The Grail of Sir Thomas

prelate once told him that one of the witnesses still walked around… Is it true?

The night made the castle walls cold, its gloomy halls chilly, as it is common for desert lands in summer: hot days make you drip with sweat, you can bake an egg in the sand, but once the night comes, your teeth start chattering with cold.

Oleg found Chachar near a fireplace blazing hot. She sat on a small bench facing the fire, throwing chocks into it. With her face washed clean, she looked as fresh and healthy as a sweet juicy apple. Her boots stood on the iron fireguard, her bare feet were buried in a beast’s skin on the floor.

She raised her face, reddened with heat, to look at the wonderer. Lovely tender dimples played on her cheeks. “Dear Oleg, you must be in bed! Your wound…”

“…healed as a dog’s one,” Oleg dismissed. “I’m no highborn to have them healing for ages. We’ve been here for two days. A guest must not outstay his welcome. Is Gorvel here? Or left for hunting?”

Chachar glanced around in fright and whispered, “Have you heard? A strange rider came tonight. Sir Gorvel locked up in his chambers to talk to him. Even Lady Roveg wasn’t allowed.”

“Gorvel has much to care of,” Oleg muttered, his heart wrung with foreboding. “And this place is no peaceful! Perhaps the king sent his vassals a word that Saracens prepare an attack.”

“But they argued! In shouts!” Chachar glanced around again, her whisper even more mysterious. “I was walking past the door by chance. The visitor demanded something. Once refused, he went yelling, threatened the lord!”

“Did you hear it well?”

“My lace got undone, so I stopped to tie it. I leaned over and… just happened to see them through a keyhole. Gorvel had a humble, miserable face. Would you believe it? I think no man should be humiliated like that. Never! A man deprived of his pride is no man anymore.”

“What did the visitor demand?” Oleg hurried her up.

“I didn’t get it. I only saw a strange sign: he draw a circle in the air with his hand, and then… er… maybe a cross. And that made Gorvel blanch and bow to him. It was his stupid wife treating him like that before! And that minstrel… I understood all of it! Yesterday I heard Lady Roveg reproaching him for his lack of skill to build a proper castle. I could barely help shouting at her, ‘Do you have the skill, stupid woman?’ A true woman demands nothing: a man will give her everything he can at his own will. He needs to be supported, comforted, helped…”

“Is that man still at Gorvel’s?” Oleg asked tensely.

“They say he left before dawn.” Her face was serene. Red lights from the blazing fire played on it, being reflected in her big gleaming eyes like a scatter of sparks. Her cheeks were as red as if she had a good sleep all the night long. Maybe she’s a sleepwalker? But that lot fails to recall their nightly adventures…

“Where’s Sir Thomas?”

“In the great hall,” she replied in vexation. Red sparkles in her eyes turned green. “He found some special sword. Now busy trying it at the senior guard.”

At that moment Oleg grasped the meaning of thundering, clanging, and panting sounds from below. He also heard rude male voices, marking the best or the most violent blows with roar and shouts. Oleg nodded to Chachar and went there, guided by the clang of steel and the strong smell of man’s sweat.

When he entered the great hall, it was full with roar and glitter of steel. The bright rays of the morning sun struggled throw the narrow windows. In the smoky semi-darkness, there were four men jumping and brandishing steel: Thomas fought three Gorvel’s men. He had a triangle iron shield in hand, and the huge sword in another moved so briskly that he seemed fenced with a shiny wall of cold steel.

“Thomas!” Oleg cried insistently. “We have to talk to the host!”

Thomas dodged a blow and parried two more with a shield. “You are his guest as well!” he cried back merrily.

“I need you.”

The soldiers grumbled. Oleg felt their hostile looks from all sides. Someone abused (in half a voice but loud enough for him to hear) the pigheaded prying pilgrims. “This year is good with acorns, but they keep grunting still…”

Disappointed, Thomas flung his sword to a soldier. The man caught it by hilt in the air. The rest saw Thomas to the stairs: crying out, banging with their swords hilts on shields. Oleg and Thomas hurried up to the second floor.

In front of Gorvel’s chambers, a soldier was walking to and fro, yawning, rubbing his sleepy eyes with fists. He livened up at the sight of them. “Relief?.. Oh, that’s you… Want the master?”

“Yes,” Thomas grunted. “Is he in?”

“Lady Roveg is. And Sir Gorvel left in the morning.”

A vacant smile was blown off Thomas’s face at once. Oleg pushed the door before the soldier could stop him. The friends rushed into the bedchamber.

Lady Roveg, with her eyes red and tearful, was rummaging in a big ornate box. Two likes of it stood open on a bench, one more — on the floor. As she heard footsteps, she recoiled in fright, moving somewhat alike a furious cat. At the sight of Thomas and Oleg and the guard running at their heels, she clasped her hands and gabbled out, “A trouble, Sir Thomas! My lord husband is gone!”

Thomas made a helpless gesture, glanced at Oleg who was gloomy as night, then waved to the guard. “It’s all right. You guard outside. Leave us!.. Lady Roveg, could he leave for hunting? He invited me there too, I recall…”

“He was going to!” Lady Roveg replied, her voice constrained with fury. “Just going to, as he had not a single day free! So busy with building… He made no step outside the castle gate since we came to this wild land! Even wenches… he had enough of them in the kitchen and servant rooms.”

Oleg coughed, asked softly, “What’s in the boxes?”

She wheeled round to him, swift as a forest predator, her eyes narrowed wildly. “Yesterday there were family jewels! Mine, as I was born the princess of Bodrik! I brought him, a poor knight with a long sword, my diamonds, golden earrings, chains with pendants of emerald, not to mention plain gold…”

“Any of servants?” Thomas asked, startled, his hand feeling the sword hilt nervously.

“Sir Thomas! Can’t you believe that a knight can have less honor than a servant?.. No one entered the chambers but a strange man last night. He had a long talk with my husband, but my jewels were all in place after he left!”

“Did you suspect him?” Oleg asked at once.

She shook her head arrogantly. “Definitely not. He had a lord’s face. Not the sort of man to stoop to a theft. Such men can take away but not steal… That’s just my habit to finger my jewels before going to sleep. No occasion to wear them in these backwoods, so I simply take and touch and shift them from place to place…”

Oleg took in the room at a glance. The hook on which Gorvel used to hang his sword was empty. “Sir Thomas, is our bag of gold at place?”

Thomas got pale with indignation. “How dare you think that? Of a noble knight!”

“Hasn’t he robbed his wife?”

Thomas shot a sharp glance at him and ran out. His iron feet made a brisk thunder on the stone stairs. Lady Roveg clenched her firsts in anger, her knuckles went white. “You are,” she told Oleg suddenly, “as far as I see, a sort of Pagan confessor to Sir Thomas?”

“Not quite so…”

“Details don’t matter,” she dismissed, still angry. “As a priest, you must know men better than their arms. Please tell me: would Sir Thomas take my offer to stay as a lord of this castle?”

Oleg recoiled. “But the tenure…”

“The King bestowed this land on a mighty knight, not namely Gorvel! The one able to build a castle and keep the lands under the reign of Christ’s warriors. The King doesn’t mind names. He minds the lord to be Christian, have real power, keep Saracen in awe!”

Oleg hesitated for a while, offered warily, “He’ll be back in a moment. Better ask him.”

“And who is that… Chachar?” she asked shrilly. Her beautiful eyes narrowed to slits.

“Hmmm… a woman. We saved her from villains. She asked to take her to any big city.”