The Grail of Sir Thomas

wonderer, shall we number in two all the rest of our way?”

“If only you…”

“Never!” Thomas said fervently. “I swear it on the cup, on my sword, on the hooves of my horse!”

“Even in your Christian mythology,” Oleg pointed out, “the sin came out of Satan’s left ear and the woman was made of a left rib, that’s why she shall go on the man’s left, and the man’s left shoulder is seated by all the evil…”

“By demon,” Thomas corrected. He looked at the wonderer with great respect. “So one shall spit over the left shoulder… Do you Pagans spit too?”

“Sir Thomas, I have to upset you. We are turning our horses back to the south.”

Thomas leaned back in the saddle, as if a log socked him between eyes. His palm clapped on the sword hilt habitually, his face flushed angrily. “Sir wonderer…” he spoke in a constrained voice, hardly keeping his temper. “Krizhina waits for me!”

“Sir Thomas,” Oleg persisted, “I promised to ride with you to Tsargrad… to Constantinople, I mean. That’s why I’m ready to make a hook and over, sharing the danger with you. It’s not me hunted. Neither me bearing the Holy Grail!”

“Why south?” Thomas screamed in a blaring voice. He sounded as though in death throes. “My way lies north!”

Oleg stretched his arm to point at the road. “Straight to the north, a big party of hired robber knights with a score of crossbowmen is coming on us. To the west, there are assassins waiting for us. To the north-west, some strange people lie in ambush: charms only gave me a warning but did not show how they look… We will come back to the north. I live at the north myself. But we’ll have to round the city and its lands in a broad arc.”

Cursing like Black God, Thomas drove his horse after the wonderer’s fast stallion.

Chapter 15

They galloped without rest, remounted often, tangled their tracks, rode at nights, avoided villages and hamlets, hid at the sight of people on the road. Even the most peaceful travelers have long tongues. Those are the most dangerous weapon now. Many would remember a formidable knight in gleaming armor, with a lance in right hand and a triangle knightly shield on his left elbow, with strange sigil: a sword and a lyre on starry field. Oleg, in his wolfskin jack, with wooden beads on bare chest, was memorable as well. They would also spot his bright green eyes, so unusual in this land of dark-eyed people.

Once Thomas couldn’t help saying pleadingly, “Sir wonderer, would you finger your wooden Pagan things more often? What’s waiting for us?”

Oleg glanced at him slantwise with a puzzled green eye and smirked. “But they are Pagan! Isn’t your faith against it?”

Thomas fidgeted in the saddle for a while. “When I led a party of knights across the desert, I had a Saracen scout,” he replied with displeasure but with dignity as well. “The information he brought was always accurate. I’d have to be a fool to refuse his help! Faith is one thing and life is another, sir wonderer.”

For a long time they rode in silence, too tired to talk. In the evening, after their horses were unsaddled and tethered and the two of them lay down after a sup, Thomas asked, “And those… Secret Seven? Can they finger charms in the same way? See us, guess our destination, know what we are doing?”

After a pause, Oleg told him with no confidence, “We are completely different. They rely mostly on accurate calculations. Civilization and progress! But in this world, bare calculation is not enough. Neither is bare civilization without culture.”

“And what enables you to see the future?”

“Intuition,” Oleg replied reluctantly. “Sometimes it fails, but in general it allows to see farther, gives clearer and brighter images. Intuition, Sir Thomas, relies on no knowledge but understanding. And understanding is the core element of culture…”

Thomas said nothing: he sniffed quietly, fast asleep, as a dead-tired healthy man with a clear conscience. The last thought remained in Oleg’s mind. At the damp dawn, when they lay wrapping themselves up in blankets, he called, “Sir Thomas, are you awake?.. Please resolve my perplexity. Why doesn’t the Holy Grail blaze up in your hands? In my wild land, I heard this cup can only be touched by sinless hands. But I look at you, Sir Thomas, and wonder: do you have no sin at all? Your superstitions… your commandments, I mean, say man is born sinful!”

Thomas squirmed under his blanket, waking up and trying to get himself warm. Finally, he got out with a twitch of shoulders, as delicate white as a woman’s. “Brrr! We have warmer nights and this is called a hot desert!.. I think the least sinful man is implied to be sinless. Searching for a completely sinless one means to hang… or at least to thrash all the mankind!”

“Hmm… You think the Holy Grail had been grabbed by so many sinful hands that it lost sensitivity?”

“I’m afraid it had, sir wonderer. It was forced to bring its requirements down, wasn’t it?”

Oleg took some cold slices of meat wrapped in wide leaves of medicinal herbs out of his bag. “Move closer. Are you the most sinless of all Franks, including kings, emperors, and other leaders of the Crusade?”

“Only Sir God is sinless!”

“But others are more sinful than you?”

“The Holy Grail thinks so,” Thomas replied modestly. “Who I am to dispute it?”

They rode all the day long. By night, their horses could barely drag their hooves along. Oleg allowed them a whole day and night of rest. After he’d gathered the brushwood and shot a hare, he only lay by the fire, looking dreamily in the sky. “Do you smell the rhododendron?”

Thomas glanced with suspicion. “Yes, I do. I have a nose,” he grunted but sniffed, just in case, and winced aristocratically. “Rhodode… Ugh! I thought it was bloody Sir Ogden again!”

“What’s the matter with him?” Oleg wondered.

“He often has indigestion. And the smell…”

Oleg looked around. “Isn’t your Sir Ogden in Britain?”

“The wind is from there,” Thomas dismissed with great negligence. He tossed more twigs into the fire, then Oleg heard a thundering sound nearby: the iron knight finally lay down to rest. “I like to look into the fire,” he said dreamily. “All our life is like the flames…”

“Why is it?” Oleg asked with interest.

“Why should I know?” Thomas wondered. “Am I a philosopher?”

In the morning, Oleg told him they had to ride into a village to buy some oats. Besides, they had no more salt and bread: the last slice had been eaten two days before, Since that, they lived on meat only.

The village blacksmith examined the hooves of their horses and reshod one remount. By the way, he gave a solemn warning, “You’d better turn until it’s too late. The way to the right is across mountains, to the left — across deserts. For any of them, you’ll have to leave horses. But if you barge straight forward, it’s sure death! The land of invisible warriors there. Evil and merciless, them allow no strangers at all. Destroy and sacrifice any foreigner.”

The knight glanced askew at the bluish mountain peaks far to his right, shivered. “I’ve crossed mountains once. I still wake up shouting when I dream of it!”

“You’ve also crossed deserts,” Oleg added in a droopy voice. “The hosts of Baldin the Third perished there: not of foe’s sabers but of heat and thirst… What’s special about those warriors?”

“Them invincible. Practice martial arts for lifetime. Know many secrets. Should such a warrior fight ten enemies at once, he leaves ten corpses in the field and goes without a scratch!”

Oleg saw undisguised fear in the knight’s blue eyes. “That is beyond even Sir Lancelot of the Lake… And Sir Galahad too, and Sir Gawain even less so… My God! Why do they need that martial skill? Are they at war?”

The smith shrugged. His eyes were sympathetic. “Them took no side in Crusade. Them would only fight each other, the strongest ones survive. Their monastery high in the mountains… For thousands of years, its monks invented special ways of fight.”

“Monks?” Thomas said indignantly. “Shouldn’t they compete in holiness?”