Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (39 page)

LOHENGRIN

He found his mother next, sitting against a massive tree, almost lost in brush and fog. There was just enough light to show her bare legs opened.

“Stay away,” she demanded. “Leave me.”

“Mother, I…”

“Go. I’ll not die of this. I’m partly glad of it.”

“Glad to be sick?”

“A kind of purging. Go. Attend your lady.” He was baffled and rueful.

“This is… I know not what I feel, Mother. So many things have happened …”

Images recurred: the lady in the tent; the weird underground fortress and charnel pit; the mad knight using the naked dead girl… and then Jane. “Some things were like enchantments… which I disbelieve …”

“Go inside, my boy. I bid you, go.” Her voice was strained.

Inside Hal was kneeling by the pallet where Jane sighed and softly thrashed. He did know what he felt; there was nothing to do.

“Christ’s words, what?” he demanded of the air and fire-tossed shadows. He was afraid to go near and afraid to leave. “What?’

“She seems most ill,” Hal needlessly said.

She rolled on her back, legs straight and rigid. “Lohengrin,” she whispered.

“Ahh,” he whispered, “I am here.”

“I was thus sick,” said the round-faced Saxon boy said, “after bad fish.”

He pointed as she spewed some bubbling vomit from the side of her mouth into the dank straw. Lohengrin felt a convulsion of chill dread. He rushed close and knelt there. Wiped the sticky stuff away with a handkerchief.

“Oh, sweet Jane,” he said.

“Even bad salt fish,” suggested Hal, blinking and staring. “O Holy Mother Mary.”

“She had no fish.”

Outside Layla stood up and staggered a little. She wanted to wash the blood from her thighs. Saw her son standing in the doorway, looking in and then out.

“Drink not from the well, mother,” he called over. “Jane says it poisoned her.”

“There’s a bucket of rainwater over there,” she responded.

“Clean water. I’ll give her a drink.”

“Then bring it me, son.” She held her partly smeared dress up, a shadow in the misty moonlight. She wide-stepped over to the crackly hut wall and sat just under the sagged eaves.

He went in and came back out.

“She could not drink,” he said. He put the bucket down close to his mother who was dimness in the wet, still night. The rain dripped here and there from the roof and tree branches. “I think she is most ill.”

“I see you care.”

She wet a clean linen cloth and wiped herself. He just stood there, breathing steadily, silent. Then he plunged back inside. She sighed. Took and drink, then wet the cloth again.

JOHN

Slogging, feet like lead in the sucking muck, he worked his gasping, shivering, miserable way to the stony shore of rotted fish smells, crushed shells and slimy seaweed.

He could distinguish the side of one ship tilted into the strand. The pilgrims were clambering down and dropping back onto the reeking beach.

“No reason to give up the cause,” he muttered. “A false start. A new trail. Yes.”

It seemed to him that to the south the fogs were thinning. He thought he could almost make out the sun’s disk in the lower half of the sky. “A new trail and trial, too …”

With a sudden rush of energy he stood up and started plopping his feet along the stinking beach towards the people.

“Hear me!” he called ahead. “The sun returns. All will be clear!” Maybe two dozen watched him coming. They were pale, weary, impassive. He half-hopped to them through the muck with stork-like steps. “All will be clear! Clear!”

PARSIVAL

No surprise, he thought, as they came to a clearing where (in the fog, subtly thinned) he saw a blue and yellow silken tent against a dark green background of dense undergrowth.

The sun, again, softly sprayed soft, uneven coins of light around them and the cool day was spring-like, for a moment…

“Wait,” he said, “I’ll go in and see her alone.” Because it had to be, his memory insisted.

“You’ll go in an see her?” Gralgrim liked that idea. Winked one eye at Lego who ignored him.

The knight went to the tent flap and entered quietly.

His companions watched him walk a few steps into the shadow of a fifteen or so foot high bluish, pointed rock, covered with soft green moss and sprinklings of tough, spiny, yellow cold-country blossoms. He stopped there and spoke, fervently:

“Lady I am grieved by what I did to you in those days. I was a foolish boy and caused you hurt. I have been long troubled by this.”

The Viking squinted. There was a bird, a smallish, graying wild goose, maybe, he decided, pecking at the scrubby grass near Parsival. Lego shifted his eyes, squinting, trying to see the tent in case there was a spell.

“He’s grieved,” said Gralgrim. “What? Did he once steal its eggs?” Snorted. “Wish I had a fucked fresh egg or even a hard-cooked one saved in salt.”

“I am pleased to see you well,” Parsival said to the lady who looked like Jeschute. She seemed to sigh and droop her head.

“He’s pleased she be well,” the Viking said. “Where’s that bow?”

“You left it behind,” said Lego.

“Even that skinny fowl would taste sweet, I think.”

Meanwhile, Parsival had dropped to one knee, with a slight clink of armor and Gralgrim shook his wide-eyed head. Said no more words. “My Lord, should we not –”

The knight glanced back out of the tent they couldn’t see. “Wait,” he commanded. “I’ll come out in a moment.”

“He’ll be out,” assured the Viking.

Parsival stood up and studied her averted face. “I will try not to fail in my purpose, this time,” he declared. She seemed to sigh and went into the back of the tent – which faded into soft mist as he passed through the parted flap and kept walking across the open field.

Gralgrim noted the bird had gone into the spiny brush. Sighed. “So much fer supper,” he muttered. “This is whom you follow, fellow?”

“Be still, he’s beyond the comprehension of bumpkin barbarians.”

“Yet geese understand him pretty well.”

“Had you half a bird’s brain you might comprehend more.”

“Aye. You understand him too,” guffawed Gralgrim. “Thus ya must have half a one.” The Berserker enjoyed his little triumph of the last word.

Parsival now hurried at a partial trot, metal pinging softly. The dark, massed and twisted trees, melted together by the fog that had closed down around them again, were unlit by sunlight. There was grayness and a graceful tower of bluish stone.

Lego and the Viking watched him heading towards a mass of broken rock that spilled in a twenty foot heap across the tundric plain.

“There before us!” cried Gralgrim. “The lost treasure of Odin!”

LOHENGRIN

His mother came back into the hut, limping, pale, but not entirely miserable.

It’s over, she was thinking, God’s will. “How fares the maid?” she asked. Coming closer she saw and knew and winced.

“I know not, my lady,” said Hal.

It’s always the worst, she thought. Her son looked dismayed; she hadn’t noted that since he was three. Ah… my son… my son…

GAWAIN

He kicked the horse ahead, then reined it to a stiff legged, snorting halt because she held on and now was being dragged. “Damn you,” he cried.

“Damn you, you white fool,” she cried in exchange. “Am I grown a hag? Am I loathly?”

He twisted in the saddle, gripping her with his right hand, holding the false one up to her face. “See this!” he told her. Let go and drew his dagger, stabbing it into the palm of the wooden hand and left it sticking out. “See!”

“Sad to lose your limb,” she said, just standing there, now, weeping. “Many have before you. What care I for that? Save you kept the best one.”

“I have lost all hope of thee,” he said, quietly, plucking the blade free. “All hope… I came back because I could not help myself. Of all women it was only you I loved entire.” His eye was weeping now, in the dark mist and obscurity of his cowl. “There is nothing I would not have done… I… please, let me go, sweet Shinqua. I am a ghost and you must free me to join the shadowy pack.”

The horse rocked his head and snorted but barely shifted in place. She still just stood there. “I am no child,” she said. “I can see thou art solid flesh and blood. What spirit has a hand of wood?”

“I beg you, my love, my wonder, my dear night and magic… I beg you …”

“What words… what words …”

“Free this ghost and ask no more, my only love.”

“Are you all words? A ghost of words?”

“Ahhh.”

“You seem flesh and blood,” she said again, baffled, not moving, staring at nothing. “You may be mad …” Paused. “Yet are you intact below?”

“Lady, you know my meaning.”

The soft light made her seem an exhalation of grace from the mysterious, murmurous night and he could bear neither to look at her nor look away. Then she gripped his steel-sheathed leg in both hands.

“I know nothing,” she told him. “All I wish is here with me now. Show me what you must.”

“Show you …”

“Yes, fool. Or leave me cursed in doubt.” He clutched his hood.

“Look then,” he said, sobbed. “Look.”

PARSIVAL

“At last,” the knight exclaimed. “I’ll not err this time.”

A second chance, he thought, even in a dream may free me of questions and regrets… any dream might be a lifetime…

Because he was crossing the moat on the carven and delicate drawbridge that might have been the same from twenty years before except all those memories swam in blurring denser than the fogs they’d wandered through.

The gate was open and he went inside and was surprised by the rich tapestries and metal mirrors, bright painted carvings of holy beings, a rich, almost stifling mist of incense and strange perfumes that smelt of clean fields and herb-clogged gardens washed by soft rains…

He went straight through the empty entrance passage, through the vaulted archway into the big (and suddenly low-ceilinged) chamber where he remembered (twenty years ago) seeing the wounded king who lay, forever bleeding, on the scented, sinkingly soft couch, awash in silken pillows with maidens and pages bearing strange objects… food, scented drink… stifling heat from masses of candles and roaring fireplaces… the castle of the Grail where he’d failed as a boy and left a shadow, a hole forever in his life that was always there, like a spot in the eye, even when he wasn’t actually noticing it…

So he was sideways surprised that the place was empty, this time, except for a figure on a massively soft and silky bed.

Lego had his arms folded. Gralgrim stood, stocky, wide, hands on hips, face halved by the dried blood streak; not quite smiling yet.

Because there was Parsival confronting heaps of rock, saying:

“I know what to ask now.” He knelt before a scrubby bush. The king moved his head from the shadow of the pillows and, this time, it was Arthur Pendragon. “My Liege!” exclaimed the knight.

This was too many for the Berserker, who hooted: “He’s vassal to the bush!”

“Go your own way,” snarled Lego, baited. “Begone.”

“And miss these rare things?”

“Bah.”

“Hearken, for he speaks further with the leaves an berries.” Sank to one knee, chuckling.

Lego shoved the Viking over with one foot; the fellow lay there, convulsed with guffaws.

“Lout!” snarled Lego.

“Parsival,” said the king. “Come nearer.”

LOHENGRIN ET AL

Lohengrin lifted Jane’s hand from where it lay beside her. It was cool and seemed unnaturally heavy. He understood. Winced and (his mother noted, sitting in her incrementally fading pain) with unaccustomed tenderness, laid her hand across her body, then turned away with a dark, baffled look and went outside. She could see him standing in the foggy yard, back to the door, softly lit by the softly tossing fireplace flames.

Well, she thought, now he’s learned this…

She wanted to comfort him, but her own pain kept her doubled-up. He was so young, she kept thinking. He’d ridden off almost like his father had.

Never thinking about pain… Life was all theirs for the taking… now he’s already learned this… I fear this wound will keep ever raw and open and deform his nature…

Hal was trying to give Jane a palm full of water. It trickled past her lips and down her chin.

“I think she’s waking up,” he said. Layla sighed.

Oh, Lohengrin, she thought. Be not as I, my son, confirm not your bitterness…