The Grail War (16 page)

The hull struck with a terrific shock, shook, spun, fell in half, and instantly disappeared, as in spasmodic terror. Valit flung himself into Broaditch’s body and locked there, gripped tighter than death, and, like one doubled person, they tumbled into the icy, deadly surf, tumbling into choking darkness, and Broaditch clutched Valit in return, as if the helpless, fragile flesh of another could preserve him, in a blind reflex that may have had wisdom in it, too …

He waited, totally relaxed now except for his arms, for the first rip and battering. For a moment he went free of himself, for a moment (as the body churned and drowned) he was somehow apart, watching, and it was as if time and space had shrunk to something he could encompass and he felt I saw the future before him like a dark land where here and there misty scenes were dimly lit, and he couldn’t be sure if this were life or the country after death, then grasped it was both: saw himself and others he seemed to know climbing a steep cliff beset by formless shadows; saw deep, interminable woods where he wandered and struggled; his wife and two children crouched over a guttering fire under cold and windy skies; a strange knight watching him from the edge of a clearing; blinding light streaming from something he couldn’t look at and a shimmering figure in shining armor floating above the trees and then an incredible, bottomless longing that seemed to stir from the roots of all time, and he perceived inextinguishable life unfolding joyous and forever, life after life upon life, the music of grass growing, the conversations of the sea, the maternal flexing of these waves … He felt free, fearless, immortal because this seeing reached far, far beyond his death as he (and the other body he didn't realize wasn’t his own) smashed heavily into mucky sand and rolled up a short beach into scraggly pines that tangled them so that the backwash of the immense surf couldn’t drag them back to the fangs of rock …

How
beautiful
, he found himself thinking, panting,
how
perfect
…
how
effortless
…
like
plucking
two
frogs
from
a
pool
… He was sure for the rest of his life that he’d felt the hands — the literal hands — guide him on the shocking, terrifying, and magnificent tides of arrangement. There was no chance. Chance was lost to him. He’d felt the mother’s touch in all the terror. His bones and blood knew those fingers, knew the fierce compassion of the sea …
I
died
, he thought,
that's
all
it
took
,
that's
all
there
was
to
it
… There was no point in thinking about it. Thinking couldn’t do a thing. It was too immense for reason.

Lohengrin’s squire, Wista, was standing at the well in the luminescent dusk. A young serving girl was just drawing a bucket. Another girl in her late teens, wearing the silks of nobility, had walked him across the yard and was sitting on the low stone circle of well wall. Her face was roundish, dim, gleaming in the lingering violet-tinged light.

The serving girl filled the pails on both sides of a yoke and started trudging back across the hard-packed earth without having seemed to have noticed their presence. She moved toward the vaulted doorway. Fireflies drew brief bright stains on the dusk.

“Take it to the second level, Lina,” the girl commanded, “the bath chamber.”

Lina barely nodded and went on steadily, balancing the two pails.

“She’s surly,” the girl announced.

Wista was staring, trying to see Lina’s bare feet in the dusk. He’d noticed how shapely they were when she was drawing the water. He found himself fascinated by women’s calves and feet recently, as if the part somehow stood for more than the whole. There was a familiar pressure within his codpiece: his flesh had started to harden.
This
, he thought,
is
what
frightens
priests
. It was so intense for a moment that he wished he could fall to his knees and kiss the girl’s sweet, sleek, bare arch and calloused instep. He felt an unformed desire to totally prostrate himself, to surrender in worship, shame, and ecstasy … He shook his head, as if to snap a spell … The girl beside him — what was her name? Frell — that was it … What was she saying? He tried to catch up with her words, hoping the pulse of pleasure would subside, except that every step rubbed it against the stiff material and thus served to make matters worse, or, if you chose, better, according to his now widely fluctuating point of view …

“ … so I told him, I said: ‘Rein up your steed, sir, for you ride alone this even!’” She laughed lightly. “I stood ready to brain him with a platter of brass. A man of
his
years. And he called me a tease.” She flounced her head. Wista studied her profile, upturned nose, fullish face. Pretty … well, prettier than he first thought. Well …

They were climbing the stairs inside the main building. Torches were lit along the halls. He studied her covertly. Her face was smooth, but a little too red, he thought.

Lina was just ahead of them. Under her shapeless dress he could see flashes of bare, brown leg. The effect, as they went up the half-spiral, brought him to a sweat and flash of adolescent dizziness …

“ … so,” Frell went on, “I told him: ‘Sir, you are gray at the temples, and yet you long to revel with a poor maid such as I. Where is your religion, sir?’”

“Ah, religion, yes …” murmured Wista, watching the legs winking out of the shadows as the yoke swayed and the water sloshed. “Well,” he said, not completely making a joke of it, “perhaps he thought himself Noah and you his daughter.”

“ … so, he soon reconsidered. Indeed, he did.”

Her hand fleetingly brushed against him. He wondered if there were any significance to it. He glanced at her again. Her body seemed good enough, he decided. He wished her feet were visible, but her velvet buskins were closed.
Why
are
feet
so
important
? he asked himself.

“I am writing poems and learning the lute,” she told him.

“Ah,” he said, glancing at her and then back up at Lina. But now they were in a level hall and the view was nothing much. He had to be content with just the ankle and below in the uncertain light. The sooty torch smoke made him want to sneeze. “Is that so?” he lamely finished.

“I am really quite taken with it. I think it really can reveal the divine side of people, as the Italian poet said.”

“Did he?” Wista wondered which one. “I write somewhat myself,” he remarked as they entered a long, low-roofed chamber filled with steam. In a huge tub his master’s dark, bushy-haired, hook-nosed face glared from a mound of suds. He faintly smiled. A young, fair-haired page held a mug of mulled wine to the lord’s lips. Lohengrin suddenly darted his hand from the water and gripped the slight, graceful boy by the cheek and pulled him until he leaned over the tub side.

“You’re a pretty wench of a lad,” Wista heard him say.

Lina, the serving girl, was emptying the two buckets into a copper caldron that was steaming in the fireplace.

Wista watched her, abstractedly, thinking:
religion
…
she
said
something
to
that
knight
about
religion
… Then he knew what he wanted to do. Then he considered it pointless and hopeless. But the idea caught his consciousness: see Parsival, his master’s father. Ask him about his doubts, about knighthood … But did he want to be a priest? Was that an answer … ?

“I want to give myself to something,” Frell was saying, “completely. I don’t want to waste away.” She looked with nervous intensity at Wista.

“Yes,” he said vaguely, “I see.” He was wondering if it really were possible to see Parsival. He couldn’t dare mention the idea to Lohengrin, who was somehow suddenly a great lord with a hundred men posted in and around the castle, as if he expected imminent attack. He supposed it was possible that vassals of the late Duke might mount a raid for revenge.

“I think perhaps poetry is the best thing for me,” she continued.

Lohengrin was looking at them now from the steamy depths of the tub.

“What are you two about there?” he called over. “Exchanging chivalrous pleasantries?” He grinned sardonically.

Frell had just lightly touched his arm and looked up into his face with an almost pleading expression. He was surprised and uneasy. She was somebody’s sister and they’d met last night at the feast. She seemed oblivious to Lohengrin’s remark. There was naked need in her face.

“We were having a conversation, my lord,” Wista said, with the sullen self-control his master always goaded him into.

“I must seem foolish to you?” she said, concerned.

He shook his head, though a little uncertainty showed.

“Not at all,” he murmured.

He hoped she wasn’t in love with him. The idea was awkward. On the other hand, if it were just hot blood, that would be interesting … a relief, anyway … He wondered if he could get around the serving girl, though, who was leaving the chamber without looking past or at him with her expressionless brown eyes. It wasn’t easy, he realized, to get something started unless you were a great knight or lord. What could he offer a peasant beyond a fair appearance of vitality? He sighed. He realized this wasn’t really like him. Was he changing, suddenly? He had never been so woman-haunted.

“I want my life to truly count for something,” she was telling him. “I don’t wish to walk in my mother’s footsteps … But is this not foolish?”

“Why, no,” he demurred, half paying attention, noticing the bent servant who had just added a copper pail of hot water to Lohengrin’s bath. The pretty page had left. The servant suddenly straightened up as the bather was delightedly easing himself back and gesturing for Wista and Frell to approach him. The servant threw off his sack-like cloak and in one swift and supple motion laid the edge of a curved dagger across Lohengrin’s throat and held it perfectly still, saying nothing.
A
rising
of
commoners
? thought Wista.

Lohengrin’s eyes were cold and furious. For an instant Wista believed he would somehow brush aside the incidental mortality of his naked flesh and tear the man apart in the hot gouts of his own blood. Wista saw the vivid image of it: the bath spilling over with reddened water as the slashed throat gaped and sprayed and the inconceivable fury itself like a force apart from the dying body it merely animated, locking the limbs upright and clamping the hands in a death-lock on the slayer’s throat …

Lohengrin didn’t stir. Only his eyes showed anything. The man didn’t speak. Wista noticed his face was grayish, doughy, squinty, utterly without expression.

Frell was startled. Wista heard the faint scrape and jingle of armor behind him and knew not to speak or turn. He involuntarily gripped the girl’s arm and held her still.

Two feline-stepping, slim men in elaborately worked light chain mail and silky, flowing robes, wearing what he didn’t know were called turbans (he first thought them bandages), padded past on slippered feet, followed by a pair of taller, wider knights in black plate armor with slitted face masks shut. They all stopped around the tub.

Where
did
they
come
from
? Wista wondered.
How
did
they
pass
all
those
men
at
arms
?

One of the servants, a round-faced, curious fellow, tending the fire took a few steps nearer.

No
\ Wista thought.
No
\

The nearest dark, bony-faced warrior dipped, half-turned, drew (what Wista didn’t know was a scimitar, either), whipped out and back, and re-sheathed his curved blade in an unbroken casual motion. For an instant nothing seemed to have happened. Then the servant, whose hands had flown vaguely up to his throat, took a weaving step backward; another, a thin smile of blood creasing his neck, then toppled into the flames, where he thrashed very little, smoked, and roasted as Frell gave a choking cry. He pressed her close and held her upright and motionless. He felt death very close, silly, incidental …

“Shh!” he whispered. “Shh!”

“So,” the taller knight, the captain, said through his face slits, “accept my homage, new Duke.”

Lohengrin just stared, then said, “How did you pass? Did all my men turn traitor at once, or were they never loyal?”

“Many are loyal, new Duke,” affirmed the captain. His voice had a tinny echo from the steel. “Take your ease and answer a question, for if you answer well, you’ll come with us a little way. If you answer poorly, you may remain in your bath.”

Wista realized his master wasn’t going to immediately be assassinated. So these men weren’t necessarily agents or relatives of slain enemies. Lohengrin obviously had worked this much out himself. He almost smiled.