The Grail War (14 page)

Alienor followed the faint sketch of trail at dawn which grayly and sourcelessly began to glow among the dense pines. Their steps were muffled by the soft, fallen needles. The air was almost cold. She thought she could feel the steel teeth of winter nipping just a little.

“Mama,” her daughter asked through a yawn, “will we find Papa soon?”

“We’ll see, Tikla,” was the reply. She held the child’s hand. Torky, the boy, went on ahead, kicking up clumps of the brown woven turf, swinging a stick back and forth like a sword. Now and again he cut at some imaginary opponent.

“Got you!” he declared. “How do you like that?”

Alienor was still settling her thoughts. She had only a very general idea of what to do at this point. Her husband’s last message had come from Camelot by way of a carter. He had transformed her into a secret literate like himself — in fact, he possessed (or had until the fire) three fragments of books in the English tongue. She still had the scrap of parchment:

MY LOVE. I AIM TO COME UNTO LONDON TOWN

BY MID-SUMMER. WEARY. WILL STAY WITH

JACK HANDLER’S KIN. B.

Her first problem was food. There were potato fields beyond the hill they were crossing. If the raiders had avoided the back trails, the section would be intact. Well, there was nothing for it but to try for London. She was going to have to face that prospect. She didn’t want to think about the war. But for some reason she had a feeling it was widespread. She didn’t know why, but she was sure of it …

The Duke’s horse was virtually jammed in the rotting beeches. It kept sinking fetlock deep into the black ooze.

The eye whites showed as he strained under his master’s curses and goads and smelled the rank, raw boar scent.

The Duke, as if the creature were to blame for his plight, kept punching the long head with his knotted fist.

Lohengrin was atop the gully that the other man was struggling to cross. The boar’s snorting fury was clearly audible above the dog cries that were circling back toward them.

“You’re mad!” the Duke flung at the younger knight. “If the beast turns into us here, why, we’re undone!”

“Think a pig may slay two armed fellows like us?” Lohengrin smiled, showing his yellowish teeth.

The Duke’s spear was now tangled in the vines that draped the pulpy trees. He tried to keep his grip as the horse pulled forward and he teetered back, tried to hold, then lost it and swore explosively.

The riot of animal sound was close now. The Duke had worked his way up beside Lohengrin on the little spine of ridge. They moved carefully along the top, as if balancing, hooves slipping on wet and mossy stones. Then the underbrush crackled and shook and the baying and squealing seemed all around them: savage, grunting snarls, louder, louder, and then the musty, reeking bloody-tusked, boar broke out of the snapping trees, massive, violent, sudden, seeming to undulate along close to the earth. A hound, tongue flopping, foam spraying, loped out at his heels, and with incredible speed and force the boar doubled back on itself and in one sweep ripped and tossed the screaming dog back into the brush in a rain of blood.

“You bastard!” the Duke was screaming. “You shit-sucking bastard!” He drew his dagger, more out of nervousness than anything else.

The pig had turned again and was virtually below them down the ten-foot slope.

“Where is that fool?” he muttered, craning around for the master of the hunt and seeing nothing but the gray netting of dead trees.

And then he just had time to twist his raging, pale, despairing face around to glare his fury at Lohengrin and swing one futile cut with the blade as the bushy-haired knight braced the handle of his lance under his victim’s armpit and tilted him out and down into the steep gully to roll helplessly in the path of the furious beast.

He kicked, pale and desperate, at the tusked snout, flat on his back. Lohengrin looked on with interest and professional detachment. He saw the boar’s first hit drive the Duke behind a bush. He couldn’t tell if he’d been slashed. He thought the older man was doing very well, considering. But without even a mail shirt, there was no chance, of course.

The dogs were trying, circling, dodging in and out, but the dense, low-slung creature, thumping mud, shaking brush, snorting in a frenzy, came in again as the man got to his feet and took a few wild, windmilling steps through the dense, leafless trees, his outline blurring into a gray shadow. He screamed this time and went down, trees snapping, into a flurry of dogs and squeals and ripping and blood and a voice shouting somewhere out of sight (the master of hunt): “Your Grace! Your Grace!”

Parsival was sitting up, nude, in the damp hay. Pieces of straw were caught in his hair. His body was still smooth, solid, and supple. His scars had faded as much as they ever would. He stroked his beard and, for no particular reason, said, “I’m going to shave this off again.”

She was on her back, relaxed, soft and thoughtful looking.

“Come over here, Sir Parsival,” she offered.

She touched his wrist with one rounded bare foot. Kneaded his flesh lightly with her toes.

“It’s dawn,” he said, gesturing with his head at the wall before them where faint, grayish slits of daylight showed.

“The birds are still quiet,” she noted.

“But is your husband?”

Her foot went away.

“I’ve grown fond of him,” she said, “in these last years. He’s a decent man … He understands me.”

“It shocks my senses,” he said, “when I think how easy it is to put off one life and put on another …”He turned to face her, still squatting. “I was afraid last night, when I came here with you. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” she replied. “And I wonder at your frankness. Few men would speak so.”

“What profit to lie?” he wondered. “Why, there have been times when I’ve been incapable with a woman.”

“That,” she said, smiling with rich content, “is like a rich man talking of his days of poverty, Parse.”

“Parse?”

“No one called you that?”

“Perhaps. But it never sounded so fair.”

“Does it displease you?”

“No.”

A pause.

“What were you afraid of, Parse?”

“Last night?”

“Yes.”

He cleared his throat and held back a yawn that sent sleepless shivers down his back.

“A week of days ago,” he said, “I sat in the bleak hills alone. This world was distant as a dream in a dream … I sat there immersed in things … things beyond the world’s borders …”

“Yes?” She was interested.

“Even now I feel only half here, as when I was young …” He yawned again. He wanted to sleep, to float. The world drew at him softly.

“Oh.” She was a little saddened.

“And I was afraid I’d surrendered again.”

“Ah. Perhaps you have.”

He moved to his knees beside her. He watched her smooth face, her eyes, as if some answer to something unasked might float up and reveal itself in those violet-green gleaming depths.

“I’m still afraid,” he said.

With a yielding strength, she gripped her surprisingly long arms around his thigh and rested her cheek near his knee.

“That you’ve lost God?” she softly wondered. “That we’re sinning?”

He shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “Not so simple, lady, not so simple … The sins I’ve witnessed and committed in this world would leave this a pale wrong, indeed, in their harsh light”

“Then
what
?" she wanted to know, pressing softly but insistently at him.

“That I’ve started another adventure,” he finally answered, smiling, serious, but inescapably wry, too. “I want no more of them.” He touched her face as if amazed at the sweet, firm warmth and life of the flesh. “They leave me ever with empty hands.” He raised her face to his and kissed, his tongue lingering in the hot, silky, fluttering unfolding of her mouth. “And,” he now whispered, “more lost than ever …” — he kissed — “ … without an ending.”

“But,” she told him, serious and direct, “there is always an ending.”

He frowned. The idea, the fact, pained him. It seemed, unreasonably, a surprise. It was as though underneath all he’d seen, done, felt, and hardened himself to, there was a timeless hopefulness in reserve, a belief in joy unsullied and permanent, as simply, he reflected, as anything his famous childhood had showed …

“No,” he murmured, almost too softly for her to hear, “let me only begin and begin forever, my love."

“Ah,” she sighed, suddenly clinging closer, drawing herself up to press against his full length. “There’s such magic in you … you’re like a dream yourself … What am I to do? Tell me, love and do it I shall! Only tell me …

He kissed and stroked over her, inhaled her spicy sweetness of ripened flesh. Staring into her spring-forest-colored eyes, he could only say, “I want to be with you. That’s what I want. I want to learn everything within you.”

He released himself now, as if all the years frozen in him were finally melting, and he knew only now how cold he’d been, how utterly cold and lost and remote … As all else thawed and ran, he found one thing suddenly, burningly firm, and letting the day dissolve away, he pressed into the resistless wetness of her, and although there was motion, there was no time: the outer world beyond their bodies shifted in its tides and currents without effect and the sounds came through without meaning and they rocked together as if to fuse seamless and forever, fragments of words and images flashing by … His body snapped into her faster and faster, deeper, fiercer, as if something were within reach, as if in this tender violence there was bliss and space, both struggled in a frenzy to free within themselves … He heard the loft rock and creak with the strain, the rhythmic rustle of the hay, the sop-sop-sop of their loins, his breath, heartbeat, smelled the sweat, juice, and uncanny fragrance on her breath … raised himself higher and hurled himself into her with images of golden fields and white, rich blossoms raining through his mind unbidden … the waves of a shimmering sea swelling and peaking … delicate, translucent, shining beings in a prismatic world embraced and praised and sang wordless and wept gold with joy … a flower like the sun unfolding … a tender animal, all warm fur and flowing, forest eyes, quivering in his grip …

“Ah,” he gasped, “I'm you … I’m you … I give all … I give all … I give … give … ah! … ah! … ah! …”

“No!” she cried, fluttering fingers clawing into his pulsing buttocks. “No … no … no …” Rolling her head distracted, throwing up her legs to lock behind his neck so that each stroke of him pounded against her innermost recesses, so she cried in pain now, too: “Harder … no, no! Oh, harder …! Heaven and earth … harder … kill me with it … kill me … kill me … kill meeeee …! ”

Because it was there and for a moment neither knew where the other began and ended and there was no telling mind from flesh from soul. All one fabric stitched through them. And he thought (though never remembered) or said:
I
am
we
are
this
joy
only
this
only
this
only
this
only
this
…

Lohengrin rode out of the swampy woods into the cool sunset. The master of the hunt followed a few minutes behind with his lord’s body. The retainers were waiting. Lohengrin noticed his squire had finally arrived. He wondered if he’d accomplished his purpose. He couldn’t ask him just yet.

“A terrible mischance,” he said to them all, his face set, eyes cold and steady, not quite looking at any one of the half a dozen present. No one said anything. A chill, damp wind blew across the over-lush rot of the field. Autumn was coming in on the season’s tide. “My lord Duke, His Grace, is perished.” The men just looked at him. “He fell bravely, gentlemen, saving me from the pig. I owe him a debt of life.” Silence. The cool gray shadowless twilight filled the woods around them like rising water. “I slew the brute killer, of course.” He let his horse drift a little closer to the vassals. Two lower barons sat at seeming ease, eyes slightly restless in bearded faces. “The Duke’s last words — unfortunately heard only by myself and the good God …” — he crossed himself — “ … were that I take hold of his affairs and act as uncle and regent to his unformed son.”

He idly wondered if they could hear his heart. Would they let this pass for now? He was basically demanding neutrality. He smiled slightly, unconsciously, thinking how one might as well risk a kingdom as a castle … Why a king but treats the world as any man might treat his family … The same stick can strike a thousand backs.

He didn’t realize (as he noticed, relaxing slightly, that they weren’t going to resist him just now) his smile had decided them. His mouth had curved and parted unselfconscious, as a shark with no thought to terrify: it was his utter cold amusement at the fact that life and death hung on this moment, and that flash of slightly too long teeth had been enough for men who still believed their lives and families and politics led somewhere to something beyond the void and trackless blackness those eyes stared into and the bleak, bitter depths that mouth smiled from … They weren’t prepared to defy him face to face.