Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

“Where’s Sir Thomas?”

“In the great hall,” she replied in vexation. Red sparkles in her eyes turned green. “He found some special sword. Now busy trying it at the senior guard.”

At that moment Oleg grasped the meaning of thundering, clanging, and panting sounds from below. He also heard rude male voices, marking the best or the most violent blows with roar and shouts. Oleg nodded to Chachar and went there, guided by the clang of steel and the strong smell of man’s sweat.

When he entered the great hall, it was full with roar and glitter of steel. The bright rays of the morning sun struggled throw the narrow windows. In the smoky semi-darkness, there were four men jumping and brandishing steel: Thomas fought three Gorvel’s men. He had a triangle iron shield in hand, and the huge sword in another moved so briskly that he seemed fenced with a shiny wall of cold steel.

“Thomas!” Oleg cried insistently. “We have to talk to the host!”

Thomas dodged a blow and parried two more with a shield. “You are his guest as well!” he cried back merrily.

“I need you .”

The soldiers grumbled. Oleg felt their hostile looks from all sides. Someone abused (in half a voice but loud enough for him to hear) the pigheaded prying pilgrims. “This year is good with acorns, but they keep grunting still…”

Disappointed, Thomas flung his sword to a soldier. The man caught it by hilt in the air. The rest saw Thomas to the stairs: crying out, banging with their swords hilts on shields. Oleg and Thomas hurried up to the second floor.

In front of Gorvel’s chambers, a soldier was walking to and fro, yawning, rubbing his sleepy eyes with fists. He livened up at their sight. “Relief?.. Oh, that’s you… Want the master?”

“Yes,” Thomas grumbled. “Is he in?”

“Lady Roveg is. And Sir Gorvel left in the morning.”

A vacant smile was blown off Thomas’s face at once. Oleg pushed the door before the soldier could stop him. The friends rushed into the bedchamber.

Lady Roveg, with her eyes red and tearful, was rummaging in a big ornate box. Two likes of it stood open on a bench, one more – on the floor. As she heard footsteps, she recoiled in fright, moving somewhat alike a furious cat. At the sight of Thomas and Oleg and the guard running at their heels, she clasped her hands and gabbled out, “A trouble, Sir Thomas! My lord husband is gone!”

Thomas made a helpless gesture, glanced at Oleg who was gloomy as night, then waved to the guard. “It’s all right. You guard outside. Leave us!.. Lady Roveg, could he leave for hunting? He invited me there too, I recall…”

“He was going to!” Lady Roveg replied, her voice constrained with fury. “Just going to , as he had not a single day free! So busy with building… He made no step outside the castle gate since we came to this wild land! Even wenches… he had enough of them in the kitchen and servant rooms.”

Oleg coughed, asked softly, “What’s in the boxes?”

She wheeled round to him, swift as a forest predator, her eyes narrowed wildly. “Yesterday there were family jewels! Mine, as I was born the princess of Bodrik! I brought him, a poor knight with a long sword, my diamonds, golden earrings, chains with pendants of emerald, not to mention plain gold…”

“Any of servants?” Thomas asked, startled, his hand feeling the sword hilt nervously.

“Sir Thomas! Can’t you believe that a knight can have less honor than a servant?.. No one entered the chambers but a strange man last night. He had a long talk with my husband, but my jewels were all in place after he left!”

“Did you suspect him?” Oleg asked at once.

She shook her head arrogantly. “Definitely not. He had a lord’s face. Not the sort of man to stoop to a theft. Such men can take away but not steal… That’s just my habit to finger my jewels before going to sleep. No occasion to wear them in these backwoods, so I simply take and touch and shift them from place to place…”

Oleg took in the room at a glance. The hook on which Gorvel used to hang his sword was empty. “Sir Thomas, is our bag of gold at place?”

Thomas got pale with indignation. “How dare you think that? Of a noble knight!”

“Hasn’t he robbed his wife?”

Thomas shot a sharp glance at him and ran out. His iron feet made a brisk thunder on the stone stairs. Lady Roveg clenched her firsts in anger, her knuckles went white. “You are,” she told Oleg suddenly, “as far as I see, a sort of Pagan confessor to Sir Thomas?”

“Not quite so…”

“Details don’t matter,” she dismissed, still angry. “As a priest, you must know men better than their arms. Please tell me: would Sir Thomas take my offer to stay as a lord of this castle?”

Oleg recoiled. “But the tenure…”

“The King bestowed this land on a mighty knight, not namely Gorvel! The one able to build a castle and keep the lands under the reign of Christ’s warriors. The King doesn’t mind names. He minds the lord to be Christian, have real power, keep Saracen in awe!”

Oleg hesitated for a while, offered warily, “He’ll be back in a moment. Better ask him.”

“And who is that… Chachar?” she asked shrilly. Her beautiful eyes narrowed to slits.

“Hmmm… a woman. We saved her from villains. She asked to take her to any big city.”

“She can stay here and work in kitchen. No, though… If Sir Thomas stays, she will have to leave. She behaves too bluntly.”

“I’ll take her away,” Oleg promised hastily. “She likes handsome men, that’s all.”

“All women like such knights as Sir Thomas. But I don’t behave that… natural, do I?”

They heard hurried steps behind the door. Thomas burst in like a hurricane, blared from the doorstep, “Sir wonderer, you’ve slandered the noblest of warriors! We, back to back, on the wall of Jerusalem… He’s a man of great honor!”

Oleg was going pallid, his body numb with cold. Thomas fell silent on half a word, his eyebrows rose in surprise. “What else?”

“Sir Thomas… Have you told anyone of the cup?”

Thomas seemed to have been windblown away at once. A thundering fast clatter on the stairs, as if some iron balls spilled over them, died away in a moment. Oleg did not move. He felt miserable – and surprised of it: that was none of his concerns. The Holy Grail was a sacred thing of Christian faith that was hostile to him. The votaries of Christ were guilty of trampling on his ancient Slavic faith, of destroying the priests of great Rod, the god of all that exists…

Lady Roveg stiffened, her confused gaze shifted between the pale wonderer and the open door. Her fingers moved on the lid of the box involuntarily, following the intricate ornament.

Thomas broke in like no hurricane but an avalanche. His face was scary, with lips bluish and eyes popped out. “It’s… gone!”

“Gorvel,” Oleg whispered heavily as if his breast were heaped with stones. “What made him do it? Did they …”

Thomas croaked, in more torture than the worst sinners in the Hell suffered, “Gorvel is a man of great honor… We stood back to back! We covered selves by a single skin, shared the last loaf of bread…”

Oleg cast a wary look at the motionless lady: her face was perplexed. He took Thomas carefully by iron shoulder. “Gorvel would have refused the King if he commanded it, I believe. But there are other lords whom I told you of. Their orders are always obeyed.”

Thomas staggered to the table, collapsed on the bench. His head dropped on the table with a clang of helmet. “You speak to gods… Please help me! Tell me what to do!”

Lady Roveg came to him with a sympathetic look. “Poor Sir Thomas… Perhaps the counsel of my confessor will help you?” Behind Thomas’s back, she made a gesture to Oleg as if throwing a cockroach out of the window. Her delicate hands lay on Thomas’s iron shoulders, yellow lights flared up in her eyes.