The Grail of Sir Thomas

sea closely. “Is there a chain stretched between them? To block the sea for night?”

“Only in hard times,” Oleg assured. “Now the chain is at the bottom of the sea. But I feel its huge winches will soon have to move… I remember times when the chain stayed up even for daytime…”

He smiled to his far memories, while Thomas wondered what the winches to stretch the monstrously thick chain across the sea should be like. Each one as large as a mountain? Which fairy smiths could have made such things?

The wonderer lay on the bed on his back, his eyes closed, as though in peaceful sleep, but his right hand fingered the charms without stop, felt them, lingered at this or that figure… Thomas turned grim. If the wonderer is right and the cup is pursued by the Secret Seven Lords of the World, there is hardly a chain to keep them away.

In the evening, Thomas decided to visit the crusader knights: there were two knightly orders that occupied a whole quarter in Constantinople. Oleg winced but said nothing against and went for supper alone. Before leaving the room, he powdered the threshold with dust and put some hairs out of his wolfskin into the door slit.

Thomas looked at the wonderer anxiously, came back to the bed and put a dagger on his belt, in supplement to the huge sword he had on his back. He was in full armor, but the city streets were strolled by people of far stranger and odder looks: from half-naked and all but naked slaves of southern lands to northern islanders clad in furs.

Oleg sat at the corner table alone, trying to keep all the room within eyesight. He saw men drinking and having fun: hired warriors, small chieftains, of both far and close tribes, who had come to sign peace pacts. Merchants and traders were also there, feasting openly, but the flauntiest revelers were unremarkable types, as grey as mice. They seemed unable to pose any danger even to a chicken and taking care of nothing but themselves. Oleg was the only one to see (and the innkeeper, probably, the only to know) their true nature. Those men were a fear even to the imperial generals, intrepid and hardened in many battles. They were the spies of basileus.

“Are you bored, chieftain?” A young foxy girl with bright make-up, in short frivolous dress with low neck, leaned on his shoulder, pretending a stumble. With interest, both professional and plain woman’s, she cast a keen glance over his muscular body, bare shoulders.

Oleg clapped on her hand. Her tender white skin knew no work. He nodded at the bench near him. “Sit down. What will you drink?”

She sat down willingly, laughed, baring her dazzling white teeth. “I see you have been to our sumptuous pigpen before, chieftain?”

“You see?” Oleg was surprised.

“Of course I do! You neither gaped nor jumped up to paw me straight away… As though you have known all of it for ages.”

“I’ve been here before,” he confirmed. “By the way, my name is Oleg.”

“And mine is Helen. I’m working here.”

“Do you have a good day today?”

She wrinkled her nose prettily. “Not really. Clients are either poor or greedy or too… repulsive.”

He gave her a sharp glance. “Are you capricious?”

She laughed merrily, screw up her eyes archly. “It depends. If I have a chance, why not? In other cities, one has to accept everyone, even drunken soldiers, and Constantinople has thousand merchants a day coming through each of her gates. I have had no one today and would like to start the day with pleasure.”

Oleg waved for a servant who hurried up to them with a jug of wine and two glasses. “You start a day when I finish it,” he told Helen.

“I’m a night bird,” she said easily. “But I hope this time you won’t finish it that early!”

He took a sip of wine. He had grasped the concealed meaning of her arch words: the sinister one. He poured her some wine, observing her manner to take a glass, touch its edge with her lips, to sit and put her legs. At the same time, he said her words again and again in his mind, making her voice softer and louder, changing it to bass or descant. He felt something different about her, other than the nature of a plain prostitute. She constructed too correct sentences, her pronunciation was clear, she was even too beautiful for a wench in such a place. Smart and good-looking whores do not linger at harbor taverns, yielding to drunken sailors on a pitch of rotten hay. They make their way up fast, some of their sort have even become empresses, like the peerless Theodora.[16] May this beauty be just beginning her way?

She chattered, plucked the tightest grapes from big bunches, enjoyed her sharp clean teeth into a huge peach. It sprinkled with juice, she laughed. Her eyes were shiny, her cheeks had a natural high color under the rough layer of rouge.

When the jug of wine was half-empty (though Helen drank very little of it), Oleg tossed a golden dinar on the table and got up. “Let’s go?”

She rose to her feet lightly. “Why not?”

Oleg, tensed as though he was to plunge into cold water, noticed a strange stealing look of the innkeeper and — in the big motley crowd, gobbling and jabbering — two sullen merchants who fell silent at once and moved their heads together to follow Oleg and the girl with slanting glances.

They went up, the broad wooden stairs squeaked. Oleg let Helen go first, as though to feast his eyes on her seductive body and inflame his lust. He laughed loudly and joked while watching the curves of her slender body, listening to music of her moves, spotting her lithe muscle, well-hid by roundish feminine shapes. Helen (he was no fool to think it was real name) did not look a girl ascending from the very bottom to the bedroom of basileus. She was evidently born atop, brought up under the care of nurses, tutors, masseurs, doctors, and experts on the codes of behavior of courtiers, small folk, and barbarian chieftains.

In his small room, she shot a quick glance at the window, touched the hilt of the huge sword, which stood at the corner near the head of the bed, with interest.

The window shutters were quivering, the cold night air bursting into the room. Helen shivered. Oleg made a step towards the window to close it. “Wait!” Helen cried briskly. “I have a better idea!”

Smiling seductively and looking in his eyes, she started to untie her broad silk girdle with deliberately slow moves. Her plump ripe lips curved in a promising smile, her eyes laughed. Oleg smiled back to her: he had grasped the whole thing of it.

Helen came to the window and, with the same slowed moves, tied her girdle on the hooks to prevent shutters from flying open. Oleg feasted his eyes on her lissome body, slim waist, wide hips seated on long slender legs — especially because she was expecting such an intent look and fast breath from him.

“I think that will be better…” she said, still smiling, as she turned to him. Even a fool who failed to see her girdle can now have a good view of her figure in the lit window.

Oleg sat down on the edge of the bed, the one closer to the door, to miss no rustle outside. Helen stood near the window. “What have you been before, Helen?” he asked peacefully.

Surprise flickered in her beautiful eyes. “Do you want a talk?”

“Don’t you?”

“Surely I do! But I heard you, northern guests, behave like beasts and bed a woman straight off!”

Oleg smiled. “Do you want me to prove the opposite? To chat with you of philosophy all the night long?”

She burst with merry laughter. Her pretty head jerked up, baring the beautiful white neck made for kisses. “It would be a severe disappointment to me!”

“Come to me then,” Oleg called. “Let’s make love and discuss philosophy in pauses… if there are any.”

She nodded, laughter still flickering in her radiant eyes. Slowly, she stepped to Oleg and, standing in front of him, started to strip off her dress. Oleg kept on his face the look of admiration for her young slender body, but he was all on tips of his ears. He heard wooden floor boards in the corridor creaking louder and nearer.

Helen also heard it. Her smile grew broader, her eyes opened wider, more seductively. She had her undershirt off in hand and looked teasingly at him.

“Someone coming to the door!” Oleg told her quickly. “Get behind that door, quickly!”

She opened her eyes wide. “What’s there?”

“A closet,” he replied impatiently. “A crumpled space but you won’t spend much time in. Just until I get rid of my friend and companion. It must be him.”