Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (3 page)

Morgana plucked at me, softly.

“Come,” she said. “Now.”

She tugged me along the tapestries as the rest banged on in milling confusion. I groped into what had suddenly, (as if in a dream) become a slanting tunnel with damp, bare, cobbled walls and floor.

“Interesting,” I remarked. “What next?”

She stopped and turned to me. We were suddenly kissing. The soft, soft hands flowed sweetly over me. I held her with my empty hand. I was getting dim flashes of intelligence now.

“You knew they were waiting for me, didn’t you?” I asked her. She was rubbing into me, ever so slightly, as if I tried to hold a perfumed cloud. Very heady. She was designed for my special faults.

“Lord God,” she sighed, moving her amazing mouth across my chest and belly, “you rend my soul …”

“I’m just standing here,” I just managed to say.

“Poor Parsival.”

“Come on,” I said, lifting her. It was now or never. “Tell me more stories. “

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Dung and daydreams. What do you really want with me?”

“You,” she whispered. I felt her trembling a little.

“What do you want?” I kept my mind away from how she’d felt. “Stop trying to fool me.”

“I think I want to kill you,” she said, breathing hard.

That worried me: maybe I’d murdered some relative or lover. You never know, once you start slaying people, who’s going to object.

“Are you really Morgana?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m not that old and I don’t age much.”

“Why would you —”

“Because I love you,” she cut me off. “You bastard.”

“Are you —”

“Yes,” she snapped. “You bastard.”

“But —”

“Yes. I want the Grail, too. I never meant to love you.” I felt her shrug. We started walking again. In silence and blackness. I groped with the broken sword. This way had to be wrong. All ways had to be wrong.

“All right, “I finally said. “What do you want from me?”

“Hm,” she replied, unhelpfully.

“What should I do?”

“About what?”

“The Grail … anything?” The benefit of the doubt. Another weakness of mine.

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

“You expect me to solve your puzzle?” She sighed again. She seemed numb. “It’s like an enchantment,” she said. “I’m … I keep wanting you … Still, I must have the Grail.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’ll share the power with you.” She seemed pained to say these things. “I’ll find a way … you could be King …” I raised both eyebrows in the darkness. “This is like a minstrel’s tale,” I said. “An old one, at that.”

“I’ll find a way …” I felt her grip my arm. “You swear you don’t remember seeing the Grail?” It seemed so important to her. Her voice held me by the shoulders. “It would be so much better …”

“Don’t you mean easier?”

She sighed. “I confess. I was using you. I didn’t mean for this to happen to me. But it’s happened and I don’t want it or like it much, sir, yet I can do nothing to stem it.”

“That sounds right,” I said.

“And there’s more.” She was whispering again. “I am not good to love nor be loved by. Not good.”

“Is that a warning? A curse?” And then the blade sparked as I walked into a wall. I felt the cool stones. It seemed a dead end. Appropriate.

A mass of stone crashed down, blocking the way back. I hardly had to crack my sore skull again to prove it.

“Christ’s molars!” I raged. I’d hit the wound. What felt like hot oil filled my head. My breath sobbed. I knew she was on the other side. I yelled; my voice was too loud and yet dead in the stone space. I leaned there for a few minutes, I suppose. As soon as the pain was merely unbearable, I groped around the small, utterly unlit space.

I was ready to start worrying.

“Damn it!” I yelled. “Stop this crap!” Maybe those were magic words. I heard a rumble, a scrape, and felt a draught. The wall had obviously opened.

I didn’t know whether I was going backward or forward, but I hefted the sword stub and hoped for someone to hit with it. Suddenly the darkness opened onto a wider, echoing space. And there was a rich, golden brilliance across a tremendous, empty hall. I thought it was the sun, a door out. I ran for it. I really wanted to be outside. I made some vows about going straight home, reforming myself, and so on … About five paces away, I realized it was a door shaped, faceted mirror of beaten gold set with oil lamps under a tall painting of a mounted knight wrestling with a formless, scaly, tufted, spectral beast. Three steps and the floor was gone; I treaded air; the light flew up and vanished. Too bad I hadn’t made out what the man was fighting. Even falling into nothingness I knew a message when I saw one.

Like so much else, the bottom was cushioned. I never learned by what. I groped to my feet among damp, soft heaps which might have been furry bodies or mildewed hides … I tried the magic words again.

“Damn it! Stop this crap!” My voice fell flat. I twisted myself around, hoping I’d heard an answer or even an echo, then saw it: a luminescent, slender woman’s shape across the cavernous room. Strained and strange from the darkness, I accepted that she was made of light and wondered how such flesh would feel.

I staggered to her, and found myself leaning on what turned out to be daylight spraying through loosely set planks: a door cut out to trace a female form. The portal that wasn’t a woman swung outward and I winced into a flood of sunshine. I wandered forward, weeping and blinking …

… into a walled garden where massed flowers broke in billows and fountaining gushes higher than my head: rippling roses; spurts of lily; foaming daffodils glowing in the afternoon in slow luxury as the sun pressed sweet upon my naked body. Even the walls ran blossoms like a waterfall. The air seemed thick with color. I sighed and let tension flow from me; it was as if I’d stepped through time and was seventeen again, wandering in unending wonder.

“Knight, knight,” a weird, nasal, high pitched voice cried out from behind the blurs of a six-foot, cresting pink bloom. As I blinked and adjusted, the fuzziness flashed and sharpened. A new joke. How would a stranger know that a practically nude man dangling a shattered weapon was a knight?

“Knight, knight,” I echoed, waiting for more.

“I beseech you.”

“You too?” I peered through the flowers where cool shadows were fractured by bright sunshafts. A long, floppy gown and knee-length tresses were visible through the leaf netting.

“For shame, knight, to mock a poor woman. Know you not this be sacred ground?”

“Have saints made water on it?”

“This is the garden of the Holy Grail!”

“How wonderful. And you’re the deadly keeper.”

“Jest not, foolish man.” Her voice kept cracking.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said across the web of light, stem and thistle. I was working my way through the dense brush. Not easy, naked. The lady backed into a mass of sunflowers so that by the time I emerged into the lane of lush billows she was gone. “Beseech me some more. I love it.”

“The Grail is held in vile thrall,” said the voice from the bushes. “The evil keeper stifles its virtues and holds the world dark. “

“Ah ha.”

“Find the Grail and protect it! This is God’s will, Parsival!” A crashing crunch behind me. The keeper of the Grail, I thought and then saw it was the keeper of the bulk and the wind: Howtlande himself puffing through a field of blue and white that flowed across his bright silver suit like water. His helm was on, but open, and he kept winking at me, immediately talking — no, still talking.

“… a man of sense and imagination, like yourself, not to mention real sensitivity, must appreciate the situation, sir. Those people. That witch, all degenerates, sir. All. I threw my lot in with them purely from necessity.” He stopped and stood, gleaming and winking. “There’s a peerless treasure here, and that crippled, fanatical little bastard wants it all for his poisonous master. But,” he lifted a steel-gloved hand in a pointless gesture, “you and I, sir, are men of sense and sensibility. Morgana merely wants to destroy her brother. But you and I —” he gestured with vacant intimacy.

“Never mind that. Where is she?”

“A scheming, treacherous head, my dear Parsival.”

“Spare the opinions,” I snapped, pointing my broken sword at him. “I want to find her.”

“Go carefully,” he solemnly advised, shaking his round head. “There is more here than you guess.”

“That’s nothing new. How did you get here?”

“We fought free.” He shrugged. “I think they were the same men we battled last night, when you were struck down.” I was thinking. She was behind my saddle as I fought. Could she have … I stopped the idea short. “We went back the other way, Gobble and I, and he said we’d have to try the garden.”

“Why?”

“Morgana hoped you’d know the tunnel route. The short way. She says there’s an entrance here,” gestured wide, “but the dread keeper,” and looked behind with a trace of unease, “haunts these lovely paths. Morgana has tried before, remember. But we can beat the pair of them, Parsival.” His eye couldn’t help itself; it winked again.

“How exciting,” I said. I wondered if even he really knew what he believed and meant. What were they trying to do with me? I was angry and nervous. I wanted to see her for one too many reasons, the worst one foremost.

“She followed you from Camelot. That was no chance meeting, sir. Gobble tracked her, and I came behind the pair of them.” That was about what I’d expect from them, I thought. He seemed well-pleased with himself now. “They think the Grail will show itself to you here. By means of magic. Morgana has searched many times and so she sent … er, rather, came herself. Neither of them can be trusted.” Nodded heavily, squinted. I frowned at nothing in particular. “I speak true.” I worked the frown some more to see what else might emerge. He had to be sweating under his iron shell. “They mean to use magic on you again.”

“Again?”

“They’ve already tried.”

“I’m too old to shock.” After all these years, people still followed me around looking for the fulfillment of hopeless dreams. Incredible. “What’s
your
big idea? Don’t be afraid to speak up now, I pray you.” Sarcasm had become my sole balm.

“I’ve studied this thing,” he explained, forgetting even to wink in his intensity and sincerity. He was really afraid of me. Men were while women laughed. “The Grail
is
power, yes. The disciples of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he crossed himself with hypocritical fluidity, “needed to secure some of the wealth they were garnering and conceal it from the Romans.” His eyes shrank to dark slits. The sun was getting uncomfortable on my shoulders as it slanted down. “They were enterprising men in those times, men with scope and —”

“
Say
something!”

“What? The Grail, you see,” he said, pointing a stubby finger like an ironclad doctor of philosophy, “the Grail is a cup of the most precious jewels of the ancient world! Daughters of kings gave all that they had to follow Him! His own advice, sir.” He grinned. No improvement. “The rarest pearls and emeralds and rubies of that sumptuous Herodic age, sir.” Bobbed his head with satisfaction. “You and I, eh? I have plans, you see, sir,” gestured, “great plans —”

“What do you think I’ll remember?” I suddenly just wanted to leave. I’d been snatched up on the road by a demented crew. They were all mad, but no madder than the kings and lords and every other crackpate I’d met and yes, no madder than me, if it came to that. “Where’s my gear?”

“I don’t know, Parsival. She took it somewhere.”

Something moved in the crest of gold and green where the strange woman had vanished. “Who was that repulsive lady?” I wondered.

“Which?”

“With the dreadful voice.”

“Where?” He had no idea.

“She’s still creeping around, I think.” The bushes moved.

“Excuse me,” I said, reaching and swishing out his sword and handing him the broken one. I wondered if he’d take it. He did.

I limped toward the movement, cursing the twisted Gobble and his ragged teeth. The foot wound was sore and swelling.

“Are you with me?” Howtlande asked my back.

“Of course!” I exclaimed with wasted irony. “Christ, I’m with everybody!”

“I’ll wait here, in case they come this way. Once we find the Grail we’ll elude them both. Morgana swears it’s hidden somewhere under this garden. The old man they tortured mentioned it, I suppose.”

I took a narrow path between mountainous waves of flowers, dazzling in the stippled sun. In a few steps I was lost in a perfumed silence. I felt clean and strangely young; if a way had opened I would have just gone on without concern for all absurd plots and obsessions. I was hungry too, and a little lightheaded.

The odd lady blocked the trail, standing in a billow of gray gown that flapped as if hung out to dry under the listless, drooping, lifeless hair. She was covered with facepaint; in the shreds of sunlight, it seemed a disease of the flesh; caked, runny, and cracked, hot pinks, dark reds, mud, pale packings — a death mask clinging to the narrow head. She reached, and rested one skinny hand on my chest. Clammy. I could feel the little bones. I resisted shoving her away; that’s called chivalrous training.