The Grail of Sir Thomas

sweet words…”

They came up to the wonderers who were seated tiredly on the huge bodies of dead monsters. Some pilgrims breathed heavily, scowled, one waved his blooded hand, others had a quite talk with their heads close.

The old man with spade-like beard, his cloak even more torn, met Thomas and Oleg with his shrill senile voice. “Who is it, eh? Just two shrimps, but look — beasts from the very hell run after them! So big knobs indeed? Hares would do to hunt you down!”

Thomas blushed, threw his hand on the sword hilt. Oleg seized his elbow, spoke back peacefully, “Who judges by clothing… My companion — he’s from the land of Angles, the former Tin Isles[17] — had also thought you, in your rags, would not do the beasts!”

“Tin Isles?” the pilgrim leader said, still annoyed. “Ah, the Land of Red Wolves?.. Where Taurus led the Old Believers to?.. I see, no way for them to know old ways there. And you didn’t tell him either?”

“I’ve been chock-full with other matters,” Oleg replied.

A hunched old man came up to them, dragging his swollen feet. The end of his dirty grey beard was tucked under his rope belt. He had a thick iron chain dangling on his neck: each link of it as large as a fist, its end dragged on the ground, leaving a wide trace. With his fingers burnt on that plain-looking crutch, Thomas looked at the chain closely — and suddenly felt it had more iron in each of its links that his heavy armor in total! “Let’s stop for dinner?” the old man asked his leader in a hopeful voice.

The old man with spadish beard snapped back angrily. “Again?.. You had your meal yesterday! Enough to wait till supper tomorrow. The beast within should be tamed, its spine broken!”

Thomas glanced around furtively. The wonderers sat in rows on the backs of dead animals, sad and ruffle- feathered like hungry crows in the rain. One walked among the monsters, prodded their jaws with his staff, examined their teeth. His belt had a gloomy glitter: broad and tight, made of metal with some strange writing carved in.

The pilgrim leader followed the glance of the gleaming armored knight, his sharp eyes flickered with some emotion. “Well, we can have some rest. But don’t give up to temptation, don’t give up! The servants of Black God wait for you to… As the sun sets, we shall plod on. Less heat and flies on the way.”

They made a fire far away from the road. The dead monsters were dragged into a huge pit and thrown over with earth and stones. However, the pilgrims had cut a couple of animals first: with knives or bare hands. Thomas turned away: he could not bear to see the dreadful entrails that had nothing in common with those of deer, boars, or even bears.

The pilgrim leader saw to the liver being taken from the biggest animals. Soon after, strange fragrances started to drift over the green valley. Thomas sat humbly where Oleg had seated him, his nostrils sniffed the fresh- roast liver avidly, but his eyes recoiled in fright from the far road. He could see it as a twisting fair stripe with strange spots of dark, broken in one place and restored with great effort after, crawling out from pools of blood. From far away, a carriage was coming, attended by riders. What would they think as they see the road flooded with strange blood, all in dents and furrows that tell of a terrible battle? However, a light wind had already raised a cloud of grey dust to bury at least some part, if not all of it. By the time they have enough of their marvel and reach the nearest village, there will be no traces on the road at all and the words of astonished travelers will be taken as tales.

When Oleg, after a long talk he had with the leader of pilgrims, came back to Thomas, the knight whispered in amazement, “I don’t understand… They are heroes!”

“They were,” Oleg dismissed.

“What do you mean? They are! They scattered the beasts, slew, and crushed!’”

Oleg cheered up and laughed. “Sir Thomas, one can live a life but remain a child. Heroes come out of childhood earlier than other people, as they in early age get everything other men can only dream of: glory, money, power, and princesses… Heroes have time to get fed up with that, to understand that’s not what really matters…”

“And become wonderers?” Thomas asked with distrust.

“They come out of heroes, anyway. In search of themselves. Many of them become wonderers to obtain Truth in their travels. They try to pick the easiest way: thinking the Truth has already been found somewhere and all they need is come and see it.”

“And what is real?”

“Truth is to be found in your own self. One man meets God on his way, another — while staying at home. Isn’t that true?”

The pilgrim leader sliced the monster’s liver in big pieces, gave one to Thomas and one to Oleg. Thomas took it with both hands and thought, with a gloomy irony, that old man with hungry eyes must be a real glutton. After eating such a slice, one can easily do without food not only till next evening but for whole week! Next to him, Oleg crunched the roast liver loudly. As he gnawed deeper in it, blood oozed from the raw inner part. Oleg’s eyes were thoughtful as if he watched some very far thing beyond this world. He paid no heed at all to his bloody fingers.

Thomas made himself eat it. Who else, in all the Crusader army, can boast having tasted the liver of the Hell’s beast?

On the other side of him, a gaunt ragged pilgrim was sitting, a thick hefty chain on his shoulders. He hadn’t take it off even for dinner. By stealth, Thomas tried to move the end that lay on the ground but the chain seemed to be rooted in it, pressed into the soil at a finger depth.

I don’t understand, he spoke sadly to himself, what strength do these strange men seek, which is more than strength? What power over power? What wonderful things are they going to achieve by denying… Goodness, a fool can see what they deny!

He felt strange, as though he spent all his life walking past the treasure visible to everyone except for him, a blind one. Would he also see it if he stripped off his armor, slipped into rags, denied the joys of life and walked bare-headed out in the rain and snow, as a beggar?

He chewed mechanically, his eyes fixed on the emaciated ragged men, on their tatters, chains and fetters, their scabbed bare feet. “I can’t get it…” he whispered sadly. “Can’t get…”

Oleg darkened, turned away. Will a worm of doubt infest even this beautiful, healthy, muscular body? Will the knight in his prime, to the terror of his family and friends, take his armor off, leave for a cave or join the wandering pilgrims?

After all, it is the easiest way to seek Truth. To sever from the noisy base world, false and venal as it is, to cut yourself off with the wall of reclusion, to stay one on one with God. No birth without pain. Only pain and suffering can wake up the soul: it either aches or sleeps. However, ordinary reclusion is not the strongest pain. Mind the Great one!

Having parted with the wonderers, they plodded to the nearest village and bought a horse for Thomas. They would got it for Oleg too if not the ill wind that brought the host’s wife to. She went screaming, dug her nails in her husband’s face. All Oleg and Thomas could do was to save their purchased horse by a hasty retreat. Thomas gave a hint of offering twice that much for the second horse but Oleg dragged him out of the house. “This land is rich, one village close to another. We’ll buy a better one.”

“I feel awkward, sir wonderer! I, a crusader knight, have a horse, and a priest…”

Oleg gave a restrained smirk. At the beginning of the journey, the valiant knight was not conscience-stricken by the sight of the exhausted pilgrim dragging himself, covered with road dust and mud, by the side of his stallion in his luxurious cloth. The old god prescribed a noble knight to be high and a common man low, and Christ, the young god, consolidated and sanctified it! Man is eager to slip into the bad, but he can also come to humanity rather quickly. “Sir Thomas,” he said in a promising voice. “Up from that hill, I’ll be riding such a stallion that yours will seem a plow horse next to him!”

Thomas shifted his jealous gaze to the horse he rode. He managed to buy a huge, mighty draft horse, which had evidently been brought there from the lands of North. I paid thrice its price, but what is money when knightly honor is at stake? And that coin had come to them easily, according to the wonderer who claimed having either found it or taken from a hare running by.

As the wonderer walked, he often tip-fingered his charms. Thomas looked at them with dual feeling. The