The Quest of the Fair Unknown Page 12

  The hermit looked aloofly at the three travelers. "Am I to have no peace in which to meditate?" he asked querulously.

  "Father," Sir Bors said, nearly throwing himself from his horse. "I need to confess."

  "You sound like that Galahad fellow," the hermit complained. "Wouldn't even let me finish my supper, he was in such a blazing hurry to confess, just as if he'd committed every mortal sin in the book, which he hadn't. Then that other fellow, earlier today, nearly kicking the door in asking for food, though I'd like to know where he thought I'd get food. Some people think that all we holy men do with our lives is store up food to hand over to every jackanapes that wanders by. Why not? What else does a hermit have to do? Let me tell you, it takes nearly all my time just to keep up with my prayers. And the wood isn't chopped, and the roof needs work, too. Well? Are you going to confess or just grovel?"

  Beaufils and Ellyn exchanged glances at this speech, but Sir Bors evidently saw nothing amiss and plunged at once into a full description of the recent events in his life, starting with his foolish vow to Lady Orgille, continuing through his leaving Lionel to his tormentors, and concluding with his breaking his promise and riding away. Listening to this account, Beaufils wasn't sure which of these events Sir Bors regarded as sins and which he did not. Maybe he was hoping the hermit would tell him. When he was done, the holy man gazed silently at Sir Bors, a speculative light in his eyes. "Please, Father," Sir Bors said, sinking to his knees, "give me my penance—anything!"

  "You want penance?" the hermit grumbled. "How about going away and leaving me alone?"

  Sir Bors hesitated. "That's not much, is it? Shouldn't you make me do more? After all, I left my own brother to die."

  "Er, Sir Bors," Beaufils began, "about Sir Lionel—"

  But Sir Bors pressed on. "I heard once about a knight who had to wear a hair shirt under his armor for years as a penance, just like a hermit. Or rather, I mean ... is that a hair shirt you're wearing?"

  "I can't wear hair shirts!" the hermit snapped. "I have sensitive skin! You want penance? Fine! Go cut some wood for me!"

  Sir Bors bowed his head obediently. "Yes, Father. And will that be all?"

  The hermit suddenly looked thoughtful. "Er, no, that's not all," he said slowly. "Dear me, no. You have been very bad, haven't you? I shall have to pray about this. Yes, I have it! Sir Bors, you must renounce your arms for the space of one, no, two years, and must assume the humiliation of being a servant! Right here, so that I—your Father Confessor—can keep an eye on your soul's health. You must cut wood and carry water and keep a garden and hunt wild game—all to humble your soul, that you might be spared from this most horrible sin."

  Sir Bors looked up slowly at the hermit's face, his own expression a mixture of grief and doubt. "So to cleanse my soul I need to become your slave for two years?"

  "It's not like that," the hermit said hastily. "It will be a trial to me, as well. I daresay you'll disturb my life of meditation awfully with all that work."

  Gravel crunched from the far side of the little clearing, and Beaufils looked up to see the swiftly striding figure of Sir Lionel himself. He crossed the yard in a flash, then drew back his ironclad foot and kicked Sir Bors with great force in the part of his hindquarters without armor, launching him forward into the hermit's legs.

  "Ouch!" shouted Sir Bors, whirling around. "Who the devil ... Lionel?"

  "Who'd you think, you stupid sod!"

  "I thought you were dead!"

  "If I'm not, it's no thanks to you," Sir Lionel retorted wrathfully. "Here, let's see if I feel like a ghost, shall we?" He kicked at his brother again, but Sir Bors scrambled backward on his hands and feet, and only received a glancing blow.

  "Lionel, listen to me!"

  "Go ahead," Sir Lionel said, striding forward. "I'll kick you a bit while I listen, shall I?" He got another solid kick in, but this time his armored foot only clanked harmlessly against the iron cuisse on his brother's left thigh.

  "I was wrong!" Sir Bors shouted. He was still on his back, but he had raised himself up on his hands and feet and was scuttling backward, his bottom hanging beneath him, where it would be difficult to kick. "I should have helped you!"

  "Oh? And you think this is a new idea to me?" Sir Lionel snapped, circling his brother, looking for an opening. "Guess what? I always thought you should have helped me, you blithering block!"

  "Dash it, Lionel, I said I was wrong, didn't I?" Sir Lionel kicked him again, but again he missed the soft spot he was aiming for. "You always did fight dirty!" Sir Bors said.

  "At least I fight," Sir Lionel rapped back, chasing his brother's beetling retreat.

  While all this was going on, the hermit had picked himself up and dusted off his cloak. Now, staring furiously at Sir Lionel, he stepped between the brothers. "Stop!" he declared. "This man is my servant."

  Sir Bors looked up from his bottom-defending crouch and said, "No, I'm not. This is my brother, the one I thought I'd killed."

  The hermit looked sharply disappointed at this, but didn't give up. "No, it isn't!" he said. "It's ... it's an apparition! A fiend from hell who has taken your brother's shape! Fiends can do that, you know."

  Both knights stared at the hermit for a second; then Sir Bors rolled his eyes and said, "Shut up, you old poop."

  Now Sir Lionel gaped at his brother. "Bors? Did you just call a religious man a ... a poop?"

  "Well, he is!" Bors said defensively. "You should have heard the twaddle he was trying to sell me before you came, trying to make me do his work for him."

  "Oh, I don't deny his poopness," Sir Lionel said. "I'm just surprised to hear you admit it."

  The hermit still stood between the brothers, towering over the crawling Sir Bors. Now he raised his arms in the air and said in a fierce voice, "Both of you are in grave danger at this moment."

  Sir Lionel lifted one finger and poked the hermit in the chest. The holy man stepped backward, tripped over Sir Bors, and sat hard in the dirt. Sir Lionel extended his hand to his brother and said, "Why don't you get up, Bors? You look a proper ass crawling about like that."

  Sir Bors took his brother's hand and, grinning, stood. Beaufils smiled. He'd never seen someone forgive his brother, but it was worth watching.

  Unfortunately, the hermit was less impressed. Shaking with fury, he rose to his feet. "It needed only this!" he rapped out. "No food in the larder, no wood for the fire, leaks in the roof, and chinks around the windows. Villagers dropping by day and night with their problems—'Oh Mr. Hermit! Won't you tell me what to do with my rotten little boy?' As if I cared!" The hermit's voice was growing shrill. "And now I've been assaulted by a knight!"

  "Assaulted?" repeated Sir Lionel.

  "Assaulted, I tell you!"

  "All I did was poke you in the chest." Sir Lionel glanced at Beaufils and Ellyn. "Do you think I assaulted him?"

  "Well," Beaufils said thoughtfully, "he does have sensitive skin."

  Ellyn began to giggle, and the hermit shrieked, "Now you're laughing at me! That's it! I'm done! Let somebody else have this hermitage, and see how they like it!" Struggling out of his hermit's robe, he threw it angrily on the ground and stomped down the trail away from the hut, wearing nothing but his linen underdrawers.

  "Does this mean he's not holy anymore?" Beaufils asked.

  "He's as holy as he ever was," Ellyn replied.

  They camped that night at the now deserted hermitage, while Sir Bors and Ellyn tended to the cuts on Sir Lionel's back. Sir Bors and Sir Lionel had clearly forgot ten their differences, and Beaufils enjoyed watching their banter and good-natured squabbling. Sir Bors was still the serious one, and Sir Lionel still the carefree one, and Beaufils reflected that he liked both of them more when the other was around than he did when they were alone.

  Everything seemed to have worked out nicely for his two friends, but Sir Bors had one more test to face. Late that evening, after they had all been asleep for hours, a faint sound woke Beaufils. Ellyn was sleeping ins
ide the hermitage, and Sir Lionel had stretched out at the far side of the clearing, but Beaufils and Sir Bors were sleeping in the yard before the hut, not far from the path, and Beaufils heard the unmistakable sound of a horse drawing near. He rose silently and slipped into the darkest shadows just before the horse entered the clearing.

  The horse stopped, and Beaufils could make out the black outline of its rider against the gray sky: it was a woman. Sir Bors stirred, then sat up in his blankets. "Who's there?" he said in a husky whisper.

  The rider sighed mournfully and said, "A poor destitute woman who has been cast from her childhood home and left to roam the darkness, prey to every danger that awaits a friendless female."

  "I know that voice," Sir Bors said slowly. "Lady Orgille?"

  "Sir Bors?"

  "So Erskine kicked you out of the castle, did he? I thought he would."

  Lady Orgille dropped from the saddle, walked over to where the knight lay, and knelt beside his prone form. "It was horrible!" she said, her voice cracking. "That man threw me from my home, giving me nothing."

  "Looks like he gave you a horse, at least," commented Sir Bors, who was edging away from Lady Orgille.

  She leaned closer. "But I would have left the castle anyway, dear Sir Bors," she said. "When you rode away this afternoon, I watched you go and my heart broke in my bosom, and I knew that I would never be happy without you and your love. That's why I'm here. I've come looking for you."

  "Have you, then?" Sir Bors said. His voice was flat.

  "Could you ... could you ever forgive me and take me back? I could ask no greater happiness than to ride at your side, to care for you, to sleep in the warmth of your presence, to—"

  She got no further. Sir Bors rose abruptly and nearly dragged Lady Orgille by the wrist back to her horse. "Get up," he said.

  "Sir Bors!"

  Setting both hands on Lady Orgille's waist, Sir Bors practically threw her up into the saddle. "Off you go."

  "Sir Bors, don't you ... don't you think I'm beautiful?"

  Sir Bors looked at her in the moonlight for a second. "No," he said at last. "You only look like it. Now get out of here, you viper." Then Sir Bors slapped Lady Orgille's horse in the haunches, startling it into a gallop. He watched until the horse's shadow had been swallowed up by the larger darkness and the last echo of its hooves had died away, then returned to his blankets and rolled up in them. Beaufils watched from the shadows, grinning.

  "Damn, that felt good," Sir Bors muttered as he went back to sleep.

  IX. The Blood of a Maiden

  "You know what bothers me?" Ellyn asked suddenly. She and Beaufils had separated from Sir Bors and Lionel that morning and for the past several hours had been riding over a dry plain in companionable silence, both lost in their own thoughts.

  "No. What bothers you?"

  "Lady Orgille."

  "Oh, her," Beaufils said. "I didn't like her much myself."

  "I just can't believe a woman would do that!"

  "Do what?"

  "Use people like that." Ellyn glanced at Beaufils's puzzled expression, then laughed shortly. "I know you don't know what I mean. As I said before, you're different from most men, probably because you didn't know any others when you were growing up. The thing is, normally when you find someone using other people as tools to get what they want, it'll be a man."

  Beaufils thought about this for a moment. It seemed strange to him. "And women don't use other people?"

  Ellyn hesitated at that. "Not like men do, anyway. That's why Lady Orgille bothers me. She acts like a man."

  This still sounded odd to Beaufils, but he decided to let it go. Ellyn sounded very intense, especially the way she said man, and he had learned from his time with Galahad that it was just when people were most intense that you could get the least sense from them.

  Ellyn muttered, half to herself, "I wish sometimes I could go to a land where there were only women."

  Beaufils glanced around them at the brown grass and stunted trees through which they were riding. "Well," he commented, "maybe we'll find such a place. I doubt it's around here, though. Not much life at all in these parts."

  It did seem that the farther they rode, the more barren the landscape became. They had left behind all that was green and fresh. As far as they could see, fields of wispy brown grass were interrupted only by small, jagged, unhealthy trees with only a few brown and yellow leaves clinging in forlorn bunches to the limbs. Before long, the grass itself began to thin, leaving dusty, bare patches. Within an hour they were trotting through sand and rock and hard, cracked dirt.

  "This can't be right," Ellyn said at last.

  Beaufils examined the barren waste. The land seemed dead, but it was somehow beautiful too. Without any vegetation around to distract the eye, the rocks and dirt seemed to stand out more proudly, revealing their true selves. "Let's keep going, though. I've never been in a place like this."

  "Neither has anyone else," muttered Ellyn. "At least let's rest the animals and walk a bit."

  So they dismounted and began plodding through the arid land. There was no sign of life, but the air tasted somehow cleaner and purer here, like spring water. Beaufils found himself taking it in with deep breaths. He was measuring his breathing with his paces—about four steps for each breath in and five for each breath out—when he became suddenly aware that they were not alone. Ellyn was still walking quietly at his left, but at his right, as if he had materialized from nowhere, strode a young man. So sudden was his appearance and so silent his movement that Beaufils thought at first he was imagining him. Then the stranger turned his head and smiled.

  "Ellyn?" Beaufils said, slowing his pace.

  "Yes?" Ellyn said, glancing his way. Then she gave a startled yelp.

  "Oh, good," Beaufils said. "You see him, too." He stopped. "Good morning, man."

  "Good morning, Beaufils. Good morning, Lady Ellyn," the man replied. Now that Beaufils was looking more closely at their sudden companion, he was no longer sure that he was young. His face was smooth and unlined, and his easy smile had a youthful feel to it, but his eyes seemed far older than his face. "Sorry if I gave you a start," he said. "You seemed to be enjoying the walk, and I didn't want to disturb you."

  "How do you know our names?" Beaufils asked.

  "I've come especially to find you," the stranger said. "My name's Terence."

  The name was familiar, and Beaufils searched his memory. "Aren't you ... Gawain's ... something?"

  "Yes, I'm Gawain's squire," Terence said.

  "You're a squire?" Ellyn said, incredulously, staring at Terence's curiously ancient eyes. "You don't look like a servant. More like a prince."

  "Can't a fellow be more than one thing?" Terence asked mildly. Then he looked at Beaufils. "Tell me, Beaufils. How's your quest going?"

  "We haven't seen the Grail, if that's what you mean."

  "It wasn't, but that's all right. Now that I get a good look at you, I can see you're doing well." He looked across at Ellyn. "And you? Have you found what you're looking for, Lady Ellyn?"

  "I don't know that I'm looking for anything at all," she said. "I didn't really come on this quest to find that Grail thing. I just wanted to see the world."

  "Especially the parts where there are no men," Beaufils commented.

  Ellyn blushed and cast a reproachful look at Beaufils, but Terence only nodded and said, "Like the Castles of Women?"

  "Castles of Women? Places where there are no men?" Ellyn asked

  "Yes. Castles and islands where no man is allowed. But I ought to tell you that ladies who go there just to get away from men don't usually stay."

  "Where are these castles?"

  "Most of them are in the Other World," Terence said.

  "What do you mean, 'Other World'?" asked Beaufils curiously.

  Terence indicated with a nod that that they should start walking again, and once they were moving he said, "There is another world beyond the one we can see."

  El
lyn frowned skeptically, but Beaufils asked, "Only one?"

  Terence smiled suddenly, with clear pleasure. "Do you know, Beaufils, you are the first person who has ever asked me that question. Usually people have trouble believing in any world other than their own, let alone many. But you're right. There are a great many worlds, more than any of us know."

  "I've often wondered," Beaufils said. "Tell me about this other one."

  "The one I mean is the World of Faeries," Terence said.

  "Do you mean the World of Faeries or Faery Tale World?" Ellyn asked scornfully.

  "I'm not sure it makes any difference," Terence replied. "But if you're suggesting that this world exists only in the imagination of storytellers, you're wrong. It does exist in stories, but that makes it no less real. Anyway, that's why I'm here. You're about to enter that world, and I've been sent to show you to the crossing."

  Beaufils was delighted, as if he'd been longing all his life to go to this world but hadn't known it until this moment. "When do we go?" he asked.

  "The crossing is just past those sandhills," Terence replied. "If Lady Ellyn is willing."

  Ellyn still looked dubious. "Forgive me, Squire Terence, but can you give me any reason to trust you?"

  "There's never a reason to trust someone," Terence said. "If there's a reason, then it's not trust."

  "I trust him," Beaufils said.

  Ellyn hesitated again, and for several moments her doubts played across her face. Then she sighed and said, "I don't know that I do trust you, Squire Terence, but I trust Beaufils."

  "That should be enough," Terence replied with a smile. "This way." He led them on a faint trail between high mounds of loose sand. "When you've made the crossing, you'll be in the World of Faeries. Don't worry. It isn't that different from here, barring the occasional ogre. Once there, you must go wherever Lady Ellyn says."

  "Me?" Ellyn demanded.

  "Yes. For now, at least, you'll be following Lady Ellyn's quest." Terence led them past the last dune, and they found themselves in a warm, brackish stream, no deeper than the tops of their feet.