At the Crossing Places (29 page)

Y
OU,” MILON SAID, AND HE POINTED AT ME. “BRAVEE!”

Then Milon raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth, but no words came out. So he gave up trying to speak in English altogether.

“Milon says he was out in this courtyard,” Lord Stephen translated, “thinking about the crusade…and then he heard all the hubbub, so he walked over to that gate to see what was going on.”

“It just happened,” I said.

“Just happened, did it!” exclaimed Lord Stephen, smiling.

“I mean, I didn't think it out.”

“Quite extraordinary!”

Milon looked me straight in the eye.

“You don't have to think to be brave—that's what Milon says. Bravery's something deeper than thought. It's an instinct. A few people have it; most don't.”

“I don't usually,” I said.

“You saw this man with a knife. It was Milon's own farrier, Jehan, but you weren't to know that. Milon says Jehan stabbed the man in the stomach, and then he rounded on the woman with his knife, and she was screaming. Is that right?”

“I think so, sir.”

“No one on the steps lifted a finger. But you, Arthur, you
leaped across, unarmed, and threw yourself at Jehan, and knocked him down.”

“Well, yes.”

“You wrestled with him and pinioned him. You gripped his right wrist.”

“He would have cut my throat, otherwise.”

“I expect he would,” said Lord Stephen.

“He did slice me here, sir,” I said, and I showed Lord Stephen the deep cut down the inside of my left arm from above my elbow to my wrist.

“Dear God!” exclaimed Lord Stephen. “At least it's clotted.”

“Bravee!” Milon repeated, and then he spoke in French again.

“Milon says you held this lout down until three of his constables forced him to drop his knife.”

“The man he stabbed,” I asked, “is he all right?”

“Dead,” said Milon.

“No!” I cried. “What about the woman?”

“You saved her life.”

“Why were they fighting, sir?” I asked.

Milon shrugged. “Two man woman,” he replied.

Now Milon spoke more slowly and gravely to Lord Stephen, and Lord Stephen dovetailed his hands over his stomach.

“Milon says that if you're as good at your Yard-skills as your wrestling and your modesty…”

“I'm not really, sir,” I said.

“No, well, we won't tell him that,” said Lord Stephen.

“Thank you, sir.”

Milon laughed and punched me on my right shoulder, the one Sir William wounded.

“You,” he said. “Knight.”

“No, sir.”

“
Oui.
”

“No, sir. I'm Lord Stephen's squire.”

“What Milon is trying to tell you,” Lord Stephen said, “is that he knows naked bravery when he sees it. He admires you for your courage, and so do I.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lord Stephen's face was somehow shining. “And Milon says, Arthur, that after we've been to Venice, when we all muster next year to begin this great crusade…”

“Yes, sir?”

“Before we set sail—”

“What, sir?”

“Milon says you may kneel to him. He will be proud to knight you.”

R
OUND THE RIM ARE WORDS WRITTEN IN GOLD:

THIS IS THE SEAT OF SIR SAGRAMOUR…THIS IS THE SEAT OF SIR TAULAT…SIR URRY…SIR VAUX…

So the ring of the Round Table is almost complete. One fair fellowship, for all its flaws and feuds. One hundred and forty-nine men, still waiting for the knight who will sit in the Perilous Seat and achieve the quest for the Holy Grail.

The eight hall doors of Camelot swing and slam. The shutters of all the little windows rattle and close by themselves. The Round Table darkens…

Servants scramble to light tapers and candles, and when there's light in the hall again, I see an old man dressed entirely in white standing inside the great door. Beside him there's a young knight, very young, no more than fourteen or fifteen, dressed entirely in poppy red.

“This young man,” the old man calls out, “is descended from Joseph of Arimathea, who laid Jesus in His own tomb and then sailed to Britain. You have been waiting for him. Of all the great marvels this court will accomplish, he will achieve the greatest.”

Now the old man leads the young one across the hall and round the Round Table. He lifts the white cloth from the table's rim:

At once there's a crack of thunder. Inside Camelot. The blast bounces round and round the walls. All the candles and torches are blown out.

Nothing but dark and cold, and all the knights and ladies of Camelot are shouting and wailing. As if it were Doomsday, and they were all teetering on the brink of purgatory.

One sunbeam, one pillar of light, flows into the hall. It glides towards them, rises, stands right over the Round Table.

The beam is so bright that the king can see all his knights more clearly than in broad daylight—more sharply than he has ever seen them before.

The king longs to shout for joy. Shout and sing. But he cannot utter a single word.

And now, through the great door, into this hush, floats the Holy Grail. It is covered with thick white silk, and I cannot see who is carrying it…I cannot see anyone at all carrying it.

Frankincense…myrrh…the air in the hall thickens and sweetens.

The Holy Grail! At Camelot. Slowly it circles the Round Table. Its redeeming promise enters each man and woman in the hall.

And now, all at once, the Grail sweeps away and out through the great door, as if it were borne on a draft of air. Over the Round Table, the bright beam gently fades, and as all the doors and shutters swing open once more, each knight and lady in the hall finds,
steaming on the table right under their noses, the food they love best.

For Guinevere, venison…for Sir Lancelot, jugged hare…for Sir Gawain, grouse…and for the king, wild boar…

“Here in Camelot,” King Arthur calls out, “we have seen the greatest marvel. Let this Pentecost feast begin!”

“The Holy Grail!” shouts Sir Gawain. “We've been shown it, but we have not seen it. We've been shown all we must try to achieve.”

“Wait!” the king orders Sir Gawain.

But Sir Gawain will not wait. “Is there any knight in this hall,” he asks, “who does not long to see the Holy Grail uncovered? I will leave Camelot tomorrow to search for it, and I will not come back for a year and a day, longer if need be. I know I must search for it, whether or not I achieve it.”

“Gawain!” shouts the king. “No Christian king has ever had such a round of honor, such a ring of trust, as I have here at this Round Table.”

But Sir Agravain…Sir Banin…Sir Cador…one by one, many of the king's knights stand and vow to search for the Holy Grail.

Down looks the king, down, deep into the rock crystal, with all its knots and scrapes and swerves, all its darkness and shining.

One by one they swear: Sir Vaux…Sir Wigalois…Sir Exander…Sir Yder…

“My lord,” Guinevere says to him, “do not let them go.”

“I love them as much as my own life,” says Arthur-in-the-stone. “I cannot stop them.”

“The king is right,” Sir Lancelot says. “This is the finest fellowship ever seen together, anywhere. But to quest for the Holy Grail is the greatest of all honors. It would be a disgrace not to, now that we've been shown it here at Camelot.”

“Do not let Lancelot go,” Guinevere begs.

“After you all leave Camelot,” the king tells Sir Gawain, “we will never meet together again—not in this world.”

All around him, the ladies of Camelot are troubled and fearful.

“If you go,” Laudine tells Sir Owain, “I will go with you.”

“I am your rib,” Lyonesse tells Sir Gareth.

Enid says nothing. She gazes at Sir Erec.

“On earth everything changes,” says Arthur-in-the-stone. “And everything must change. But knowing you must die on your quests, many of you, is it wrong to grieve?”

Now many of the ladies are openly sobbing.

“Tomorrow,” the king calls out, “let us all meet in the water meadows. Here at Camelot. Let us meet and joust and feast. So that as long as men have tongues, they will remember. They will say that, once upon a time…”

Sir Galahad rises from the Perilous Seat. He holds up his shield, white with a scarlet cross…

I cannot see straight. The knights and ladies, the Round Table and the hall itself are nothing but streaks and gashes, white and scarlet and gold.

And my seeing stone: It is wet and shining.

L
AST NIGHT, LYING UNDER MY SHEEPSKIN, I THOUGHT
about everything: becoming a knight and Winnie and our winter journey. I thought about my mother and the manor at Catmole.

One day I'll inherit it, that's what Sir William says. But what is it like? Will I ever really see it, or must I imagine it?

Catmole, Catmole. I kept saying the word to myself over and again, and the letters began to seethe like the stars in my seeing stone—the stars in the night sky when I try to count them.

Cometale…mot…malecot, elmcoat…comelat!

That was when I realized. I sat up, I filled my lungs with cool October air, and I yelled!

Catmole. I'll remake it. My pillar. My cloud of dust and, within it, a grail of sunlight. After Venice, after the crusade: my own March Camelot.