The Grail of Sir Thomas

When Thomas came up into their room in the inn, the wonderer was lying on his bed, hands behind head. On the floor, there was a big plate of fruit, a jug of wine. Judging by apple tails, the wonderer had gorged apples with their cores.

Oleg livened up at once. “Greetings, Sir Thomas!” he said cheerfully, waved his hand and even his right foot: probably it was a sign of ardent love and passion. “I see you visited all the taverns on the way… plenty of them, I recall. What the hell, where’s my youth? You must have missed no whore, a whole quarter of them here. Fine swarthy Asian wenches, plump Jewish women, cold girls of North… You did a right thing. There’s only dust and mud of roads ahead.”

“Curse that tongue of yours, sir wonderer,” Thomas said. He flopped heavily on the bench, his face exhausted, the red pressed-in stripe on his forehead filled with mud, big beads of sweat running down his face. “All the night long, I tried to get out of the back streets where you left me. Whenever I went, it was either a dead end… or a return to the same place!”

“How’s that possible?” Oleg gasped. “The inn’s but a step from!”

“I saw it then,” Thomas explained in vexation. “When I got to a familiar street. Precisely, when I came to the inn’s gate… and even then I almost passed by! Do you have anything more substantial than this food for goats?”

“I’ll send for meat,” Oleg replied hastily. “Don’t take your armor off. It suits you, I see now. You are so magnificent in it, so noble! I tracked the place of the chief malefactor. We need to take him quickly, before he thinks up a new foul trick to play!”

As Thomas ate the meat the servant brought them, he glowered at the wonderer. He knew the saying about the donkey who was not relieved of his load, as that was said to be decorating him. He felt dead tired, like never before, and wished greatly to undo his clasps and get out of the heavy steel armor. “One of the Seven?” he asked.

Oleg jumped, as though thrown up, came to the window. Thomas saw his back strained. “Yes,” the wonderer replied in a dull voice, without turning to him. “I hope he’s alone. And I’m afraid he is!”

Thomas choked, started to chew the hot meat slower, with more care. Strength returned to his tired body, flowed in with every slice he swallowed, but his fear of the unfathomable powers of magic was back too. Despite his strength and courage, the wonderer is no man of war. He fails to understand that’s impossible to break into a well-guarded house with less than a hundred well-armed soldiers. Who will allow such an attack within the capital city? To take a castle, we need a thousand men. And if the master is an adept of magic, one of the Seven Secret Lords, no host will do for him! “Will we break through the gate?” Thomas asked, doing his best to conceal fear.

The wonderer paced up and down their small room, like a predatory animal in a cage, clenched his fists, rubbed the temples of his head. “The gate is always closed…”

“We’ll break it!”

“Is it a jest? While we break the gate, the Secret One will sit by the window, drinking tea and pointing at us.”

“I think what he drinks is no tea,” Thomas replied with his mouth full, chewed it well and added, “Surely, a direct assault is impossible. What if we enter as traders? I don’t think he goes shopping. Rather the goods are brought to his place.”

“I doubt whether traders are allowed into the house itself.”

“What we need is to pass the gate!”

“Sure? The entrance door of the house can be even stronger. I know such cases.” Thomas raised his eyebrows in surprise, and Oleg waved away in vexation. “Sir knight, one can be born a seignior but not a hermit! In my young years, I’d climbed on towers, like a nasty monkey, jumped from masts… A good way from above! Pity it won’t work… We have to come by sea!”

“Is the house at the shore?”

“It’s rather a tower,” Oleg explained. “Though there’s a house too. However, if I got the signs right, we shall find our foe in the tower. It’s a more convenient place for observation.”

“Of us?”

Oleg winced. “Of stars, ebbs and flows of a tide, the phases of moon, the flocks of birds… In a word, we must try the way by sea.”

Thomas felt his hands cold. He moved an unfinished slice of meat away, sighed convulsively, and objected. “In a boat? We’ll be set with arrows before we row up to. It’s no forest: neither bushes nor logs to hide behind. A crossbow bolt can even break my steel armor! And moorings are tall here, for guards to hide and endure an assault from sea easily.”

Oleg ran about the room for a while, then hurled himself on the bed. The thick boards gave a plaintive creak. He turned onto his back, his broad palms darted behind his head. His eyes screwed up angrily at the whitewashed ceiling. “I see no other way! Neither do my charms. If we boat up as fishermen, we shan’t be met by a whole host. The mooring is only guarded by two men. Though they are protected by its tall stone board… And two guards at the entrance to the tower! Only the four of them can see us!”

“Who’s inside the tower?” Thomas asked.

Oleg waved away in annoyance. “A party of hired soldiers, but we have to think of getting out of the boat alive first! The guards won’t like it, will they?”

Thomas suspected him of nervous irony. He scowled and replied gloomily, “We need to act very quickly. And accurately. But the main thing is that we’ll have to hit without a warning! That’s prohibited by the knightly code of honor.”

“They’ll sock us without a warning themselves! Once they see we are no fishermen.”

“They are one thing,” Thomas snapped stubbornly, “and we are another! We should not behave like them.”

Oleg twisted his mouth in a smirk but said nothing, sparing the knight. Being uncompromising is good for songs, but it’s no way to survive in real life. The one who lived at least thirty years, as this valiant knight did, should not tell tales of his nonconformity: no fools here, only married men, as the Saracen say.

He put things into his bag methodically, looking over the walls and corners as though he knew he would never come there again. Thomas sighed, cursing the day and hour when he resolved to deliver the Holy Grail to his native Britain. She blooms like a garden without this miraculous cup as well. He tightened his belt, checked the sword in scabbard, lowered and raised his visor, changing from an armored man to a solid metal statue.

* * *

The guards had got used long ago to the fisher boats crawling lazily within the Golden Bay. Some boats stayed on the spot for days and nights, others moved continually, sailing or rowing, as though following the fish. The guards had only to drive the boats away from the stone wall of the mooring, but hardly any of them approached it: there were bare rocks sticking out of water. Fish has no love for such places. Only two weeks before they had an occasion to use their weapons: a fool fell asleep in his boat, the rising tide brought it close to the mooring, where the drunkard was woken up by a strong blow with the thick end of a spear on his light head.

In one of the boats, they saw a fisherman naked to his waist, his strong bronzed shoulders gleaming in the sun. His fellow was steaming in his wide cloak, even the hood pulled low over his muzzle. That one must have been sunburnt, a foreign fool, his skin under the cloak red like a boiled lobster. Now he hates the daylight, and tomorrow he will get blisters all over. For the next week, his skin will be peeling off, at his moans and groans, in big shreds, like a snake’s one.

The guards sat in the shade, their backs leaned against the warm wall of the tower. One of them had a paunch bottle in a wicker basket at his knees. The sea waves lapped in two steps below, but brought very little coolness, while the sun-warmed tower emitted heat. The guards glanced wistfully at the clear blue sky: only a puny white cloud on the far edge of it, and even that one melting before their eyes, like butter on a hot pan.

In the fisher boat, decrepit and dirty, the half-naked fisherman left the rows, yawned broadly, showing his jaws to gods, scratched his sweaty breast. His fire-read hair was matted, he felt hot and filthy, shot malicious glances at his pal who sat drowsy, his hood pulled over his eyes. The light breeze and surf were driving the boat to