Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (17 page)

I felt my life and saw and sensed a power latent in the very texture and fabric of the substance the mind weaves images from. Sensed that if I could shape that subtle stuff while fully awake, then I could shape solid things as well.

I was afraid, but fascinated.
Feel
yourself
, the unvoice commanded.
Touch
what
you
actually are
.
Aim
your
sloppy
willpower
.

And I grasped that the will was tangible (not merely a quality of concentration) and you could reach out and touch things with it.

These
extremes
are
necessary
because
you
have
so
little
time
left
to
do
what
you
must
do
.
The
work
you
have
neglected
disastrously
long
.
Hear
me
,
Parsival
!

I felt I understood. Tried to understand, anyway. Tried … willed myself (I believed) back into my body but the other vision remained. I had eyes and ears again and the other, dreamish, sight.

I could move. Things kept happening: roaring sounds, ripping ripplings in the world’s substance … The lava and dense stone rippled so that I seemed to see ahead into utter darkness and time and space … Then the rocks would close again … And I think I picked her up with the sword in one hand and her soft, light body under the other arm, found or somehow created a bridge to the far side of the cavern (the wizard unspeaking dim approval) and ran or perhaps leaped or flew across it to the next tunnel … Perhaps all and perhaps none of it happened that way …

Then the roaring ceased and I was leaning, weak and vague, on the wall with Morgan standing beside me. She seemed impressed.

“I see,” she said, at length. That was more than I could say.

“You’re in advance of me.” The strange perceiving had withdrawn. I still held the golden sword. The hand that held it was hard to flex. It wanted to stay locked to the hilt. “Where are we now?”

“Under the channel sea. I know the way from here.”

“Amazing. What did I just do?”

“Weren’t you paying attention?”

“Weren’t
you
?”

She was already moving ahead. The tunnel ran dead straight with faintly glowing spots here and there. “Bring the weapon,” she said. “We’re going to need it.”

“Was I outside of myself?” I was stunned and wanted answers.

“Are you inside now?”

“What does that mean?”

She glanced over her shoulder.

“Stop asking senseless questions, Parsival, and come along. Merlin did you a favor and made my work harder.”

I was coming along. What choice? I rested the bare blade over my shoulder. “Work?” I said. “To rule a lost world,” she said. I really was starting to like her. Her boyish quality. She was wiry, secret, strong, and profoundly uninnocent. I kept thinking about that. The devil of lust. Good day, sir.

“I’d just like to get home,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s become like winning a world.”

I smiled and meant it. I was feeling more myself and trying to repress the foggy, feverish images. But I’m a better person, frankly, when I’m frightened and guilty. Once I relax, I want to sin on the spot. I wanted to push recent events down into my foggy depths. I gave it my best. “Tell me,” I said, “why have you no lovers?”

She liked that tack. “Are you applying for the work?” she asked me.

We moved quietly through the underwater glow from the wide-set stones. The dull red showed like heat in her hair and strange, lost, willful eyes.

“So, it’s available?” I reacted.

“Who knows?” she shrugged. “Unless we meet some honey sweet young ladies along the way, hm?” She was mocking me for my taste. I liked that. “I’m tired of the straight path,” I said, shaking my head. “Lead me back to torturous ways.”

The fact is, I wanted to touch her, create more familiar problems to distract me from wizardry and ghosts and burning visions.

“Ah.”

“Seem I so faithless?” I wondered.

“Not you, sir, me.”

I raised my eyebrows. That was something to think about. Interesting. I stopped. She stopped. Amused. Watching my expression in the dull red light.

“You like sweet ladies?” I asked her.

She shrugged.

“Who knows?”

She touched my lips with two fingers. That was all.

“Well,” I said.

“Court me,” she suggested.

“Interesting idea,” I agreed, following, after a moment.

HOWTLANDE

We came above ground somewhere in a mass of woods beside a road. The area looked familiar. Gobble told me we were near the castle where the Grail was supposed to be hidden. I felt like a mole. The fresh air was an indescribable delight.

Sure enough, a quarter of a mile on, at sunset, we topped a hill and were looking down at the place. I saw dozens of fires and a mass of men. An army was encamped, investing the fortress.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Our forces,” Gobble said, bobbing with satisfaction. “We take no chances this time.”

“How do we know this is truly the Grail castle?” He grinned. Small teeth flashed in the waning light. “There is more than one,” he said. “The master has perceived their plans. They move it about like squirrels bearing nuts. Yes, yes, and by seasons and time to enhance its virtue.”

“Part of a ritual, eh?”

He grunted.

“This time we’ll raze the place if need be.” His bony fists clenched small and hard. “When they come we’ll take the spear and then we’ll soon have it all and nothing in the visible or invisible worlds can check the master’s will!” He paced like a mechanical doll at a fair.

The little men in their black harness may have been listening intently or simply watching his gesticulations. All his nervous energy seemed to be bursting from him. His voice went shriller, and I wished I knew if we were on the eve of triumph or lunacy.

“Well,” I began. “The new gods shall walk among men,” he whispered, teeth flashing, as if he were enraged against the sunset that smoldered behind the hills. The shadow of the castle stretched across the valley floor. What a beautiful country, so fresh and richly luscious. What kind of creatures were these who so willingly crept about in the dank innards of the earth when the surface was so sweet to sight and scent? Let me just rise until I ruled a small kingdom here and I might rest content to the end of my days. At least I felt so at those fine moments. I barely heard Lord Gobble’s speech and invocation.

“… and so, we shall clean the world and purge away the useless creatures and make space for the coming race that even now is being bred in the depths of the deepest caverns!”

I had never marked him so happy. Perhaps it was the fine evening, the first clear scent of autumn on the valley winds.

LOHENGRIN

We landed as if by enchantment. We rode the tide into a great river (probably the Thames) and beached without incident. A bright, hazy sky, mist along the marshes. You could mistake it for no other country. A few miserable huts on a promontory upriver; the chittering of a grayish, ill-omened bird of the mudflats.

The lanky seafarer and his lumpish son crawled off the raft beside me and young, bedraggled Chael.

“We’re all living,” I said.

“You deserted your father,” Veers said. “Maybe he’s dead.” Sullen bastard. What a nice, simple way to look at life.

“He’s done me the same favor nine hundred times,” I responded.

“I’m hungry,” complained Chael. Whenever Morgan wasn’t around, she relaxed and showed a whiney side.

“Peace,” I told her. “Soon we’ll eat.”

“Eat what?” she wanted to know.

“Are you ready for the outdoor life?” I wondered, heading up the muddy bank into the reeds. I had to ease my bladder. “I was well brought up,” she said. “My mother was a fine lady. “

I kept my back to her, looking over the tops of the reeds across a flat stretch of marsh. Smoke rose from one of the huts. I thought I could smell meat broiling.

Veers stood near me, similarly occupied. I heard the spatter of it on the mud. Beef dragged himself farther inland and squatted down.

“You’re a true bastard,” the seaman told me. His stare was cold. That amused me. Did it matter what he thought? He couldn’t do much about it, and, anyway, I was supposed to be a knight — why I’d leapt on the back of my horse clad in full harness and spent the night watching my sword and pretending not to doze meanwhile thinking about going quietly mad with boredom or the various things I might someday do to women of choice. I could kill the baseborn bastard and not have to answer to anybody, really. But I never took that side too seriously, because I was baseborn myself, having his nobleness for a father …

“In this world,” I replied, “if you can’t make a thing happen, you might as well carve curses on latrine walls.” I grinned.

“You enjoy yourself,” he went on, “you disrespectful —”

“Christ’s hind end,” I said, impatient, “are you a pardoner now by trade?”

“I’ll pardon you, son,” he told me.

“— I’m really tired,” she put in, “and must eat soon or faint away.” Beef broke nice wind up ahead. That set me laughing as I closed up my front. I pointed to the huts. “We’ll get a feeding yonder,” I said, resting the disputed spear over my shoulder. I’d managed to keep it as if it really meant something. I grinned at Veers. “You can come along,” I offered, “but, pray, relent your moral strictures.” That was telling him neat.

Beef sighed and re-echoed in fluent flatulence. A peerless winder.

Chael looked poor. Stringy hair, pale face, chapped lips. Oh, I’m too critical, I know. My stars show that. But she kept biting the inside of her cheek and I mistook it for a tic.

“Are you going to be able to lead us from here?” I wanted to know.

She looked cranky.

“I know not,” she said. “I’m faint and starved and sick from the sea.” I thought about putting her back on board and kicking the sticks out to sea again. But I just smiled. I’m a knight, as I said before.

“You’ll feel better, my sweet lady,” I assured her.

Her reddened eyes weren’t seeing me. She knew she had the edge now. Hugged herself. The seaman was watching us, waist deep in the reeds.

“I think I have a fever,” she said.

Veers chuckled, with too much space between the gargling sounds. I sighed. I’d come too far. I’d carry her if need be. I was tired of going home with nothing. I wasn’t planning on going home either.

“You look wonderful,” I said. The son was saying something to the lanky father. I kept my back to the pair. Kissed her damp forehead. “You’ll be well and right, I promise.” Thinking how later I’d break that spindly bastard in half.

PARSIVAL

We walked for days through monotonous tunnels. She said there were markings that told direction. Apparently all Britain was honeycombed by these ancient passageways. Those who knew the secrets could creep around like wily moles. It was a pleasure I would pass on anytime.

We ate dried wayfood, slept now and again. I was too weary to worry about courting her. That could wait until we found a haymow. Or a bed. Ah, a bed. What a sweet idea. But I gradually lost focus on that, which commonly happens when nothing much happens until, at last, you just hope the subject won’t come up again …

At least we’d run out of hot chambers and magic swords. We chatted a bit. I found out a few things, among others that might have been lies. I don’t say they were lies, mind. She hated Arthur. But I knew that, though I didn’t know how much. I didn’t hate him, but I didn’t (as she knew) love him either. She felt that Modred, her odd son, was the rightful heir to the throne. I didn’t care. We chatted. Modred represented the old ruling blood. I didn’t see why Arthur had different blood but … she really hoped to restore some peculiar, visionary kingdom. She was sincere, but most of them were. Good or bad, mad or partly sane, they generally meant what they did. I knew a man who sat in the sun staring at a blank wall all day, talking to nothing, and he meant every moment of it.

I think she liked me, in the end. But nothing was going to stand in her path that she could kick aside or stomp flat in the dust.

We were finally heading for the surface up a twisting set of oversized steps that ached my back to climb. I wanted to just sleep by then. She had the fanatic’s tireless advantage.

“Why did you capture me?” I suddenly asked her.

She was just ahead, but I saw the angle of her smile. “I could have you now, save that bastard wizard made you too strong.”

She wanted to think so. I wanted to let all that go. The golden sword thrust through my belt was behaving itself. No visions, no scary soul-bendings. I saw daylight ahead, leaking down in faint, welcome driblets and spatters. The rough stone gave way to a smooth, fitted flooring. We’d come up in a castle.

“You will draw the Grail to you,” she said.

“Has it legs?”

“Or you to it.” She shrugged.

We reached a massive door. The handles were immense.

“Why do you insist on this nonsense?” I wanted to know.

“A fat man cannot see his feet because his body is too gross.” That cleared up nothing. “What?” She tugged the door with both hands and it smoothly swung open.

“Yet his feet are there,” she said.

We were in a cobwebbed hall. The light was gray and faint.

“This is my son’s home,” she informed me as we passed through a smaller way into a well-appointed chamber with a laden table and servants just setting down a vast boar. Around the table were several knights and ladies, and a small, bony, red-faced priest, who was just flicking his hands in benediction over the victuals.

“I thought he was your nephew,” I commented, spotting Modred. I’d seen him before. Sallow, fleshy-faced, he’d been backing away from Arthur across the brilliant green jousting field, his helmet off, his golden armor battered and muddy, holding his broken lance as if it made a difference. He’d been knocked flat by Galahad. Arthur was cursing the young man steadily, while Modred (whom we all believed to be his son by some unknown paramour) raged back: “It’s my kingdom! Give me what is mine!”

And Arthur:

“I’ll give you three foot of steel, you limp-livered, hollow-brained, worthless, woman-like —”

“I’ll have what’s mine!” the boy spit. “I’ll have it and hold your head on a pikestaff!”

There’s nothing like real family feeling to touch my heart. He hadn’t been back to Camelot since then and small loss to us all.

“He thinks he’s my nephew,” she said.

Modred was rising, startled. His guards came to the ready.

“You obviously don’t set him at ease,” I commented. The runtish prelate had stopped intoning and looked distressed. “Modred,” she said, “my love.”

“Cursed witch,” the priest put in. Modred gestured caution at him.

“Dear Aunt,” he said. Waited.

She stopped at the head of the table. The crisped boar was steaming in its fats. Less and less did I like meat, as the years wore on. But it smelled rich and good.

I had to admire her force and energy. After what we’d come through, there she stood, hands on hips, challenging the hall:

“Are your balls still hanging?”

He frowned.

“What do —” he broke off.

“Would you like a kingdom still?”

“Cast this black-souled woman from you,” expostulated the priest. “Is Arthur dead?” Modred asked, hopefully. I grinned. “How did you get past my guards?”

“Trouble yourself not,” she suggested. “Gather your men and march for victory, with me. As I promised, you will sit on the throne.”

The priest started a new protest, but Morgana snarled and tried wriggling her fingers at him. She had better success this time. The skinny, red-faced man went pale and clutched his throat. He gasped as if gripped by unseen hands.

I had an odd sense that I could have done the same thing myself. A feeling I let pass.

“Silence until I bid you speak,” she ordered. “The old power has you, priestling of Rome.” The fellow sat down, wheezing air back into his tortured lungs. Then to Modred, who’d gone thoughtful, she said: “Gather men-at-arms and all the knights you can. We will strike such a blow as Arthur and his soft lords can never rise from.” She was happy as a cat with a crippled bird. “And,” she whispered, “we will check the real enemy too.”

*

That night I saw my first bed in what seemed a decade. I couldn’t wait to shed armor and leap naked like a swimmer into the softness of linen and satin and light fur.

Modred and his master of deep wisdom had pondered me during the meal. I simply drank and ate until my brain gradually died and I dozed in my wooden seat like a great lord.

I dimly remembered them talking with Morgana at some vague point.

“He serves the false king, does he not?”

Morgana:

“Whose hand is on the handle claims the sword, nephew.”

The golden one was in my belt. Ah, we expected great things of it. As in so much else, what, exactly, was unclear.

Then later, swimming in bed, adrift in the mind’s sea on waves of wine, I hit a reef. Thrashed. The reef had arms, legs, and a smooth, hard belly … the reef was embracing me. I smiled like a babe and murmured and let myself enjoy what was very likely a dream … except it suited me, it was my kind of relationship, whatever it was …

Hot blue eyes swam in and out of focus … pale, delicate skin … ah, as always, I was never really conscious for anything important …

Nice things happened: fingers and mouth … astonishing things . . . things that flowed smooth as waves into other things …

Each time I woke to take it in, the candlelit chamber, the pale bedclothes, the shadowy figure sighing in my arms, each time I sank instantly back into my private world of private ghosts and altered memories …

And then a shock of something wrong, my hand reached out beside myself and yet touching myself, my own swollen and raging sex … I woke and didn’t wake and tumbled and kissed her small, hard, yet resilient breasts … But I felt the form of a man beside me, if it wasn’t myself. Yet I couldn’t lift my head high enough from sleep’s tide to understand the mystery, so I lay afraid in the eye of ecstasy …

Dawn was cool and bright, and the bed was empty around me. By the time I put water on my flushed face and bread in my belly and armor on my back, the troops were already banging, clinking, marching out of the castle. And the mystery of last night was lost in the mists of my brain.

By the time I arrived in the yard, Morgana was mounted. She smiled faintly at me. “How slept you, Parsival?” she asked. Troops crunched along the road. Morgana had her little army. Modred watched me blearily. The runtish clergyman sat a black, bent-legged mount. He wore light mail and was grimly pondering a small crust in his red, soft fist.

I shrugged.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “And you?”

She was almost merry. I tried to remember more details, but the images were drowned in darkness and fog. “I’m reserving judgment,” she said.

I know these roads, I thought: the vine-choked interstices of rock ledge and dense, small, spiny trees where trails twisted and doubled and redoubled. This was worse than the woods I’d crossed with Morgan’s supposed sister. Supposed because Morgana had never really answered the question.

“Was she your sister?” I’d asked, while we walked underground.

“Did you love her?” she returned.

“I murdered her. Thanks to your inane plotting.”

“You wrong me in this. “

“Was she?”

“Ah. Was she. And is Arthur my brother and Modred my son?”

“The fat one and the cripple said they had an arrangement with you.”

“You saw what sort of arrangement that must have been.”

“Did I?”

“To wipe my hind with goose down?” She’d chuckled and changed the subject. Well, truth is not on the map. It’s never on the map. I’d definitely been in these woods before. As a boy. Seventeen years old. Of course. Lost and wandering, on the advice of a bald wizard and a strange fisherman I’d seen in a skiff on a lake that had to be nearby, if I was right.

We climbed gradually across the grain of the screened undergrowth, walls, and gullies. Hundreds of foot soldiers and a company of about thirty-five knights. Enough to make an impression in most circles.

If I recalled correctly, we’d soon come to a wide, deep rutted road at the crest of this tangled, rounded, surprisingly large hill.

The men labored on through the mild, thinly bright afternoon, horses rolling, slow, subdued, the priest scowling at the cross in his fist.

Yes, there I was, actually back on the march to the mysterious castle. I tried not to think about it. The wide road was full of small trees. We swooshed slowly through them while the sun rolled over the top and down the sheer slope of heaven’s dome. We climbed. By the time we reached the top of the hill and looked down the backslope over dense waves of blue-green pines at the big castle, long shadows were cutting up the landscape.

I’d managed to go in a circle again. Life had me chained to a mill.

Modred seemed nervous. “The place looks forsaken,” he said.

If any of us had known what was waiting, we would have quietly fled, I think. Morgana had just deployed the troops for the march to the gate. Trust her to keep things ordered and moving along. “It is,” she said, “and isn’t. I doubt we’ve beaten our fellow-seekers here. Not all of them.”

“What godless mission is this?” the stunted Reverend Father wanted clarified. His small eyes watched her with unwavering malice.

“Number seven,” I said. “What’s that?” he asked me. I was watching the treetops below pushed by slow winds. Morgana didn’t look at the priest. “You’re here to bless our deeds,” she told him. “Therefore be still until we do them.”

“Do they need blessing?” Modred asked.

“This is the holiest quest in Christendom,” she said.

“Ha,” said the priest. “That’s fine coming from a heathen witch.”

She laughed and gestured the men to advance. No one objected.

“All the more need for you, Father,” she told him. Then to her son or nephew or whatever he was: “Modred, my sweet boy, within those walls lies treasure and a weapon to make you master of this island.”

It was wonderful how men liked to believe such things. In the face of all facts.