The Grail War (28 page)

“I cannot …” she said after a pause.

He reined up and waited. Her palfry halted beside him.

Helmetless, he looked at her, concentrated on her eyes. She was haggard, sad, windblown, but beautiful: soft, full lips, a speck of peeling, a faint streak of mud dried on her cheek, eyes like (he thought) a sunny summer glade … He reached out as from far away to relish the softness of her cheek with bare fingers …

“I love you, Unlea,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she said. She shut her eyes. “When you touch me …” She gave a little flutter of a gesture. “When you touch me, I … I can do nothing …”

“Then I won’t release you.”

She seemed to silently plead while nuzzling his palm with her lips, and her arms came up to take his shoulders.

“Oh,” she said, tearful, “you bastard …”

“No,” he said.

“Please.”

“No. No, I cannot. Don’t you see that?”

Because everything was in this. He didn’t care how he bound her because He knew the end would prove itself with lucid, simple beauty and peace. The idea of being alone now terrified him. He didn’t know what he’d do … didn’t know …

“I cannot let you go,” he said. “I cannot …”

She wept, silently, nuzzled his hand, tender and miserable.

That night when he slipped under the quilts (that were beginning to need washing) in the uncertain light of a single candle, she kept her back to him. He moved into her warmth and lightly bussed her shoulder.

“Mmm,” he murmured, stroking her long, bare arms and back. She didn’t respond.

“Where are we going tomorrow?” she asked palely.

“Are you ill, love?” He was concerned.

“I think not.”

“Your voice …” He broke off. He had never known a woman so rich with luster and life, and day by day she seemed to be fading. Rain was suddenly drumming on the tent roof and he sighed a curse. “Again,” he muttered. “I’m grown weary of the sound.” He frowned, thought fleetingly of Prang, Lohengrin … his dead wife and daughter … Gawain … Bonjio … He moved restlessly. He recalled he’d meant to ask Prang if he’d been at the tent flap several nights ago … realized it was impossible, at the same time … no doubt a vision from sleep …

“Parsival,” she said quietly, “where will we go to tomorrow?”

“Onward,” he replied, pulling her closer to him, putting his hand over her breasts, almost roughly.

“Have a care,” she said, “you’re pinching.”

He relented, then turned her around in his arms, untwisted her nightdress, and reached between her legs. He poked, not ungently. He found her wet enough and was puzzled and relieved. Her arms, almost unwillingly, came up around him.

“I cannot help but be your whore,” she said flatly.

He stopped.

“That’s no pleasure to hear,” he told her.

“I’m sorry,” she said and kissed him. “I know you love me.”

“Unlea,” he said, narrowing his eyes, as if his expression would reinforce his moderate conviction, “hear me well. We make our way to London town and from there take ship to Brittany. I’ve been working out the plan of it. From there — ”

“We have no silver and gold,” she broke in.

“What? I thought … ?

“I gave the few coins I had to the guards to seal their lips. I’m no thief to steal more from him I wronged.”

“Wronged … ?” He sighed. “Say no more to me. I’ll find what we need.” He sat up, the covers falling away from his bare torso. He stared at the steady candle flame. The rain rattled steadily. Small leaks broke out here and there. He could hear the pit-pit-pit on the damp rug. He sighed. “I’ll — ”

“How?” she wanted to hear, rolling over again so her back was to him and the slight illumination.

“I don’t know yet,” he said impatiently. “Trouble me no more, woman.”

Silence, except for the rain and dripping … She turned onto her back again, restlessly … sighed …

“I’m miserable,” she said, rolling her head on the stained satin pillow. “I’m so miserable …”

“Things will be good,” he insisted, looking down into her face now. “You love me. You said you love me.”

“Yes,” she returned, “yes … ”

“Then what?
What
!” He felt haggard in the faint, wavering stain of flame color. She kept her profile to him. “Tell me!”

“I know not,” was the best she could do. She was weeping again.

He was baffled, maddened almost. He took her by the shoulders, saw her wince with pain. He held hard, anyway.

“Are you content?” she asked him, face turned away.

“What …? I … ?” His eyes tracked back and forth. “How could I be? With you as you are … But it will be good, we have to
try
… I … I
know
it will be good …”

Her eyes came to his at last. They seemed a little frightened. She said nothing through her parted lips, then went between his legs, gripped his sagged flesh, kneaded it, shut her eyes, as if on all facts and fears and waking things, because her face seemed asleep to him, lost in the faint flame, warm-edged shadows. Both her hands now worked together and he grew and firmed under her touch and she soothed: “Peace, my love … peace … peace, my sweet love …”

And he let himself fall back with his face by her heels and he held both her feet, biting his lip, rolling his eyes, body arching rigid as her burning hands gathered irresistible momentum, and he heard himself gasp, and in flashes, as his head swayed, he glimpsed her serene face rocking slightly on the pillow, and for an instant it reminded him (though the thought was swallowed and lost whole) of his mother praying in a rapt, sweet, totally vulnerable, utterly remote calm …

“Oh, good Christ!” he cried, bit his lip, opened his mouth, as if to bite and swallow something in the rosy, shadowed air, and her accelerating hands lifted him out of himself … “Aaaaah!” he cried. “Aaaaah …! Aaaaah …!”

It was still raining steadily the following day. The river was a wide, gray-white, seething sheet. The earth was sodden and flooding in places. They were down to nearly level ground now, so Parsival assumed they were nearing the coastline. They went on side by side with the pack mule between them. The rain tinkled on his light mail links and boomed on the open helmet. The smell of damp, oiled steel always took the edge off his appetite. It was midafternoon and Unlea wanted to eat. As soon as they came to some shelter of pines or whatever, he’d oblige her, he’d just said.

They’d spoken very little, otherwise. The weather was depressing. And he didn’t want to risk reopening last night’s wound …

“I think we’re lost,” she suddenly announced from under her traveling hood.

“Lost?”

“Yes.”

“But we’ve been following the river,” he protested.

“It keeps turning.”

“But it has to come to the coast in the end. It’s the way of rivers.”

“You haven’t been able to see the sky for nearly two days together. I think we’re lost.”

“Nonsense, Unlea,” he soothed. He wished she wouldn’t frown like that. It made her seem like a stranger, somehow …

“I have a feeling,” she said.

“Never fear,” he began, “I …” And broke off, reined up, halting the mule in the same movement. She stopped a pace or two on, the river behind her. He was staring through the rain at a line of trees that lay like a wall almost to the water’s edge. He felt the pressure in his stomach and knew someone or something very powerful was there. He immediately assumed this connected with the dark figure in the tent opening the other night. He bit his lip as he felt a prickling chill.

Is
it
mortal
or
some
other
form
? he asked himself.

He didn’t want to stir up that other world anymore. Let it sink into the past.

Broaditch and Valit had gone on into the dark woods for several hours, picking their way over ditches, around fallen trees and boggy streams. The swampy area was gradually yielding to dry country. As the moon was about down, Broaditch decided there was no point in pressing forward. Valit was wobbling, in any case.

They sheltered themselves on a nearly bare hilltop among outcroppings of glacial rock. With their backs against cool stone, they could look back over the flat-lands. The sea was dimly visible in the starlight. Broaditch imagined he could distinguish the light in Balli’s hut; anyway, it was a single, wavering, faint reddish glint …

Neither said much for a while. Then Broaditch broke the silence.

“Well, lad,” he said, “you’re getting to see the world, in a certain way.”

“Is that what it is, then?” Valit came back with, seeming in better spirits than was his wont.

“I know the road home looks fair to you now,” Broaditch added, wishing he still had his eastern pipe for smoking herbs. He was unique in these lands, where only a few stray crusaders had imported hookahs from the infidels. Suddenly he shook his head and chuckled.

“Was that so mirthful a remark?” Valit wanted to know. Broaditch noted he didn’t seem normally surly.

“I was going over my last moments with our former host and lord judge.” He laughed.

“That ain’t funny itself. I had no regrets leaving the mad bastard, I can tell you. As for the road home, I want none of it. I didn’t come this far to go back to nothing.”

“Well,” Broaditch said with some surprise, “I’ve got no better advice than that … And I thank you for coming back for me, lad.” He didn't add his surprise at that, either. He slouched down and stuffed his hide cap under his head. “No better, that is,” he concluded, “than to join me in the place where we’re most alone — I mean in slumber, Val.” Whereupon the massive man folded his arms and set himself for sleep. “I tell you this, young Valit-Varlet,” he added, eyes comfortably closed, “I need no more old wizards with whiskers full of hints and mad mischief. It’s home for me, and the devil with the devil’s own!” He sighed and shifted, trying to wedge himself down in a better way. “I say this much: I were wiser when much less I knew.” He yawned with a slight shudder.

“What wizards was that?”

“Hmm? None, my lad … none …” He yawned. “Just my own fevers, I expect …” Sleep waited warm, empty, and safe. He let himself slide down into it a little at a time … gradually faster …
Thank
Christ
for
sleep
, he thought,
for
there
the
world
ends
for
a
sweet
time
…

“I ain’t tired,” his companion complained.

“You’re over-young,” Broaditch muttered, fading fast. “But the cure for that is inevitable …”

God
grant
me
, he prayed, mused,
relief
from
the
snakes
and
great
,
fat
fellows
with
one
eye
…

And this was the last thought for now, and restless Valit heard the first, buzzing snore commence …

Except he was wrong this time: he felt uneasy, cold, and exposed … tried to turn and struggled down into himself for warmth and safety and realized he was standing up, somehow. He wanted to lie down and blot out the bright, silverish dawn light. He saw Valit sitting up, tapping the earth with a stick, brooding, and, without even being surprised, because he wasn’t precisely thinking, his mind in the strange silence of a dream, he saw a big man wrapped in coarse, muddy hides lying beside him, a lumpy, dead-looking hunk that he knew was himself an invisible wall away … Now he wanted to sleep desperately, and before he could act or move in any way he noticed a third figure (that resembled the old man in the boat) standing nearby with arms crossed over a grayly shimmering cloak. And Broaditch felt the wordless dream-voice say: “Do you recall us?”

He instantly had an image of the bottom of a long tunnel lying on his face among naked, toiling workers in chains when he’d been a slave for Clinschor’s conquering hordes many years before … He’d escaped by feigning death, but for a time believed he had truly died and had spoken with mysterious beings … He gathered this bearded figure had been one of them. They had exhorted him to do something he never quite understood …

“You were chosen then and now.”

“But …”

“There’s no time for indulging yourself. You are in the sea and had better swim.”

“But …”

And a moment later, without perceptible interval, he

was looking down on a rugged terrain lit by the same sunless, silver-blue, even glow. He seemed high enough to see all the country and the gleam of distant ocean while at the same time scenes appeared close at hand and startlingly vivid. The bluish color sparkled everywhere like some underwater sunlight. He floated, feeling sweet and peaceful and tender and free … saw battalions of mounted knights moving along intricate paths to take up positions in the almost circular mound of hills and piney forests. Each figure seemed to radiate a warm, goldenish glow into the general washes of color … He perceived men working, felling trees and moving stones to block the winding roads, and then it seemed as though the sun were coming up through the misty, glowing earth itself, because in the heart of the land below there was a towering, hazy outline of what might have been a castle dissolving into a golden-white shining, a blinding radiance whose streaming beams seemed pressing to burst free from their compressed space and ignite the universal twilight … He found himself caught up in the play of light and drifted, watching the pulsing … drifted …