Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (23 page)

HOWTLANDE

Don’t
look
back
, I kept telling myself as we fled along that foul road. The hellish, clammy doom-fog seeped around us as we climbed through steep, rocky hills. It was impossible, of course. Bah, I hate wizardry. It’s an emptiness that can destroy a man better than a keen ax. And how can you tell it from madness? A question for Church thinkers.

I cannot tell how far we ran. Time was swallowed into edgeless twilight that must have been daytime. No inns, no villages, no castles… The road twisted and rippled like a trodden worm. The trees and brush were supernaturally dense, walling us into a gradually narrowing track. Eventually there was nothing but a lumpy path overgrown from disuse. Sawgrass whipped our legs.

LOHENGRIN

The mist boiled around us. My feet hurt. The girl was gasping and I was half dragging her now. I heard my father and the fat knight puffing and clinking along behind.

Suddenly there was no more path. Side by side, my father and I chopped the small growth with that chill deadliness at our backs. There was no choice but to run for it. I’d rather face a solid opponent. I was very, very tired and that made it harder to deal with.

PARSIVAL

Who’d ever heard of a road just ending in nowhere, I kept asking myself as I struggled along beside Lohengrin, hacking brush and dodging trees.

And then we were trapped. The woods ended abruptly and the moon gleamed on a huge embankment topped by a high Roman wall. That meant a good highway on the other side. I was pretty sure I knew where we were. Amazing to have tome so far on foot. The road that ran along the wall branched a few miles farther on and went directly past our home.

We ran for the embankment. The darkness in the mists billowed, seemed to stride at us on spidery limbs: tall, dark wrong-jointed limbs reaching and scuttling. The guardian. The drinker of souls.

“Aii,” cried the fat man, scrambling at the packed dirt. “We’re doomed!”

“Climb, shitlump,” I suggested. I paused to watch them scramble. My son was actually helping the girl. I was moved. There was hope for the world yet.

I turned to face the horror. That was the least I could do. We weren’t all going to make it. The streaming cords of mist beat like breakers into the massive wall. The walking darkness was among us.

With an impotent feeling (something I was getting used to) I brandished the golden blade. No sparks sputtered. No lightning flailed the smoky air.

I thought my bounding heart would burst from my chest. My nerves screamed. My body wanted to turn and fling itself against the mass of earth and stone where the others were clambering towards the top. Another instant and it would have. But a limb of night flicked out and touched my forehead. I felt the shadows (like ink in water) flow into my brain.

I fought. I screamed NO with all my soul. Eternity seemed to drift past soundlessly while I strained. No earth, no sky, only formless empty blank blackness. I fought to fill it with color and brightness and I wielded pictures, memories, hopes, dreams of sweet days … instinctively, I fought with all the brightness in me …

I waved the sword and slashed at I know not what, and, still fighting, lost everything …

LOHENGRIN

I don’t know how I gained the top of that wet, slippery wall with the damned girl clinging to me like a babe to its dam. But I made it. And so did the fat man. Armor and all. Well, it was light mail.

I peered back down and caught my breath. Chael sobbed and trembled. Fat panted. My father was lost in the surf of mist. I decided he must have run parallel before he climbed. I assumed he was ahead or behind us on the road. I couldn’t see ten feet either way. Well, I’d keep on north. And hope Father went south.

LAYLA

Hopeless … hopeless … hopeless … “Your husband is coming,” the crippled madman was saying to me. He dangled in his litter, one twisted leg swinging free as they carried him through the cool drizzle to the parapet’s edge.

The hills were saturated with ground fog. The day was dull, overcast. Two men held my arms because my legs rippled a little like willow wands. I saw better with one eye shut. That was secret and funny. I may have giggled. I think someone slapped me, far away. Dull … The madman kept talking, but I was busy trying to catch the light rain in my upturned mouth. Something tasted like salt and metal. Blood, not rain. I wanted to sleep again, because there was a dream I liked. I tried to recall it. The effort or the failure made me sad. I told them all about it.

“Put her in the cage,” the madman said. “Let the rat spy the bait.”

I heard that. Wondered about it. I hated rats. I loved sleep … sleep … sleep … All the things the voices said were silly…

JESCHUTE

We rode, and it was raining. The earth smoked. It was a wonder to me as if (because of all that terrible time in the underworld) I had a child’s fresh sight.

And then the castle. The knight took me; I held him from behind — very like a child. My arms around his iron waist. I had no memory of this place. I kept hoping that time would clear the troubled waters of my life …

PARSIVAL

When I recovered, the rain was in my face and the blurry wall loomed above me. There was no more mist. The woods were dark and deep and wet. I knew the darkness had entered me. It was down there, unseen, untraceable. Like a bottomless pool in my mind. It was there like a wild dreaming, a choked-off scream from some childhood terror. The golden sword lay broken beside me. What had I broken it on?

I’d been having a busy time of it. I’d quit the king (who’d tried to kill me already); killed a beautiful lady in a garden; chased my son at sea; descended volcanos; been struck by lightning … enough … I climbed up and over, almost as if to get away from what no longer had to chase me. From then on there would always be a spot of that emptiness in me. Or had it always been there? I’d seen too much as it was and despaired.

It was like being ill. Everything took a little too much effort. I headed along the familiar road and tried not to think about anything. I marched on. Trees overhung the highway. Waded through stippled puddles. Climbed the gradual slope through open, rocky fields where late season flowers glowed violet and deep russet among the prickly upland grasses.

A strong breeze freshened. Bowed and billowed the rain. Tore whitish streaks in the clouds. The day’s glow went dim and bright without rhythm. The subtle, bad feeling stayed, the sense of something sickly and dismal sunk in the well of myself. Ah, could but the rain wash it out of me!

HOWTLANDE

Whatever it had been was gone. And what next? What prospects? Another wild chase for phantom gain?

I had to repair my fortunes. And this Lohengrin seemed a decent fellow with more common sense than his famous father.

“I mean to go to London town,” I told him, as we straggled along the sound Roman road. Sunlight broke through here and there and flecked the treetops. “You’re welcome to come, young man. You seem a knight of uncommon enterprise and wit. “

The nervous girl was shivering still. She huddled close to him. His expression was indifferent, I perceived. That didn’t bode well for her prospects.

“And,” he wanted to know, “do what, exactly?”

I touched my finger alongside my nose. “Make our way in the world, young man. Find profitable employment. Cease chasing mad goals with mad companions. Find ways and means of advancement. The key to life, young man, is to persist and when the chance comes, jump on opportunity. Rape the bitch.” He looked hard at me. Obviously my words had given him food for reflection.

LOHENGRIN

Nice, general precepts Howtlande had. But better, I reasoned, to join forces with this windbag than with someone I’d have to worry about. No sense retreating home empty-handed. I’d be worse off than when I’d started. And Morgan’s tale about my mother being in danger was likely as substantial as the rest of her notions.

And then, I’d have to find something to do with this cloying girl, sooner or later. Perhaps I could leave her, like a babe, on some doorstep … “Yes,” I said. “A fair idea. But I may have a better. Yet, first, let’s find horses. I know a likely spot not far from here.”

JESCHUTE

I knew him. Even with the wild beard and visor closed and ruined legs hanging over the side of the stool they’d set him down on to face me in the rainy castle yard. The cool mud bubbled around my feet. I stared at him.

I really had nothing to say. I waited. I’m not certain he was even paying attention to me. The men with him had cruel, pale faces. A thin, one-eyed advisor stood behind him. A bloatfaced fellow leaned on a sword, the rain running over his puffed cheeks and dripping into the black mud. Scavengers, bandits, but whom else would have followed him?

All my memories had come back, and I was sorry. Sorry for the terrible things and sorry to have to remember. “I really hated you,” I suddenly said. “And then I just forgot.”

He cocked his head inside the too-tight helmet with the ragged beard sprouting out the mask. But his cold and pebbly voice was the same.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I even remember that too.”

“Who, woman? I know you not.”

“Yes,” I said, “I know that too. You never knew me.”

I think I was crying.

PARSIVAL

Home. Finally. And I’d walked it. And the strange darkness was still in me. I tried not to notice. All the empty things I’d done had collected in a pool, a pit, a hole.

I stood and stared up the slope at the old walls, the familiar fields, the soggy-looking huts in the valley. Home.

When I tried to recall just what had happened to me, I brought back nothing but a shapeless, cloudiness looming overhead, sucking at me in winds of terror. There was a sense of something unspeakable being pushed into me in sickening violation that had sent soul and body into a frenzied spasm … Or was it just all the bad memories of all the ugly, wasted, meaningless things in my life flooding up from the pit of conscience?

The golden sword had seemed to vaporize in golden flame. Maybe. I left the broken pieces behind. There were so many maybes in all of it: Morgana, Merlinus, the underworld adventure that might have been … what? More dreams? Fever? Bad water? Drugged food? So many maybes and then a hole in the blasted garden where fog poured and a woman or witch or both tried to stab me to death for supposed magical reasons which were full of maybes too …

Oh, the golden flame flared and the darkness recoiled, I think. Unaccountable things always happened to me and then I’d seem to wake up into daylight sooner or later with a handful of air for my pains.

Home. Home. Home. Just what I’d been wanting. Here I was, weary, drained, with a stain of darkness in me that wasn’t going to fade. My knee still hurt from the machine’s blow and my heel ached where Gobble had gnawed on it.

Halfway to the gate, I knew there were too many men at the embrasures, and who’d hung a cage up there? Someone was inside the cage. It was raining again. I squinted through the grayness. It was a woman in the cage. A terrible punishment. She was huddled, naked on the barred floor, dripping hair long and dark. A thin woman.

While I was trying to be sure, the side gate opened and a slender, pale, disheveled-looking woman emerged, holding a tattered cloak close around herself. The chill rain had picked up. Several streams sliced into the hill from where the foamy runoff impacted after spilling down the castle walls. She crossed one streamlet that looped in front of my feet before slanting down into the valley and the first line of soggy trees,

She was a ghost of someone familiar. She stopped in front of me. Someone fatal: that was in her gaze. There were more men on the battlements now, watching. Something was terribly wrong, and not just the woman in the cage whom I was afraid to recognize.

“You don’t remember me,” said the haggard lady, hair burned with streaks of gray.

I was chilled and miserable. All I’d wanted was to come home, and I had come home and the curse had followed me. All my dreams ran blood, sooner or later.

I sighed.

“No,” I said, “I know you. You’re the lady I always see just before …” Before all dooms. She didn’t react much. Like the angel of all my pointless deaths. “Good day, angel,” I said.

“It’s your wife in the cage,” she told me. I shut my eyes and nodded, letting the rain pour over my face. “They’ve been waiting for you.”

“They always are,” I said, still not looking. I remembered her name, though I really didn’t believe it yet. “Don’t tell me your husband is inside.”

I remembered him. Saw his contorted face, blood vessels burst in both eyes, chained to his horse, useless legs flopping as he rocked in the saddle and screamed in fury because he’d just broken the horse’s back trying to get me with his huge mace. He foamed and spat seething hate. I’d been too numb to really understand. He’d always believed I’d dishonored his wife. Yes, Jeschute. That was her name.

“Yes,” she told me. She didn’t have to say much else. Morgana had gotten one thing right, at least. I opened my eyes to the consuming grayness. Years didn’t help either. Every time I moved, I left ineradicable tracks.

“Curse it,” I said. “Curse it.”

She just stood there, hair plastered flat over her shoulders. “They fear you,” she told me. “They ask you to lay down your weapons and go inside. Then, they say, she’ll be released…

“They say this?”

“He says it.”

“Who is mad.” I looked through the blurring downpour that made a wall out of the air itself. I tried to focus on the blurred shape of my poor wife. The blurred shape of my guilt. There was no choice again and for once I was glad about the darkness of the hole inside me.

She didn’t have to say:
Or
else
she
dies
there
in
the
cage
and
your
children
next
,
your
daughters
.

“Yes,” Jeschute said. “I will help you.”

“No one can help me.” Because I’d caused it all. It no longer mattered why.

“I shouldn’t have let you leave my tent,” she said. “So long ago. I should have kept you there.”

I almost smiled. So long ago and yet here it was back, in my face. Seventeen years old, dressed like a fool, blundering after King Arthur and a castle made of gemstones that I’d only seen with my eyes closed. Blundering into her damned tent! And here it was in my face again. “You’re right, Jeschute.”

“Someone thought seeing me might change him,” she said.

The rain crashed down harder and harder. “Into what?” I wondered. The gray sheets slammed down on the boiling earth and stung my flesh. She just stood there, neither waiting nor not waiting. Because there was no choice.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as I slogged past, heading for the gate, hoping I’d wake up in bed somewhere.