Chapter 1

The Grail of Sir Thomas

By Yury Nikitin

Text copyright © 1998 Yury Nikitin

Translation © 2013 Ingrid Wolf

All Rights Reserved

Part I

Chapter 1

The scorching Saracen sun is burning the endless orange world. An eagle, barely visible from the ground, is motionless high in the blue of the sky, as though nailed to the firmament. The air is sweltering, swaying in translucent waves.

Along the broad trodden road, a huge knight rode a heavy black stallion to the north, jets of overheated air trembling over his iron armor, beads of sweat trickling down his unprotected face. His sky blue eyes, a color never seen here before the arrival of Franks, look defiantly. The knight seems to be seeking for a reason to grab the hilt of his long sword with his gauntleted hand.

The huge stallion kept a steady pace fitting for a long journey. A track of his hoof prints, each as large as a plate were being left on the ground as hard as a stone, trodden by myriads of hooves and feet.

A white cloak, embroidered elaborately with a red cross, is flowing from the knight’s armored shoulders. At the left hip, he has a triangular shield, a bit rumpled, with a sword and a lyre upon starry field. On the right, a great two-handed sword is strapped to the saddle, its iron hilt wiped to a shine. A small bag of camping things is bulging on the horseback behind him.

The crusader had a lance pointed upward in his right hand. The spike was glittering with orange, as if he carried a red-hot lump of metal on the top of it. The stallion stepped heavily, looked at his rider askew with a sullen fiery eye. The mounted knight looked like an animated statue, one of those numerous Pagan remnants on the squares of Rome.

The sun was dazzling. The air seemed to be rising from the Hell’s stove waiting for all the infidels and sinners to burn them. Away from the road, there was a puny group of trees, some people in colored, mottled oriental robes lying in the sparse shadow. Three more men found the shadow under a cart, their bare feet stuck out. Some buffalos stood in the middle of a muddy puddle that could pass for a lake in this land. They were as motionless as boulders, with only their snouts out of the mud.

The knight passed by the grove without moving a muscle. It did not befit Sir Thomas Malton of Gisland, the crusader and hero of the capture of Jerusalem, to show his weakness before the eyes of conquered people.

The destrier walked slowly, the road was deserted. Not until midday had Thomas come up with some live creatures – a string of pilgrims. They went afoot, ragged and emaciated, without looking up. Thomas whispered a thanking prayer to Our Lady for his being born a noble knight. Cloaks on these travelers are dirtier than a cloth for people to wipe their shoes on.

The pilgrims, covered with grey road dust, dragged their tired feet on. Their worn-out shoes were falling to pieces even as they went. Every single one looked like a scarecrow or a skeleton in hooded cloak. The dust raised by their feet made Thomas cough, he spurred to leave them behind. None of pilgrims cast a single glance at the magnificent knight: they had seen lots of his sort in the Holy Land. However, the knight had also seen all that lot of travelers, pilgrims, maniacs, dervishes, and even prophets.

The dark wall of forest was approaching. The destrier looked there with hope for rest and cool, but it was still far, so he didn’t bother to mend his pace. The road went across a small village. Thomas adjusted his sword baldric, alerted. Since the army of crusaders had passed there with fire and sword, the resistance of Saracens was broken, but the land remained wild. A lone warrior should keep alert here if he doesn’t want his throat cut in the night.

Thomas lowered his visor with a metal clink. His eyes looked closely through the narrow slit in his steel helmet. At that moment, he saw no beauty of the place: only flat earthen roofs, from where some hothead could throw a spear, and tall leafy plane trees, a good hide for archers…

He heard some dogs ahead, barking and growling maliciously. The destrier snorted, laid its ears back without falling out of step. Once Thomas entered the outskirts, he saw a pack of scraggy dogs attacking a pilgrim, in some ten steps ahead. Someone pelted the stranger with sticks and clods of dry earth from behind the earthen wall. The dogs snapped at his rags and legs. He did not even try to protect himself with his thick staff: he could barely stagger along, his legs covered with bloody clots, a fresh red trickle running down his calf. As the mongrels smelt blood, their attacks became fiercer. A dog jumped, clawed at the poor man’s back and hung there, pawing his flesh.

Once the pack heard the pounding of hooves, they gave out a louder growl. A dog tried to snap at the stallion’s leg. Thomas hit it with the end of the shaft, the yelping mongrel jumped away. Some Saracen children showed their curly heads up over the fence, hurled sticks and stones at Thomas. The dogs surrounded him, snarling, pouncing, looking ready to attack all together. The destrier shorted anxiously. Thomas reined up to keep the feared horse from bolting. He turned his lance quickly, speared a dog, shook the squealing blood-stained body off and struck another mongrel’s spine.

The speared dog was crawling in the dust, its guts dragging and leaving a wet track behind. The pack crowded around it. One mongrel licked the blood, and suddenly all of them attacked the wounded creature. They tangled into a ball, hair flew sideways from it, a dog squealed in agony.

The pilgrim leaned on the staff, his face hidden under the hood. Thomas heard his rattling breath, as if some torn bellows blown nearby.

“Take my stirrup,” Thomas ordered with disgust. “These mad dogs will rip you.”

“Grace... upon you... good sire,” the pilgrim answered in a choked husky voice.

His hand, seeming skeletal to Thomas, appeared from a torn sleeve. The destrier snorted with disgust for the pilgrim’s bad smell.

Thomas hardly kept the stallion from trotting faster. The pilgrim dragged himself along, clinging to the stirrup. He looked a real fright in his loose shredded cloak, definitely off some other man’s back.

When they passed the village, the pilgrim released the stirrup and fell into the dust exhaustedly. His wide-open mouth was gasping for air. His eyes sank down, lips turned pale and bloodless, his breath howled like a cold winter wind in a chimney. “Thank God...”

“Laudetur Jesus Christus,” Thomas muttered piously.

The destrier trotted away hastily. Not until the stranger was left far behind, did he take a heavy pace again.

The forest was approaching slowly. The sun was setting. Red and burning it was, as a hot half-finished sword on an anvil. The air was so dry that it scratched the throat. Thomas felt like having been hungry for ages. His tired body ached, the destrier stumbled more and more often.

The road stopped twisting. It seemed to be rushing as fast as it could to the salutary coolness and green of the forest, where a stream could be found. Thomas rode up to the nearest trees. As the branches covered him from the burning sun, his shoulders squared and his back straightened. His warhorse gave a short neigh, as it trotted by a narrow path among big stocky trees. Thomas recognized oaks, hornbeams, and elms. The rest were nasty Saracen plants, none of them allowed by Holy Virgin to grow in his blessed Britain.

“We’ll have a rest soon,” Thomas soothed his destrier. “This grove must have a spring. I feel coolness with all my knightly heart and soul, like a hungry lion!”

He heard a crack in the shrubs ahead. A big thickset soldier tumbled out, like a huge boar, clad in a shining helmet and a breastplate pulled over a leather jacket the color of dirt. He had broad shoulders and wry legs. A wide dagger was on his belt, a huge battleax in hands.

The robber looked derisively and sounded stentorian. “A knight on his warhorse! Not the sort to set off without gold. Are you, good sire?”

Three more men jumped out at both sides. Thin and swarthy, clad in ragged Saracen clothes and turbans, they had resentful looks on their faces and curved narrow swords in hands. Those one-edged weapons were named sabers here. The three of them kept their eyes on Thomas, while he only watched the soldier. Definitely a deserter from the great Crusader army, that one was heavy, strong in arms, his splitting axe more dangerous than light sabers.

The Saracen flung out in broken Frank language, “Silver also... good.”

The leader grunted contentedly. “Then we’ll fleece him. Hey, knight! You have a rare chance to leave without a fight.”

Thomas reined up in five steps before the leader who crouched, his eyes fixed on the knight’s hands. The other three set on from the sides.

“All right, go without a fight,” Thomas agreed.

The leader exposed his yellow crooked teeth in a smirk. “You go. Leave everything and go.”

“You can’t take me like that,” Thomas replied tensely. “I’ve been fighting in the Holy Land, I’ve slain hundreds of Saracens...”

“Looks like you dreaded hard fists in Britain, huh?” the leader asked mockingly. “Or maybe in Germany? Get off your horse! Move it, or we’ll help you.”

Thomas looked over the four of them haughtily, reined up with deliberate slowness. His thoughts darted feverishly. He thanked Our Lady for preventing him from taking his armor off, despite the damned heat definitely sent from the Hell by Satan.

“I passed the lands of the Saracen,” he replied arrogantly. “I will pass here too!”

The deserter raised his axe. Thomas turned left, pulled the heavy sword out and slashed, holding it in one hand The axe staff crunched as a straw. The deserter dashed aside: too late. Thomas felt a start of sword hilt in his fingers, heard a creepy tinkle. The robber’s arm, cut away near the shoulder, plopped down on the ground, still gripping the stick.

The robber uttered a dreadful shriek. Thomas turned his shield quickly to the right. A pounding strike in the center of it made his arm numb. The thieves dropped their sabers. The warhorse made two giant leaps, he saw the open road ahead, a sparkling stream...

Something pounced upon him, strong hand gripped his throat. Thomas swayed, falling down. At the last moment, he pulled his feet out of the stirrups, as he was taught to, caught the enemy’s arm, wriggled and collapsed on top of him.

Thomas weighed hundred and ninety pounds, and his armor put him at two hundred and fifty. The robber gasped, blood gushed out of his mouth. Thomas raised himself a little. He heard another tramp fleeing, fell aside, and a short spear crunched into the stunned robber’s chest.

Thomas rose, still a bit stunned by the fall. He set his helmet straight, as it had slipped down on his eyes. He had barely heard fast breath behind when someone socked on head. Stunned, Thomas wheeled round and saw a dim giant figure. The giant swung his arm for a new terrible blow. Thomas grasped he had no sword in hand, nor a solid heavy shield. He jumped aside, his head buzzing, his heavy armor a burden. A dreadful strike froze his shoulder, he heard a crunch of either his bone or the iron armor plate.

The robber swung for the last crushing blow. Thomas’s mind cleared. His enemy turned out to be no giant but a small Saracen, dark and very evil, with bare teeth. A sharp saber was useless against the armored knight but the Saracen had a battleax instead, or maybe a cleaver, its blade narrow as a beak. He attacked Thomas hastily, allowing the knight no time to regain his senses, with a hail of hasty blows. Thomas backed, trying to shield with forearms and elbows. His head was clearing, his strength coming back, but his armor cracked under the violent blows!

Thomas was still choosing the right time when his knees were jogged by something behind. He flipped his hands, trying to keep his feet. The Saracen jumped ahead with a scream, brandished, aiming at the knight’s face. Thomas dropped on his back. He saw a scary flash of steel, heard the axe swish past him and caught it in the air. The blow was hard but Thomas held on to the weapon and rolled aside. Something tinkled under his body, his fingers found the leader’s giant axe. That one had a short staff like the Hammer of Thor.

Thomas had time to rise to his knees. The robber gave him a heavy sider, Thomas stood rigid with sharp pain. The robber was yelling bestially, his eyes goggled, his mouth spitting. His sharp blade aimed at Thomas’s face, with those hateful eyes looking through the narrow slit, bright blue, as though the very sky seen through the Frank’s skull.

Thomas seized the axe with left hand, as his right arm hung helpless, stepped under a new blow, felt the hot spreading within his side, his body contorted with pain. He blocked the axe blade with elbow. The new pain made his teeth clench, but at the same moment he struck back heavily.

The broad steel axe blade clove the Saracen’s head down to his teeth. The blood spurted out powerfully, like splashes from a huge stone thrown into a sunset-colored puddle.

Thomas dropped his axe, staggered along the road. Stout trees wriggled around like snakes, but Thomas saw his clever stallion who was nibbling grass and fresh leaves hastily, knowing his master would not linger.

Thomas struggled to pick up his shield and sword. They were incredibly heavy, he dragged them on. His steel armor had a crack on the side, the red oozing out of it. Thomas felt more blood spreading under the armor, soaking his knitted shirt, squelching in his boot.

The stallion stopped eating around, ready to break into a gallop, but the knight stood still, clinging to the saddle. The destrier snorted, turned his head in a surprise to sniff Thomas. The knight had lost much blood, everything was going dark before his eyes. With great effort, he hung his sword on the saddle hook, then the shield. He felt too weak to clamber up the saddle but he must have managed it somehow, as later he saw, in half-oblivion, some green branches moving towards him until all the world went dark.

* * *

Cold tickling drops crept down his face. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but grey mist. He could not move. As he groaned, his voice sounded surprisingly hoarse and weak.

Some fingers touched his face. The grey curtain disappeared: it was a wet cloth, now removed from his eyes. He saw a gaunt face over him, it looked like a skull covered with dry skin tightly. The man was deathly pale, his massive cheekbones so protruding that they threatened to break through the skin. Thomas felt creepy all over. The skull said in a rasping voice, “You are not called by gods, sir.”

Thomas looked at the bony fingers holding the wet cloth. Behind the pilgrim, Thomas saw his sword, shield, and dagger hanging on a scaly oak, his armor a heap below. The wind ruffled the hair on his chest, and he realized lying naked to the waist on a pile of twigs, his belly tied up with clean strips. Under them, he felt some thick twigs at his side: it was still burning, pitching, stinging with pain.

“Thank God,” Thomas whispered. His voice broke and hissed, so it sounded like “thanks.” “Who are you?”

“A wonderer[1],” the pilgrim replied in a flat, lifeless but strong voice.

“A wanderer?” Thomas repeated.

“A wonderer,” the pilgrim said again. “This is…”

Thomas struggled to remain conscious, but the pilgrim’s voice was fading, like a sugarplum while it is sucked. Finally, it disappeared.

When Thomas came to himself, much later, he ran into the same grey mist, guessed to pull the wet cloth away but put it back the next moment: his forehead was burning terribly, as if sore of hitting against Beelzebub’s hardest pot.

The wonderer hunched, as still as stone, by a small fire. He had taken his cloak off to put Thomas on it, and the knight shuddered with both pity and disgust for the pilgrim’s terrible emaciation. A skeleton clad in skin and wisps of rags. As the fire warmed him, the abominable smell of unwashed body drifted over.

“What’s your name?” Thomas asked in a faint voice. “Where are you from?”

The wanderer turned his head slowly, as if it took a great effort. His eyes were dark, with reddish sparkles in pupils. “I come from Rus’,” he spoke slowly. “My name is Oleg. I have come to the Holy Land for a feat, as you did.”

Thomas coughed, winced with sharp pain at his wounded side. He felt bruises all over his body where the heavy blows of the robber’s axe had caved his armor in. “Never mind,” Thomas comforted, gasping for breath. “You will have it another way.”

“I had it,” the pilgrim replied in a flat voice. “Everything as I wished.”

Thomas chocked, raised himself on elbows in great astonishment, despite the sharp pain he suffered from that. “But, holy wonderer! You look like a man just out from Saracen prison… and beaten with all the canes of both Nile and Euphrates before that!”

“My feat,” the wonderer said faintly.

Thomas lay down. “A feat is to kill a dragon,” he objected wearily. “To storm into the midst of Saracen hosts, kill their best warriors, capture their banner! A feat is to rescue a princess and hammer her kidnapper into the ground up to his nostrils…” He fell silent, black flies dancing before his eyes.

Oleg the wonderer stirred the crimson coals with a twig, slowly and silently, with a thoughtful look on his face. Suddenly he leaned, snatched something that looked like a small round stone, shifted it to his other palm. “A dozen of baked eggs. You can’t do without food.”

The smell was exciting. Thomas recalled himself riding to the forest. Hungry as a hunter he was, dreaming of food and some rest in the shadow of trees. “You can,” he replied impetuously. “I see it.”

The hermit raked the rest of the eggs out of the fire. Thomas shelled them with trembling fingers. He swallowed half a dozen without sensing their taste. Not until his stomach got full and heavy did he check himself. “Oh, holy wonderer, I’m sorry! I was so hungry…”

“Not holy,” Oleg corrected gently. “There are holy Magi, holy hermits and preceptors, but wonderers are only wonderers.”

He changed the knight’s bandages and examined his wound. In times Thomas passed out in a fever. His side was still burning but the acute pain subsided. “God reckon it to you,” he said clumsily but with proper pride. “You linger here because of me.”

“I’m in no hurry,” the wonderer comforted. “Your recovery is fast. Stop that, you owe me nothing. You have protected me from those mad dogs. I’m just paying back.”

“Quits then.”

Thomas woke up with fever several more times. Each time Oleg’s face with sad eyes was low over him. Cold drops ran down the knight’s cheeks: Oleg put on his forehead the cloth, so icy cold that Thomas would have remove it if only he was strong enough.

Finally, he fell asleep so fast that he would wake in another dream, and he did it several times before he found himself under the familiar oak, on a thick pile of twigs covered by his cloak. The rest of his clothes were hanging on the tree.

The hermit was sitting in three steps. He looked indifferently in the fire burning out, the thin coating of grey spreading over the coals. Thomas felt his stomach getting anxious, twitching and howling.

Oleg looked up. His sank eyes flashed with red for a moment. “Back to yourself?.. Your wound is healing. You can get up, slowly.”

“Holy father,” Thomas spoke in a shaky voice. “I have famine mirages as if I were still walking in Saracen sands. I smell roast…”

“I’ve shot a wild boar,” the wonderer said indifferently. “Are you forbidden by your faith to eat pork?”

“No, I’m not!” Thomas cried fervently and coughed. “Not at all!”

He raised himself a little and was surprised by having managed it with only a little prickle in his side. Oleg raked the coals with a sharp twig, hooked a flat brown stone and offered Thomas. The knight grasped that was no stone but a thoroughly roasted slice of meat, so he took it. The hot juice dripping down burnt his fingers. He swore, dropped the slice on the ground, picked it, dug his teeth into the meat hungrily, ignoring the blades of grass stuck to it – but it was too hot. He spat it out hastily, threw into his other palm, devouring the slice with his eyes. The juice was pouring off the bite.

“How you did it?” Thomas wondered. “I had no bow. It’s no knightly weapon!”

“I made it,” the wonderer dismissed. “Sticks are everywhere, and the cord of your baldric made a bow string.”

Gnawing at his meat, Thomas watched the wonderer with astonishment. However, the boar could have been not frightened. Or stupid. Or he may have found the animal wounded and dying. “Are you not forbidden by your faith to kill?”

The wonderer was surprised. “No one stops killing due to his gods. Why should I?”

“Gods?” Thomas said with horror. “You are Pagan!” He dropped his meat again, picked it from the ground, oblivious of grits and dry grass crunching in his teeth.

The wonderer shrugged indifferently. “My faith is kinder. No persecutions. You can put up the pillar or cross for Christ beside our gods. This is the way Khors, Simargl, and even Taran of Celts came to us. And we accepted them.”

“A Pagan!” Thomas repeated with disgust. “Christ is the god of gods! He is supreme!”

“Put him beside,” the wonderer insisted. “If people start making sacrifices to him only, we will remove other gods.”

“Christ accepts no sacrifice.”

“What about praises and canticles? Or some fragrant smoke?”

Thomas wished to close his ears, but there were juicy slices of pink meat steaming over charcoal. He smelled their fragrance. The wonderer hooked the slice after slice and offered him. Finally, the twig itself was given to Thomas. He gulped the food down, his voice half-choked. “Why aren’t you eating? I can see the sun through you.”

Oleg hesitated over the last slice sprawled in the crimson coals like a squashed turtle. He shrugged his pointed shoulders with doubt. “I don’t know… I would live on locusts and wild honey for a long time. I would eat leaves and grass. But meat… It rouses a beast in you.”

“Er… Does it? I only feel appetite rousing in me.”

The wonderer curled his pallid lips in a ghost of smile, his teeth white and sharp as a predator’s. He picked the hot slice with bare hands and did not wince, rolled it in palms, pressed it. His face seemed motionless: Thomas was not good at reading expressions on skulls stretched with skin.

He held his breath when the pilgrim brought the slice to his pale lips. They opened and touched the roast meat, his nostrils trembled, smelling it. Then the wonderer touched it cautiously with teeth.

Thomas did not dare not move while he watched Oleg eating. When the wonderer swallowed the last bit masticated almost into a gruel, Thomas breathed out with relief. “There you are! Beyond locusts and wild honey!”

The pilgrim turned with his eyes bewildered, then nodded as he grasped it. “You don’t understand… No food is forbidden in my faith. It was part of my feat! Self is the hardest to overcome. A fast sets the power of spirit over body. I was hungry for bloody meat but fed myself with leaves. I desired women but spent my time alone in the cave… Full abstention is what it needs to find the Truth. But the best lot is not to abstain from pleasures but to rule them without them ruling you… Try to get it.”

Thomas didn’t get it. “You still keep your Pagan beliefs, don’t you?” he asked with disappointment.

“So far I do,” the wonderer replied gently. “The power of my spirit is strong enough to keep my flesh from trembling at the sight of meat or hearty meal. You see, I can have it and remain calm. Thus I can proceed up: from small reclusion to the Great Reclusion…”

Thomas was not listening. He had fallen asleep, sated by food.

On the seventh day, the knight tried to mount. Once the horse took its pace, Thomas got pallor as dead and swung. The wonderer barely had time to catch the knight falling down.

When Thomas came to his senses, he was lying under the same oak. All the day long, the wanderer was boiling some stinking broth of roots and herbs in the knight’s helmet, knocking black excrescences down from the birch trees to chop into. He made Thomas drink the vile bitter mix, with all the hard wing cases and little sharp-clawed legs floating there.

Thomas cursed the names of Beelzebub and Astaroth but drank it. As a noble knight, he knew little about potions, leaving it to lesser men, but he took his new friend’s word for it, as believing is noble and Christian.

The wonderer made potions and decoctions and shot birds skillfully with self-made arrows. Once he shot a young badger. As Thomas ate, his young muscled body, hardened in battles, campaigns, and far journeys, was quickly filled with strength. In times he got up and listened to his body. The wounded side was aching, but no sharp pain.

“When have you washed yourself last time, holy father?”

“Last month I got caught in a heavy shower,” Oleg replied with a vacant look.

“Oh. Is there any water nearby? I caught a glimpse of a stream while falling from the horseback…”

“It is,” the wonderer confirmed. He became thoughtful, spoke slowly, “Yeah, I’ve forgotten… The Great Reclusion lets everything that is allowed to others. So I can…”

He came back wet and clean, with his hair plastered to his head and his eyes shining. Thomas watched him in amazement: the wonderer’s hair turned out to be the color of sunset, his face as white as if it were never exposed to the sun. His eyes also had an odd color: as green as spring grass, green and sad.

“You are not Saxon, are you?” Thomas wondered.

“I’m Slav. And you? From Britain?”

“Yes. I was born on the banks of Don,” Thomas said with a faraway look. “My castle stands in the bend near the estuary. It is surrounded by woods… and bogs and marshes. Britain is all woods and marshes. The hill under my castle is the only dry place within a hundred of miles. The forest is crowded by aurochs, boars and deer, not to mention badgers and hares. The cries of birds make you go mad. Fish hit your boat with their heads, asking to be caught…”

Oleg nodded. “I have also loved it on Don.”

Thomas wheeled round lively, his eyes glittered. “Have you been there?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Have you seen a high castle of white, white stone? It stands in the bend of the river, has the moat and rampart on its left…”

Oleg shook his head. “I’ve been on the banks of Don in the Eastern Rus’[2], Palestine, Colchis, Arabia, Gishpaniya, Hellas… Rivers got the name of Don wherever the sons of Scyth came.”

Thomas twitched. “Did those wild Scythians ever conquer Britain?” he asked menacingly.

“I have been to the Holy Land without conquering it, haven’t I? Once Targitai, the great chieftain… or that was Koloksai?..[3] decided to replace Dana, the old goddess of nomads, with Apia, Mother Earth. He wanted to turn nomads into ploughmen at once! Of course, it turned a bloody strife… After the battle, the Old Believers crossed all the Europe and settled on the Tin Islands. They made some old-way altars of dolmens, colossal stones… Have you seen them? No? That’s a pity. The place is beautiful. Stonehenge, that’s the name of it… The Old Believers have also given names to rivers. Don is a Scythian word for river. The city built in the estuary was named London, which means standing in the mouth of the river. Other Scythian word for estuary is ustye. In Rus’, we also have cities named Ust-Izhora, Ust-Ilim or simply Ustug…”[4]

“I’ve never seen any savages there,” Thomas interrupted haughtily. “We Angles live on the banks of Don since the beginning of time. Since God created us there, just after He had created all the world, in six months only!”

“Six days,” the wonderer corrected in a meek voice.

“I know it,” Thomas snarled. “I was afraid a Pagan would not believe it. Six days is really a… And six months is enough time for your gods to do the same if they work altogether!”

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 742