Swan Knight's Sword Read online

  Frustration bubbled in his breast. “Dr. McGuire, the chief of the spies for Alberec, put at least one agent in Blowing Rock. So if Bigfoot finds that out, he may figure out where you are and come for you again. I saw his cloak. He still lacks a patch to finish the hood.”

  She said, “Dyeing your hair with pooka dye diminishes the charm such hair carries.”

  Gil was distracted. He ran his hand through his bangs, crossing his eyes to look up at a captured strand. It was bright again, a hue more pure than white. He said, “What is the secret of our hair? Why is it silver?”

  She said, “Who was the brother of Merlin, but not in blood?”

  Gil said, “Mom!”

  Ygraine said, “Sorry. Elfs are proud and will not hear when you tell them truths in a straight way, but their pride takes all puzzles as a challenge. Humans are different. They are like unto the Creator and see truths only when told as tales and parables.” She ladled some tomato soup into a bowl and brought it over to him. “Remember to say your grace.”

  “I always do, Mother.” Gil remembered the drubbings he had taken when the squires told him not to keep the practice of praying before meals. And he smiled because he also remembered drubbings he had given.

  Strange. Before Uffern House, when no one beat him to prevent it, he often forgot.

  Gil intended to take a spoonful or two and to ask more questions, but his body had other plans. The rich savor and warmth once touching his nostrils and tongue usurped control of his mouth.

  She said, “Our hair come from Phanes, who wed Yglais, the sister of Merlin of Avalon. To her the keeping of the Grail was given after the Hermit King was carried out of this life in a chariot of fire. It is a sign of sanctuary and sanctity. Certain spoken spells or uncouth alchemies can turn that sanctity from its intended purpose and halt one form of death, either the sharpness of a sword, or the speed of an arrow, or the evil virtue in a poison, and so on.”

  “And when the hair just grows naturally? Yours, mine?”

  “It is the sign given the blood of those who watch the Grail. The outward shape of the blessing differs. Yours was given by your grandfather.”

  “Blessing?”

  “I can drink venom unharmed, and take up serpents in my hand, and tread on scorpions. I need fear neither the arrow that flies by day nor the plague that stalks by night.” She smiled. “You would be surprised how often a mother with child needs that particular protection.”

  “And mine?”

  “Bullets, shots, and shrapnel will avoid you when allowed, jellied gasoline, other weapons too recent to have formed reflections in the dream world.”

  “When allowed? What does that mean?”

  “If someone pressed the gun barrel to your head, the bullet would have no choice but to carry out its duty. Grandfather knew of the arms and armor your father left and thought this blessing befitting for a knight, to rob unknightly firearms of their fearfulness. If you are shaved bald by a woman, the charm is broken.”

  “Who is my grandfather?”

  “I am the daughter of Pellinore of Listenoise, son of Pellehan, and Danae of Arcadia, daughter of Aegeria.”

  The names meant nothing to Gil, of course. He wished he had written down what Nerea had told him of his family relations.

  “So I am descended from Merlin the Magician?”

  “You are the great-great-grandson of his sister, yes.”

  “Why did you hide all this from me?”

  “To preserve your life.”

  “To preserve my life, you hid my life from me?”

  “While your life was under my breast, it was my duty as your mother to preserve it. You are now a man. The duty is yours, now, to fulfill or to fail to fulfill.” She sighed. “Your father’s armor is well crafted indeed, for not one of your bones is broken. Your dog buried the shield and helmet in the wood, for he thinks you will have need of them again. You must tell him that his foresight proves false.”

  Gil straightened up. “False? Why false?”

  Ygraine looked surprised. “Your father did not come, not even to preserve your life. Why else would I have let you have your way in this, the foolishness of walking in the Twilight World mail-begirt under helm and shield and with a sword beyond your strength and skill to wield?”

  “You made that big speech about the meaning of a sword! I killed a wolf because of that! Now you tell me you were kidding?”

  She shook her head. “Do not take that tone with me, young man. About such things I do not jest. The mysteries of knighthood run as deep as those of priesthood. Was not Cain the first of knights older than his brother Abel, first of priests? But if your father did not emerge from the shadows to be your liege lord, whom can you serve? The elfs are wicked creatures! Your dream is done. There is no knighthood in your future, surely!”

  He said, “I am King Arthur’s man.”

  Her face lit up with the last emotion he expected to see in his mother’s eye: joy. Pure, simple, childlike joy, bright as a candle, like what one might see on a toddler’s face the first time he climbs into the lap of a storefront Santa, is given permission to ask for his heart’s desire, and receives instead more than he dared hope.

  But immediately her face fell, first to a quiet look of sorrow and then to a deepening look of dread. She said, “I know Arthur lives and will wake again in day of terror and fire when the Beast shall rise from the sea. But I also know he dreams and issue no orders, and all the chivalry of the Table Round that fell at Camlann slumbers with him, and an archangel watches over them with outspread wings to prevent the passing years from alighting on the sleepers. He has given you no commands.”

  Gil said, “As best my own wisdom tells me what Arthur would want, that I do. Could Arthur be my father?”

  “No. The man who took me in his arms was awake, and Dyrnwen is not Excalibur, and the Sign of the Swan is not the Red Dragon and the White of the Pendragon. Whose ears heard your oath to Arthur?”

  Gil said, “He has a servant who is never seen, whose name I do not know. Why is there a look of dread in your eye, Mother?”

  “Because I am farsighted, and I see you are foredoomed. If the elfs know you are Arthur’s man, they will seek your life, and I do not see how my tender young son, so unwary to their tricks, will escape their malice.”

  “Why do the elfs hate Arthur?”

  “He conquered them and is their rightful lord. Have you kept your oaths to Arthur secret?”

  “Not in the least. I told the Emperor, two kings, a queen, and all the nobles gathered of the elfs, and there were Giants and Cobwebs and talking animals, scarecrows and owls, and other races besides, and one deadly creature that was perhaps a Greek goddess.”

  “She was a messenger of the Outer Darkness, where no music plays and no laughter is heard, but only wails and lamentations forever.”

  Gil was astonished. “How do you know this?”

  Ygraine smiled cryptically and said, “Before your birth, my seat was fifteen seats down from Empousa at Christmastide, for my seat was with Lord Alain le Gros of Corbenec under the banners of Corbenec. She sits beneath the banner of the Great God Pan, who was the first of the Olympians tithed to Hell after Christ struck mute all pagan oracles and sibyls, deceiving man no longer. You walked where once I trod, my son.”

  “Then you know I must walk to the Green Chapel to face the giant. My father’s honor would be stained if I act like a coward.”

  She closed her eyes, and he saw the glint of unshed tears escaping her downcast eyelashes. “I hear the truth in your voice. You have already slain your first monster and anointed your tongue in the fashion only the Children of Phanes know. Your celestial blood has betrayed you!”

  “Celestial? Are you an angel?”

  “Hardly. Angels are pure spirit, and their bodies are mere seemings, assumed so that the sight of their glory strikes no man dead with terror. I was a Swan Maiden.”

  “Was?”

  “Swan Matron, now, I suppose. I served in Sar
ras, amid the fair and white towers mined of stones never stained by sight of sin and far above the woes so commonplace on Earth. Alas! My son is a man and must perish as men do!” She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and said, “Tell me by what device or trick they snared you. Repeat the whole story from the start.”

  7. The Doom of Man

  Talking to his mother was a wearisome affair, for she often asked the same questions over again, drawing out some added detail, and he had to tell each part of the tale at least three or four times. Her sharp questions often brought to mind nuances he had overlooked.

  He finished with, “A wager was made. I struck off the head of the Green Knight of the Green Chapel, and in turn I must report to him in his home in Hautdesert, to which I shall be led, and there he will strike off my head.”

  Ygraine smiled. “Then there is hope. You must break your word and not keep this bad oath.”

  Gil was thunderstruck. “When did you stop being my mother? Because you are not my mother! Never before in my life would she tell me to be dishonest!”

  She said sharply, “Never before has such folly made it necessary! You accepted a wager, as you call it, known to be impossible, knowing that no one offers his neck to the blade for sport!”

  Gil said stubbornly, “There is an old story that Sir Gawain faced this same knight, and he was spared.”

  Ygraine said, “There is also an old story that Saint Peter walked for seven steps on the sea, before he fell and went under. Did the story say why he was spared? I see a look of doubt in your eye. Did the Green Knight utter the name of Gawain?”

  Gil said reluctantly, “Yes. He claimed the old story was misremembered and that Gawain failed.”

  His mother gave him a withering look.

  Gil said stubbornly, “The Green Knight did not say Gawain died. He said failed. So that means, technically speaking, that it is possible that there is one knight who survived the encounter.”

  Ygraine said, “If no one told the tales of those who did not survive, how could their numbers be counted? This is not a battle, where the victor fends off invaders or gains gold or land for your nation. If you win the wager, the only prize you gain is your life, which is what you possessed before you offered it in wager! For what, then, do you risk a certain death?”

  “Honor!”

  Ygraine grew angry, and her eyes flashed. “No more nonsense! I strictly forbid you to go.”

  “Mother, I must.”

  “Not to the Green Chapel! Not there!”

  “What is the Green Chapel?”

  “It is the house of living death where dwells a sufferer whose deadly wound cannot be healed and whom to look upon is death. Who has returned from there?”

  “The Green Knight, for one.”

  “Is he alive? Or is his condition other than what men call life?”

  “I hate your riddles! I don’t see why a chapel can be so dangerous? A chapel is a House of God!”

  “Who is Uzzah? How did he die? Who defies the divine wrath and lives?”

  “Mo-ther! I don’t know the answers to your riddles!”

  She stood and picked up the family Bible from where it rested in a niche behind the standing radio. Coldly, she flung the book into his hands. “Then read! You have endless hours to fill, for you shall not leave the shadow of this evergreen!”

  “And—that is another thing! Why is there a tree growing in our house?”

  The pine branches swayed. She looked up. “Thank you for reminding me. I dare not forget the hour. I have to go to work my shift. A double shift: I will not be back until late tomorrow morning.” Ygraine narrowed her eyes at him. “I want to hear your solemn oath that you shall be here when I return and that you will break your oath to the Green Knight.”

  “Mother, how can an oath break an oath? My father’s honor would be stained if I turn coward.”

  She gritted her teeth. “It is not bravery to face certain death; it is folly.”

  Gil said, “Mother, for all your wisdom, you are not being wise now! All men face certain death all their lives. They only do not know the day. What does knowing the day matter? Living like a knight means dying like one!”

  She said, “Stay here. This tree is a friend who came back from the dead to come to your aid and grew thirty-nine year’s growth in thirty-nine days. She broke the powerlines and water main with her roots. While she stands over you, the elfs will not see you by any of their black arts. If you get cold, she will cover you in pine needles; if you hunger, she will bear her seeds out of season and show you which parts of the cone are eatable. Stay here; it is my firm and absolute command.”

  “Mother, I cannot obey it. What day is this?”

  “Today is the Feast of Saint Nicholas, when children rule and elders are ruled. But you shall not rule in this! Obey my word, I straightly charge you, or I will have you chained up by force.”

  Gil said, “I do not have to leave yet. I will stay here until the day arrives when no time and no choice remain to me. That is the only promise I can make you.”

  Ygraine looked at him with eyes like green stones. With no further word, she turned. She walked out the door.

  There were a calendar and a list of feast days in the back leafs of the Bible. The Feast of Saint Nicholas was the sixth day of December. The Feast of Saint Ambrose was the seventh.

  Tomorrow. The day when all his choices ran out was tomorrow.

  Sitting on the couch, he stared at his feet, lost, bewildered, and wondering what he should do.

  Chapter Two: The Crime Spree of Gilbert Mott

  1. Hanging Thoughts

  The day passed slowly. He stared for a time at his mother’s robe, wondering whether it would carry him aloft and out of his life if he put it on.

  His thoughts were hung between the two stark and unmovable demands. Back and forth they moved all day, never truly on the ground and never truly in Heaven. Like his mother’s swan robe, hung on a branch neither high nor low, swaying and swinging, his thoughts never were silent, but never said anything new.

  In the morning he searched through the house, hoping to find something, anything, to settle his restlessness: a secret door or a childhood toy. There was nothing. His old bedroom was destroyed. The walls were still intact, but nine tenths of the floor had collapsed from the intrusion of the tree into the deserted garage beneath, crushing empty shelves and rusted barrels.

  His mother’s command told him to foreswear his foolish, insane, deadly, suicidal oath to travel to some unknown and accursed place to be struck by an ax. It was so reasonable, so obvious, and so much what he wanted to do. (Was he going to die after only kissing one girl one time only? While underwater? And she had been pushing herbs into his mouth! That did not count!)

  Gil spent part of the day reading by the window. There was nothing to read but the Bible, which he turned to in hopes that some clear inspiration would come visit him, as apparently his mother had been visited.

  But the words seemed to lie on the page, lifeless, void of meaning. There were endless chains of names broken into syllables which begat other names. There were obsessively picky instructions on how to decorate some sort of circus tent and serve up the various meats and sacrifices. There was a story about David finding Saul asleep in a cave while Saul was hunting to kill him: and David cut a swatch from Saul’s robe, but left him alive and unharmed, rather than break his sworn oath of fealty. But in another part he found a passage where Christ sternly told his disciples not to swear oaths: merely saying ”yes” meant you would do what you said.

  His thoughts turned and turned again. His mother’s command was perfectly clear! But then there was the question of the honor of his father. If a man vowed to do a hard thing, a dangerous thing, was the vow nullified if the task was impossible or the danger was mortal? But if the difficulty of a task excused carrying it out, all swearing of vows was in vain.

  What could he have done differently?

  He spent part of the day exercising and recovering from
the unexpected pains of that exercise. He discovered he could not go for a day without going through his sword drills, for it had become an ingrained habit. He found two more boards and repaired and painted eight more stairs, wondering what the landlord thought of the fact that a tree was growing through the building. Pounding nails did not stop the questions pounding in his head.

  What could he have done? Sure, he could have sat in the feast hall of the elfs, and said nothing, and let the Green Knight fling insults into his teeth. But he would have been hunted and slain by the Cobwebs in any case for killing Doolaga and Gulaga the Bigfoots… assuming he was not killed just for carrying his father’s sword.

  But suppose he had never gone on errantry? Never recovered that stolen baby, Loobie. (What kind of name was Loobie anyway?) Well, he would have been better off, but that particular baby would not have been.

  Exercise, drill, and carpentry left him stinking worse than a horse. To prepare a bath took all afternoon, carrying the water buckets up from a cistern in the garage below, heating water in a kettle above a fire in the sink, and pouring it into the tub one kettle at a time. The damage from the tree had left the bathroom floor at an angle. There were candles in wine bottles Ygraine had brought home from work to illume the bathroom, which had no windows.

  Suppose he had never wanted to be a knight? What then? His mother had kicked him out to find a job only because he was too foolish to stay in school. If only he had been willing for the schoolboys to commit their crimes, steal their drugs, tell their lies, pick on the weak….

  Gil could have learned to be popular, surely. Surely he could have found a way to be like those kids!

  He could picture it clearly. He was athletic enough and quick witted enough to handle himself around boys his age, or girls. He could have cozied up to them and joined their world.

  He could have learned to wallow in cowardice and falsehood like them, to listen to their banging filthy music, to flatter, and evade, and to tell half-truths and total lies each time he opened his mouth. He could have learned to cower, to lick boots, to laugh at unfunny jokes, and to sneer at all wise and ancient things. He could have learned to answer every honest question with a screaming counterattack. He could have ladled an entire sewer of self pity over himself and played the make-believe game that he was never, ever wrong in the slightest and that all corrections or criticisms were unfair bullying of his delicate, abused, tiny little burnt-snowflake of a soul.