The Quest of the Fair Unknown (3 page)

Beaufils didn't know what Galahad had meant by "mortal sin," but he had to chuckle again at the rest of this speech. "Oh, it wasn't
lucky
that he missed me," Beaufils pointed out. "He tried his best."

Mordred's eyes blazed angrily at this, but Beaufils ignored him. Stepping off Mordred's sword, he picked it up and handed it back to the knight. "Here you go, knight. Or should I call you Mordred?"

'"Sir Knight' will do," Mordred said, a bit sharply. "It will help you to remember your place, boy."

Beaufils was about to ask what Mordred meant by this when the other knight spoke. "In truth you are right, boy. He tried to strike you but could not. I have never seen anyone move as quickly as you did. Have you been trained for war?"

Beaufils shook his head. "I don't
think
so," he said. "Have you?" he asked, hoping that Galahad would explain what he meant by "war."

Galahad nodded. "From childhood, I have done nothing else but prepare for one sort of war or another. I have trained my body, my mind, and my soul for battle, both earthly and spiritual."

This didn't help at all, but Beaufils decided he could ask about this "war" some other time, so he replied politely, "That must have been nice."

Galahad blinked at this, then said, "Come, boy, and join our camp." Mordred started to speak, but Galahad said, "After all, Mordred, having attacked him without cause, we should make amends in whatever way we can. If you don't like it, you can go find another camp. I was here first anyway." He sat down at the fire and gestured for Beaufils to join him. "Mordred and I just met here a few minutes before you came. What is your name?"

"Beaufils. And yours is Galahad? Or should I call you
Sir
Galahad?" Beaufils had learned from Sir Bors and Sir Lionel that people usually used that title of respect with knights.

"No," Galahad said, with an air of regret. "I have not been knighted yet."

Beaufils absorbed this. "So people who are not knights are
made
knights? Who can be made a knight?"

Mordred laughed derisively. "Not a churl like you, if that's what you mean."

"Who then?" Beaufils asked.

"It is customary that only the sons of knights may become knights," Galahad explained gently.

"Oh," Beaufils said. "That's all right then. I don't know that I
want
to be a knight, of course, but it's nice to know that I can become one if I wish."

The two travelers stared at Beaufils in silence for a moment. "Do you mean to say that your father is a knight?" Galahad asked. Beaufils nodded. "What knight?"

"I don't know his name," Beaufils said. Then he told them how his mother had revealed to him before she died that his father was a knight from Camelot who didn't even know that Beaufils had been born.

Mordred laughed again. He was somehow able to make all the sounds of laughter without communicating any feeling of merriment. Beaufils thought it uncanny and not very pleasant. "You don't really expect us to believe that, do you?" Mordred asked. "Your mother was lying to you, boy—trying to make herself more important than she was." Galahad said nothing, but his eyes were wide as he stared at Beaufils. Mordred glanced at Galahad, then said, "Come, Galahad, you aren't going to believe this whelp, are you?"

"Why should the boy's story be a lie?" Galahad said softly. "It is my story as well."

Beaufils had been about to reply sternly to Mordred, whose scorn for his mother had aroused an unfamiliar stirring of anger, but at Galahad's reply Beaufils forgot his irritation.

"Truly? Is your father a knight from Camelot too?"

Galahad nodded. "And my father, like yours, does not know I exist."

Beaufils smiled widely. "Why, we could be brothers!"

"If so," Mordred said, his lips curled in an unpleasant expression, "you can both be very proud of your sire. A busy knight, it seems."

Galahad turned red but didn't reply. Beaufils asked, "And are you on your way to Camelot, like me? To find your father?"

"I am," Galahad said.

Mordred gave his joyless laugh again. "A family reunion, I perceive. I do hope your father is, ah, pleased to see you both."

"Oh, it might not be the same knight, you know," Beaufils assured him. "Sir Lionel said that my father could be one of two dozen knights. He didn't think I would be able to find him at all." He looked at Galahad. "How will you find
yours?
"

"My mother said he would know my name when I was presented to the court. And what about you? Will your father know your name?"

Beaufils shook his head. "I don't know. In fact, I'm not even sure that 'Beaufils'
is
my name. It means 'fair son,' and it was just what Mother called me."

"How pathetic," Mordred said. "Two bast—ah, two
love children,
looking for their fathers."

Galahad's face grew tight. "Why do you sneer at us so, Mordred? Do you think it a weakness in us that we do not know our fathers?"

"No," Mordred replied softly. "I think it a weakness that you seek them out. If I had a father at Camelot who did not know I existed, I would not seek him; I would make him seek me. Then I would make him pay."

Beaufils looked at Mordred in silence, feeling a chill of something black and heavy behind these words. Beaufils had never encountered such a feeling before—a hungry, bitter, and arid emotion that seemed to bleed all the warmth from Mordred's voice when he spoke. Beaufils felt instinctively that he was in the presence of a much greater wickedness than mere bandits with cudgels. Galahad must have sensed it, too, because neither he nor Beaufils spoke to Mordred again that evening as they sat around the fire, then prepared for sleep. When they awoke the next day, Mordred was gone.

Galahad, Beaufils learned as they rode together toward Camelot, had spent all his youth in a place called a convent, where his mother was something called a nun.

"What is that?"

"A nun? Do you not know?" Galahad asked. Beaufils shook his head. "A nun is a bride of Christ, a woman who has wedded herself to Our Lord in mystic union and spends her days meditating on His goodness."

"Oh," Beaufils said. His mother had told him about God and Christ, but he wasn't sure how Christ, whom he knew as a strong presence in moments of great peace, could be married to someone. "And a convent is where Christ's brides live?" he asked.

"Yes. My mother went there after I was conceived, seeking a place away from the world in which to raise me."

Beaufils understood that. It was exactly what his own mother had done, except that his mother had gone farther afield.

Galahad continued. "There I was raised by all the sisters of the convent, taught to give myself to prayer and to the service of God, and then—when I was old enough—trained to use the broadsword."

"Your mother taught you that?" Beaufils asked, mildly interested. When he was with Sir Bors and Sir Lionel, he had lifted Sir Lionel's heavy sword, and he knew that his own mother would not have been strong enough to ply such a weapon. "A strong, burly woman, was she?"

"No, of course not!" Galahad said. "There was a priest nearby who had once been a knight, and he taught me to use sword and shield."

"That was kind of him," Beaufils said, thinking how nice it would have been to have had neighbors himself. "So where
are
your sword and shield?"

Galahad lifted his chin. "I have none. Father Calchis trained me with his own rusted sword and shield, but they are so old and chipped now that they cannot be used. Mother says that God will provide arms for me."

"That will be nice," Beaufils replied. "Will he give you one of those pointed things—a lance—as well?"

Galahad flushed and turned sharply, but before he could speak Beaufils said, "Why is there a man up in that tree ahead?"

Galahad turned back and stared down the path. A large chestnut tree growing just off the path sent out several long branches, one of which overhung the road a short distance ahead of them. "I see no man," he said.

"He's on the branch over the road, just where the leaves are thickest," Beaufils said. "You don't see his outline through the shadows?"

"I see nothing," Galahad said impatiently.

"I'll show you," Beaufils offered. Sliding from Clover's back, he stepped into the bushes beside the path and made his way to the trunk of the tree. It was an old tree with low branches, ridiculously easy to climb, and it took Beaufils only a few seconds to reach the base of the overhanging branch. There he was, a man in knight's armor, sword in hand, his face turned toward where Galahad sat on his horse. Beaufils waited for the knight to say hello, but the man was so focused on Galahad that he hadn't even heard Beaufils climb the tree beside him. "Hello, knight," Beaufils said at last. The man jumped in the air, exclaimed something in a sharp voice, and swung his sword blindly behind him in the direction of Beaufils. "Be careful," Beaufils said, evading the sword easily. "You'll fall."

The man fell. His violent swing completely overbalanced him, and he tumbled with a clatter to the path. Beaufils swung down, hung from the branch for a moment, then dropped lightly beside the stunned knight. The knight's sword lay on the ground at Beaufils's feet, and he picked it up. The knight groaned and sat up just as Galahad cantered near.

"What meant thou, Sir Knight," Galahad said, in a somewhat deeper voice than his normal one, "lying thus in wait for strange knights errant?"

The knight shook his head slowly, as though to clear it, then replied, "Are you Sir Breunis Sans Pité?" he asked.

"I am not," replied Galahad.

The knight sighed with relief and rose to his feet. "I beg your pardon," he said. "I had heard that that most wicked of recreant knights was in these parts. He lives but to strike down young knights from ambush, and when I heard you approach, I hid."

"You should not run from recreant knights!" Galahad said sternly.

"But Sir Breunis Sans Pité is a demon with a sword! I confess that I feared for my life."

"You need not fear now that I am with you," Galahad said.

The knight looked Galahad over frankly. "But ... forgive me for pointing this out ... you don't seem to be armed."

Galahad lifted his chin. "Sword or no sword, I fear no recreant knight."

"That's admirable," the knight replied. "But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather have my sword back." He glanced at Beaufils, who returned his sword. Immediately the knight grasped the sword by the hilt and put the point at Galahad's throat.

"You are very brave, youngster. Also very stupid. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sir Breunis Sans Pité, and I am the last knight you will ever see alive."

"You would strike down a knight with no sword?" Galahad asked, his face calm.

"Not extremely clever, are we? Didn't you hear my name? 'Sans Pité' means without mercy. I don't care if you're armed or not, except that unarmed is easier. Are you ready to die now?"

By way of answer, Galahad—who had silently slipped his foot from his stirrup while Sir Breunis talked—simply kicked Sir Breunis in his elbow and, in the same motion, threw himself backward from his horse. He landed on the ground like a cat and whirled around to face the knight, but there was no danger there. Sir Breunis's sword had flown harmlessly from his grasp, and he was kneeling on the ground clutching his right arm. Galahad retrieved the sword, then strode over to the kneeling knight and placed the edge against his neck. "Tell me why I should not slay you now," Galahad said calmly.

"You've broke my arm!" Sir Breunis said.

"It's true," Beaufils contributed. "I heard it crack. That'll smart for a bit."

"I care not. He would have killed us both. Truly I should break his neck and rid the world of an evil man."

"You would kill an unarmed knight?" Sir Breunis whimpered.

"It is what
you
meant to do, after all," Galahad replied. "It is no crime to punish evil." He drew back the sword to strike.

His eyes glazed with pain, Sir Breunis managed to say, "I don't suppose it would help to say I was sorry, would it?" He clearly didn't think it would, because he then closed his eyes and braced himself for the blow.

But Galahad had stopped and was staring at Sir Breunis uncertainly. In a low voice, as if speaking to himself, he said, "If he has truly repented and I kill him, then I commit a mortal sin."

Sir Breunis opened his eyes, one at a time. Then suddenly, with his good arm, he began frantically touching his forehead and stomach and both shoulders and muttering, "Domine patris ave Maria plene gratia something something summa pater noster" and several other things like that. Beaufils stared at him with consternation. He appeared to have lost his mind.

But Galahad lowered the sword. "Sir Breunis," he said at last. "I do not know if your repentance is true or not, but if it is not, God will requite you for your falseness. I will not slay you."

Sir Breunis stopped muttering and waving his arm about and let out his breath slowly. "You are a true Christian knight, my lord," he said. Then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he fainted, falling face first into the dust.

Beaufils and Galahad rode away an hour later. Beaufils had set the unconscious knight's broken arm and bound it tightly, and Galahad, after much soul-searching, had returned his sword. Pacing back and forth for a long time, Galahad had fretted aloud about whether he should keep the sword for himself or return it. Beaufils was occupied with Sir Breunis's broken arm and didn't pay a great deal of attention, but in the end Galahad slid the sword back in its owner's scabbard. "For if his repentance was true and I left him defenseless, it could be the same as doing him harm myself," he said. "God shall have to provide me another sword, if it be His will."

Beaufils didn't understand Galahad's scruples, but he was content to let him sort out the matter for himself. Leaving Sir Breunis beside the path, he and Galahad remounted and continued together toward Camelot.

"Galahad?" Beaufils said.

"Yes, Beaufils?"

"You're very quick, too."

They slept that night in a dense forest that Galahad said was less than a day's ride from Camelot. Beaufils was pleased that they were near their goal—he had already traveled over far more country than he would have believed existed—but he would not have minded if the journey had been longer. He liked traveling with a friend.