The Grail War (51 page)

“But where will you go” — he gestured with his wiry brows — “with two chappies as you have and the world as it is?”

“I came this far,” she said seriously, almost grim. “And I have family in the south — at least I
had
. My father was sour to my husband … A pause. “My broad wanderer …”

“So he went off, then?” he asked hopefully.

She took Torky’s hand and turned toward the expanse of hazy desolation. On the horizon a few massive, smoldering clouds still towered and seemed to be drifting almost imperceptibly north. One was momentarily shaped by her fancy into a squat, roundish castle … and then, as she watched, it additionally suggested a sentient form, perhaps a hunching troll-man or a church carving of a massive demon … She blinked the images away, then turned her face back to the steady, warm sun pressure …

“He went off,” she said. “But if he be yet living, he’ll come home … my broad one.”

Lampic saw the way it was. He wasn’t even certain why he’d pressed so long. It wasn’t like him. He was an unmarried miller, fond of women to a fault, it had been said. It was not like him, but last night there had been a moment … a moment when he’d felt something that still lingered, mild and warm and tender in that morning …

No doubt it was the relief from the past, terrible days, but … still, he’d felt something … she’d been there and they’d certainly shared something which still lingered …

He stood up, long, angular, and nude. It was cold in the north, he reasoned. He tugged on his woolens, then worked into his heavy shirt. He said, “Did you feel it?” He fixed his eyes on her. He paused.

She didn’t even bother to ask
what
. She didn’t have to. She looked at him with her dark blue, cold-sea eyes. And didn’t have to nod, either, though she did, once.

“Last night?” he needlessly added.

She just looked at him. He remembered the distant thunder of the storm becoming a continuous booming, the flashes lighting the earth and sky around them where they lay … he shook his head to himself … and he’d never had such a moment with anyone, and, he insisted, she could not have, either … it was impossible … This from a fellow known for such sayings in the villages as: “Women ease the strain a bit, but business, lads, be business!”

“I’ll go with you,” he suddenly said, raising a hand against her protest to come. “I’ll not act, anyway … just for the company.”

“No,” she said, walking now. He was bent over, spitting to clear his throat and blowing his nose into the turf. She gathered Tikla into her wake, heading for the burned, steamy, skeletal country.

“I’ll follow along, then,” he found himself saying, coming on behind, lacing up the front of his rough shirt as he walked. “But you might wait and give a man time to piss … and break his fast.”

She went on, back erect, steady, reaching into the sack as Torky ran ahead a little, and Tikla called after him, “You was scared of the fire, Torky … I heard you crying.”

Torky didn’t look back. He had a stick and was cutting the air with it.

“So?” he said.

“I was scared worse,” she called to him. “I was.”

“Take this back to goodman Lampic,” Alienor ordered, giving the girl a hunk of hard cheese.

Think
of
the
poor
souls
, she was thinking as the twisted, fallen, blackened, broken trees and mounds of stirring ashes loomed closer,
who
may
he
living
still
within
…
God
keep
and
help
us
all
…

Tikla ran with short, weaving steps back across the twenty yards or so to where the long man followed, rubbing his face vigorously with his palms as he long-strode, carrying the food in both her cupped hands.

We
do
what
we
can
do
and
no
more
, she thought, glancing back to see him taking the cheese. Tikla’s hair shone in the rising sun. Their joined shadows reached to where she was. She turned to the front again. Torky was small and pale at the edge of the silent ashes and forest bones …
What
we
can
…

She heard a bird calling but couldn’t see it. The sound seemed mellow as honey. She felt a spot of warmth within herself. She smiled, almost as if she nurtured a secret, a little spot of warmth that was like the singing bird, somehow …

She lifted her free hand and lightly touched her hair, easing a few stray strands behind her ear. She heard Tikla saying something back there. She smiled again over the secret, soft flutter of a thing …

“What we can,” she whispered under her breath, serious and light at once. And she went on.

Broaditch was wading through the ankle-deep ashes, raising black dust among the charred, almost branchless trees. The sun was high and clear. The earth was still warm here and give the season a strange feeling of spring.

He was heading roughly south, hoping to strike a road. Irmree had headed north after an incomprehensible speech. She’d kept her lover’s iron pinky ring. He’d seen her pull it free. He’d watched her walk away for a time … then turned away … The only sound in the muffled silence of the afternoon was the faint, dry whooshing of his steps …

He blinked: something was gleaming in a mound of ashes. Bright silver. Coming closer, he saw it was a sword, melted almost shapeless except for the blackened hilt. Near it a blob of helmet was half-buried … Farther on his foot kicked against a plate chestpiece with no trace of even bones, much less flesh …

He went on … wondered how many days it would take to walk out of this devastated zone …

He paused once in hours, thinking he heard a bird call somewhere in the blasted forest. He listened intently … nothing repeated, if it had been real to begin with …

The sun was slanting down behind the trees that seemed black scrawls against the sky as he topped a low hill and looked at where a slender crease of stream curved away, shockingly bright and clean on the powdered blackness. He realized that the rains must have washed it clear … It was a wonder of beauty to him. The sun spattered sparkling light reflections that flashed on the somber banks …

He was following, winding with it at almost a stroller’s meditative pace when he saw them up ahead and shielded his eyes (his sight was equal again) against the brightness. He went on steadily toward them. They didn’t see him: the long, lean man was bathing his feet; the two children were wading; the determined-looking, copper-and-gray-haired woman was sitting a little apart, hands dexterously sewing a piece of garment while her eyes looked toward the quietly flowing water. His first reaction was that he thought he was going to like her. He liked her look, her worn, strong, attractive face, and it wasn’t until she turned her head (and the blue eyes locked on his) that he recognized her and understood again that there were really no accidents, that fate was simply guiding him out of the shadows this time, that the tide was lifting him …

He stopped a few steps from her, not looking at anything else but those dark-sea eyes, which seemed richer than he would have believed, as if age deepened and warmed and worked them into jewels. She was blinking, that was all, blinking, and he couldn’t tell if she actually wept. It wasn’t necessary … He knew the man was watching him and that the children had stopped playing, but there’d be time for that. He was still taking in, relishing, the stunning moment, the richness … He didn’t want to speak yet.

Her hands were motionless in the shapeless garment. He noticed everything, as if his senses were washed clean: the gleam of the thorn needle, the tracks of dark thread, the coppery tints of her hair, the lines in her face that (he understood) were simply shaped by what was inside, were the writing of the soul in time’s script and were beautiful … her breathing … he was afraid to speak …

The moment stretched out and then: “Well,” she said, without even smiling yet, though he was, “you might have let us know you were coming.”

He smiled and stretched out his arms.
Alienor
, he thought, as if it now were certain.

“How, woman?”

She shrugged.

“Sent a crow with word, I suppose,” she said, and now he saw the tears. The sun flashed on them. Her voice was suddenly a little husky. “You seem weary,” she said, not moving yet, as if she, too, were afraid to press the moment …

He nodded, said nothing. He turned and looked at Lampic, who was watchful, feet still dangling in the stream. He looked at his children, standing knee-deep in the water with the incredible sunlight shatteringly enhaloing them, as if they stood at the heart of brightness, as if their bodies were shadows and the shimmering, soft glowing were their true substance.

“My doves,” he finally said. He felt Alienor standing beside him, felt her strong hand firmly join into his. He heard her light, uneven breathing, felt her … felt her … The children still hadn’t moved and he remained held by the rippling glow … felt the warmth of her hand, gripped it, as if to press the two into one piece of flesh … He shut his eyes and reopened them. “Now it begins,” he said. “Now it begins …”

Parsival was several miles north of the burned-out woods and had just reached an ancient, sunken road that curved away across the open fields into the glimmering, violet wash of twilight.

He abruptly stopped and turned around. The wind was cool and he could distinguish a distant, faint, charred hint on the air … He was suddenly remembering his wife and daughter lying in the grave he and Prang had dug outside the castle, saw their pale forms … he’d washed off the dried blood … He confronted the image in his mind, as if he were actually facing them, because there was a message, a meaning: the fragile, silent women gazed, as if from a dream, wordless and profound, and then he understood and knew why he’d stopped — he had to find his son. Yes … he had to try and find his son … Lohengrin …

He was already unconsciously starting to walk back the other way as he took the feeling in … Gawain or someone had said he’d been fighting with the invaders, and his own inner senses told him the young man was alive. He had no doubt of that …

Yes, he thought, walking faster through the fading wisps of dusk, yes, he had to try, for the living, as well as the dead … Everything was suddenly lucid: go back to where he’d seen the Grail light, to the very point, that was important, pick up the trail from there, because that was the true beginning of his new life … He was already in his new life, he thought, walking out of a dream into the lucid air, where the first stars were trembling out, Venus like a soft eye following the sun down … His new life would start where all his roads had ended and would start with his son … Yes … yes …
my
son
…
my
son
…
We
start
from
there
… Perhaps he’d find Gawain again, if he lived, and he might … he might … He looked steadily at the richly bright evening star as the road curved away from his direction and he headed across the smooth fields, past dim, clustered blots of trees.

The world
, he suddenly thought,
will start there
…

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The Grail War
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