Excerpt- Shadow of the Grail- Chapter Three

A Day of Discovery

The day dawned bright and clear, the air crisp and full of promise.  Peredur rose early, prodding his young friend Tallaght out of his slumber.  He was too excited to sleep any longer, and he wanted his friend to share in his excitement.

“Tallaght.”  Peredur prodded his friend with his bare foot.  “Tallaght!  Get up, you sleep-about.”

Tallaght stirred in his bedroll and turned to face his friend.  “What gives?” he asked groggily.

He wiped the sleep from his eyes comically and rolled to a sitting position.  Tallaght was tall for his age, all arms and legs, and he’d be taller still when he got his full growth.  He had yet to fill out, so his height lent him a lanky look.  As most children carry their ‘baby fat’ with them into early adolescence, so Tallaght carried his lankiness, and that lankiness would translate into wiry muscle as he grew, adding weight to his height.  His reach would give him a formidable advantage over more average-sized men.

“Get up, Tallaght.  Do you want to sleep this day away?”  Peredur indicated the brilliant day with a grand sweep of his arm.  “Today’s the day, Tallaght!  I can feel it in my bones.”

“What day?” Tallaght asked sleepily, standing and shaking off his cover.

“The Grail.  Or did you forget?  Today’s the day we find the Grail!”

Excitement ignited in Tallaght’s eyes as he recalled the conversation from the prior night, then dimmed as the reality of another day on the trail hit him.  “How do you know?  What makes today the day?”  Tallaght wrapped his blanket over his shoulders and headed off towards the stream.  Peredur fell into step beside his companion.

“Can’t you feel it?  Can’t you feel it?”

Tallaght stopped and looked at his friend.  “What I feel is the cold of the morning.”  He continued walking.  “Oh, and tired.  I feel tired.  And not a little bit hungry as well.”  He shrugged.  “It was a late night last night, with all the storytelling.”

They had reached the small stream, and Tallaght quickly stripped and immersed himself in the frosty water, shivering.  He splashed the water into his face, causing his teeth to chatter audibly.  “C-cold, P-Peredur—that’s wh-what I f-feel.”  He laughed and splashed a cascade of water in the general direction of his friend, who deftly stepped aside.

“You’ve no imagination, Tallaght.  No sense of purpose.”  Peredur held his friend’s blanket out to him.  “The air is virtually alive with purpose today.  Can’t you feel it?”

Tallaght had climbed out of the shallow water and wrapped himself tightly in his blanket again.  “Let me break my fast and then maybe I’ll feel something.”

Peredur smiled at his friend and punched him companionably on the arm.  “All right, have your food, and then you’ll see.”

The two headed back to the campfire where the scraps from the previous evening’s supper were being gathered and eaten for the morning meal.

“Good morning, Sirs Peredur and Tallaght.”

Peredur turned his attention away from his friend to see Sir Galahad already sitting by the low morning fire.  “Good morning, sire.”

Galahad was one of the second generation of the Knights of the Round Table, or the first generation to be born into the Knights.  They had to earn their spot just like the rest, but they had the advantage in they grew up with the life surrounding them.  As a group, the second generation seemed to be more inclined to talk, less inclined to fight.  Not that they couldn’t and wouldn’t fight, or weren’t good at it, just that as a group they tended to be more diplomatic than their predecessors.  Some argued that they were afforded that luxury because of their predecessors, who shed blood so that they might shed words.

Galahad was a model of his generation, having seen more peace than his father’s generation.  This allowed for more education, more religious training, and more introspection.  Consequently, while Galahad was as thorough a Knight of the Round Table as any of the others, he was also blessed with a pious heart and a honeyed tongue.  Had he a mind for it, which his piety tempered, the honey-tongued words that were capable of dripping from his mouth would have made him quite the lady’s man.  As it was, he usually unintentionally left a string of heartbroken women in any village he visited, and more than once, unbeknownst to him, a husband had to be talked out of ambushing him as he inevitably turned married heads as quickly as he did the heads of maidens.

Yet for all the sweet words and noble actions, the outer Galahad was a stark contrast to the inner Galahad.  To put a fine point on it, Galahad was a plain-to-homely looking man.  He was of average height and weight.  A man in armor is a man in armor, most are relatively equally sized when encased in metal.  But Galahad had a face that no one would look at twice, and few would even look at once.

What attracted women and men alike to Galahad was the brightness of Galahad’s personality, which shone through his plain-to-homely exterior and overwhelmed all but the most stubborn of women, and men for that matter.  Galahad was without question the nicest, most congenial Knight of Arthur’s Round Table, and the most pious.

Thus it was with heartfelt anxiousness and sincerity Galahad pursued the Holy Grail.

“Morning, Sir Galahad.”  Tallaght was swaddled tightly in his blanket, and now tried to shrink more deeply into it as the knight had caught him unawares.

“It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it, Peredur?  A good day for questing.”  Galahad winked at Tallaght, who tried to shrink even further into his blanket.  “And an even better day for an end to questing.”

Peredur froze.  “Sire?”

Galahad looked at him with a mischievous grin.  He stood and unfolded his long legs out from under him in a single, energetic motion.  “That’s right, son.  You heard me.”  He smiled as he put an endearing arm around the boy’s shoulder.

“An end to the quest, sire?” Peredur parroted.  “But that would mean—”

“That’s right.  That would mean the Grail has been found.”  He turned to face both boys squarely.  His face split with the largest smile either boys had ever seen.  “The Grail has been found.”

There was an almost audible click as Peredur’s jaw hit his chest.  Tallaght’s fingers had apparently gone numb as the blanket slid down his bare body to puddle at his feet.

Galahad laughed out loud at the reaction from the young squires; a rich, heart-felt, relieved laugh.  “You are the very picture of stupefaction!”  He turned and strode towards his tent, calling over his shoulder, “Dress up, young squires.  We ride to the Grail.”

* *  * * *

The cave was dark, too dark to see beyond the immediate entrance.  “Peredur, a torch if you would be so kind.”  Galahad shaded his eyes and squinted into the shadows.

They had ridden for most of the morning, heading west towards the sea.  During the previous night, after the tale-telling, when most of the camp had been long sleeping in their bedrolls, they had been visited by an old fisherman from the coast.  He had told them of a cave at the bottom of a valley, a cave that went underground for quite a ways, although no one had ever explored it to its end.

A cave mostly left to itself, because it had a dragon guardian that caused it to glow with a mysterious green firelight, and caused a hissing sound to be heard ominously from the entrance.  It was enough to have kept the cave unexplored. 

“Rumor has it, sire, it was the cave formed from the collapse of a chapel some centuries ago.  A chapel set up to pay homage to the Lord Jesu.”

“Where is this cave?”  Galahad could hardly contain his excitement.

“I can take you to it, sire.  Not much more than half a day’s ride from this very spot.”  The old man licked his dry, cracked lips.

“Get this man a drink,” Galahad said.  “We ride at first light.  You’ll lead us to this cave.”

* * * * *

The torch sputtered as Peredur handed it off to Galahad.  It wasn’t very bright, but it would serve.  If the Grail was indeed somewhere in the cave, they wouldn’t need the torch anyway.

They saw no sign of the mysterious green firelight the fisherman told them of, but there was a low sound emanating softly from the cave.

Turning nervously from the cave, Galahad steeled himself.  “Thank you, Peredur.”  He turned to face his assembled retinue—his companions on the quest—his companions of the heart—his Cymbrogi.

“I’ve thought many times over as to what I’d say when this moment finally arrived.”  There were smiles throughout the assemblage, and much back-patting.  “Friends, we’ve been through much together, and though I go into this cave—alone, as it was decreed by He Who is Most High—I take you all with me to the culmination of this Quest.”  He lowered his head for a moment, and struck his right fist to his chest.  “Here.  You’re all with me in here.”

“We’re with you, Galahad!”  The group cheered their leader as he turned and entered the cave, torch sputtering above his head.

In a moment, Galahad was swallowed up by the gaping maw of the subterranean passage.  In the next, he was erased by time itself.

© Ray Cattie