The Nonexistent Knight (11 page)

How much more difficult it is for me to plot on my paper Bradamante’s course or Raimbaut’s or glum Torrismund’s! There would have to be some very faint pucker on the surface as can be got by pricking paper from below with a pin, and this pucker would always have to be impregnated with the general matter of the world and this itself constitute its sense and beauty and sorrow, its true attrition and movement.

But how can I get on with my tale, if I begin to torture the white page like this, scoop out valleys and clefts in it score it with creases and scratches, reading into it the paladin’s progress? To help tell my tale it would be better if I drew a map, the gentle countryside of France, and proud Brittany, and the English Channel surging with black billows, and high Scotland up there and harsh Pyrenees down here, and Spain still in Infidel hands, and Africa mother of serpents. Then with arrows and crosses and numbers I could plot the journey of one or other of our heroes. Here, for instance, with a rapid line in spite of a few twists I can make Agilulf land in England and direct him towards the convent where Sophronia has lived, retired, for fifteen years.

He arrives, and finds the convent a mass of ruins.

“You come too late, noble knight,” said an old man. “These valleys still resound with the cries of those poor women. A short while ago a fleet of Moorish pirates landed on this coast and sacked the convent, bore off the nuns as slaves and set fire to the walls.”

“Bore off, where to?”

“As slaves to be sold in Morocco, m’lord.”

“Was there among those nuns one Sophronia, who in the world was the King of Scotland’s daughter?”

“Ah, you mean Sister Palmyral There was indeed! They loaded her up on their shoulders straight away, the rascals! Though no longer a girl she was still attractive. I remember as if it were now, her shouts and groans at those ugly faces.”

“Were you present at the sack?”

“Well, we who live here, you know, are always out on the green.”

“And you didn’t help?”

“Help who? Well m’lord, you know, so suddenly ... we had no orders, or experience ... Between doing a thing and doing it badly we thought it best to do nothing at all.”

‘Tell me, did this Sophronia lead a pious life in the convent?”

“These days there are nuns of all kinds, but Sister Palmyra was the holiest and most chaste in the entire diocese.”

“Quick, Gurduloo, down to the port we go and embark for Morocco.”

All this part I am now scoring with wavy lines is the sea, or rather the ocean. Now I draw the ship on which Agilulf makes his journey, and further on I draw an enormous whale, with an ornamental scroll and the words “Ocean Sea.” This arrow indicates the ship's route. I do another arrow showing the whale's course: there, they met So at this point of the ocean will take place an encounter between whale and ship, and as I’ve drawn the whale in bigger, the ship will get the worst of it Now I’m drawing in a crisscross of arrows to show that at this point there was a savage battle between whale and ship. Agilulf fights peerlessly and plunges his lance into the creature’s side. Over him squirts a nauseating jet of whale oil, which I show by these divergent lines. Gurduloo leaps onto the whale and forgets all about the ship, which at a whisk from the whale’s tail overturns. Agilulf with his iron armor of course sinks like a stone. Before the waves entirely submerge him he cries to his squire, “We’ll meet in Morocco! I’m walking there!”

In fact, after dropping mile after mile into the depths, Agilulf lands on his feet on the sand at the bottom of the sea and begins walking briskly. Often he meets marine monsters and defends himself against them with his sword. The only bother about armor at the bottom of the sea is rust But having been squirted from head to foot in whale oil, the white armor has a layer of grease which keeps it intact.

On the ocean I now draw a turtle. Gurduloo has gulped down a pint of salty water before realising that the sea is not supposed to be inside him but he inside the sea. Eventually he seizes the shell of a big sea turtle. Partly letting himself be drawn along, partly guiding it by pinches and prods, he and the turtle near the coast of Africa. Here they become entangled in the nets of some Moorish fishermen.

When the nets are drawn on board the fishermen see amid a wriggling school of mullet a man in soaking wet clothes covered with seaweed. “The merman! The merman!” they cry.

“Merman? Nonsense! It’s Gudi-Ussuf,” cries the head fisherman. “It’s Gudi-Ussuf, I know him!”

Gudi-Ussuf was in fact one of the names by which Gurduloo was known in the Moslem field kitchens, when unsuspectingly he crossed the lines and found himself in the Sultan’s camp. The head fisherman had been a trooper in the Moorish army in Spain, so knowing Gurduloo to have a strong body and docile mind, he took him on as an oyster fisher.

One evening the fishermen, and Gurduloo among them, were sitting on the rocky Moroccan shore opening the oysters they’d fished one by one, when from the water appeared a helmet, a breastplate, and then a complete suit of armor walking step by step up the beach. “A lobster man! A lobster man!” cried the fishermen—running away in terror to hide among the rocks.

“A lobster man! Nonsense!” said Gurduloo. “It's my master! You must be exhausted, sir, after walking all that way!”

“I’m not the least tired," replied Agilulf. “And you? What are you doing here?”

“Finding pearls for the Sultan,” intervened the ex-soldier, “as he has to give a new pearl to a different wife every night.”

Having three hundred and sixty-five wives, the Sultan visited one a night, so every wife was only visited once a year. To the one visited it was his custom to give a pearl, so that every day merchants had to supply him with a fresh new pearl. As that day the merchants had exhausted their supplies, they had recourse to the fishermen to procure a pearl at all costs.

“You who’ve managed to walk so well on the sea bottom,” the ex-soldier said to Agilulf, “why don’t you join our enterprise?”

“Knights do not join enterprises with lucre as their aim, particularly if conducted by enemies of his religion. I thank you, O Pagan, for having saved and fed this squire of mine, but I don’t care a jot if your Sultan cannot present a pearl to this three hundred and sixty-fifth wife tonight”

“We care a lot, though, as we shall all be whipped,” exclaimed the fisherman. “Tonight is no ordinary wife’s night It’s the turn of a new one, whom the Sultan is visiting for the first time. She was bought almost a year ago from certain pirates, and has awaited her turn till now. Tis improper that the Sultan should present himself to her with empty hands, particularly as she is a coreligionist of yours, Sophronia of Scotland, of royal blood, brought to Morocco- as a slave and immediately destined for our sovereign’s harem.”

Agilulf did not betray his emotion. “I will show you how to get out of your difficulty,” said he. “Let the merchants suggest that the Sultan bring his new wife not the usual pearl but a present to soothe her homesickness: the complete armor of a Christian warrior.”

“Where can we find such armor?”

“Mine!” said Agilulf.

Sophronia was awaiting nightfall in her quarters of the palace harem. From the grating of the cusped window she looked out over garden palms, fountains, alleys. The sun was setting, the muezzin launching his cry, and in the garden the scented flowers of dusk were opening.

A knock. 'Tis time! No, the usual eunuchs. They are bearing a present from the Sultan. A suit of armor. Of white armor. What can it mean? Sophronia, alone again, remains at the window. She has been there for almost a year. When bought as a wife she had been assigned the place of a wife recently repudiated, a place which would fall due again more than eleven months later. Living in the harem doing nothing, one day after the other, was even more boring than life in the convent had been.

“Do not fear, noble Sophronia,” said a voice behind her. She turned. It was the armor talking. “I am Agilulf of the Guildivern who saved your immaculate virtue once before.”

“Help!” screamed the Sultan’s wife. Then, recomposing herself, “Ah yes, I thought I knew that white armor. It was you who arrived just in time, years ago, to prevent me from being abused by a brigand...”

“Now I arrive just in time to save you from the horror of pagan nuptials.”

“Oh yes ... Always you ... you are...”

“Now, protected by this sword, I will accompany you forth from the Sultan’s domains.”

“Yes ... indeed ... of course.”

When the eunuchs came to announce the Sultan’s arrival they were put to the sword one by one. Wrapped in a cloak, Sophronia ran through the gardens by the knight’s side. The dragomen gave the alarm. But their heavy scimitars could do little against the agile sword of the warrior in white armor. And his shield sustained well the assault of a whole picket’s lances. Gurduloo was waiting behind a cactus tree with horses. In the port a felucca was ready to leave for Christian lands. From the prow Sophronia watched the palms of the beach drawing further away.

Now I am drawing the felucca here in the sea. I’m doing a rather bigger one than the ship before, so that if it does meet a whale there'll be no disaster. With this curved line I mark the passage of the felucca which I want to reach the port of St. Malo. The trouble is that here in the Bay of Biscay there’s such a mess of crisscrossing lines already that it’s better to let the felucca pass a little further out, over here, yes, over there; then what should it go and do but hit the Breton rocks! It’s wrecked, sinks, and Agilulf and Gurduloo just manage to bear Sophronia in safety to the shore.

Sophronia is weary. Agilulf decides to put her for refuge in a cave and then together with his squire go to Charlemagne’s camp and announce her virginity to be still intact and so also the legitimacy of his name. Now I’m marking the cave with a small cross at this point of the Breton coast so as to be able to find it again later. I can’t think what this line is doing passing the same place; by now my paper is such a mess of lines going in all directions. Ah yes, here’s a line corresponding to Torrismund’s journey. So the thought-laden youth is passing right here, while Sophronia lies in the cave. He too approaches the cave, enters, sees her.

10

HOW had Torrismund got there? While Agilulf was moving from France to England, England to Africa, and Africa to Brittany, the putative cadet of the House of Cornwall had wandered far and wide over forests of Christian lands in search of the secret camp of the Knights of the Holy Grail. As the Holy Order has a habit of changing its headquarters from year to year, and never makes a show of its presence to the profane, Torrismund could find no indications to follow in his journey. He wandered about at random, chasing a remote sensation which was the same for him as the name of the Grail. But was it the order of the pious Knights he was searching for, or the memory of his childhood on Scottish heaths? Sometimes the sudden opening of a valley black with larches, or a cleft of grey rocks at the end of which boomed a torrent white with spray, filled him with an inexplicable emotion which he took for a warning. "Perhaps they’re here, nearby.” And if from nearby rose the faint and distant sound of a hunting horn then Torrismund lost all doubts, and began searching every crevice yard by yard for trace of them. But at most he would run into some lost huntsman or shepherd with his flock.

On reaching the remote land of Koowalden, he stopped in a village and asked the local rustics to be so good as to give him some goat’s cheese and black bread.

“Willingly would we give you some, sir,” said a goatherd, “but see how I, my wife and children are reduced to skeletons! We have to make so many offerings to the knights! This wood is crawling with colleagues of yours, though differently dressed. There’s a whole troop of ’em, and for supplies, you know, they all come down on us!”

“Knights living in the wood? How are they dressed?”

“In white cloaks and golden helmets with two white swans’ wings on the sides.”

“Are they very holy?”

“Oh, yes they’re holy enough. And they certainly never soil their hands with money, as they haven’t a cent. But they expect a lot and we have to obey. Now we’re stripped clean, and there’s a famine. What shall we give them when they come next time?”

But the young man was already hurrying towards the wood.

Amid the fields, on the calm waters of a brook, slowly passed a flock of swans. Torrismund followed them along the bank. From among the bushes resounded an arpeggio, “Flin, flin, flin!” The youth walked on and the sound seemed at times to be following him and at others preceding him, “Flin, flin, flin!” Where the bushes thinned out appeared a human figure. It was a warrior in a helmet decorated with white wings, carrying both a lance and a small harp on which now and again he struck that chord, "Flin, flin, flin!” He said nothing. His eyes did not avoid Torrismund but passed over him as if not perceiving him, although they seemed to be following him. When tree trunks and branches separated them, the warrior led Torrismund onto the right track by calling with one of his arpeggios, “Flin, flin, flin!” Torrismund longed to talk to him, ask him questions, but instead followed, silent and intimidated.

They came into a clearing. On every side were warriors armed with lances, in golden cuirasses, wrapped in long white cloaks, motionless, each turned in a different direction with his eyes staring into a void. One was feeding a swan with grains of com, his eyes turned elsewhere. At a new arpeggio from the player, a warrior on horseback answered by raising his horn and sending out a long call. When he was silent all the warriors moved; each made a few steps in his direction and stopped again.

"Knights...” Torrismund plucked up courage to say, “excuse me, I may be mistaken, but are you not the Knights of the Grai—”

"Never pronounce the name!” interrupted a voice behind him. A knight with white hair had halted near him. “Is it not enough for you to come disturbing our holy recollection?”

"Oh do forgive me.” The youth turned to him. “I’m so happy to be among you! If you knew how long I’ve looked for you!”