Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (6 page)

“What about his nasty little men?” I left Gobble weighing and watching. Of all of them, he was the one worth fearing.

“Most fled,” he snarled. “Those cowards will regret much once I come before the master again. We used to get fighters who could fight. Now …” He was disgusted. He sniffed.

“What of your friends?”

“Friends?”

“The great knights from Camelot.” He was amused.

“Most of them died,” Howtlande mentioned.

“And they came here to kill me,” I pointed out.

“That’s true,” Howtlande confirmed. “The lady knew that. We’re all comrades at the last, then.” Insects hummed and skreaked outside the walls. “So let’s to business, eh? Down the well here, you say?” He peered dubiously. It was a fairly wide opening.

“There’s a ledge not far below,” I explained.

“Go on, then,” Gobble urged. “I trust you to go down alone.”

“It has to be somebody small,” I said. Silence. “I’m not getting out of this armor again.” I waited.

“Ah, yes,” said Howtlande. Suited him. There was more silence, maybe a little sweating. But everybody was hooked. What would master say if his pet cripple passed up the chance?

“After you succeed,” I said, “you can afford a thousand ladies’ gowns.” I could feel him stare, feel him thinking, round and round, but there was no way for him to leave and come back. He couldn’t possibly risk it.

“Why should I —” he began.

“I’d go,” the massive knight declared in his ambiguous over-the-water accent, “but I’m not so nimble as another.”

“Even,” stated Gobble, “if that other be an elephant.”

I didn’t have to say anything. Just wait. He leapt up on the well, still trying to read my face, probing the way a man who’s already bought a horse still tries to reassure his judgment.

“Why did you suddenly remember?” he asked.

I smiled.

“Strange thing. When the lady in my armor stabbed me in the side, I fell, and it all came back in a flash. Like magic.” He was sweating, but what could he do? It was his own story. “A strange marvel, don’t you think?”

He snarled in parting, and gripped the rope like a spider.

“At last, at last,” breathed Howtlande. The rope held, swayed, marked his descent. We watched him drop, a worm on a line, past the level of indirect moonlight. As if he climbed into the nothing before creation. Howtlande, at my elbow, kept murmuring to himself. After many minutes the rope jerked and we heard a muffled, hollow shouting, too far for the words to separate into sense — if there was any.

“He wants to come up,” I said. “He’s found it.”

Howtlande’s eyes shone in the puffy darkness of his features. He was almost too excited to speak, but he managed. “Do you think so? I couldn’t make out … there it is, again.” He harked, bent to the next indecipherable volley. I could smell him perspire.

“It’s clear enough,” I said confidently.

“The three of us … or two … as you like. We’ll raise a kingdom, eh? But if through, er, misguided loyalty, Gobble insists on serving the perverse witchcraft of his master, why, you and I, you and I, Parsival, can —”

“You’d better pull him up.”

“Ah …” He drew in breath. Looked at me the same way the other had. I thought about the man mangled at my feet and the woman I shouldn’t have had to murder. I helped him clamber up onto the narrow well. He steadied himself with the taut and shaking rope.

“Pull,” I said. “Go on. You want the Grail, don’t you?” Down in the black shaft, Gobble was still hollering. I could just imagine what.

There was no winch for the bucket so Howtlande pulled, strained and cracked his wide back. I watched for a while. His eyes goggled when I drew and sawed my sword edge through the tensed rope. It parted. Howtlande reeled upright, wobbled on the brink, tried to make himself fall back to the ground as I leaned over and listened for the splash.

I never heard anything because Howtlande fell toward the hole, twisting and puffing desperately, pleading at me, his steelshod feet slipping, dancing, sparking on the stones.

“Help!” he screamed. “Please … help …”

There was a good chance he’d plug it up. I didn’t care or want to know. I turned and limped away. My feet rang unevenly on the smooth stones, echoed as I aimed across the castle yard for the archway out. I took a full breath of scented air. I listened to the insects raging and raving all around. I heard a clattering crash — for all I know, he made it.

I was incredibly incurious. I had something to bury, and then I’d go home.

Memory is like the earth; and dreams flow like water and like blood.

I’d find a horse. Eat and drink. Blink at tomorrow. Bury whatever I could.

LOHENGRIN

Why
not
? I asked myself. I had just reached the moat. I could see the stars in the motionless water. I could smell the stagnation too, the rank weeds and scummy foam and offal dumped from the castle wall.

I’d left my horse hitched to a sapling in a spur of trees that cut across the open, park-like fields. I lived about five miles east. This was our nearest neighbor. Not that we ever had much to do with neighbors. They didn’t like my father. The great Parsival. He’d chopped the arm off some near relative or other. He was like that. He’d lay them flat in the field and then go all pious. He’d talked to me about it once or twice. We never had much to say to one another. But, now and then, after six glasses of wine when his breath would have that sickly-sweet taint, he liked to sit me down, trap me, heart-to-heart, and explain how none of the dirty work mattered because he’d seen the vision of blessed wonder, or whatever he called it. Well and good. He made me sick. My father. He was wonderful for making promises and then vanishing for years.

My mother was weak about him. I felt sorry for her. Whenever he would come home, it would start again. Every time. You couldn’t talk to her about it. No one would bind
me
like that. He never fooled me with his talk about the wonder vision of moonshine and spiderwebs in the land of the Grail. Hah. The Grail. We all believe in that.

I stared across the moat at the high walls and raised drawbridge. Specks of flamelight in the tower windowslits. I thought I heard string music up there, muffled, washed down on the summery air.

Why
not
? I repeated to myself. I wasn’t too proud for this work. To sneak to my ends. At least I had ends. We were poor. Mother didn’t like to face that either. She was like, as I understood it, her own mother. My paternal grandmother was apparently mad. So they said. To judge from her son, I felt the supposition had force.

So, poor. Which meant no influence. I stood to inherit dead land and a few crippled serfs. I had to get out, out of that flat, dull, gray life. I didn’t care how. So there I stood, about to risk my neck again, to visit the lady of the castle and do a job for people who had crept out of the night to commission me — about a week past. A strange job. Nothing an honorable worker would have accepted. I jumped at it.

I strapped my sword to my back, stripped to my woolen breeks, and swam across the stale, scummy water. Lily pads and weeds brushed my face. At that level it was like moving through a rotting swamp with slimy-slick growths towering over my head. Yet it was strangely peaceful as I sloshed and bubbled to the far bank and then crept up to the curving wall.

I knew how to get in. I moved around to the side of the second drawbridge gate. It was peacetime. No one would even bother to doze by this entrance, much less keep watch. Peace was all the worse for my prospects. War might have made me useful to some lord or other or a stray king. Living here I could treat myself to weathered women, or stick the rod in sheep butts. My mother liked to get drunk daily. The peasants, I suppose, enjoyed watching the pale rye struggle to survive on rocky slopes. Living here, I might someday wed a fat girl from some crumbling family and increase my holdings of stonebearing fields.

I was eighteen years old then. I knew what I hated. I still know. And I was ready to kill, steal, do anything to get away. Tonight it was stealing, with killing in reserve. And, naturally, the lady.

Out of boredom and despair I’d ride the countryside looking for someone to fight with or something remotely interesting. Or a pretty face. Anything. Most of Wales was a sty. Beside most of the women, the pigs looked good. Lady Grace was an exception. Exceptions are necessary, my tutor told me, while hammering me with Latin. Lady Grace was married to our nearest neighbor, who lived, as I said, here.

The fact was, he was more monk than man. Common knowledge. He’d all but taken vows. He prayed and fasted continually, she’d told me, and suffered from some odd affliction that was rumored (she was mute on this point, one of the few cases of that in my experience) to be some infestation of the balls. That made sense, because when the horse drops dead on the road, it’s easy to make a great show of how you love walking …

Lady Grace. Small, neat, dark-haired, honey-eyed. Very intense. Soft and intense. Hot as an oven. My lover. Not that I was particularly tender. Nor cruel, though I came to be called so. I watched people and things. Watched. I enjoyed poking a woman, but when it was over I didn’t feel like lingering in her arms for half the night: I honestly thought about food or making water or about my problems in life … or my anger. She liked to say I was cold and furious all the time. But she always knew, Lady Grace, what she’d taken on when she took me. What did she expect? Though I would not say so. But in her own eyes she was a whore, you see, in her own eyes.

So Lady Grace had left the gate unbarred again to let love in again. And I was inside, again.

Though I’d come this night to find a weapon. I wasn’t going to the armory. My goal was the chapel. But not to pray. I’d come to steal. The mysterious people were going to pay me for it. I wasn’t much given to prayer.

I kept thinking about how I wouldn’t be able to visit the lady after tonight. A pity. Thinking about it, I felt the blood thicken in my hanging parts. Each step pressed a slow tingle into them.

So I headed up the familiar steps. One last poke. Then farewell to Grace.

For the morning hours there’s nothing like a fine, big, damp castle for being deserted. I’d rather sleep in the fields anytime excepting midwinter. Or in a rainstorm.

I went unchallenged through corridors, up twisting stairs, lit now and then by dull torches or wisps of moonlight that filtered in through high, slit embrasures.

Three flights up I heard a guard snoring. Saw his feet poking around a bend. That, and a scuttling rat were the biggest moments until I reached the narrow room that smelled like wet rugs. Even in dry weather. Odd thing. Well, the chapel would wait.

I saw her before catching the note of her perfume: a blot of pale robe. A moment’s ghost as I entered and went over, standing above her. Phantom hints of moontone showed her face set in the shadows of her hair, a slit of her rich, creamy body showing where the ghostly robe parted.

“Good evening, my lady,” I said. I didn’t quite smile with my voice.

“You are always so cold to me,” she whispered. She was always suffering. It was part of her pleasure to pay for her wickedness. Not that her discomfort wasn’t real. But she needed it the way some men need a taste of the rod on their bare bottoms in order to put a bone in the thing. She liked me to be cold. In fact, I was neither hot nor chill. That might have truly pained her, had she known it.

“I said, ‘good evening,’” I told her. Waited, not moving. I knew what to expect. “I’m not the spirit of snow.” Waited. She was on her knees. She didn’t move. I could barely keep my hands from her head. I liked this too. Because it could only end one way. There’s only pleasure in hunger when you’re certain to be fed.

“You’re so cruel,” she sighed. “Look what you’ve made of me.”

“Do you blame the horse you ride,” I replied, “for bearing you from home?”

“I don’t blame you. But you are still cruel, Lohengrin.”

“Shall I go?”

For answer she did what she had never (as best I recalled) refrained from doing: tugged down my breeks with both lean, strong hands and inhaled my hot ache.
Ah
, I thought.
Ah
…

*

Later, as we were parting in the doorway (sweat now instead of water drying on my skin) while she was nervously looking up and down the dark, empty corridor. She whispered:

“How can you just leave me like this?”

I was puzzled.

“Would you prefer I walked on my hands?”
Or
,
knees
? I thought. “You just — leave …” I shrugged. I was thinking about what I planned to do.

“What choice is there? Spend all night with you and your husband?”

“What will become of me?”

I think she was crying now.

“The same as for me,” I said. “We’ll die in due course. Suffer awhile. Hope in vain. Dream and die.” I shrugged. Was restless to get on my way.

Downstairs I found the chapel with little trouble. I lit a thin taper and went down the central aisle to the altar. My sword was slung across my back. The flamelight shook strange shadows around the bare walls. A child might have been frightened. I’d seen too many priests to be impressed by their strongholds.

She’d said the spear was hung vertically. No other spear ever was, that I’d seen.

The mysterious people had given me a handful of silver coins. I jumped at it. A way out of this miserably dull life. I jumped like a goosed mare. Why they valued the thing, I didn’t know. But Grace had unwillingly revealed its location to me, in all innocence; silver and gold coins buy onions and I was in the market.

Sure enough, there it was on the side wall, in an obscure nook. I admit, I hesitated a moment. Oh, I didn’t believe the fairy tales about the relic (I could see it was old, even in the ruddy, uncertain light) but I hesitated. I had an impression someone spoke at the far end of the long, narrow chamber. Whispered.

I half turned. Squinted past the weak spill of light. Just shadows. Why was I sweating? Coldly sweating? “Nonsense,” I muttered. Turned and reached out straight from the shoulder and gripped the shaft. I don’t know what I expected. A shock? Heat? Cold? Magic?

Just wood. Not even cool. I felt it and looked closely at the bronze and steel head. My eyes suddenly seemed to have adjusted to dimness. I saw every detail very clearly. I think I stood staring longer than I should have. What was so fascinating? Just faceted metal, dull and dusty. A sharp point. No strange glow. I found myself thinking vaguely about my future: what was I really going to do with myself? Get a price for this stabber and then go on to Brittany or Italy. Visit Rome. That would be interesting. And warm. Gold and white cities, crystal blue seas, lush flowers the color of blood, dark women, ripe, with eyes like sweet flowers … or something …

Somebody was awake. I heard metal rub. Close. That woke me from unaccountable reverie. I cursed myself.

Bad luck. Two of them. Both big and wearing light chainmail, and I was practically naked. That’s a feeling like when you dream (if you ever have) of being caught at Mass or at some feast with nothing on. On the good side, I was armed and cornered. And I was my father’s son in one way only (I hope): I’m excellent at killing.

I doubted the old spear would stand up to a thrust and there’d be little sense in damaging the goods I was risking my neck to make off with. So I bounded over the prayer benches, bouncing and sprinting for the door at the end of the center aisle. If the chapel had been a few feet wider I’d have made it because they’d come in a side doorway I hadn’t noticed. But I reached the end of the chamber at the same time as one of the guards. Tall men. They wore facemasks. Odd for indoors, though I didn’t think about it until later. They said something to me, but I didn’t listen. I wondered if she’d betrayed me somehow. I couldn’t see why. Still, everyone you trust is a rent in your shield. A dagger’s gate.

I drew my long blade from between my shoulders (where it hung in the light cloth scabbard) and cut a good, solid downstroke at the dimly glinting helmet.

“You poor fool,” I think the bastard said. Odd remark.

Incredibly, I missed. I still don’t know how. The shadow and glinting light must have confused my aim. He didn’t strike back either. Stood beside the door arch. A strange moment. I tried stabbing and the thrust glanced off the wall brick. The bastard must have moved just that much. Just enough. I felt the other one come closer. There was something very like a dream in this: I felt slowed, vague, and my best cuts went through these men as if they were ghosts. Or dreams. But I wasn’t asleep. My pounding heart told me that.

My next reflex was to feint into the room and then duck and burst out, cutting a wild pattern, ripping the shadowy air, stabbing the spear with my left hand and making no contact with anything.

But I made the corridor. Ran full tilt. Whenever I glanced back, no one was following. The rest of the castle seemed tranced. Empty. Silent. Dim, but not quite dark anymore. As I reached the door to the moat, I realized dawn was opening a subtle crease of paleness at the edge of earth and night. But what had happened to all the night hours?

I blinked, worried, suddenly very tired. Too tired. Swam the moat, holding the spear clear of the scummy surface and fled on, eyes burning, into the gradually brightening grayness. I could smell the dawn. The dew scent.

I looked back once at the castle. Still no pursuit. What had happened to those guards? I was almost too tired to care. I found my horse where I’d left the bony son-of-a-bitch. A hard breather. The witless beast looked dully at me and reminded me of half the population of Wales. The better half.