.

“His Majesty wishes us to give him every chance to see reason,” he yawned and said. Belched. “And killing such a fellow is not lightly contemplated.”

“Well then?” asked the stocky, dark knight. Alinn shrugged.

“We follow,” he said. “We keep talking sense to him.”

“And finally,” the third said, “we talk with a mace blow for I fear his ears are stopped.”

Alinn sighed and shrugged again, gesturing to the pages for the jug of buttermilk Henry the blue-eyed Saxon held. Took it and swigged, staining his chin with the pale richness.

“What think you of your lord Parsival, boy?” He wanted to know.

“A famous knight,” he replied.

“Ah, yes. Still, why do you imagine he refuses his service to his liege lord?”

Henry shrugged, uncomfortable.

“I know not Sir Parsival’s mind, Sir,” he said, creasing his wide, normally smooth forehead. He was looking at the buttermilk left in the bowl Alinn still held, absently. “I know it is a great offense to refuse service.”

The knight nodded. Noticed the young man staring covertly. “Would you like some? he offered the bowl which Henry (or Hal as friends called him) took at once, without ceremony, and gulped down major swallows, amusing Alinn and the others. “Don’t they feed you here, boy?” Alinn asked. “You seem stout enough.”

Coming up from air, Henry answered:

“Yes, Sir. Why they set a good table here.” The three knights were grinning now while the other page rolled his eyes. “This buttermilk is rich and tangy. My friend Lohengrin likes to say I have an understanding of food.”

The stocky knight guffawed.

“If you ever come to be knighted,” he said, “on your arms you’ll wear a goblet crossing a stuffed goose.”

They laughed and then Alinn commanded:

“We’re off within the hour so ready yourselves.” To Hal: “Pack us food for the road and mind you, eat it not before you deliver it.” Grinning. “Not even a mouse’s nibble, do you hear me, boy.”

PARSIVAL

His armor was packed on the mule tethered to Lego’s saddle. The beast swayed reluctantly behind the mount. Parsival rode in front at a walk up the twisting narrow trail. He felt neutral. He planned to stop at the top and nap for an hour. The rocking of the big dappled gray horse was soothing.

A wall of huge clouds was slowly starting to cut off the sky. The sun was arching down at two o’clock and would soon be swallowed by the massive greenish dark thunderheads. He could see distant flickers of lightning around the immense bases. They were still too far away for the atmosphere to tense yet. He reckoned they were still hours away.

“My Lord,” Lego said, behind him.

“Yes, Lego?”

“Why did you bring your knightly gear?” Parsival didn’t look back, replying:

“You mean if I intend to retire from the field?”

“Aye” Lego could have happily dispensed with the balky, stumpy mule.

“Mayhap,” Parsival said, “I will offer my steel to the saints.”

Or maybe I mean just to do something dramatic… he thought. I have to be careful of that, of mere gestures…

“To a new life.”

“I have not worn out my old one, my Lord.”

“My new life. You are to be a witness.” Parsival glanced back. “Then you can go home with the testimony.”

“My Lord …” Lego began.

“Yes?”

The captain brooded now. Reached back and jerked the mule’s halter. “Stinking dung!” he said without venom. “My Lord, you ought to have …”

“Yes? I ought to have struck my son?” Parsival looked back at his companion. He respected Lego very much and was willing to consider any advice, at this point.

“Maybe,” Lego knitted his thick eyebrows together. “Yet the beaten horse but strays the further.”

Parsival nodded.

From here he could see the long valley and his home in the distant mist. He thought he understood why monks choose high places; not so much as to see God, but to escape from men. He already felt the events of the morning had happened years before, and were melting into memory’s mists…

“You’re just a witness, Captain Lego,” he reminded him. “Once you’ve seen what you see, you will return alone.”

“Hah. Give your sense to Frenchmen, jokes to Germans, calmness to Italians.” He thought a moment. “Soap to the infidels.”

Parsival smiled appreciatively. “What’s this advice, Captain Lego?”

“Only give to those incapable of receiving.” Parsival chuckled.

“If they tried to take, Captain Lego,” he added.

Lego smiled and spat into the dust. He had two daughters; no sons. He scratched around his beard. Went back to thinking about getting the youngest married. At fifteen she was ripe, he thought, for trouble, and she ate too much. Always chewing down bread and honey. He always said she should have been a nobleman’s child. As soon as he came back from this expedition he would look into the situation. He nodded to himself.

He might have thought it better to have had sons except for his lord’s example.

To get his mind on something else, he asked:

“Where are we bound?” Because Parsival had been so mysterious. He seemed to be dodging Arthur’s emissaries but there had to be more to it.

“These seem dark sayings,” the soldier observed. “But dawn will come apace,” the knight told him.

The hilltop was rocky, barren except for stringy bushes and pale, spiny-looking flowers. Parsival realized just how elevated his castle actually was because they hadn’t climbed more than a mile and suddenly they were above the tree line.

The monastery was just ahead. It had massive walls and timbered roofs. The stones were grey and wet-looking. A strange silence, Lego thought, seemed to infuse the place. No chanting, no bells, no barking dogs, no voices on the breeze.

“My Lord,” he asked, as they dismounted in the courtyard and watered the horses at the trough.

“Yes, Lego?” Parsival was scanning the building, the slit windows showing nothing but shadow.

“Do you mean to enlist here?” Lego wondered.

“I mean to ask a question,” was the knight’s reply. “What I do depends on the answer.”

Lego rested his arms on his mount’s saddle. The late sun was still hot on his face.

“Mayhap, you will speak to the stones here, my Lord,” he offered.

Parsival went to the door. It was iron with brass overlapping straps. Slightly polished and rustless. He pushed hard. It stood solid. He drew his sword and knocked with the hilt. The door must have been hollow because it rang like a gong, rich, resonant as if the whole dull building were ringing sweet and deep.

Parsival just stood there, leaning into the sound. His memories were haunted. Pictures came: a field of bright misty-silver grass and milky flowers like recrudescent dreams. And across the gleaming field, a wall of translucent stone and a crystal gate that was just opening; movement beyond a haze of gold, figures that might have been dressed in golden armor moved and seemed somehow portentous, mysterious, profound…He shook his head as if to clear it. The sound was dying away now.

“Well,” said Lego, “that bell should stir them. It would bestir the dead.”

And then the door swung silently inwards and a little monk with a narrow, reddened face like (Parsival thought) a ferret, was tilting his neck around the jamb.

“May you speak?” Parsival asked.

The monk shook his head, and motioned the knight inside.

Parsival followed him.

“I’ll wait for you out here,” said Lego. “I have little taste for the monkish mysteries.”

The knight followed the monk down a high, narrow corridor that suddenly sloped steeply upward. There was a single step so high they had to half climb to gain the incline.

It must mean to have a humbling effect, he thought. The monk bounded, silently, up the extreme slope. Parsival followed feeling the strain in his legs.

At the top they entered a square, windowless chamber. On what the knight took for a carved stone coffin sat a man he assumed would be the Abbott: bold-faced, middle-aged fellow with short arms and a razor thin nose. His eyes were lost in his cheekfolds and squinted brows.

“Do you speak?” Parsival wondered.

The face was a strange combination of ascetic and worldly: The full, purplish lips, contrasting the edged nose; the fleshiness of the face against the bony head and sharply pointed jaw. A fat-thin face the knight decided.

“I speak,” the monk said, his voice high-pitched.

“Did you expect me?”

The Abbott smiled, for Abbott he was. “Did you say you were coming, Sir Knight?”

Parsival smiled, scratched behind his ear, and took the situation in. “I expect mysteries,” he said. “Perhaps too often. Perhaps I miss them too much.”

“Man is certainly a mystery. That such a divine and marvelous work should sink so deep in self-made mire.”

Parsival sighed and nodded. He looked and there was nowhere to sit unless he were meant to perch on the coffin or whatever it was.

“I despaired of my life,” he said. “I lived sealed behind a fortress of errors.”

The Abbott nodded brightly. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “That is a good beginning,” he said. “You’ve got to remain despairing for much longer, however, if you hope for results.”

“A mystery?” Parsival wondered.

“Hardly that, my son. You clearly want to repair your life, not wash it away in a sea of prayer and meditation. But only when the tooth rages do we seek to pull it out.”

Parsival thought about that. He scratched behind his other ear. “You may be right, Father,” he said. “And afterwards I may swim. Isn’t that so?”

The monk smiled. He tilted his head to one side. “You might,” he agreed. “But you might merely drown.”

“Do you have any suggestions?” Parsival wanted to know.

“You came here for suggestions.” It was a statement to the possible question. Parsival nodded. Shrugged. Scratched again.

“You had better start over, Sir Knight, don’t you think? You clearly missed your way.”

Parsival nodded. “Yes, I took a wrong turning twenty odd years ago.” He closed his eyes to collect his thoughts. “I saw something, just this morning.”

“Saw something?” The Abbott reached down into the seeming coffin, and Parsival realized it was hollow and open, the monk just braced on the thick edge. He came up with a small loaf of bread and golden goblets.

“Maybe it was a mark on the trail,” Parsival continued. “Here,” said the Abbott. “Are you not thirsty?”

Parsival went over and sipped the wine. It was sweet, red, scented with a spice. It burst with slow heat in his belly. “What signpost did you see, Knight? A vision?”

Parsival shook his head. Had another sip. It seemed to strike him softly behind his eyes so that his sight was blurry and the windowless chamber, lit by oil lamps seemed suddenly brighter. The Abbott lost his outline, for an instant, and seemed just a softly covered shape without sharp features or certain edges. It was interesting. It was pleasant. He liked the wine.

“No,” he replied, “not a sight… it was a feeling… something perfect and beautiful – a great solitary power filled me …” He drained the goblet. The floor seemed to tilt like the deck of a ship in a slow swell. He wanted to say more. The wine made it very easy and poetic. “What have you given me?” he wondered.

“What have you asked for?” the Abbott returned.

“Nothing yet… but to be resolved in my mind …”

“The mind teases itself to confuse you. That is not what you are asking for, Sir Knight.” The depthless outline seemed to gather the unsteady shadows into itself so that the Abbott appeared to be a human-shaped hole in the dim chamber. “The mind can never, of its own working, be resolved.”

The warmth stayed even as he swallowed more wine. The stone flooring remained tilted but didn’t shift.

Strange drink, he thought. This is somehow like the mysteries of my younger days when I would wander into and out of portents at will…

“I think I really hoped,” he said, expository, because there was no connection personally with a shadow, “I hoped that… somehow… I would find my way into a place without death in it.”

The Abbott (such as he truly was) may have responded; he couldn’t be sure for a moment because of the strange drink and the tilting and the dimness.

“What?” Parsival asked.

“If I were you, Knight, I would try again.” said the Abbott sagely.

Parsival nodded, half-hearing, setting down the goblet on the stone with a faint clink. He sighed and turned away. Shut his eyes. Felt what had to be the priest’s hand on his shoulder although he hadn’t been standing that close to him. Then felt what he was certain was a soft, deep, heavy blow in the center of his back that seemed to stun his heart. Frightened, he tried to open his eyes… couldn’t. Tried to move; couldn’t. Couldn’t feel the floor or his feet… nothingness…

His mind was fast, lucid though he couldn’t feel his body… next he was standing on a fog-shrouded beach of chill-looking, gray, gritty, glassy sand, ice crusting the shoreline with massive, freezing surf crumbling just behind him. He felt nothing. The mist billowed and shook in the windblasts.

What desolation, his mind said.

Found himself moving inland though he couldn’t actually see his body, as if he were merely floating eyes. There were little creatures, furtive shadows in the mists, seemingly armed and savage… he had an impression they were, somehow formed from the fog and ice. He glimpsed their faces: long mustaches and oblique eyes which seemed to glare, reddish, feral… they moved constantly, seeming to melt in and out of substance as the fogs filled and shifted…

Mist creatures? his mind wondered.

He drifted inland, steadily as if the wind propelled him and he kept passing over the little creatures without really perceiving any purpose to their activities… he paused over a pit that seemed slashed from the harsh, frozen soil. Glimpsed three mutilated bodies laid out head-to-head at the bottom.

Then the fog was gone and there were green fields all around: bright, tiny blue flowerets; clumps of spiny, twisted trees… he was rising now, soaring into a clear sky.

He saw a line of people in mixed dress led by a single knight in red armor, too high to make out features, moving in single file, twisting, zigzagging as if following some unseen and needless path on that perfectly flat plain. He had an impression the leader in red was reading a map.

Rising higher he discovered this was an island, vaguely rounded or heart-shaped: foglost shore, a green band surrounding the center that was just blurring, no cloud, no surface, as if his eyes simply failed to focus.

Higher… higher… the isle was a spot on a vast, shrouded sea… a speck… gone…

His eyes popped open and he was staring straight at the vaulted roof, flat on is back in the stone “coffin.”

What? asked his mind. What?

He sat up. Then stood, as if in an empty bath. The monk was watching him. The floor seemed level again.

“What happened?” he wondered.