Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (21 page)

“Bah,” he said, because he’d just remembered the silky, pungent perfumy stocking. “Let’s mount and begone.”

Mount her, he reflex associated. Rubbed his face again. Didn’t head for the horse. Thought about things he’d never done with a female. The memory of the stocking and the woman he’d been obsessed with plus the sight of a beautiful naked form before him conspired to pump an unbidden throb of stiffness between his legs.

He was alone there. That was the troubling point. He could do whatever he wanted. And, at his age, he could have sex with himself or another 10 times a day. He knew he came from an excessive family.

“I have a horse and weapons. I can rub my stick later.”

He started to walk to the waiting steed. Found himself turning in a hesitant circle and was looking at her again. Had some vague idea that he ought to bury her or at least cover her. After all, he was a near knight. So he went back thinking about what to cover her with.

Christian burial, he thought. If I’m indeed still a Christian…

Religion was nothing to him. He was distracting himself again from the blot of darkness he wouldn’t look directly at.

He looked at the dead or still dying man again. “You turd,” he snarled. “I’m immune to your talk.”

He considered piling stones over her. The idea of covering that exquisite body bothered him.

What would dead nether lips taste like? His mind asked. It seemed a reasonable question. Who would know?

He suddenly stepped between her splayed-out legs and began to unbutton his breeches. Then caught himself.

“What’s wrong with me?”

He turned and half-ran for the horse. With every step he wanted to go back. As he was riding away he wanted to return. He rubbed himself forward and back on the saddle.

LAYLA

I’ll find a crone and have this baby out, she was telling herself.

She’d been walking steadily on through the deep darkness among the vague shapes of trees and massive glacial stones, heading steadily, but not steeply, down.

“I hate them,” she whispered. “Oh how I hate them,” meant men. The starshine showed just enough to keep her from banging squarely into anything but she still tripped and slipped, now and then.

She didn’t realize the dawn was close until, almost imperceptibly, pale mistiness began to blur the heavens and the landscape started to materialize and show edges and differences.

She’d determined to walk until she found running water to wash in and drink and then follow down to the eventual and inevitable village where streams always led.

But suppose the old woman was mistaken and she really wasn’t pregnant? She hadn’t shown the appetite yet. It had to be very early on. She might have missed last month’s bleeding just reacting to suddenly having sex every day after months of nothing. That kind of thing had happened before. Maybe it had been so slight a staining that she’d just missed it…

Vain hopes, she thought.

The trees were getting sparse and the land was leveling out, though still rough and stony. Not farmland yet, she noted.

Ahead in the subtle exhalations of first light she saw what seemed a long, delicate spire wavering up into the sky’s softly crumbling darkness.

Where there’s a church there’s a town…

As she came closer and the light incrementally intensified, she started to think it was a ruin with just the spire itself left standing. And there were no other buildings visible yet.

She decided she could at least shelter there and there could be a well. Closer now, she saw there were no huts, not even the burnt-out husks she’d started to expect. Just a tower, poked into the earth with no trace of a church either.

Most odd… why build so far and just stop?…

She was now crossing the long grasses that surrounded the place. There was enough light now and colors showed: pale greens, powdery blue and rose sky; the dull, rough grey fieldstone of the tower.

She could see, as she circled the strange edifice, there was no sign that anyone had ever even intended to erect more than the tower because it was closed on all sides, plus no door. Yet there were slit windows, too high to reach.

“Where’s the cross?” she murmured. Never got even that far?

The clouds were pink now. A flight of crows broke over the near treeline, wings loud and sudden; circled the tower once and then went on across the already hot, steamy morning. Watching them, she nearly fell into a pit.

She caught herself and dropped to her knees to look; it looked more like a short tunnel that went under the tower wall. She hesitated. Shrugged and climbed down. At the bottom she had to crawl on hands and knees.

Inside was hot and smoky and surprisingly bright: hundreds of candles lined the intilting walls from the floor all the way to the top. Her first thought was how much work it must be to keep replacing them.

Most of the smoke went up through the steeple tip which was open. She hadn’t noticed the smoke. Smoke instead of a cross.

At first she didn’t notice someone was sitting on the floor in about the center of the room. As her eyes adjusted to the crisscrossing candlelight and shadow, she saw he was bent forward, seemed fairly old, and wore only a loincloth that left his big, round belly and thick arms and legs exposed.

She decided he was either lost in contemplation or asleep.

Maybe a hermit.

He looks like he’s never too far from food, she thought. If he’s a true man of God he’s bound to have drink too…

Being Layla, she went straight up to him. He didn’t stir or look up.

“Pardon me fellow,” she said. “I —” But he cut her off:

“These are the latter days?” he said, not looking up. His voice was ordinary save that his inflection made every statement seem a question.

“Are they? Why ask me?” she wondered.

The shadow shiftings made them both seem to blur into and out of substantiality.

“Would you be saved?”

She looked around, hands on hips.

“I’d be fed, good sir,” she said. “Who lights all these candles?”

“The living who were the dead?”

Again, she took it for a question.

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

“You are of the dead?”

“I will be if I fail to eat and drink soon.”

“Eat as you please,” he said. “There is food here to feed the still dead?”

“Fine,” she said. She stared up at the rows of candles circling towards the steepletop. “I’m afraid to ask where the food is.” Where’s the ladder to get up there? “Are you here alone, sir?” She sat down in the dry hay. Decided her appetite was a sign of pregnancy. Considered starving herself for spite.

The hay had no particular odor, which she might have found odd had she noticed it. The place seemed strangely sterile. The only real scent was waxy smoke.

“There is bread and salt meat in the cask by the wall,” she was told. “And beer too, if you thirst for it? Sleep where you please?”

“If I please,” she said. “Are you innkeeper or priest?”

“Well asked,” the pale, round, swollen-looking man said, still not looking up. His thighs were bowed and immense. He suddenly stood up. The soft, changing light made him resemble a wax figure, melting slightly. “I keep this inn for wanderers?”

She shrugged, taking it for a question again. “Don’t you know?” she asked. She got back up and started looking for the victuals. She kept half an eye cocked on him in case he should turn violent.

“Yes,” he declared, “innkeeper I am?” The days of this world are nearly done?” He folded his arms. She thought them thick as hamhocks. “Death has been seen on his stark white steed? The fell hooves are heard?”

“So you’re a priest after all,” she said, still circumnavigating the interior. “I have found no food yet.”

“The dead don’t feed?” he seemed to ask.

“Not that I’ve noticed. Or are you just telling me something?”

“I have seen the shadow of the angel’s wing? In his hand he held the vial to pour upon the waters?”

“Ah ha.”

“To turn the seas to blood? I have seen the angel of the seventh seal who will bring silence in heaven?”

She had just tripped over the cask. Inside there was cheese and bread. The bread was still moist as if fresh-baked; the cheese dry and hard but very good.

She sat and ate. He sat back down and contemplated the ground again.

“I have seen the star Wormwood?”

“I can’t find the beer,” she said.

“The world ends in the year one thousand?”

“I don’t know,” she answered what hadn’t been a question, chewing and rooting in the cask for something to drink.

“The beer is in the jug?” the seer said, not looking up.

“But what of the unbelievers with different measures of time?”

“Their reckoning is false? As is their vile faith?”

She nodded.

“So we say,” she replied. “But mayhap the world ends only for Christians?”

“Salvation is only for Christians?” he told her – or asked.

She found space between candles and sat down, leaning her back against the intilted wall.

“Lucky for us,” she said, chewing bread. “I better make sure I’m sitting under a cross on January the first.”

He shook his head.

“Neither cross,” he intoned, “nor the blood of God will avail thee aught unless thou be reborn in his light? ‘Unless thou art again born, thou shalt not enter heaven’s kingdom’” he said in Latin.

Now she sipped a little warmish ale from a clay pot she’d turned up. It was delicious. In those days every village had local brewers, usually peasant women with husbands in the fields. Sometimes the results were very good. In this case, it was more proof that there were monks or priests involved because they were, generally, the best brewers.

“And the babe born today or –” She did a rough calculation of her probable term. “– next February? Might as well never come out? Doomed?”

Touched her belly, thinking:

So now I’m just accepting it again… I’d be most blessed by blood between my legs, let alone God’s…

“Woman,” he said, “I speak not of birth in time and pain?” He pressed his short, fat hands together and lifted his face up towards the peak. “You must be reborn into true knowledge? The Antichrist is hard by the door and enters without knocking?”

“Is that why you have only a tunnel into here?” she asked to mildly mock him, now eating cheese with her ale.

He turned and looked straight at her for the first time.

“You did not find this place by chance?” he told her, looking surprised. She was getting used to his rising inflection and resisted answering the non-question. “You show quick wisdom? The knowledge is to find the womb? To find the place of salvation?”

“Find my mother’s womb again?”

He suddenly hurled himself flat on the straw-covered floor, face down. His voice was muffled and gave the impression the words were coming up from the earth.

“The tunnel reminds us of our first birth? You must find the second way?”

She sighed.

“It always comes back to you must find,” she said. “No one ever seems to have a map of anything.”

“Map?”

She took another long pull of the sweetish, satisfying brew. It got better with each swallow. She found herself taking the conversation somewhat seriously, after all.

“This tower is a lighthouse,” the muffled, earth voice said. “As when a ship is lost from port and the steersman sees the brightness in the distance over the storm waves and crushing wind and knows home and safety lies there?” He sighed, or was it the earth, she wondered, half-serious.

“As when the once-holy Jews were led through the desert of death to the land promised of God,” the ground resonated as he shouted now. “We have the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and you can be brought to safety? As when the blood of the lambs, which was even then Christ’s blood, was smeared on the Jews’ dwellings and the Angel of death passed over them, so have we the sign and place of safety and we will guide you to this place and you shall be saved?” Paused. His voice croaked again. “Yes, there is the map?”

She was lightheaded, both from drinking and exhaustion. Wanted to sleep.

“Will you?” she asked. “Will you, indeed?” My life’s miseries have grown from week to week and year to year until to live my life, take the pain and blood, you might as well try to shit out a ten-pound stone from your bunghole. Will you save me, fat monk? Why do I doubt it?”

He shouted so loud the structure seemed to shake. “Doubt or not, we will lead you there, foolish woman!?” She nodded, angry and disgusted.

“Men always know what’s best for me,” she snapped back.

“You will be saved?” he bellowed into the earth. Croaked again, a froggy bleat that seemed like a spasm. “We will pull you back from doom as one pulls a foolish child from the path of a charging horse?” The candle-lined walls actually trembled, this time.

She nodded again.

“Of course,” she muttered this time, “Whether I like it or not.” Finished the pot of ale. “Fine.” Looked at him lying flat on his face. With the hay around it his rear end rose like, she thought, a barrow from a wheatfield. All it lacked, she decided, was a circle of Druidic standing stones around his bunghole.