Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (24 page)

LAYLA

What a terrible thing. What a terrible thing. Shivering, cold, cramped in by the bars of a terrible nightmare and yet I wasn’t going to scream because there might be no way to stop myself… So I crouched until I was numb to the water and everything else, until the numbness spread into everything, until the world drowned in numbness … I didn’t want to care, so I sank with it … I’d always been in prison… He never understood that. … He never understood so many things … Even the pain of the bars became numbness too …

BEEF

Mother always said, and she said right, that father would come to a bad finish, following the moonshine on the water, and so I think he did, and I spat and swore my oath this time I’d follow him no more … No … I’d go home and set about my proper work, as any man would, and the hell with all else.

I backed my way out of that damned place and never saw a living soul the whole time. Though I heard some music, I thought, somewhere in one of the big, long halls, but I might of been mistook in my mind … sweet music, I thought it, but, bah, as if anybody was to home in that dreadful place.

Lovely tunes like in a church, faintly sounding off somewheres and very nice I’m sure but who had time for that? Get out and get back to the road, was my thought. If Veers turned up, well and good, but if not, one of us had to do a man’s duty… Think of poor Mother alone thinking God knows what with dread of us both being drowned dead.

Once outside, in God’s blessed, sweet air, I right off knew which way to walk: away! And not to look back. And I didn’t look back, I’m here to say.

Me father was a fool. I don’t know to this day now why he followed those mad noblefolk. No good was ever come of such misdreaming.

Off he went, my father, like a pig to the bleeding block and never no word of him; and once I was home safe again by the misty sea, in house, drinking hot broth and sipping ale with me feet raised, curling my toes towards the fire, mother put it best like ever she did:

“Beef,” said she, “it’s well he’s gone, if you reason it, for sooner or later that’s what it had to come to.” Trust her to see to the bottom of a thing. And one thing, I wasn’t the only one unhappy with what went on back there. No.

“Mother,” says I, “hear something then.” It was good to tell the tale by the fire, guzzling a steamy mug of fish soup. “When I come out of that damned castle —”

“Put it from your mind, son,” said she.

“That I will, Mother.” Ah, mother. “But when I come out and walked not far I heard them fussing and steaming at one another. Well, I went and listened a minute. They were near the road. All dank mist every place, so nobody saw me.

“Thank the saints,” said mother.

“And so I heard their talk. It was the one they called the witch woman and her relative, the pale little nasty nubbin of a knight. Modead, I think he were called.”

Mother nodded. “Give a wide berth to gentryfolk,” she said, setting down a trencher of hot meat.

“‘Modead,’ says the witch, ‘I’ve got a fine plan.’ ‘Plan,’ says he, ‘I want no more to do with no plans.’ So he says, mother. Well, I had to laugh, and I did so. Their voices went all faint and muffled to nothing in the mist. I knew he was trying to get away, and she was at his heels. I had to laugh.”

If madness were fish, what a place that was to cast a net, eh? What a place. Good riddance to it.

PARSIVAL

I stopped under the gate and looked up at my wife. If Jeschute hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have known.

“Layla,” I called up. She said nothing. “Layla!”

There was a face at the gates lot. A big, white face pressed close. “You,” it growled.

“I know,” I said, “my sword.”

I wasn’t shaking inside yet. That would come later. I stuck my nice blade in the running mire.

“Open up,” I said, “why keep me waiting out here?”

The gate swung to. A cluster of troops gave me the nervous study from behind their weapons. I’d almost forgotten I made men nervous because I’d been forced to perfect something I’d been too good at in the first place. That and luck (where luck is God’s hand) had left me still standing on a thousand battlefields sick with the blood smell but still standing there, and that was one more reason why I caused it all.

“Walk away from your sword,” a thin knight, all nose, demanded.

“Will she be freed, in God’s name?” I asked. I wondered if I could snatch up the weapon and dive into them before the gate could be shut. Probably not. I’d skid in the mud.

“Yes,” he said. Why not say yes?

“Yet, how can I trust you?”

The wedge of men parted and two wet, disheveled, miserable-looking girls were thrust through. My stunned and somewhat worn daughters. Christ! They stood shivering, sopping wet. What other females were yet to emerge today? My mother was dead, God rest her.

“Here is surety,” I was told.

“Go on,” I said. “Go on, Leena! Both of you. Run!” They came out to me, pale and panicked. “Father,” Leena, the elder, said. “Go to the village,” I told them. Then they were in my arms, and we all trembled together. Their smell was pleasant, almost as when they were babes. Regrets flooded me, and no rain could wash them away.

My voice nearly choked me, saying: “I love you both, my dears, my sweet dears. I love you both.” One asked about her mother, muffled into me. It didn’t matter which. We were all the same now. All one thing in fear and grief.

“She’ll be all right,” I said. Why not say it? “Go now. Go, I tell you!” Because I wanted to keep holding them. My arms didn’t want to let go. What a simple sweetness to hold them after all the twisted passions I’d known. I had caused it all, say what you please.

I turned and shoved them so that they stumbled off into the downpour, graying away as they went, blurring into mists, ghosts…

I think Jeschute was still standing there. I hoped so. I walked inside without looking back again. As they circled and herded me along without getting within arm’s length, I felt the spot of darkness in me, like a speck of ink in a clear pool. The darkness was for them. For him. Orilus.
I
love
you
both
, I thought. Yes, and Layla too. I was dying for Layla, wasn’t I? And Lohengrin. Don’t forget Lohengrin.

The spot of darkness consoled me, because I couldn’t fight back. Everything would be blotted out, in the end, so what did it matter? I had the secret of eternal void inside me. So they couldn’t touch me. Except I didn’t dare think about my family. I wanted to be with them, even for the few moments the void allowed.

“I love you all,” I murmured.

“What’s that?” jeered one of the men-at-arms, sneering across the sheeting rainfall between us. “Wants mercy, does the bastard?”

“Always curse your victims,” I said. “Makes crime more bearable.”

“What’s he say?”

More of them came out and stood around me. Now I could have used a magic sword. Oh, I might still have taken a few with me, if I had tried, but the void made it easier to submit. The blackness would well up within me soon and I’d be free of all troubles and care. The peace of utter emptiness was the only true peace. I knew that, at last. All else was woven subtly with hope, and from hope came despair and pain and ultimate defeat.

“In emptiness there’s peace,” I told them. Why not?

“You’ll soon know that,” one wag said. I was the center of fifty spears and staves and swords. Too many to bother with seriously.

Why did so many follow such a madman? I wasn’t really surprised. I’d seen enough of it. Seen little else but. The void had a balm to sooth that as well. My secret knowledge brought a slight smile to my lips.

They walked me into the old throne room where I’d last seen my mother and where (they’d told me) she’d died of grief for my going away. So there was that too, another cause, another pain for the void to sooth and smooth over until all the struggle stopped and all nature hung in perfect stillness. God was perfect stillness. I saw that clearly. God was nothingness.

The old banners hung limp and dusty. We went between the pillars and stopped, and we faced the two thrones. The armored cripple, Orilus, squatted like a toad in my father’s seat — though I’d never seen my father sit in it.

The mad knight’s whiskers poked insanely through his visor. I wondered he’d not choked to death. A perfect instrument of the void. I kept smiling.

“So, despoiler, you’re amused?” he said to me. He didn’t worry about my reply. “Strip him!” he commanded. I shrugged. None of it mattered. Just the emptiness waiting. My wife would soon join me in the perfect blank, in any case.

“Let her go,” I said, mechanically, because I was supposed to. “I never wronged you on purpose. And not in fact, either.” I’d said it. I waited while two fools cut my clothes away and stood me naked and wet in the chilly hall. “Do you mean to slay me with chills?”

The black mist was here too, lurking, forming in the corners, reaching shapeless arms around the old stonework, reaching to embrace that silly, pitiful fool on the meaningless throne. I smiled.

“We’ll take off all your skin, you creature!” Orilus promised, bouncing slightly in his seat. The chamber was dimming as the strange smoke flowed and gathered among the cobwebs and dusty, stiff, cracked pennants. I smiled. “Inch by inch and then your wife! Yes! You shall suffer! You shall suffer!”

I paid slight attention: the smoke fascinated me, because I could tell it was boiling up from the dark spot in myself. I had brought their doom to them! The void would eat us all together! I hardly noticed they’d chained me to the wall. I vaguely recalled images from long ago: playing in this room, ducking around the stonework through splashes of sunlight, faded, old sunlight … with some little girl, a cousin perhaps … hiding and ducking in and out of the brightness …

The emptiness was swallowing all of that too. As if it had never been. Lost moments. I remembered her face, small and fine. A smile and a laugh out of the fading light and it might have been one of my daughters as the mists smoked and swirled about me and I thought
No
!
No
!
Not
this
too
!
Not
everything
! I wanted to touch the little girl again. I felt the bite of chill knives on my back and heard the distant madman’s noises and then shouts and sounds and swirling darkness like a terrible whirlpool sucking me and all life and light down into nothing and I kept screaming “No!” Wanting to touch the little girl’s hand, see her sweet face that might have been my wife’s or my children’s …

I struggled then, thrashed and kicked into the walls in the shouts and yells and pain and obscurity. I was sucked down and I fell and fell endlessly into emptiness, reaching up towards the last glimmer of that wisp of golden brightness and the unmarked, untroubled face of that sweet child. Reached …

LAYLA

I wasn’t even cold anymore either. … The rain was just there … and then I was looking up into it and it suddenly wasn’t there and I thought I saw the sun or something I’m not sure what I thought I saw because of the fever you see I had fever by then and my brain spun thoughts like gray webs that didn’t mean anything … But I’m certain the rain stopped and there was the sun breaking through, just a slant, a fracture, and (with the fever) I dreamed I could touch it (whatever I imagined I was seeing that wasn’t just sweet sunlight), and I know I reached out through the top of the cage trying to touch it and heard commotion inside unless that was part of nothing as well but it seemed all noise and shouting and bangs and screams… I tried to reach it, touch it, but, obviously, I was just reaching into air between the bars …

PARSIVAL

They had me again. Even the void was a lie. There was no stillness and peace at the heart of that swirling darkness. They had me, coming out of the smoke, appearing and vanishing, snarling faces full of fangs, ripping my flesh from my bones, little demons, cripples, big, fat brutes, hard, keen-eyed knights of the table round … They all had me. The pain and fog and madness had me …

I was being ripped apart, and so I ripped back and then I could move again — except I didn’t move myself. The darkness sucked and whirled me around, filled me with strange power, while my enemies were blown like leaves around me. They were all caught and doomed too; a dwarf lunged for my legs and the smoky power swung my arms and he fell … next a stone pillar was blown past. … next a crippled little monster with a toothy mouth on both sides of his skull and the power smashed him too … and then a tall knight wearing a silver crown whose eyes were blank metal and the power ripped his armor like skin and tossed him howling into clouds of fury … a naked witch sprang up flaring evil fires from her ears and nose. She was chaff too, though my blows missed her … I kept spinning and striking, filled with icy force, on and on as the whole misty world spun too, choking everything into utter, coal-dust darkness … and I believed I would spin endlessly into a nightmare eternity, the void a lie, annihilation a lie … And then a wan of brilliant, golden brightness slammed into me…