The Grail of Sir Thomas

in the castle. Your horses will be fed by choice corn, and you will be woken up in the morning… if only you don’t prefer to stay for few more days.”

Oleg took in a breath, intending to refuse firmly, when Thomas cried happily. “Gorvel? We climbed the walls of Jerusalem together with him, like two evil monkeys! Arrows swishing, stones flying, and two of us standing back to back… Is it his castle? He’s a seignior now?”

“The king granted him these lands,” the squire replied with such pride as if he had been granted with them. “There are only seven of us. The rest are Saracens, hireling, and vagrant folk, but the location is perfect — the crossing of caravan roads!”

Thomas waved imperiously for Oleg to come to, drove his horse along the road to the castle. Chachar cast a triumphant look at the wonderer who looked like a wild animal to her. She caught up with the magnificent knight and young squires briskly. Oleg hid the arrow, followed them reluctantly.

The squires shouted to the guards at the gate. One of them blew a horn, though the guards had seen them from the wall before. The squires made way respectfully for guests, including Oleg in his barbarian clothes. He couldn’t help shuddering. He had never liked strangers behind his back, especially when his soul was shrinking with a vague foreboding of evil.

The gate swung open. In their way, blocking the passage, a huge red-bearded knight stood in his armor, his helmet in the crook of right arm, his shoulder-long hair, as red as fire, ruffled slightly by the wind.

Thomas vaulted off the horse heavily with a clang of steel. The red-bearded knight came to him. They embraced with such a thunder as if two forgers thrown by giant hands collided. While they clapped each another on shoulders and shouted happily, it sounded like an iron gate being knocked out by a ram, with sparks scattering around.

“Sir Thomas!”

“Sir Gorvel!”

The squires and a handful of guards were standing around in a sparse circle, looking at the mighty warriors in silent awe. Finally, one man dared to raise his sword and cry glory to the Crusader army.

The squire took the reins of Oleg’s horse. “I’ll take them to stables,” he said with an air of importance. “You go to the servant room, have dinner there.”

Oleg nodded, jumped off and squatted, stretching his legs. He thrust the bow and quiver into his bag over shoulder. He left the axe at the saddle but took the sword. Chachar flew down as a butterfly, threw the reins gracefully to another squire.

Thomas released himself from the embrace of the read-bearded lord. “Wait, sir wonderer!” he cried to Oleg hastily. “Stop, you deaf devil! Sir Gorvel, this man is no servant to me but a brave companion-at-arms. A co-fighter, as they say in Rus’.”

Gorvel put his hands in thin mail gloves on Oleg’s shoulders in a friendly manner. “Welcome, Sir… wonderer. My castle is your castle. Please feel at home! Angles say: my home is my castle, but we are another sort of man — all wide open, our hearts on our sleeves…”

His tanned scarred face expressed astonishment: his gauntleted hands seemed to be lying on round granite boulders.

“We don’t need much,” Oleg said sulkily. “A pitch of hay for horses, a corner for us to sleep in, a slice of bread for dinner.”

Gorvel clapped on his iron hips, upset. “What is not, that is not! Poor horses will have to eat choice oats, guests — to be content with feather beds in chambers. As to dinner, we can only serve pies, sweet cookies, and sandwiches instead of bread. We’ll also find something for you to wash those dry things down your throats!”

Thomas looked at Gorvel attentively and laughed. “If you are the same, I beg you not to serve wine in barrels! Several jugs of it will be enough.”

“Of course,” Gorvel comforted him. “It’s enough… to start with!”

Chapter 7

Oleg entered the great hall and stopped for a moment, stunned by loud voices, jokes, toasts, and songs. In the bright light of blazing tar torches, at two broad tables, all the seven Franks in the company of Saracens who had turned Christians or were simply in service of Gorvel, a brave warrior, were having a feast: eating, drinking, crying out toasts.

Oleg felt their tenacious, searching looks. He knew he looked like a Frank, with his red hair, green eyes, big bones and bulging muscle, but a Frank washed suspiciously clean. His wet hair was plastered to the forehead, his clothes dusted off. Frankish knights in the land of Saracen kept up their European habits, washing their bodies fewer times a year than their Saracen servants and mercenaries, living up to Koran, did in a week. At the feast, dishes were given to dogs to lick them clean. Hounds were rushing about the hall, fighting for bones, raising their back legs to water the legs of tables and, preferably, those of guests, Chachar in particular, to mark these people as familiars.

Fiery-bearded Gorvel and Sir Thomas were seated in throne-like wooden armchairs, others on wide benches. Four people were seated separately, facing the lord: Chachar, a tall beautiful woman of breeding with tired eyes next to her, a handsome young man with a sleek face and arrogant malevolent eyes, and — as in every Christian castle — a stout monk in black cassock belted with a plain rope.

Gorvel stood up, showed Oleg (with a wide gesture that almost knocked down a servant with a tray) his place next to the monk. The latter pretended to move aside but only pulled up to himself a big jug and a plate with half of a roast boar instead.

The monk reeked of roast onions and sour wine. Oleg sat, elbowed a space for himself, reached the roast boar haunch and salted it. The salt was strangely white and fine. A servant put a wide cup in front of him, but Oleg did not move a muscle. As he ate meat, he felt being filled with strength: beastly but quiet and meek that time. Ready to obey every order of spirit, in fear of being plunged into starving, hardships and torments once again. He had never been much for drinking wine, and that was no time for it at all. He sensed a vague danger within the hall and needed his wits with him.

Gorvel and Thomas clapped on each other’s shoulders loudly, drank for the battle in Cilicia, for the fight on the walls of the Tower of David, for the victory in Terland. No mention of Jerusalem: they must have celebrated big cities before. Gorvel’s eyes glittered, his face reddened, he spoke loudly and tried to roar marching songs. Their toasts referred to small towns and keeps that, as Oleg realized, were to be followed by settlements, villages, homesteads, wells, barns and hen coops. Anyway, there was so much wine that it would suffice to drink for each stone in the Temple of Solomon and for each nail in the twenty gates of the Tower of David.

The young man winced arrogantly at Gorvel’s laughter. In times he bowed to the tall beauty’s ear and whispered something, and she nodded with her eyes down. Oleg caught only one of her looks at the handsome lad and understood much but that was none of his concerns. People play their games anywhere in the same way, though everyone thinks of self and his situation as unique. Oleg even felt relieved at the familiar sight of their looks and gestures — those two were no danger. And the monk? That one cares of his belly and nothing more. Whether Gorvel kept him half-starving or the monk’s own reason was lost to greed, but he grabbed everything he could reach, hiccupped, choked, dropped slices of meat and moved his knees apart hastily to catch them. A woman’s habit. A man accustomed to wearing pants would have moved his knees together.

Oleg knocked aside dogs that jumped over his legs. In Rus’, dogs are not allowed even to dilapidated houses. Even the poorest mongrel has an isolated doghouse, but this castle looks a great kennel!

Gorvel and Thomas roared with laughter, changing a mighty clap for a clap. They had left their armor in the armory, so their friendly slapping sounded as if a thick tree were lashed to drive a bear down from it or wild bees out of a hollow in its trunk. Gorvel’s wife shot hostile glances at her husband. The young man winced and raised his eyebrows ironically. Oleg spotted that the eyes on his young face looked very old. Then he noticed a thin netting of wrinkles, some burst blood vessels in the white of the man’s eyes, the guarded looks he cast at laughing Thomas.