Yury Nikitin - The Grail of Sir Thomas

Thomas cast a sharp glance at him. Oleg felt the knight’s thoroughly concealed fear. His own heart felt wrung with iron hand. In the morning, the two mighty warriors will come for us to fight. Now the guests were allowed to rest together with the monastery inhabitants only because the warriors were absent, but by dawn they would be here. Maybe we should try to lead the horses out in the night by stealth and gallop away?

They walked along a broad corridor, halfway to their room, when some rough grey thing burst out suddenly from the narrow slit in the wall. Oleg drew his knife convulsively. The looped rope brushed against him and winded around the knight’s gleaming body at once, in three rows. The fist-sized stone on the end of the rope landed a final bang on the iron belly. Thomas looked stunned. After a while, he realized being tugged, pulled somewhere like a young bull on a tie. He seized the rope with both hands and pulled.

The wooden wall burst with a crush, scattering splinters, dry clots of clay. In the cloud of yellow suffocating dust, Thomas and Oleg saw three monks rolling out to their feet: sinewy and swarthy, half-naked, in strange woman’s skirts. Their eyes, as black as thorn, were blazing on flat decisive faces. The three monks were lean, with no drop of excessive fat. They gripped the rope tightly, one had even winded it round his fist, as large as a baby Angl’s or Slav’s.

Thomas shrugged in perplexity: he still could not grasp the meaning of these rites. With caution, he dropped the rope on the floor, where the stunned monks were lying, and walked round them.

Thomas and Oleg left for the guest room. The monks remained in the heap of splinters and clods for a long while, following them with blurred eyes.

At night, Oleg felt restive. He heard Thomas flinching in his sleep. Sometimes the knight groaned, tossed and thrashed with an awful grit of his teeth. The fragile beds moaned under their bodies, much bigger than those of monks. The night was stiff. Oleg was dripping with sweat. He wanted to get up and wash himself with cold water, but was afraid to get into a scrape: break a taboo or step on a local relic. All tribes are passionate towards their rites, and monasteries even more so. Only a bitter experience could have given birth to the wise rule, “When in Rome, do as Romans do…”

Oleg fell asleep at the daybreak, when the eastern edge of the sky got red, but once a tiny tip of the sun appeared above the horizon, he jumped up as if scalded. Thomas, in his armor, sat by the door. He looked pale and haggard, watched the wonderer with envy. “One can chop wood on you,” he said gloomily. “A clear conscience, isn’t it? But those two fighters we are about to combat don’t mind your soul. To withstand, we need something more than clear conscience!”

“We have it,” Oleg grunted. He dressed up quickly, feeling the knight’s inspecting eye on himself, the eye of professional who could tell at once which muscles were developed by heaving stones, which – by exercise with sword, which – by throwing a spear, and which – by work with battleax. Oleg saw doubt in Thomas’s eyes and gave a sullen smirk: the knight was not the first expert to get confused by his muscle.

“What do we have?” Thomas asked skeptically.

“The cup.”

Thomas glanced back in fright, felt the bag with his palm. As his fingers followed the bulging curves tenderly, his stern face softened.

There was a knock at the door. Thomas unsheathed the sword, stood on the left of it. Oleg, with a throwing knife in hand, crossed the room and removed the bar. A monk in pompous clothing was there, standing in the corridor, his face impenetrable, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. He gave them a low bow, then made a sweeping gesture. A table on castors appeared from aside, and Oleg’s guts gave an involuntary loud croak. They sat down, loosing their belts and rubbing hands, glancing and winking at each other.

The table was wheeled into the room by a monk. While he shifted hurriedly the loads of plates from it to their massive table, the other monk, a pompous one, was bowing to Oleg and stiffened Thomas, trying not to turn his fat bottom to them. At last, he said in a high-pitched, woman’s voice, “The father superior begs humbly to know about how you are, whether you had a good sleep, and asks you to taste our frugal monastic meal, the food our gods sent us!”

Oleg was torn between the intent to run into the yard and wash his face and to rush to the table. He heard Thomas muttering, “By gods… One could wish to turn Pagan!”

The knight flopped down at the table decisively, but Oleg dashed downstairs, splashed himself with water near the well. Thomas had barely finished slicing the suckling pig roasted in fragrant leaves when the door flung open and fresh Oleg, with his eyes washed and shiny, darted across the room to the table. Thomas gulped the saliva down and said skeptically, “Such a washing – was it worth the trouble? Or that’s a rite of yours?”

“At least, I washed myself,” Oleg objected. “Why you didn’t?”

“I like to wash substantially, not in a slipshod way. At home, I would only bath in the lake. It’s just under the windows of my castle…”

“In the lake? That’s good,” Oleg agreed. “But what’s about winter?”

“Too short to mind it,” Thomas dismissed casually.

They snatched the tender juicy meat. When only several crushed bones, each no bigger than a nail, remained of the pig, the stunned pompous monk ordered, with a weak gesture, to bring the next course. He grasped that while it would be carried up from the kitchen, the rest twelve dishes, with roast swans and young geese, swollen with nuts and other things stuffed under their skin, would become empty, well if not nibbled. Those men of North were said to gnaw even at their shields…

Early in the morning, Oleg had been sure that food would stuck in his throat before the duel with true fierce warriors, but then – marvelous are the works of gods! – he gorged on, feeling the violent strength spread inside his body, fill his muscle, make the heart beat faster and blood rush quicker in his veins.

Thomas ate like a bumpkin, his noble manners forgotten. He snatched the biggest slices with both hands, ahead of Oleg, spat the bones out onto the middle of the table, though there was still enough space for those under the table. He could throw them into corners as well, all four in the room. His lips and fingers glistened with grease, the crunch of bones in his teeth was incessant, as though it were a middle-sized stone breaker in Baron Otset’s quarry.

Twice Oleg tried to tear himself away from the table, as it is difficult to fight with your belly full, but Thomas clapped on his shoulder with an air of doom: if one should die, he’d better have fun before, and there is no fun like the table set!

When the table was cleaned for the third time, Oleg stood up. “We, the good sire and I, are ready,” he told the pompous monk firmly.

The monk backed, bowing frequently, his bottom pushed the door open, he vanished in the corridor. Thomas sighed, started to get up from the table, his breath heavy and strained, his pale face reddened.

Oleg slapped on his forehead. “At last I got it, why you never take your steel off! To keep control of your paunch, yeah? At the table you can go too far, but your armor knows where to stop, doesn’t it?”

Thomas moved his eyes with displeasure, took his sheathed sword from the corner, put his baldric on. Oleg also belted with sword, adjusted the ties of bow and quiver of arrows on his back, and followed Thomas out.

The father superior, supported under his arms and followed by two old monks, ascended to meet them. At the sight of two giant figures he stopped, took pause for breath, and made a low bow. Thomas grumbled, as though he had only swallowed boulders for lunch and now they were rolling inside his steel armor.