Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (16 page)

“No, no, no!” he insisted. “What is this place?" He was suddenly shouting and the woman seemed to cry:

“Be still!” Her voice becoming an echo that repeated and overlapped itself until there was only the darkness again, the wall of the pit and himself yelling over and over:

“What!? What!? What!?”

GAWAIN

He woke up after midday, surprised by what seemed a din outside the dim, comfortably cool place where he lay, naked, on his back on a blanket laid over clumps of hay. The smell told him it was a barn or stable. The noise reminded him he was in the city: voices calling, talking; shouting children; bells ringing; carts banging; music and drums in the distance…

He reached for the woman. Then sat up, looking for her. He’d left the wooden hand screwed in with the joint wrapped in a silky fabric. He was in a hayloft in a stable, as he’d thought. No animals present either, he noted. But it was in use, you could smell the dung and horsereek.

He remembered being led here by her, struggling up the ladder, spilling half a jack of ale over himself and her and finding it very funny. Remembered fragments of the night: her strong, smooth, long limbs, tender breasts, her mouth all over his body… It was the best thing he’d known in so long, he’d almost forgotten reality…

Of course, she was gone now, he told himself. She woke sober and saw my face. Likely she’s still in flight…

He started when he heard her sudden voice at the foot of the ladder:

“So ya finally stir yerself,” she called up. “I’ve got hard-cooked eggs and mare’s milk.” Her head and shoulders now showed in the loft as she paused there on the steps. “And yer hood be sewn.”

He grinned, turning his face away so she only saw the strong-jawed profile and long dark brown hair almost untinted by gray.

“Am I in the same world I fell asleep in?” he asked. “This seems a pleasant place.”

“You’ve earned some respite,” she told him, kneeling up beside him, now, barefoot and naked under a loose, fresh white linen shift that probably (he later realized) was her best that she’d gone home to put on.

Though he’d lain with noblewomen in finest samite gowns, sporting fair jewels and traced with rare perfumes, he was as touched by this as by Christ’s parable of the widow’s mite, whose gift was greatest because she was poor and gave, with her mere pennies, all she had.

“I thank you, woman.”

“Me pleasure, Sir Gawain.”

She laid the cowl over his lap where he sat, cross-legged, and gently touched his shoulder.

He nodded. He felt good; yet his eyes were teary – and not with self-pity.

“Yes,” he said, thickly. “I do thank you. Yet, I disremember your name.”

“You never asked, me lord.”

“Yes?”

“Enea,” she told him.

He adjusted himself into the cowled cloak, still sitting. “You need not cover for me, Sir Knight.”

“I know,” he said. Quaffed some milk. It was warm, musky, rich. Offered her a sip which she took. “Where is your excellent husband this morrow?”

She shrugged. “Somebody took away dead Tom,” she said. “I don’t doubt it were him sneaked back.” She took a bite of egg and handed him one. “I don’t doubt he’s hiding and watching to see if you be gone. In fear, he’ll be.”

He took her by the shoulders and squeezed, tenderly. “I –” He began and stopped.

“Aye?”

He realized he wanted to take her with him; tell her that. Where? On the road with the madman John? Why would she want to?

Ice or fire, he decided, uncomfortable either way… yet, might I linger here?

Because it was nice to make love, again. In any case, he couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Shinqua even if she’d actually accept the horror of him.

This one was smiling, faintly, just looking at him.

“Had no such humpin’ ere this,’ she told him. “You was as loved by the great ladies, I trow, as salt peas by pigeons.”

He liked that. Grinned and let himself relax into feeling good. Why not? It would soon pass.

“Savory comparison,” he reflected.

“You be a humorous sort,” she said, chuckling. “In yer own style.”

“I laugh like a priest prays: in fear and doubt.”

“Fear not ne doubt,” she murmured, reaching down his crotch with both hands and following with her mouth. He was surprised and stiffened at once into the world’s sweetest discomfort. Sighed and hummed, reflexively.

Her mouth worked him, held him so that when she broke contact the cool air was a cold shock and her absence an ache. She knew it.

“Why did you stop?”

“So you’d remember what yer missing, me lord.”

“As though I knew not,” he said, rubbing his hand in her hair, gently trying to shift her head back where it had been.

“I hope to grip ya to stay,” she told him. “As yer a wanderin’ man.”

“Well …” He gasped as her intense mobile mouth came back to cover and soothe his need, again. “… take over your husband’s… business …” he joked in ecstasy… shut his eyes… lost what he’d meant to say. “Ahh… mmm …”

LAYLA

She was brooding in the tent by the light of a wan oil lamp, bare feet on the rug floor. She was in her shift with a traveling cape over her shoulders for a robe.

She had just washed her face and hands for the night and was waiting to get sick again. That was the first thing she hated about being pregnant. There were others.

She sat there, torn, because she couldn’t help an underglow of tender warmth that diffused within her as if from the seed itself while her mind kept saying:

Not again, not really… Jesus and Mary, not again…

She barely glanced up when the flap parted and Gaf’s dour mother came in and stood there. When Layla didn’t react, she said:

“Well, whore, I’d hoped we were rid of you and your delightful family.”

Layla was scraping at the cuticle of her little toe, waiting to get sick. She didn’t look at the woman. Tried to decide if her feet were already ever-so-slightly swollen.

“I’m not here by choice,’ she responded. “I wasn’t missing you and that hairy sneak so much I couldn’t stay away.”

The Lady Gaf tilted her short neck forward and stamped her heel into the earth floor.

“You led my son into sin,” she declared, bitterly.

“Oh, surely,” said Layla, done with the toe now. “As the fly led his mate to dung.” Smiled, almost looking at the stout lady.

“What is that?”

“That is this,” said Layla, “flies love shit and need none to guide them to it.”

“Well,” said the other, “you are both fly and shit together.” Layla liked that idea.

“Like the mystery of the Trinity,” she reflected, “vinegar to reason but honey to faith.” She pulled her sock-like buskins over each long, pale foot. “Why don't you help me escape?”

“Would that I could,” the mother muttered. “Ah, but your son’s in love with the dung.”

“He’s a fool.”

“Not a fly?”

She thought about the seed again, the spot of life and heat that had been jammed into her most intimate recesses. She felt the strange anger and tenderness mixed again. She couldn’t decide which father would be worse.

Because she’d slept with Parsival within a week or so of the other. They both had been sodden with wine: blurry, edges softened, sleeping awake… instead of fighting that night they’d gripped together in a burst of reluctant joy, not kissing, like two shipwrecked strangers clutched together in the heaving of the sea…

Later, lying side-by-side, neither wanted to talk; afraid to talk. She’d felt him waiting for her to fall asleep so he could get up and go prowling.

The older woman stared at her.

“You bring trouble without profit,” she said.

“I bring? Ha. You came to my manor with that prize son of yours. He took advantage of my drunkenness.” Like my husband, she thought.

“Ah, so you say,” the mother cut in. “Yet you were half-drunk each day between matins and vespers. There’s no taking advantage if that’s your natural state.”

“I wish I were half-drunk now,” Layla said, bitterly. “Meanwhile, I was merely captured and dragged here, as you must know. I have no wish to spend another hour with your mulish sod of a son, let me say —”

“You are as bad a guest,” the mother snarled, “as you were a hostess.”

But she was cut off: “Guest? Guest?”

She remembered lying next to Parsival that last time, realizing she didn’t care where he went or what he did. She’d wanted to tell him “Go, go!” except then he probably would have stayed, just to prove something. One of his noble gestures.

She sighed. Looked at Lady Gaf.

“Listen,” she suggested, reasonably. “Why don’t you help me leave? You are not happy I’m here.”

“My son must have his reasons. He rightly seeks justice for your husband’s insults.”

“That’s funny,” Layla said, mirthlessly chuckling. She refocused her attention on her toe. “Your son is a prince of pigs. Justice for him would be to slice bacon from his flanks.”

Lady Gaf sat on a stool, her back very straight. The weak glow from the lamp filled her face with pits of shadow.

“Say what you please,” she commented.

Now Layla was thinking how it might be the son who’d made her pregnant. What an idea. She didn’t look up, saying:

“Listen, woman, if my miserable husband actually takes enough interest to come after me, your lout of a son would find himself knocked flat as a cowflop.” There was little doubt of that. She shook her head. “When it comes to breaking heads he doesn’t disappoint.”

Madame was unimpressed. Her small, dark, cold eyes were moist-looking, like stones in a stream.

“I was born Italian,” she announced. “In my country we have learned one need not always stand up to fight.”

Layla raised an eyebrow.

“You think us clods?” she wondered. “Think you’ll poison all your enemies in the field? I warn you, beware of Parsival.” Poison his cup, she thought, and he’ll spill it by chance. Put a viper in his bed and he’ll fall drunk on the floor that night… If he showed up angry, they’d all be in Hell before breakfast. “Fornication might get him,” she allowed, “if you could find a pretty woman with the plague.”

“He’s not the only warrior in the world.”

He’ll come to get me out of duty and kill out of duty but without honor, Layla thought He’d rage if I said so but with him it’s duty without honor. He'd tiptoe past the bedchamber where I’d be deceiving him, I think, and not care who knew it, yet if the same man who cuckolded him, cursed me or showed my disgrace in public he'd drag him to the lists and batter him to pulp…

She sighed. Because she believed all he wanted was his freedom to do what he pleased and his conscience demanded that she also could do what she pleased so he might think himself just.

The whole point is I wanted him to force me not to do what I pleased, she thought. The fool…

“Invite him here, Italian, Greek, what ere you be,” she said. “It will be as much sport as watching hogs butchered.”

Her mind wouldn’t stop: I'm going to have another child… I’m going to have another child… God damn them… God damn them to the Devil’s deepest shithole…

LOHENGRIN

The blackness made Lohengrin feel like a speck because the only things that existed were the things he actually was touching. His hand hurt. It was stretched up over his head as if in blind Roman salute to the stone wall where he knelt. His knees hurt too.

“Fine,” he whispered or thought; he wasn't sure. “Fine …”

When he tried to lower his hand he discovered it was stuck in a hole in the abrasive stone. Caught as if in some monkey trap.

He eased himself upright and gingerly moved his hand. His fingers were caught as if in rock jaws.

I must have put my hand in there and then the wall slipped… or something…

He was afraid they would clamp down further and crush his bones. In a near panic he jerked free, ripping the skin. Most of what had held him crumbled.

“The wall bit me,” he murmured. The idea was, somehow, funny. Because there were actual teeth gripping his knuckles. “Christ… Christ …” Part of a jawbone. There must have been a skull entombed in the wall and he reached in while asleep. That was his best, unsatisfying idea.

He slammed the bony fragments against the blocks and yelped when it bit him again as it shattered. He felt blood on his hand.

Madness, he thought, do I die down here?

His fingers were numb. They tingled as he rubbed them. Holding down serious fear, he moved almost frantically around the inner perimeter again except this time, in mid-stride, he tripped over what proved to be a raised landing for a set of stairs.

How did I miss it before?

He went up one step, another… another… up… up… he felt a draught.

Impossible, this wasn’t here… the hole in the wall must have opened it… He imagined the space where the skull had caught his fingers was some kind of door latch.

He groped and stumbled up, panting, touching the walls on either side, thinking, as if it meant something:

I’ve been bitten but not eaten… bitten but not eaten… they let me go… they let me go…

Then stopped, staggered, because the steps had ended and he kept trying to climb. He was outside, the wind gusty, cool, damp and sweet. He realized he’d only gone up maybe 30 feet.

The storm was still in full fury and the reflected lightning flashes showed he was under a massive overhang at the base of a cliff. He’d obviously descended it through the steps and well inside and came out at the bottom, here. Hal was way up at the top.

He was sheltered here from the rain and wild storm blasts. The thunder and wind were greatly muffled.

Examining the rock face he discovered he’d stumbled out through a sprung iron door that had sealed shut behind him. As if he’d want to go back.

They didn’t like my taste, he thought, so they vomited me out…

He moved to the edge of the overhang. Rain whipped into him. The landscape bounced and seemed to spin as the lightning ripped and spasmed. He saw only mist and blots of trees.

“Where in Hell am I now?” he wanted to know. “Where’s my horse?” He knew the horse was on top. There had to be a way around and up. He started working his way along the cliff, still partly sheltered by broken talus rock and the overhang.

First the witch, he thought, now this… I'm cursed… that’s it… I’m cursed… under a spell…

Except he didn’t believe in spells.

“Fuck the Devil and Heaven too!” he suddenly shouted at the storm. “The Devil –”

“— Has heard you,” a woman’s voice said behind him, from closer under the cliff. “Who’s there?” he demanded.

“What a fool you are.”

He squinted and groped back. In the shifting flashes he could see she was behind a steel grate set in a niche in the wall.

“Fool?” he said, staggering slightly in a gust that stung his cheek. “Who are you, woman?”

He went over and gripped the dull, black, solid bars. “All the power you wanted is here,” she told him. “Where did you come from?”

“Where are you going, boy?”

“Away from dullness,” he answered.

He leaned closer to see her face. In the flash and shadow her features changed expression and form: she seemed fierce, then tender, then distant; sharp featured, then palely gentle…

“Who are you?” he wondered. “A prisoner of this rock.”

Lohengrin touched his beaked nose, as if in thought, then suddenly stabbed his hand through the bars to grab her. Talk never satisfied. She evaded him or he misjudged. She was further back now and the reflected lightning showed less of her shape.

“Don't go,” he said, face pressed to the square space in the grating. “You’re not a spirit. I don’t believe in spirits.”

“Do the spirits care what you believe?”

“But you’re not.”

“So please you. You belong to my master.”

He was young enough to be more annoyed than curious. “I have no master,” he said.

“All men have masters, boy.” She seemed amused. “Men are ruled by mine, yet few serve him.”

She was closer again, though he hadn't noticed her move. The light and shadow winked over her face again. The nearer she was, the more changing and unfathomable she became.

“Is this a nunnery?” he wanted to know.

“All kings serve my master,” she explained. He winced with irritation. Wanted to try and grip her again.

“So it’s just God,” he said, harsh, beaked face showing impatient disdain. “I’d hoped it was the Devil, for the sport of it.”

“Name him as you please,” she whispered, words almost lost in the wind. He had a random feeling that she, somehow, might dissolve in the wind herself and blow away in mist.

My father would be certain it actually happened, he thought.

And would discuss the mystery of it at dinner…

“How about I name him Lord of the Dunghill?” he suggested. In the shifting light her wrist looked close enough to the bars to catch. He moved the way you try to get just a little closer to a deer you’ve surprised. Breathless, infinitely slow.

“You may serve my master,” she whispered. “He is eternal. Come back and embrace him. Take the ice and night into yourself and you will live even in death.”

Lohengrin liked this bizarre exchange. It had the effect of bringing him back somewhat to the everyday world. “A riddle,” he said. “Your sire is death, himself.”

She spoke past him, pleasant, meditative…

“If you become one with him," she said, “his strength is your strength. You will love and live with him. He will protect you from all error.” She paused and moved closer, right to the bars this time and he could see her pale, sincere, pretty face. “He will nourish and feed you.” Her eyes were closed.

He was impressed. The flashes and thunder were rattling towards the horizon, now.

The shadows barely shifted on her face. Impressed, but not convinced.

“I’ll feed death,” he told her, “until he feeds on me. But I don't promise to love and wed him.”

In the time it took a fading flash of lightning to glint on the dull bars, her slim hand shot through the bars and with fingers of steel and ice locked on his throat, yanked and slammed his face into an iron crosspiece. The next flash was pain in his skull.

I must be sick, he thought. I’m so weak…these women…what is it? First the witch who'd sucked him dry; now this. “I yield,” he grated into the choking fingers. “I yield.”

His famous cold fury was filling him. His forehead was rubbed raw. Enough, he thought, and slammed his thick forearm up into her wrist hard enough to snap bones or bend metal.

He wasn’t sure which was worst: the shock of pain or the fact that her grip locked on unshaken.

“Surrender to the truth,” she cried, singsong, rocking slightly. “Let the cold fill you and become one with dark.” Her eyes seemed to flash or mirror the faint lightning. “You will now be made a knight, undefeatable. Fulfill your quest and you may return here to join the kindred.”

She released him and he staggered back a step. His nose was bleeding. He was too impressed to be angry or even apprehensive.

“Amazing,” he said. “Will I learn the secret of that strength?”

“All the kindred have great powers,” she explained, still singsong and swaying behind the grating. “You will become a knight inestimable, colder than ice, harder than stone, with fists to burst walls and break plate!”

He raised both dark, wet, bushy eyebrows. Maybe he was becoming a believer.

“A joy to ponder,” he said. Rubbed his face. Felt groggy, as if waking up. Smiled. Maybe he wasn’t becoming a believer, at that. Not altogether, anyway.

She paid no direct attention to him.

“You may, if you succeed, become lord of this land in the name of our Master.”

“My rise is certain, then, witch?” He cocked his fierce head to the side. “So long as I surrender? I’d believe you better were you less sweet to see.”

She shifted, gracefully, along the bars. “The hemlock flower looks pleasant to the sight,” she said. “Yet to taste it is death.”

He nodded.

“Which is what you are offering.”

“There is ordinary death,” she said scathingly, “and there is the joining.”

He was focusing, amused.

“My father,” he told her, “whom I little respect in most matters, would probably ask you how, in this, you differ from all other women?”

Her voice had altered and seemed a man’s.

Mayhap I were but feeling weak and she were not so strong as it seemed…

Her voice had suddenly changed, was shrill but, unmistakably, a man’s. “Youth,” it said, without inflection or feeling, no more personal, he thought, than wind blowing through a pipe, “go next to the ruler of this land. There you will be given power in trade for a service worthy of you. Heed this and remember all you have been told. Thou hast been chosen. Do not ponder why. You are young, yet you may be found fit to bear my authority over all men.” Suddenly she opened the gate, and still in that shrill, inorganic voice, said:

“Enter!”

He tried. He felt stuck in stone. Felt he was losing his wits; certainly he was sick of witchcraft.

“When next you come you will enter without effort,” she assured him, in her natural voice this time. “You will soon be shown the way to what you need.”

Suddenly he could move again and he stepped forward as she slammed the gate shut with her effortless strength. In the last flickers of lightning light he was left with an afterimage impression that her hair was bushy and moving as if in an electric wind or, somehow, independently alive, a sense that her face was wide and flat, depthless, eyeless, awful…

And then there was just the wind, fading rain, coolness and relief… He started walking, still groggy, out from under the overhanging rock ledge.

Where’s my horse? he asked himself. Where’s Firetail?

He felt vague, weighed down by a vast, massive softness.

“He’s on top of this damned cliff,” he muttered, “that’s where.”

It seemed infinitely high and far. He wished he could fall up, for a change.

There was a clump of pine trees alongside the cliff face. They swooshed soothingly in the dying wind. He was so spent he could only think about being tired. He went under the massed branches into a peaceful silence. The air was rich with clean scents as he waded into dry fallen needles. He had to sit. He sat. Then stretched out. Then was gone from everything…