The Grail of Sir Thomas

behind them, its folds started to shake. Oleg heard scratching, creepy howls. A thick paw, as large as a bear’s, tried to squeeze under the gate.

Oleg turned on his back. The foreman shook his head. “You endure. No wail… A stoic?”

Oleg shook his head slowly. “It’s just puny body suffering. I am free.”

The foreman pulled a mocking face. “But you’re set in this puny body, aren’t you? And can’t leave it. It’s your body if I get it right!”

“My soul is desolated. How can I put body first? Mark Aurelius was right, though he was an Emperor. He said man has nothing but his soul.”

“What if body dies? Of this work?”

“Here I’m fed better than I was… in my cave. I get less tired than while I worked to master my body with spirit.”

The foreman nodded, with no further interest in the novice. For previous three years, he had met different people in the stone quarry: pious men, pilgrims, and stoics, men of many countries and religions. He had taught ascetics and hermits who would only wear hefty chains and mutter prayers to break stone. His main concern was to reveal a man eager to riot or escape. That one was neither: he, a foreman for three years, could sense it from a mile away.

* * *

It was the second week of Oleg’s breaking stone and dragging heavy boulders. He gained some muscle, though he still looked gaunt and bony as against others. He was a welcome workmate: never shirking, ready to take the worst part of it, eager to help.

Once on his way back to the barn he heard a man swear and a lash whistle. A big man was crucified on an oaken cross, his clothes torn off and scattered about the yard. A Saracen in a huge green turban, naked to his waist, with sugar-white teeth bared in malice, was lashing the poor man with delight: spinning the lash over his head, hurling it down with a whistle, each slash meant to break the skin as deep as possible. The poor man’s back was lined with crimson wales. Bitter buzzy flies were dropping on it to lick his blood and ichor before a new lash.

The foreman nudged Oleg as he walked. “A nobleman,” he said with a frown, “They’d have the likes of us nailed, and he’s just bound! Held for ransom.”

“Who is he?” Oleg asked aloofly.

“A knight errant. Or maybe just a returnee from the Holy Land. Not every knight as lucky as our Baron! Many got their mouth watered and that’s all. Now glad to get home alive but scatter their bones on the way…”

They were the last to enter the barn. Guards prodded them with thick ends of spears and barred the door. Thomas Malton, Oleg recalled. An arrogant knight. A boy in the appearance of a man grown, his body in its prime, but his soul still a bud.

* * *

In his third week in the stone pit, Oleg saw a violently bashed man nearby: half-naked, his neck in the iron collar, his legs chained. It took Oleg some time to recognize him as Thomas and just a moment to forget it. He worked hard, but his thought was free to shrink deep into the soul, so he was searching the Real World desperately for the answers to the questions that tormented him while in the other world his mortal body, along with other two-legged animals, would drive wedges, raise a heavy hammer, drag boulders.

Suddenly he heard a hoarse voice nearby. “Wonderer? Er… Sir Oleg?”

He saw Thomas’s face: dripping with sweat, thinned, his southern tan gone. In the clatter of picks around, no one was looking in their side. “Yes, Sir Thomas, that’s me,” Oleg replied slowly. He was still in another world.

“I didn’t recognize you at once. This work did good for you! You got stronger, put some muscle on… Are you going to stay?”

“I can speak to gods anywhere,” Oleg said indifferently.

They heard a foreman’s warning shout. Cursing, Thomas brought his pick down on the rock, the stone fragments flew high. A cloud of dust raised and made everyone look alike. In the commotion Oleg lost the sight of Thomas, but in the evening the knight found him again. “I’ve changed with the man you worked with,” he whispered.

“We’re all men,” said Oleg indifferently. “All humans.”

For a while, Thomas crowbarred a granite boulder, thinking over an answer, then gave a guarded look around and whispered, “No men here but slaves! Does it befit you, a freeborn…”

“Slaves are men,” Oleg interrupted.

“Not men like us.”

“No one is made a slave by God. Only by people.”

Thomas shook his head angrily, his blue eyes blazed with fury. “Sir wonderer! You are too humble. I want to get out of here. I need help. A bit of help!”

Oleg nodded at the other men’s backs, glistening with sweat.

Thomas waved away angrily. “They’ve died out. But not you! I feel a glimmer in you…”

Oleg looked indifferent. He was driving his crowbar in a narrow slit, crushing the stone. Thomas breathed heavily. His muscular arms raised the pick over his head frequently, his blows cracked rocks like rip nuts. The chain on his ankles clanked miserably.

“You’ll burn out,” Oleg said.

“What?” Thomas wondered.

“Overstrain. Run out of your strength soon.”

“I shan’t linger! If no way out, I… swear on the Heaven and Holy Communion, I’ll smash my head!”

His breath rattled, as he had swallowed much stone dust. His neck was squeezed by the collar, his burnt blisters rubbed till they bled. The glitter in his eyes could belong to a small animal at bay, his fingers trembled. Oleg realized clearly that the handsome knight was not long for this world. At least, for the part of the world where Baron Otset’s castle stood.

“How will you get out?” Oleg asked without interest.

“I don’t know,” Thomas said desperately. “But here I shan’t live till Sunday. I know it. And no one to trust in! Slaves… They’re slaves after all! It’s only you I know. You cured me, and I once saved you from dogs!”

The wonderer raised his arms evenly and strongly, bringing the sharp end of the heavy crowbar down into the crack between boulders. Thomas could almost see other boulders that moved unhurriedly in Oleg’s head, casting a dim glimmer into his impenetrable green eyes.

“But,” the wonderer spoke gently, “people should not be forced, even to their good. If they can’t forget their flesh here, if they’re unhappy because of its suffering… they should be released.”

Thomas jerked his shoulder impatiently. “Damn your wise words! Who will release them?”

“We,” the wonderer replied in the same humble voice.

In the evening Thomas was brought to the common slave barn. None of the exhausted, work-disemboweled men paid any attention to the novice. Thomas made his way to the corner where Oleg was sitting. “You’ve travelled a lot,” he whispered with excitement. “Might have seen more of such pits than I have. Do you see a way to escape?”

“There’s always a way,” Oleg replied softly. “But the collars will give us away… and our rags! We’ll be stopped in the nearest village and handed back. No one would like a quarrel with Baron.”

Thomas nodded. “I think so. And I can’t leave without… some things. I hate to part with my warhorse, my armor and sword, but let the damned Baron have it! But in my saddle bag there is an old copper cup…” He stopped, gave Oleg a searching look.

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” the pilgrim said quietly. “In search of something to dress your wound… Why is it so important?”

“It’s holy,” Thomas whispered. “A sacred thing.”

“Ah,” Oleg said, “ritual. I see. Every our sorcerer used to have a cup on his belt. Back in the times of Targitai, the golden plow, yoke, and cup fell from the sky…”

Thomas hissed angrily. “Don’t you liken holy Christian relics to those Pagan things!”

“Well, well. On the way out, we’ll need the armory first. You put your iron pot on, we take horses and gallop