The Grail of Sir Thomas Read online

Chapter 2

  On the tenth day Thomas managed to climb into his armor. Still weak and staggering, he mounted with the wonderer’s help. The restive destrier neighed, tried to take a majestic pace. The wonderer seized the rein hastily, the horse stopped dead. His hand on the rein was as wide as an oar, his arm, bony and gnarled, with some flesh added to it, seemed to be carved of old oak. He became even broader in shoulders, his face a bit livened up, but his eyes still full of anguish.

  “Thank God,” Thomas said. “Do your gods allow you to accept rewards?”

  “Sir Thomas, I need very little. If no grass, I eat bark. I sleep on bare ground or rocks. Goodbye! And good luck.”

  The knight tried to raise his lance in a salute but failed. He gave a guilty smile instead; his destrier took a steady pace, doing his best not to shake the knight. The wonderer picked his cloak and staff, which he called a crutch, and strolled along the same road slowly, lost in brooding.

  The path wound among trees, the open space visible ahead. A squirrel ran along a branch over the walk, saw the strolling man and paused in curiosity, its little teeth made a clank. A big bird flew past him heavily, tried to perch on a branch, but her legs were stiff from long sitting in the nest, so the bird rocked and flapped her wings till her talons regained confidence.

  Oleg stepped softly, trying not to disturb that bird, a broody hen. Her belly looked pink and pitiful, with bare skin where it had plucked its feathers away to warm the nest. The bird was emaciated. She seldom left her nest and ate almost nothing, busy with warming and guarding her brood.

  A doe passed twenty steps ahead without fear, followed by a young thin-legged deer. She was alerted, her ears moved. The doe gave Oleg only a guarded look: he did not seem to pose any danger. She nuzzled into branches, plucked some fresh leaves and chewed them, her eyes half-closed with languish. The young deer gaped at dragonflies while being fed by his mother.

  The trees parted. Oleg plunged into the hot air. The sun pounced upon him, frying him in his cloak. Oleg threw the hood back, exposing his head to hot rays.

  An ordinary hermit perfects himself in solitude, far from the vanity of the world: in a cave, desert, woods, or mountains. Such hermits number in thousands. In agonizing reflection, they obtain the Truth and bring it into the world. Gautama obtained his Truth in wild woods, Zarathustra secluded himself in mountains, Christ fasted in a desert for forty days, and Mahomet heard Allah while brooding on the top of a lone mountain.

  But there is a more difficult sort of reclusion: being among people, dressing, eating, and doing as they do, but living this life with your flesh only, while your soul remains as clean and sublime as it was on the mountain peak. Many tried Great Reclusion, but few succeeded in it!

  The road meandered in hills. Twice Oleg saw odd, ugly olives with swollen trunks, which only grew in that land, till the hills parted and the road went out into the open.

  Far ahead, there was a lofty fortified castle – a gloomy building of four floors, with a tall watchtower. At that moment the castle was ramparted. It looked swarmed with ants, but those were lots of men: dragging huge stones, binding them round to lift onto the wall. Oleg saw their bare backs bustling everywhere and the wet glisten of trunks that were removed of their bark on the go.

  The road forked: one branch turned to the castle eagerly while another went by. The wonderer passed by the castle without interest: he had seen many of its sort. Since the Saracen were defeated, and Jerusalem’s lands captured, the Frank crusaders fortified hastily, enclosing with walls. Kings vied with each other in bestowing the lands they did not control on their knights, and each knight rushed to build a castle to shelter behind its solid walls.

  The castle keep is a tall square tower: wide and massive, formed by huge granite blocks. It is surrounded by smaller buildings, their roofs barely visible over the high rampart. The castle stands in the bend of a river – a common way to ensure better protection. On the other side, there is a deep moat dug from the river and filled with its water. There is a massive gate deep in the wall, under the arched cornice, flanked with two small towers where guards would hide.

  The wonderer had left the castle far on the left and behind, when he heard a fast clatter of hooves approach from there. Without looking back, he stepped off the road and past the roadside. He knew the wicked men’s habit of whipping pedestrians while riding.

  Hooves clattered past him. He saw three men on light slim-legged horses. The last rider looked back at him, shouted and stopped. Others reined up reluctantly. The three of them are dressed in motley rags but all have sabers and daggers. One also has a bow on his back and a quiver full of feathered arrows by his saddle. Their faces are hungry and evil.

  “Hey you,” the back rider cried harshly. “Whose man?”

  “A pilgrim, good people,” Oleg replied meekly. “On my way home from the Holy Land.”

  “Where’s your home?” the rider demanded. His friends held their horses, who were longing for gallop.

  “Rus’.”

  The riders exchanged glances. “Never heard of it,” the back one said angrily. “Some made-up place, huh?”

  “Or a tiny kingdom!” a different rider cried.

  “Tiny as my nail!”

  “Very good,” the back rider resolved. “He’s no one’s man.” He dismounted, prodded Oleg’s chest with a whip handle. Oleg did not stir when the man felt the muscle on his arms and chest efficiently. Then he made Oleg open his mouth and counted his teeth.

  The first rider cried impatiently, “You’re ready to grab all sorts of carrion, Ternak! Look! He’s a bag of bones.”

  “He’s from Europe,” the second rider added. “Our blood.”

  Ternak laughed. “God said He knew no Gentile nor Jew. So everyone is equal to the Baron’s stone quarry, ha ha! Take him to Murad.”

  They surrounded the pilgrim: two with bare sabers, the third with an arrow on the bow string. Oleg looked in their faces, skillful slavers, experts in this god-awful trade.

  “Stretch your hands!” Ternak commanded. “Not ahead! Behind you!”

  Oleg crossed his arms behind him submissively. Ternak put a rope on them deftly, tied his hands together. Another rider helped him to lift Oleg on the horseback. Ternak shook his hands off. “So heavy a bag of bones!” he said with surprise. “Abdullah! Take him to Murad and join us.”

  Abdullah swore, mounted hastily and galloped to the castle, whooping and holding the bound pilgrim.

  They had barely entered the courtyard when a huge creature covered with black hair came out to meet them. He seemed to Oleg half a man, half a beast, with his low forehead, close small eyes, huge massive jaw and absent neck: his boulder-like head was seated on muscular shoulders directly. His bare chest resembled a beer cask, his legs looked as though he spent his whole life seated on that cask, but his arms were as big and thick as tree trunks, covered with thick black hair instead of bark.

  The enormous man wiped his hooked fingers, which looked fire-tempered, on the hem of his blood-stained leather apron. He eyed the wonderer with revulsion. “That one will croak on his first day! Kadji damn you, Ternak…”

  Oleg was brought to a low stone barn. The door was ajar, the inside smelled of sewage and stiff air. They pushed Oleg forcefully into the dark. His foot found no floor, he went rolling down the stairs and came back to himself on the stone floor covered with wisps of rotten straw.

  He heard the door shut and barred upwards. A strong hand touched his shoulder, a mocking voice said into his ear, “Hail to the builder of new world!”

  Oleg’s eyes got accustomed to the semi-dark quickly. He discerned about twenty half-naked men along the walls. Each one had a tarnished metal collar round his neck, three were fettered. “Which world?” Oleg asked.

  “The new one,” the other man mocked. “Fair one! Christian one! Baron Otset’s castle among barbarity. An outpost of the Christian host in the land of Saracen…” He was half-naked, his back full of awful swollen weals. His face was crosse
d by a lacerated crimson weal, his left eye swollen.

  Oleg sat up, rubbed his numb hands. “I heard of… a stone quarry?”

  The man grinned, baring sharp stubs of front teeth. His gums were bleeding. “Ever worked stone?”

  Oleg nodded, still looking around. If the man wants to see the novice’s fear, he’ll be disappointed. Pilgrims see many things in their travels.

  “A pilgrim?”

  Oleg nodded at that again. The stranger went on, “Half pilgrims here. Baron gives us a chance to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. For him, surely. The castle’s done, now the wall raised… My name’s Yarlat.”

  “I’m Oleg. From Rus’.”

  “Is that somewhere in Hyperborea5?”

  The next morning Oleg was brought to the forge. Two strong warriors put an iron ring around his neck. The forger was skillful and fast to join the metal ends and rivet them together. The skin on Oleg’s throat got burnt a bit.

  The guard slapped him strongly on his back. “I love pilgrims! Humble, accepting. Others are pigheaded. Yesterday two of ‘em were fed to the dogs alive.”

  The collar was burning hot, slow to cool. The guards led Oleg through the main gate outside. In half a mile from the castle, there was a pit large enough to contain two or three such castles. Fine sharp dust was rising from it. Oleg heard heavy blows of iron on stone.

  The guard led Oleg up to the brink, pointed at a wooden ladder. “Get down! No pick for you, drag stone out. The foreman will show you in.”

  Down in the pit, half-naked men were pounding rocks with heavy picks, making holes in the stone, driving wooden stakes into the holes and watering them. The wet swollen wood would break the stone. Broken boulders were tied round with ropes and lifted up.

  The foreman glowered at his new slave. “You drag broken stone. To that wall. On top are those who won’t try to escape. We don’t know yet if you will.”

  Silently, Oleg gripped a sparkling colored edge of the cut-off boulder. The black-bearded man who took it by another side told him through gritted teeth, “Don’t be idle, but don’t work your fingers to bone. Or you won’t live till evening!”

  They spent all the forenoon either rolling or dragging stones to the wall. Rope ends were thrown down from above, Oleg and the black-bearded man called Shaggy tied the stones round, dawdling with knots to extend the moments of rest. Then the boulders were lifted up with poignant slowness; their sharp edges scratched the stone wall, the crumbs of granite fell down.

  After a brief lunch, when each slave was given a dried fish and a slice of bread, Oleg was told to drive the wooden wedges. Others were watering. The slab of stone underfoot was crackling and groaning when Oleg felt a strange strain in it. Next to him, two moaning slaves were rolling a broken-off boulder with long poles.

  “Step aside,” Oleg warned them. “Or you may be injured.”

  The slaves looked bewildered. The foreman gave him a sharp look, then suddenly barked at them, “Get away!” The slaves flew up, like birds flushed. The huge slab gave a crack. A boulder shot up as if hurled by catapult and ploughed the dry rocky ground two steps long. Oleg stood on the very edge of the larger slab. The foreman kept his eyes on the novice, his mouth twisted. “You know stone? Good. Two fools owe their lives to you.”

  The slab was broken like an overripe watermelon: its inside gleaming red with black grains, lined from top to bottom with straight grooves, water-swollen wedges stuck in them.

  Oleg picked up his excessively heavy hammer. Slaves moved around like half-dead men, their eyes lackluster. His heart was wrung with guilt: he still had not found the Truth to rescue them.

  There’s nothing truly great about the one who lifted himself from slavery to the emperor’s throne, as many did. Oleg used to know Upravda, a blue-eyed shepherd who left sheep herding in Carpathian Mountains for the throne in Constantinople. He translated his Slavic name, which meant rule, governance, and law, into Latin as Justinian, to mean the same6. The word justice, derived from it, spread in Latin and other tongues. He had done much, that fair-haired shepherd, though the throne was prepared and given to him by his uncle Justin, once also a shepherd in Carpathians. But even the most powerful emperor can’t find a way for happiness. For salvation, as the young Christian faith puts it.

  By evening he was hardly able to drag his feet along. The hammer was dropping out of his hands, twice he escaped falling boulders only by a miracle. Covered with stone crumbs, dripping with sweat, he could barely hear, through the buzz in his ears, the foreman shout for everyone to finish work and get out.

  The exhausted workers rushed to the rope ladders dropped from above, where the guards’ swords rang and glittered with bare steel. Oleg lingered. His breath burst out in rattles, his legs quivered.

  The foreman whipped him. “Move it!” he bellowed. “You must be in before dark!”

  Someone helped Oleg up to his feet. The guards above struggled to keep their mad dogs under control; they pawed the ground, reaching for slaves, and clanked their scary sharp teeth.

  The foreman shoved Oleg into the barn, both collapsed on the dirty floor. Once the gate was slammed behind them, its panels began to shake. Oleg heard scratches, 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 wailing. A stoic?”

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

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

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

  “What if the body dies? Of this work?”

  “Here I’m fed better than I was… in my cave. I get less tired than I used to be in the work to master my body with spirit.”

  The foreman nodded, with no further interest in the novice. For the 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 primary concern was to reveal a man eager to riot or escape. That one was neither: he, a foreman with three years of experience, could sense it from a mile away.