Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

Gorvel clapped on his iron hips, upset. “What is not, that is not! Poor horses will have to eat choice oats, guests – to be content with feather beds in chambers. As to dinner, we can only serve pies and sweet biscuits instead of bread. We’ll also find something for you to wash those dry things down your throats!”

Thomas looked at Gorvel closely and laughed. “If you are the same, I beg you not to serve wine in barrels! Several jugs will be enough.”

“Of course,” Gorvel comforted him. “It’s enough… to start with!”

Chapter 7

Oleg entered the great hall and stopped for a moment, stunned by loud voices, jokes, toasts, and songs. In the bright light of blazing tar torches, at two broad tables, all the seven Franks in the company of Saracens (those turned Christians or simply in service of Gorvel, a brave warrior) had a feast: eating, drinking, crying out toasts.

Oleg felt their tenacious, searching looks with his skin. He knew he looked like a Frank, with his red hair, green eyes, big bones and bulging muscle, but a Frank washed suspiciously clean. His wet hair was plastered to the forehead, his clothes dusted off. Frankish knights in the land of Saracen kept up their European habits, washing their bodies fewer times a year than their Saracen servants and mercenaries who lived up to Koran did in a week. At their feast, dishes were given to dogs to lick them clean. Hounds rushed about the hall, fighting for bones, raising their back legs to water the legs of tables and, preferably, those of guests, Chachar in particular, to mark these people as familiars.

Fiery-bearded Gorvel and Sir Thomas were seated in throne-like wooden armchairs, others on broad benches. Four people were seated separately, facing the lord: Chachar, a tall beautiful woman of breeding with tired eyes next to her, a handsome young man with a sleek face and arrogant malevolent eyes, and – as in every Christian castle – a stout monk in black cassock belted with a plain rope.

Gorvel stood up, showed Oleg (with a wide gesture that almost knocked down a servant with a tray) his place next to the monk. The latter pretended to move aside but only pulled up to himself a big jug and a plate with half a roast boar instead.

The monk reeked of roast onions and sour wine. Oleg sat, elbowed a space for himself, reached the roast boar haunch, salted it. The salt here was strangely white and fine. A servant put a wide cup in front of him, but Oleg did not move a muscle. While eating meat, he felt strength filling him: beastly but quiet and meek that time, ready to obey every order of spirit, in fear of being plunged into starvation, hardships and torments once again. He had never been much for drinking wine, and that was no proper time at all. He sensed a vague danger within the hall and needed his wits with him.

Gorvel and Thomas clapped on each other’s shoulders loudly, drank for the battle in Cilicia, for the fight on the walls of the Tower of David, for the victory in Terland. No mention of Jerusalem: they must have celebrated big cities before. Gorvel’s eyes glittered, his face reddened, he spoke loudly and tried to roar marching songs. Their toasts referred to small towns and keeps that, as Oleg realized, were to be followed by settlements, villages, homesteads, wells, barns and hen coops. Anyway, there was so much wine that it would suffice to drink for each stone in the Temple of Solomon and for each nail in the twenty gates of the Tower of David.

The young man winced arrogantly at Gorvel’s laughter. In times he bowed to the tall beauty’s ear and whispered something, and she nodded with her eyes down. Oleg caught her single look at the handsome lad and understood much of it, but that was none of his concerns. People play their games everywhere in the same way, though everyone thinks of own self and situation as unique. Oleg even felt relieved at the familiar sight of their looks and gestures – those two were no danger. And the monk? He cares of his belly and nothing more. Whether Gorvel kept him half-starving or the monk’s own reason was lost to greed, but he grabbed everything he could reach, hiccupped, choked, dropped slices of meat and moved his knees apart hastily to catch them. A woman’s habit. A man accustomed to wearing pants would have moved his knees together.

Oleg knocked aside the dogs who jumped over his feet. In Rus’, dogs are not allowed even to decrepit houses. Even the poorest mongrel has an isolated doghouse – and this castle seems to be a great kennel itself!

Gorvel and Thomas roared with laughter, changing a mighty clap for a clap. They had left their armor in the armory, so their friendly slapping sounded as if a thick tree were lashed to drive a bear down from it or wild bees out of a hollow in its trunk. Gorvel’s wife shot hostile glances at her husband. The young man winced and raised his eyebrows ironically. Oleg spotted that the eyes on his young face looked very old. Then he noticed a thin netting of wrinkles, some burst blood vessels in the white of the man’s eyes, the guarded looks he cast at laughing Thomas. The merry knights recalled, in eager rivalry, what they felt while standing back to back among hundreds of Saracens. The ladders had broken, leaving them on the wall: two Christian knights against infidels…

The wine splashed on the table from Gorvel’s cup. The red-bearded lord did not mind it. He yelled, interrupted Thomas, also drunken and yelling, to find out details, roared with laughter, demanded songs, sent for his minstrel but forgot it at once, cried for the barrels of Chios wine to be brought into. “You see, Sir Thomas, all the merchant folk drag their caravans past this place. For my protection and for the castle construction and for they, bloody suckers, crucified our Christ… That’s how I got those few barrels. Or few dozen ? My steward swears they topped over hundred last week… I have deep cellars. Two scores of slaves died while digging and covering them with stone…”

“Sir Gorvel,” Thomas asked, “have you settled forever? Won’t you return to Britain?”

Gorvel stopped roaring with friendly laughter and got serious. He drained his cup in one gulp, thundered it down on the table. “My soul is Anglic! I’d rather herd cows on the banks of Don, my home river in Sheffield, than rule a kingdom here! Alas, my king commanded to build a fortress. We are few here, and Saracen as many as grits in a desert. We can only be safe in castles: Saracen are bad at taking them. Still bad…”

“You’ve built it fast!”

“We had to erect a mound,” Gorvel complained. “All this land was as flat and bald as my confessor’s head! See him there, at the table? They dragged stone from across the river and a mile over. Lots of men drowned, but I had the rampart raised in two weeks! Only then I set to the castle.”

“A strategist decision,” Thomas praised. “You’ve seen me in battles, yeah? The King appreciates me, but he did right to bestow this land on you , to make you a lord! And I’m still a knight errant, ‘cause I’m no fit for a seignior.”

Gorvel squinted at him. “May we change places?” he asked suddenly.

Thomas shivered, as if an icicle fell under his collar. “Not for the world!” he replied ingenuously.

Gorvel burst out laughing, but his eyes were sad. The monk poured the rest of wine into his cup, sent a servant for a new jug. Gorvel commented it with assumed merriment, “Due to the caravan road, I have wines of Chios, Mazandaran, Liss, Darkover, even of Zurbagan. If they made me a watchdog, I’d rather be one on a rich market than in a poor village!”

Long after midnight, Gorvel’s wife, Lady Roveg, left the feast. Soon after her leave, a serving maid bent to Chachar’s ear and hinted in whisper that a decent woman should not remain in the company of drunken men anymore, as their jokes had become even more vulgar and their songs scabrous.