AVONMORE

I

Sir Ancel pointed his sword at Sir Gale.

Galehaut I call him. Just that. I will not besmirch the noble appellation of knighthood by marrying it to his name. For by this man your Majesty has been betrayed in a manner most execrable.

The King looked from Sir Gale to Sir Ancel.

Duly noted.

Ancel was standing. All the others, including the King, were seated. Ancel nodded and continued with his accusations, staring fixedly at Sir Gale.

Your eyes confirm the truth of transgressions I have yet to bring forth.

Gale’s eyes had not changed since the conversation began. Nor had any other part of him. He thought it best to remain silent and listen.

King Ura nodded to Sir Ancel.

Proceed.

Your Majesty, I have for some time been suspicious of Sir Gale’s intentions and struggled through many tempers before giving them voice. For a knight is held to his words, and once those words enter the world they are more durable than the stone circles of the vanished Druids. I only speak them now because I have proof that cannot by gainsaid. I assure you that it pains me to bring forward verities of so egregious a nature.

King Ura’s eyes wandered to the lancet window which framed the courtyard sundial, its shadow falling heavily into the afternoon. He was well accustomed to Sir Ancel’s exhortations, clothed in a rhetoric which stiffened his posture even more than armour.

It puts me in mind of the disciple of our Lord who—

We appreciate these noble attitudes Sir Ancel. We are all schooled and suited in them, so let’s charge forward.

Of course your Majesty. In brief—

Don’t say in brief, Sir Ancel. It’s too late.

Sir Ancel opened his mouth to acknowledge, apologize, and qualify. Thought better of it. Nodded. And started again.

While rabbit hunting earlier today I chanced upon your loyal and lovely wife. The forest east of Kardoel opens into a clearing best known as the Meadow of Unremembering. There, the fair Queen Ganeura—I do not presume to use her familiar name as is the practice of some knights—is known to linger admiring its singular population of lepidoptera. As I said, hoping to discover cuniculi and their like, I came upon this man in her immediate vicinity.

Again Sir Ancel pointed to Gale with his sword, a gesture that came as naturally to him as a bow of homage to his King.

In an attempt to steer her from virtue and fidelity the aforementioned was making insidious argument couched in the language of philosophers. As I stood, aghast, wondering what my response should be, the decision was made for me.

Made for you? I don’t follow Sir Ancel. Were you possessed by a spirit?

If anyone was possessed it was this man who we’ve trusted as we would a brother. For you see, my Lord, frustrated by the Queen’s forbearance, Sir Gale escalated his campaign from knavish discourse to physical incursion. And I responded in the only manner an honourable knight can. Feel free to envision my aspect of outrage as I charged forward to intercept an atrocity.

Sir Ancel now gestured with his sword so vehemently his pauldrons jangled.

The Queen’s distress was plain as she attempted to free herself. But the man was undaunted and—I dare not speak the words.

In that instant King Ura’s world was a different one. The vibrance of the sun had lessened and the King no longer cared that sundials were invented. He stared at Gale. Then back at Sir Ancel. Then at nothing at all.

Sir Ancel’s testimony was as unreliable as it was unctuous. The King indulged it only because he was the strongest knight in battle. What mattered was that a set of relationships whose utterance had been tacitly forbidden had finally stained the silence. The moment was inevitable. A trap requiring only the slightest disturbance had been tripped.

The King knew he must take charge of this hideous dialogue. He leaned in, his forearms resting on the curve of the table.

And what did you do then?

Sir Ancel raised his head and looked into the beyond, as though in reverence of his own courage. 

I rode between them and swapt my sword a digit’s length from the scoundrel’s neck. Had I given licence to my wrath I’d have finished him then and there. However, it is incumbent upon a Knight to let his opponent accept the engagement. But rather than meet my advance, Sir Gale turned his horse and fled like the coward he is.

There were several moments of silence before King Ura realized that Sir Ancel had finished his report. At least for the time being.

Setting aside the allegations for a moment, Sir Ancel, I sense a personal grudge between you and Sir Gale. I’ve felt it building in recent weeks.

Then subtract me from the equation and investigate only the deed. But need I remind you that the man lived for a time in Lucca—under the veiled name of Galleto—publishing blasphemy in the name of science. Blasphemy which says the Sun, not the Earth, is the centre of God’s creation. And that our orb circulates its illumination with no more singularity than Mars or Venus. Can one trust such a man with anyone’s wife?

Gale’s education in the cosmos had taken place in Pisa not Lucca. For the most part under the tutelage of the great Benedictine teacher Cristoph Clavius. But he was impressed that Ancel’s informant had located him within a radius of five leagues. What a strange thing gossip was. A machine that represented the world with blurred edges, like the lenses of apprenticing oculists.

Let’s leave the minutiae of celestial dogma to the cardinals in Rome, shall we Ancel?

Of course, your Majesty. To continue.

So he wasn’t finished after all. At this moment King Ura wished he was anyone else but himself. He’d trade places with the lowliest scullery maid.

I had demonstrated my wrath and my intention and he refused to meet it. So I resheathed my sword and caught up with him. For in addition to being a weak soldier, Sir Gale is a poor equestrian. I circled thrice and faced him.

You circled thrice. Why?

To impress upon him that there is no escaping a man’s outrage when supported by the judgment of God. I chose three circuits in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The King had never heard of a knight doing anything so foolish as circling an enemy at close range. Such hubris might well have allowed Gale to run him through and abort these horrible proceedings. That Sir Ancel towered above all other knights in martial intelligence made the story even less convincing. Something crucial had been replaced with nonsense.

Continue Sir Ancel.

Sir Ancel hesitated. He’d become unsure of which facts to retain, which facts to omit, and which facts should be altered in the interest of a higher truth.

The King made a fist with his right hand and banged it on the table.

What did you do next Sir Ancel?

Apologies, my Lord. I hesitate only because I want the testimony to be exact. I then said to the man: Take yourself away, or my next motion will decapitate you. He did as he was bidden.

And the lady?

Your fair wife being in a state of terror, I gathered her up as delicately as I knew how and brought her back to you. You witnessed the transport yourself, my Lord, when you were returning from the hunt. A stag and a hart in tow as I recall. Understandably, you were unsettled at the sight of us together on a horse. I told you that I was conveying her out of murderous peril. That a matter of honour was at stake. I invited you to convene the Round Table, whereat I would explain. Which I am now doing.

That’s a fair description of the ultimate event, which I witnessed myself. Rest here a moment. All of you.

King Ura departed.

The knights sat in silence, all eyes moving from Gale’s face to his sword and back again to that inscrutable expression. They also looked to one another in a silent agreement that they would frustrate Gale’s exit should he decide that fight or flight were his only options. But Gale remained seated and his sword remained sheathed. His eyes moved nowhere the other knights could discern. Rather, as was often the case with him, his gaze was fixed on a time and space invisible to others. Superstitious knights believed Gale had commerce with demons and had mortgaged his soul for the wisdom of dark arts. Ambitious knights believed he planned to usurp the throne.

The King returned, accompanied by a page bearing a jug of water. The boy placed the vessel carefully on the table before the King, then vanished with the swiftness of a sprite.

Resisting the urge to steady himself against the edge of the table, the King raised the jug and downed its contents. When he was finished he slammed the empty vessel to the table, its clang an exordium to the impending sentence.

The Queen confirms Sir Ancel’s report.

A collective gasp from the knights bespoke horror and judgement.

All stand.

In the rush to obey came a resounding clatter of metal garments.

I will spare Sir Gale his life. But that is all.

He looked to Sir Gale.

Return the emblem of our court. Then turn and go.

Not only were all knights expected to display the emblem of the court, they were required to pay for it without reimbursement, and Gale remembered feeling overcharged by the quintet of seamstresses commissioned to embroider the tabard which at this moment was getting caught up in his ventail. When he finally had it free he shook out the creases and displayed its devices: the motto of the court, God is mightier than any man’s thought (Gale was the only Knight to insist on the original Meotud meahtigra, þonne ænges monnes gehygd); beneath that the emblem of Kardoel, an eye and eyebrow within a heart; and beneath that Sir Gale’s own coat of arms, a scarlet bend sinister with a wyvern flying above and a basilisk writhing below.

Gale lowered the tabard onto the table so that the fabric folded onto itself in thirds. He did this partly as an expected nod to the Trinity but mostly so that it didn’t upset the bowl of dried venison strips, prepared by Sir Pymme, whose turn it had been to bring snacks.

After smoothing out the garment Gale turned and went.

II

The Knights were expected to honour the verdict of exile and refrain from visiting harm upon the man who had betrayed his king. But Gale knew that if he crossed paths with one or more of his former company the very meeting would justify immediate engagement. So he kept a close watch on his surroundings as he hunted for sustenance by day. And as he gathered medicinal roots at sunset. And as he found mosses and lichens glowing under the ignis fatuus at dusk. And in the dead of night as he charted the stars.

Gale needed a good hiding place. And quickly. And so he disappeared into the forest, urging his charger, Terraplane, to go as fast as the terrain allowed.

Night was the biggest risk. That was the time knights moved stealthily on enemy fiefdoms, eager to dispute a border or retrieve an abducted daughter.

He was hungry, and as though the very thought of food had made the quarry appear he came upon a fawn dragging herself slowly through brush, an arrow in her hind parts. The rainbow-dyed feathers meant that the missile had been dispatched by Sir Kyle, the most inept knight it had ever been Gale’s ill fortune to be paired with on a hunt. It was a miracle the man had even gotten a piece of an animal.

Gale dismounted. Broken in spirit, the animal barely tried to outrun her pursuer, which meant that Gale overtook her easily, removed the arrow, and kept her from escaping by lashing her to the reigns of Terraplane. He then found a society of maggots blanketing the remains of a squirrel they were consuming. With the branch of an oak Gale transferred as many of the maggots as he could from the carcass to the wound of the fawn, thankful that the injury was in such a place the animal couldn’t lick them off. Maggots were a foolproof method for cleaning a wound and one he’d recommended to his fellow knights for any battle injury that wasn’t fatal. Most of the knights reacted to Gale’s advice in horror, believing maggots to be the spirits of fallen angels. Gale had no idea where they got these ideas.

He stayed with the fawn for an hour, slapping her lightly whenever she tried to shake the maggots off with the jerk of her left hind leg. When at last he released her from the reins she stared at him for seconds thinking it must be a trick, then bounded off into the bush faster than a spark off a flint.

Gale was hungry, but not to the point that he’d feed on an animal he couldn’t hunt fairly.

A rabbit or fish would do nicely.

He came to a small path cleared by animals, went up a knoll and down it again, and arrived at a stream. By using the edge of a spur, Gale removed the third nail in Terraplane’s right rear shoe. He used a flat stone and a smaller rounded one to curl the nail into the shape of a hook and tied the hook to a length of cord he removed from the waist of his undergarment. Then he went and found a worm and skewered it onto the end of the nail. 

Sitting cross legged by the stream he used the device to fish. In an hour he had three perch.

Gale cooked the fish slowly over a small flame, making sure no smoke was visible to knights at a distance. When he’d finished, he noted the sun falling behind a set of cairns that Ura’s knights were known to avoid in fear of the pagan race that assembled them. Just past the cairns lay the dwelling and workshop of Master Erl.

The Master’s magic amplified their fear still further, which meant Gale would be safe there for the time being. He only hoped that Niniane, that creepy girlfriend of Erl’s, hadn’t moved in again.

III

The outer architecture of Master Erl’s home was a wide flat rock, level with the ground and supported by several amorphous stones to create a low entrance. Smaller rocks filled in to form walls to either side, the entire structure tapering to the ground as one entered and descended into Erl’s home and laboratory. On the foremost stone to the left of the entrance were words hewn in antiquated Manx that few even among the literate would understand. Arrows and crosses gave the correct impression that it imparted a warning to those who would enter.

Cur-my-ner nagh vel naightyn tuittym ass y plafond.

Ayns cass dy h-earroo, sheiltynys y dorry.

Gale grasped its gist. That a knight should stoop and move carefully beneath the precarious rock, so as not to scrape his armour. And that he should be on the lookout for asp, ecidemon, ehcontius, lisis, jecis, meatris and other venomous saurians given to dropping from the crevices of its ceiling.

With these cautions in mind Gale entered and descended a serpentine passage that opened into a lavishly decorated sitting room, its lamps fueled by the emissions of rare elements. As though expecting Gale, Erl sat stiffly in a chair facing the entrance, which chair, like all of Erl’s furniture, was illustrated with stars and swirls and suffusions of colour, and its fabric spun, woven, dyed and transported from workshops east of the Haemaic range. Erl’s clothes too were of brilliantly dyed silk, a stark contrast to his white beard, white moustaches, white eyebrows, and white head-hair. Falling below the shoulders, this last was parted meticulously and conditioned to possess the bounce and body of adolescent tresses. Whenever Gale had visited in the past he’d found Erl similarly clean, groomed and attired, a surprising vanity in a man with little need for society.

Master Erl.

Sir Gale. You’re right on time.

By what means did you predict my arrival?

Master Erl gestured to an orb which provided a vision of things to come. Or so Erl claimed. Gale suspected it was a decoy to divert visitors from the real tools of prophesy: those myriad texts and intricate devices on shelves and tables. Like any prestidigitator, Master Erl sent attention away from where the trick was performed.

Since you know more about my future than I do, I’d be most thankful if you’d tell me what’s in store.

Gale got a sense of Erl smiling. Though you could never be sure with those moustaches.

Why don’t we start with what you’re most keen to know.

Which is?

Whether Sir Ancel and Lady Gena are lasciviously entangled, oblivious to the toll their illicit coupling takes on King and Kingdom and all that is held sacred.

Well, are they?

Yes, they are. Yes, unequivocally, they are. Yes, in thunder, they are. And have been since my hair was black as night.

As though to remind Gale that his hair was excellent in any colour Master Erl brushed away a lock that had fallen in front of his eye.

Ancel and Gena are only approaching the far side of youth and you’ve been white-haired since I was a boy. So what you say would make them ancient and incapable of it now.

Your notion of time is stodgy and linear. A crime of their nature inflects our history back to the first glow of life and infects our future unto the curtainfall of time itself. Dare I say that passion like theirs is heedless of age. That it keeps its prisoners frozen in youth and that when it ends, as all things must, their corporal selves will quickly catch up to, yea even overtake, their true age. It is a rare and vitalizing union. The underoccupied will be gossiping about it centuries hence.

I never know if you are serious, Erl.

The better part of magic is hyperbole. The fact remains and you hardly need to have asked me. It’s a truth known to everyone except the King. Who knows it too, just doesn’t know that he knows. If I’m not mistaken you came upon them in flagrante delicto in the Meadow of Unremembering.

Well on the way to it. Or just finishing up. I had only a moment to assess the situation. And you saw this all in your orb?

I saw it because it’s impossible not to. Incidentally, the meadow is as badly named as places get, given that no one in Kardoel forgets anything that happens there. They should take the name to heart and ignore intruders like Sir Ancel and Gena, or yourself for that matter.  Seeing that you had discovered them there, Ancel was too overcome with fear to consider how best to handle the situation.

What should he have done?

He should have put himself in your place. Had he done so he’d immediately have seen that nothing was to be gained by traducing you before the King and his Knights of the Table. Firstly because you’re too busy with scientific pursuits to waste time on matters of honour. And secondly because you’re smart enough to know it would only be your word against his, and he’s the more favoured. But instead he swept Gena up and onto his horse—hardly the best means of dispelling rumours—and ran almost immediately into the King and his party. In an ill conceived improvision he spoke of saving the fair and virtuous Gena from your animal attack, a preëmtive strike against witness you had no intention of bearing. He’d have done better to say he was rescuing the Queen from the pursuit of bees. And had he bothered to remember that women are better than men at these matters he would have consulted the Queen on his next move. She’d have advised him differently.

Differently how?

Erl ignored the question, lost in thought.

Unless.

Unless?

Unless, Gale, they both feared that jealousy would override your good sense.

Jealousy?

I think chiral is the word Queen Ganeura might use to describe yourself and Sir Ancel. Each of you satisfying that which the other doesn’t. Am I right?

Honestly Erl, are you this periphrastic with everyone?

You aren’t everyone, and you might shy away from words like periphrastic if you’re going to call the pot black.

Erl grinned wickedly. There was no mistaking it this time. Even his moustaches moved. Massive broomlike things that miraculously managed not to collect food when he dined. Gale also saw his eyes widen, to the extent you could see anything they did beneath the cloudlike masses of eyebrow.

You have filled some gaps for me, Sir Erl, and your factification is fair. Distressingly so. I’m grateful that you’ve refrained from moral embellishment.

I convey events. Let some Scots poetaster to spin them into a censorious ballad if he so chooses.

You said the other knights know the truth of Sir Ancel and the Queen. Why do they ignore his part in the drama, while regarding me in such hate?

Of the King’s knights Ancel is the most skilled at jousting and the fiercest in knightly combat. He’s given to pontificating about honour among men while you gather mosses in jars and study the stars through a glass.

It wasn’t the first time Erl had suggested that Gale’s failure as a knight stemmed from these frolics of inquiry. Gale felt it might be a good time to remove his armour and only responded when he’d done so.

Sir Ancel is skilled at the arts of charging men on horses. But he is far from brave. Surely a man of your wisdom knows this.

Gale, you are too much a philosopher and too little a knight. The King believes Sir Ancel is unprecedented in martial valour and unmatched in loyalty. Therefore he is. What you and I know as facts is immaterial.

I trust in the material.

Sir Erl nodded and changed his tone.

Speaking of which, I’ve spent much time with the celestial maps you drew for me. With some modifications I’ve made use of them in my study of the heavenly bodies and how their movement writes the futures of men.

We draw different conclusions. Rather I draw no conclusions. I just draw.

What we agree on is that the movement of the stars follows no truth that Rome holds as doctrine.

From a pallet in the corner of the room came the sound of a woman’s half-interrupted sleep. Not having noticed her until now, Gale turned and was startled to see Niniane in the act of rolling over, the movement distressing her perpetually unkempt hair still further. Hair black as Bible ink and impossible in a woman of her pallor, Gale thought, guessing correctly that it was achieved with a vegetable dye and that she used the same pigment for her makeup. Which by now was mostly smeared on the bedding she’d thrown off in irritation, revealing her to be naked as an eel.

Her skin is sensitive, even in sleep. But don’t worry, she won’t bother us. She’s been that way for days.

Why would she sleep so long?

I was foolish enough to give her a packet of seeds a colleague brought back from his journey to the East. They grow into flowers of a curious orange. When they’ve done flowering they produce an even curiouser sap.

I’ve heard of such a thing.

Master Erl nodded.

Papaveroideae. Niniane devised a preparation from the substance. One that delivers pleasure orders of magnitude beyond the carnal, was her description of the effect. Though from what I can tell it’s mostly a formula for prolonged sleep.

She can’t be even one-and-twenty.

I suspect you’re correct.

Against your immeasurable age.

I do her no harm. By inclination we are seldom together.

When it came to sharing books and substances Erl and Niniane were the perfect match. What they offered each other beyond that Gale couldn’t imagine. Or tried not to.

IV

Gale stayed with Erl for seven days. Niniane slept the entire time, uttering sounds that conveyed delicious dreams. It surprised Gale that she didn’t grow thinner, though if she had she’d have ceased to inhabit the world.

By the seventh day of Gale’s visit Erl’s fastidiousness had become insufferable to Gale and Gale’s presence had become obnoxious to Erl. But before the inevitable parting the two worked to produce an omelette of fried quail eggs gathered by Erl from nests in tall grasses and filled with snails that Gale foraged from beneath wet logs. For the first time since Gale’s arrival he and Erl had negotiated an amicable division of labour and were in harmony. Such reconciliations are common between those who’ve been clashing for some time and know that however much the other displeases them, the relief of separation is immanent.

But even this concord was tenuous. As they ate, Erl unfolded the maps and pointed out the sloppiness and misdirection in Gale’s study of the stars.

If you looked at them on a cloudless night I think you’d find them correct. It’s a method I’d recommend over locating them in a crystal orb.

Erl was about to respond when he remembered that there was a more important matter at hand. He refolded the maps—impatiently and contrary to their established creases—and handed them to Gale. Gale returned them to his pack and stood.

As always it has been—

Gale’s words of farewell were cut short.

We aren’t done yet.

Are we not?

It’s time that I showed you the alchemy of gold.

Erl wiped a glass table with a cloth soaked in vinegar. When it dried he passed Gale a silk bag dyed the blue of sapphire.

Pour this onto the table and examine it.

Gale did. It was a pound’s worth of gold dust.

This is fantastic! You’ve turned lead into gold! The truth of alchemy confirmed after millennia of struggle.

Please Gale. No one will ever turn lead into gold. The very notion is primitive folly. To obtain this gold I carved figures of our lord from hardened wood that I further weighted with lead. Then, after painting a glittery surface upon the objects I presented them as solid gold. I’m told that I resemble a holy man, but whatever the reason, people were fooled and paid a fortune for my icons. The sales earned me enough for the powder you see before you.

Gale had always considered Master Erl a necromancer rather than an entrepreneur, so the business plan impressed him.

We have work to do, Gale.

V

From a white-hot ladle Erl and Gale poured out the melted gold in the form of a seething arc. Erl then used tongs to complete the loop, joining the end with the beginning so that it resembled the ouroboros. Once the circle was rounded and solid he selected minerals from a cabinet of tiny drawers, poured them one after another into a mortar, and powdered them with a pestle. When the powder was as fine as he could make it he poured it from the mortar into a black metal box. Using the tongs again, he placed the gold hoop in the powder, making sure the object was fully immersed in it.

From a set of sandglass timers of his own construction Master Erl selected the one that measured exactly 34 minutes and inverted it.

Now we wait.

Having run out of topics whose discussion wouldn’t create more conflict between them, the two sat in silence, drinking mead of Master Erl’s fermenting. Not much good in Gale’s opinion, but it left him with a pleasantly light head.

As soon as the last grain of sand had fallen, Erl withdrew the gold loop. The object had now shrunk to the size of a delicate band whose inner circumference would snuggly encircle a modest digit. While it was still warm Erl donned gloves and banged the imperfections out.

A ring?

Yes. A ring. Like the kind used to represent holy matrimony.

Erl immediately shook his head against his own description.

But that would be wasting its remarkable quality on vows people don’t keep. To the point. It’s the same amount of gold as before, concentrated now into a seed.

A seed?

A seed from which entire landscapes might erupt.

I’m not sure I follow.

One could pound the ring into a circle 100 digits in diameter, cut 1,000 coins from it, pound each of them into a diameter almost the same again, cut 900 coins each from those circles, and so on.

To infinity?

Of course not. There is no making something from nothing. There are only improved economies of matter. Keep it safe. The object is formed to fit an average woman’s ring finger but will encircle your smallest one.

Gale slid it on and it fit perfectly. Then he pulled it off and examined its inner loop.

Are you not going to engrave it?

With what?

A wise saying.

Wisdom is not something scored onto a surface and recited over cups of tea. Wisdom is earned in the battle against limits.

Gale always felt tired after his time with Erl. It would be a rare man or woman who could manage it long term, Gale thought, and slid the ring back on.

I’m most appreciative of so rare a gift.

Good. Then take it and leave.

Having a recent memory of being ordered abruptly to arise and go, the words stung.

I’m curious though. Why would you give such a thing to me?

Because of all men, you have the least inclination to do the obvious with it.

What is obvious to do with it?

Pound it into a fortune. That you have to ask is remarkable.

Which means that it will do what in my hands?

In your hands it will thicken the plot.

VI

Concealed behind a larch at the edge of forest, Sir Gale watched as Ura, Rex Brittonum, invited his knights to form a circle in the meadow. Horses got in position. Snorting. Swapping their tails. Looking smarter and more elegant than the stiff, encased men that rode them.

Once in place the men drew their swords in unison and directed them like spokes towards an invisible point at the centre. King Ura spoke words in Latin.

Calix sanguinis Domini quaerimus, licet sit iter per vallem umbrae mortis.

Gale understood this simple directive but knew that the words might as well be a clattering of jackdaws for all sense the knights made of them. Perhaps spoken in their own language the idea of blood and of the valley of the shadow of death would have made them squeamish. Men of action find it easier to embark on adventures when the perils are unspecific.

Arthur spoke again, now in his own tongue, as he continued to stare down his sword

This point where the lines of our swords converge is one so infintesimal only God perceives it. To us it appears as void, but void we will eradicate through our quest. Is it our duty? Our destiny? Nay, it is our divine calling to replace nothing with a thing of perfection. Now let us go.

The King set out and his knights followed. Galvanized by Ura’s commencement speech, they chanted the scant Latin they knew: Magister magistorum. Rex Regum. Dominus dominorum. No doubt these words were uttered to show loyalty to the King unto death, but they came off as cheers bellowed by men at a tournament after a third helping of ale. If there was one thing Gale didn’t miss in his exile it was the assembly of men at sporting events shouting stupid stuff like that.

He watched until they’d all disappeared over the summit of a hill in search of a holy object they wouldn’t find. Meaning that Gale wouldn’t meet any of them for some time and didn’t have to worry as much about staying hidden. That was something.

VII

Gale approached a crude, thatched entrance. One that, like Master Erl’s portal, led to a home underground. Though unlike Master Erl’s this one was bereft of either style or menace. A short stout man wearing a plain robe emerged and addressed him.

I am Occam.

I am Gale. It is an honour to make your acquaintance.

This surprised Occam.

What do you know of me?

That you are a blacksmith, but that you also publish works of rational thought. Works that I have read with pleasure.  

The idea that a text he’d sent into the world had been consumed by a person who stood before him upset Occam.

As an artisan I’m always eager that the name my daughter and I share be known. Word of mouth being the best advertisement for a business. As for my works on logic and exegesis of our forefathers in the pursuit of truth, I rather hope no one reads me.

Why is that?

It encourages interpretation.

Isn’t that the point?

No. The fact of the writing is the point. Interpretation distorts what the writing is. It would be fine if people simply read my books. But unfortunately they have to talk about them. Worse still, some of them write responses to my arguments, bind these arguments in new books, and send those books into the world. Begetting still more exegeses bound into books. And so on. There is an infinity of corruption in that. To say nothing of the fact that the mutation is antithetical to what my words propose.

This was an unusual position. In Gale’s experience most writers wanted to be read and could seldom get anyone to do it. He changed the subject.

I won’t talk about your work then. Other than to say that I’ve noticed your attribution is consistently mononymous. Is Occam the family name?

It is.

Might I address you by your forename?

I am unburdened by a forename.

And your daughter?

Unburdened as I am. Neither more nor less so.

Doesn’t that cause confusion in the household?

When I use our name I am never referring to myself. When she uses our name she is never referring to herself. Occam is a collective name for us. The family being a necessary concept. But as persons she and I are not concepts. We are flesh and blood and have no need to complicate ourselves by a thing we are called.

Wouldn’t it cause confusion if you had a second daughter? Or a son?

I don’t have a second daughter or son. We are Occam. We haven’t survived for centuries as the smiths of our community by making single things multiple. With any luck there will be generations more of us bearing one child only and promulgating the same philosophy. I know you mean well Sir Gale, but these inquiries are accelerating the beating of my heart and distressing the flow of air into my lungs.

Gale resigned himself to this rustic wisdom. He was unsurprised that the Occams sustained themselves as smiths and not as tutors.

Gale removed his armour and sat at Occam’s stable. And the daughter, who there is no choice but to refer to as Occam’s daughter, brought a prepared fish on a plate from which they helped themselves, Occam having given Gale an implement contrived in the forge. One that offered the ability to cut, to pierce and to scoop. Occam ate with his hands.

You are puzzled?

Gale had been staring at the device preparatory to imposing it on this frugal repast.

It’s a compelling object and confirms your interest in unica.

It confirms my interest in simplicity.

A threefold device is simpler than three things? One could argue Platonic idealism and say that an item of threefold use has a complexity of essence three times what simple divisions would demand.

Your criticism is just. Or would be if I were a Platonist and didn’t regard idealism as hogwash.  Nevertheless I take it to heart and I’ll work to simplify the object further.

Gale felt a gentle hand on his shoulder as the daughter placed a metal vessel of ale, uniform and handleless, at the centre of the table.  The touch was singularly pleasing, perhaps more so, now that Gale wasn’t suffering under armour. Though he was chilly in just his doublet and more annoyed than ever that his tabard had been recalled, particularly given that he’d paid for it himself. If only the Occam family had been tailors rather than smiths.

To dispel these thoughts Gale slaked his thirst with an overgenerous gulp. Then Occam helped himself to a mouthful from the same vessel.

Let me guess. Your household contains just the one.

Occam nodded.

But surely the shoeing of horses demands uniformity and must constitute much of your labour. 

And it pains me. I do my best to make sure that no two are exactly alike.

And how are the horses with that?

Occam was silent and Gale felt like an ungracious guest. Rather than question how Occam produced nails, he urged the man gently into new topics of philosophy. Occam grew lively whenever he found something to disagree with, which happened quickly whenever a new thesis was put forward. Gale restricted his talk to concepts rather than things and forced himself to avoid the plural of any noun. It’s harder than it sounds.

When he was done he thanked Occam for the hospitality, thanked the daughter as well, and then immediately wondered if one thank you would have sufficed for both and troubled the father less.

The daughter helped Gale back into the armour. She was a small woman and her clothing was a black blanket with a diagonal cut at the centre through which she inserted her head. The only addition to the blanket was a large hood stitched on behind the aperture, and which was currently lying loose against her back. The entire garment was blacker than Niniane’s hair, though in this case not from dye, but from years of embedded soot. And it was so overlarge that the corners dragged on the ground even when she raised her arms to manipulate the pot over the fire.

She was an ill-formed woman, shapeless but for the hunch to her back. And her skin was as dusky as Gena’s was fair.

Being just able to reach his shoulders, she had to proceed by touch alone and the entire time she did so her black eyes stared into Gale’s grey ones, intently, as if she discerned everything he was. Though Gale could read nothing of her.

Then, with a clang, a rivet gave and the armour felt weightless. How had he not noticed that the left pauldron pressured his shoulder so much more than the right?

Gale was in a fine mood as he rode out, the well-tempered armour having revived his spirits and invested him with fond regard for the Occam family.  They certainly understood the properties of metals. And however malformed the daughter was—probably from hard work at the forge—her strong body would be of great assistance to her father for the rest of his days. For being so profoundly unbeautiful she would neither be courted by upstanding men nor carried off by drunken bands of passing knights. Once again Plato and Socrates got it wrong. Pulchritude is no index to a lofty spirit.

Gale’s thoughts continued to move over the same ground, oddly compelled by the strange woman. Terraplane’s gait described these thoughts as he skipped unsteadily over flat stones, hopping now leftward, now rightward, over a long expanse of standing water. Looking down Gale noted that the legs and head of his horse were reversed top to bottom in its reflection, which answered the question Cristoph Clavius had posed during Gale’s time in Pisa, as to why mirrors transpose the world left to right but not up and down.

VIII

In the fraught moments after he’d found Gena with Sir Ancel and Sir Ancel had directed some theatrical swordwork towards him, Gena had held up one finger, followed by eight, followed by five. The signal gave Gale both a lunar date and a time of day.  

It was twilight when he reached the Meadow of Unremembering. Erl believed the place to be misnamed, but Gale thought it was perfectly named. Had it been called the Meadow of Forgetting people would walk away from whatever happened there and be done with it. But it wasn’t that. It was a place where people ignored the real, and recounted whatever they pleased about the place, with no assistance from memory.

Gena had already arrived and was sitting primly on one of the meadow’s thronelike stones, said to be hewn by Druids of old. To ensure that she was unaccompanied, Gale approached first from behind her seated figure, waiting some minutes amidst junipers whose tarte berry aroma aroused his senses.

She’d chosen the time of day well. The final and fervid moments of sunset ignited her auburn hair into pure fire. Tresses that found their complement in a dress that in turn matched the emerald of her eyes. If I were a painter I’m sure there’s lots I could do with that, Gale thought.

Her white palfrey stood beside her, lowing at times to nibble greeney tufts. A Tiercel named Gos, the favourite of Gena’s falcons, was perched on her arm. Not having children, Gena prided herself on her devotion to her birds, and their loyalty to her. Though she did have Gos on a creance and Gale suspected that she’d keep everyone in her realm on one if she knew how to.

As he approached, Gos launched, circled Gena three times, landed so that he was facing his mistress, and tilted his head at her in quizzical scrutiny.

Gale sat long enough to observe the angle and speed of the rising moon. Then circumnavigated the meadow through the wood and approached Gena from the front, imitating Gos by tilting his head identically to the bird.

It made the Queen laugh. Though she caught herself and returned to her characteristic posture that highlighted the best angle of her cheekbones. When Gale got within hearing distance she spoke first.

You took your time.

Meaning?

You’ve been in exile for weeks, so coming to see me is obviously low on your task list.

I simply followed your signals. You indicated a meeting at twilight on the first day of the next gibbous moon.

Rather than finding your way into the castle and meeting me in secret before that.

Impossible given my current status. You know this.

Then you might have come here sooner on the chance of discovering me here. It is a place I frequent.

So you’ve been coming here daily?

Of course not.

Then how do you know I haven’t.

You’ve already revealed that you haven’t.

Gale wasn’t sure he had. But abiding by facts would go against everything Gena was, so he let the argument go.

I find it hard to believe you’ve spent your time just dodging knights. They’re all gone now anyway. Hunting a metal cup they plan to wrest from its keeper by whatever means necessary.

The lore I’m familiar with says that the Grail cannot be taken by force, only by love. And that one becomes king of the object and its power simply by asking its current guardian the right question.

If you like. Really it’s just Ura needing to get away. Like most men he’d rather face an enemy invested with the wrath of a hundred angry gods than deal with problems at home. May he be blessed with a series of foes just spoiling for a tilt.

Well it’s given us opportunity.

Has it? I think you’re more interested in the planets and the stars. Orders of angels are less intent upon the heavens than you.

As the orders of angels are a whim of theologians that’s not saying much.

Even less reason to concern yourself with the problems that affect neither God nor humankind. A selfish wisdom.

Not even. Don’t confuse skill at observation with wisdom. I’m not Master Erl.

Praise the mercurial rulers of Heaven and Earth for that.

And are you really in any position to judge me?

Meaning?

Meaning you did betray me to the King.

There was no other way. Given the situation.

And after betraying me with Sir Lance.

It wasn’t—

She hesitated.

Yes?

It hadn’t gone that far. And there was a reason for indulging him even as much as I did. Sir Ancel is Ura’s favourite Knight. I knew if I forced Sir Ancel’s attention to a crisis it would stave off a worse situation.

A worse situation?

Ancel has always pursued me. In the past I simply sent him away. But the shame around his feelings for me was escalating. Given his piety, and insistence on honour as the supreme virtue among men, there was now a dangerous possibility that he’d confess these feelings to the King.

I don’t follow. I thought you hadn’t done anything with Sir Ancel.

I haven’t. But he adheres to the position of St. Paul. You know. That it’s just as bad to think about it as to actually do it. Possibly worse.

How on earth could it be worse just to think about it?

Because mere thought can’t be avenged. Only actions can. The conflict makes Ancel unpredictable and twitchy. So after he accused you, and the King crept in to ask me if it was true about you and me, I told him it was. I even put my face in my hands and sobbed. But I could tell he wasn’t convinced. He knows Sir Ancel has been acting strangely and probably wonders if Ancel and I are framing you to throw suspicion off our own relations.

Relations that you and Sir Ancel aren’t having.

Correct.

In other words the King has no idea what’s going on or who to punish or what the devil to do with you.

If you want to put it that way.

And just so I understand correctly, Ancel was tempted to confess to the King an iniquity of pure thought. But when at last he took action and all but forced himself on you, rather than confess he decided to lay charges against me?

When the stakes reach a certain level he chooses confrontation over reflection and his duty to God gets thrown to the four winds. Sir Ancel is an unusual person.

Gos bated again and came to rest on Gena’s left shoulder, facing the darkening forest behind her. The movement threw Gena off, and Gale used her discomfiture to push for the truth.

But even assuming your assessment is correct, you chose a peculiar strategy.

Strategy?

Your decision to confirm the allegation. I got off lucky with exile. The King could have ordered my execution.

He wouldn’t have dared. He knows he’d lose me forever if he did that. And since he can’t solve any of his problems at home he’s gone off with all of his horses and all of his men in search of something no one will ever find.

With the added benefit that it keeps you and Ancel apart.

That comment is unfair but I’ll overlook it. Because what matters is that you and I are together at last.

All’s well that ends well.

Rather than offer a rebuke to this irony she stood up, hooded Gos, and secured his jesses to a perch on her palfrey.  When she mounted the horse and turned to face Gale the movement in her upper body was more enticing than anything he had ever seen.

Come on.

Gale mounted Terraplane and followed her into the night.

Hours later they arrived at a clearing. A castle stood in the distance, its pointed rooves glittering in the moonlight from a silver finish that suggested taxes levied on the vassals of this domain must be substantial. The stars above were so vibrant one could think they were proof of angels. Though Gale did not.

Tie our horses here. And wait.

Binding one end of the creance to her left wrist she removed Gos’s hood and allowed him to describe repeated arcs to the abrupt limit of his constraint. Perhaps he’s a protection against whomever might lurk in this interzone, Gale thought and watched as the strange choreography of bird and woman was absorbed into the gardens surrounding the castle.

As it was the perfect night to observe bodies in the firmament, Gale gave his attention to the sky, lamenting the loss of the glass that could magnify them. Thankfully he still possessed a celestial navigation device of his own invention: a set of concentric metal wheels, movable and marked with the degrees of a circle. Using the instrument to line up stars whose position was well established, he could plot the location of newly discovered ones. The activity was a comfort to Gale. The stars could be known by observation. Whatever Gena planned to do next could not. A man might know all the mysteries of the earth and the heavens combined and still not know what went on under that armada of braids and ringlets.

As Gale was thinking these thoughts Gena, now Gosless, came back into view as a silhouette. Only when she was very close was the night illuminated by the glow of her face. So white. Heavenly god so white! Gale thought, surprising even himself as he was given neither to prayer nor apostrophe.

Floßhilde has prepared the way. Havergal, the groom will stable the horses.

They know about us?

The two have been servants since I was a child. I trust them.

The two circled the castle for some 115 degrees by Gale’s calculation at which point Gena’s arms signaled an instruction and the bridge descended over the moat. The figure of a man emerged from the dark, took the reins of both horses, and led them into the darkness surrounding the castle. Gale followed Gena across the bridge and around a barbican much like all the others that budded from the structure, making a mental calculation of its position in relation to the donjon lest he need to navigate quickly out and away.

They ducked under the portcullis Havergal had raised just high enough to admit them and found Floßhilde waiting for them. By the owl-light of a dim torch she guided them through a corridor, up an intestine staircase, down another corridor, and finally to Gena’s chamber which was lit with more candles than Gale had ever seen in one room. She took his hand and together they stepped across a sea of rosepetals and peacockfeathers, archipelagoed by striped and spotted pelts from Southern lands.

IX

The days were without beginning or end and outside time.

Gena and Gale enjoyed the wine, goose and pheasant Floßhilde brought them, but mostly they enjoyed each other.

At the unlikeliest hours, and from a gallery Gale’s ears tried to locate but couldn’t, came the sound of Havergal plucking an instrument and Floßhilde incanting verses in her mother tongue. The words bespoke passion to Gale and instruction to Gena.

But as is always the case in such a retreat from the world, a moment came when both Gale and Gena knew that the time together was stolen, not earned, and must end.

In an interlude of dreamy exhaustion Gena reached to a side table made of iron legs and a quartz surface and selected a book from a stack of many.

You might like this.

What is it?

A tale told by an Italian poet who claims to have travelled all the dimensions of hell.

Three? Or does hell have dimensions denied to earth?

Probably. Just think of the population it needs to accommodate.

Mm.

In any case I was fortunate to get it from a purveyor of imports. He saves the choicest arrivals for me. It’s brand new.

She opened the book to a place she had marked and began to read, in the manner of one who’s learned a language from books and never heard a word of it spoken.

O anamuh aff an tay. Veneetay a nwoy parlar, saltree nole niega!

Basta. Basta. BASTA!

What?

If we were any closer to Italy they’d wake up screaming at the damage you’re doing their language.

Gale took the book from her and found the passage she’d chosen, scanning ahead as he translated aloud.

Oh tired souls. Come. Speak with us. If it be not forbidden.

Gale continued to the end of the Canto. The passage described the poet and his guide as they encounter an adulterous couple named Paolo and Francesca. When Gale had finished the passage he stared at the embedded letters, as though the pen of the calligrapher had burned through the paper to the very depths of hell. He missed reading books from Italy. The scribes who indited and bound them were so much more skilled than the ones here. The words of the poet were in his head forever now, though they emerged solely from ink and paper. Gale was always compelled by the incarnation of powerful feeling from pure materiality.

Gena spoke, as though to remind Gale that she was material too.

You seem far away. The poet must have affected you.

It’s a substantial collection of pages. The more impressive given that he’s committed to terza rima throughout.

You’re interested in the form, not the characters?

I wouldn’t say that. I am interested that Francesca does all the talking. A reader could forget Paolo’s there.

Smart man.

Not smart enough. Given that he’s down there. But I’m more interested in why you chose to single out this passage from all the others.

It reminds me of us. That’s all.

Doesn’t bode well for our future.

I disagree. They get to do whatever they like in hell.

I’m not sure that’s a conclusion the poet intends.

Gale turned to the first page of the book. The huge, illuminated N of its opening word encased the poet as he wandered in woods. Three unfettered animals, their skins patterned like the rugs in this very room, floated above him in the trees.

But more concerning was the graceless inscription in the margin.

GENA ET ANCEL IN AETERNUM

Along with the remnants of wax made by Sir Ancel’s seal.

Sir Ancel gave you this? I thought you said you purchased it from a purveyor or imports.

The fellow had it on order for me, and Ancel was kind enough to pick it up when he was out hunting boar one afternoon. He’s keen to gain my affection by such gestures. You knew this.

And you read it together?

She laughed.

Hardly. He thought it was in Latin, which he believes they still speak. He doesn’t understand a word of it. I’m not sure he can even read the French he spoke as a boy.

Gale put the book down and lay for a time thinking. When he could tell from Gena’s breathing that she’d fallen back to sleep he turned and watched her until he lost track of time. He’d have fallen asleep himself were it not for a sudden violent shaking of the earth.

A crack appeared in the wall opposite and the bed shuddered as though it might break and deposit them into the very hell the poet described.

The shaking woke Gena and Gale held her close until the tremors subsided. A few minutes later it shook again, though less fiercely this time. After that it didn’t return.

The smell of spilled wax was pungent, but thanks to their lead bases the candelabras were still standing. The chandelier pendulumed wildly at first, then subsided slowly into progressively narrow ellipses. Reflected in Gena’s eyes its flames drew wild white scribbles.

What was that?

I’ve experienced these quakes in the past and notated the frequency and severity of the earth’s vibrations. I attribute them to plates of rock side by side. One suddenly gives way and the shift sends a delayed trembling outward from its location. I can show you my calculations if you’re interested.

Someday. We have world enough and time.

Speaking of which. We can’t stay concealed much longer. Surely the King will return from his quest soon.

She looked up at him through the hair that had fallen over her eyes.

You aren’t much of a tactician or a geographer. We’re not in Kardoel any more. We’re in Salaburra. Segramor’s castle.

Your father?

No. I’m his mother’s sister’s granddaughter. But there are no men in line, at least not in the vicinity.

That goes against the mathematical odds.

She shook her head, the hair falling away now from her eyes.

Not really. There were men. But most of them died going up against King Utr, Ura’s father. And my brother was killed by Sir Ancel.

Over what?

My brother alleged that Sir Ancel’s attention to me was improper. Me being a married woman. To defend my honour Sir Ancel challenged my brother to a joust and killed him on the first pass, thereby proving the allegations to be false.

Is Segramor here?

Failing fast. The physician says he won’t last the week. I’m the nearest blood relative but as a woman I can’t command the throne. So I’ll announce you as a half-brother, a bastard concealed by my father but who is now the best choice for succession. I have paperwork in a convincing replica of my father’s hand. You would be the new King.

That would mean pronouncing a deception we then have to maintain through our lives. And sleep in separate wings of the castle.

Gena raised herself onto her elbow and looked up into the cobwebs of the vault above her.

No. We can do whatever we like. We’ll be gods over our subjects and the rules don’t apply to gods.

And if you have a child?

We give him to some rosy peasant girl we say is your concubine. It will turn out that the girl has aristocratic lineage through a set of rediscovered chronicles I’ll have my legal advisor draw up. The concubine disappears and the child becomes the next in line.

Only if he’s a boy.

If she’s a girl we’ll figure something out.

This is carefully conceived, though not without hazards. My more immediate concern is that King Ura will come after us. His army helmed by Ancel. And how do we handle that?

From our vassals you’ll raise an army to meet them. Our men are strong and disciplined and haven’t depleted their strength on quests for metal cups. Given the conflict between Ura and Ancel right now our army will win.

Annoying as he is, Ancel is a strong commander. He deserves his reputation.

She shook her head.

Soldiers fight harder on home soil. And the loyalty Ancel had from fellow knights and soldiers has diminished.

Why?

For having betrayed the King with me. At least so Ancel believes he’s done in his heart and so the King suspects he’s done in fact. It’s nothing to do with actual events. Ancel’s guilt is real because he feels it. It’s palpable in everything he does. And it will be his ruin.

You’re impressively fearless.

Gena’s eyes had wandered, as had her thoughts which were far outside the room.

I could never face the loss of dignity and dominion.

But on the chance that you’re wrong and our forces are overwhelmed, imagine the fury of Sir Ancel and his men when they storm the palace.

Then the throne will be a glorious sepulchre.

With these last words her eyes again met Gale’s, speaking enigmas he was unlikely to decrypt. He knew that without the blessing of Rome his role as King to her Queen would be a relationship neither familial nor marital. But would project a foul suspicion of both. A thing dark and ungodly to the people. More importantly it left the foundation of the monarchy to Gena. Her right to succession might be distaff and slender, but it was backed by deeds and chronicles. Gale was son and heir of nothing at all. His acquaintance with history told him that betrayal and self-interest seldom triumph over the long haul. And when relations sour, indisputable pedigree trumps a few forged documents claiming some newcomer is the King.

Looking around the room Gale was startled discovered Gos perched on an outcrop at the base of the vault above them. Still as a carving the tiercel’s eye was alive with witness.

Gena’s breathing slowed and strengthened again as she fell asleep. Gale was as awake as he’d ever been.

And yet he felt closer to her than he’d ever felt with anyone. In every way. They smelled like each other. Gale knew the agony the separation would be.

The ring that he and Sir Erl had forged together was on the third finger of her right hand (the only finger available as all the others were committed to massive ruby settings forced on her by the King). Gale tested her pulse with the first two fingers of his right hand. When it had slowed to a frequency consistent with deep sleep he removed Erl’s ring from her finger.

Gale lay for minutes, clutching the object tighter and tighter in his hand. Not even thinking.

Finally he slipped the ring back onto the smallest finger of his own left hand. Then with an agony of heart he hoped never to know again he moved from her, dressed, availed himself of a candle tipped on its side but still burning, and descended the staircase.

The portcullis was closed all the way now. As he puzzled to find another exit Floßhilde approached, ghostlike, the light of her lamp even dimmer now.

Gena has doubtless informed you that I am the new lord of this castle.

The woman didn’t respond.

Get Havergal to prepare my horse. There is a man I know with authority from Rome. A man vested with the power to annul forced unions and sanctify true ones. I’ll collect him and return quickly, but while I’m gone it’s essential that my lady remain innocent of all knowledge that he is on his way. For our bond is that rarest of gifts, and she like unto a maiden too pure to comprehend the thing it is.

Gale all but gagged on the words. So syrupy and idiotic they couldn’t fail to raise Floßhilde’s suspicions. He wasn’t good at this stuff.

But the woman was less jaded in matters of the heart than Gale and lacked volumes of Italian poetry at her bedside. While he doubted that he had her completely, Floßhilde softened at the language of virtue. She nodded and did as she was bidden.

When Havergal arrived with the horse and let down the bridge, Gale paid him an overgenerous amount of gold coin for his trouble and then rode out furiously. He saw the sun rising between the twin towers of the Cathedral in the distance, which meant he’d calculated correctly and was moving Eastward, as is the man who takes a few more steps towards Jerusalem each time he enters the house of God.

Gale rode furiously, knowing how little time he had, and how many things pursued him.

At dawn he heard the thunder of horses whence he’d come. But he stayed hidden, still as death, waiting for them to disperse. Amidst an uncomfortable bluff of shrubbery he saw knights at a distance.

But their action had been initiated in too much haste and they were unprepared. Gale heard them cursing that they hadn’t even been given time to assemble the dogs, who’d have sniffed him out instantly. For the millionth time, Gale pondered the peculiar nature of luck. A thing to reckon with even in a world without God, and inexplicable by mathematics.

X

Gale remained in place for an hour after the men abandoned their search, pondering a mound of ants beside him. Creatures far more organized than men. With a final glance at the insects and their works he mounted Terraplane and went on his way. Like a god knowing that the world he could easily crush underfoot might be more interesting left to its own devices.

Gale moved through meadows and glades, avoiding the visibility of ridges and the entrapment of valleys, without a plan, other than not to be seen by another living soul. He’d never felt so unmoored and never felt so at peace.

In the late afternoon he captured two large squirrels. Not daring to build a fire large enough for roasting, he settled for consuming them lightly smoked. The result was so tasty he thought he might prepare them this way for guests someday, should there be a future in which he had a home and friends he could invite to it.

When night fell he slept. When he awoke with the sun he knew exactly what he needed to do.

XI

Gale returned to Occam’s cave. Though perhaps the term was unfair. A broker of property sales would no doubt describe it as an underground studio equipped with a state-of-the-art forge and a renovated ground-level entrance.

Gale was startled when what he thought was a stump began to move. A superstitious man might imagine the forest coming to life, Gale had just time to think, when he realized it was Occam’s daughter. As she stepped to the ground she pulled her blanketwear on and the hood over her head. Gale almost laughed out loud, the hood being so dark that her head disappeared into it completely, making her appear no more than an animated cloak. Were someone to hand her a scythe, she’d resemble the familiar personification of death.

We heard a rider approach and father sent me up to investigate. My skin is the colour of the stump and if I stand very still without my cloak on no one sees me.

Still not knowing what name to call her Gale chose generalized friendliness.

Well now that I can you’re a welcome sight.

Why welcome?

Gale imagined that ‘because you’re preferable to the dozens of men who want to kill me’ would be an uncharitable answer. Strange, he thought, that I’m as disconcerted by this homely blacksmith as I’ve never been with Gena, the fairest woman in the land.

I’m happy to encounter you because you’re too uncomplicated to be false.

False testimony is often terse and simple. In fact that’s when it works best.

But not in your case.

How do you know?

I don’t.

So your point is without meaning.

Her father appeared, having emerged from the hovel as silently as his daughter had been standing guard.

Gale removed the ring from his finger and placed it on the stump.

This ring was cast by Sir Erl. Under extreme heat and pressure. And can be magnified into a wealth of gold in your forge. I’ll happily pay you from a portion of it, but what I’m after isn’t wealth.

Then what are you after?

Occam’s daughter headed inside and began feeding the forge in preparation.

I would ask that you transform it into a goblet resembling the one that contained the blood of our lord.

The goblet in question was not forged by me. Nor by any smith of my acquaintance. Nor have I seen it. Nor has it been described to me. Therefore I won’t be able to make a representation of it. And even were I able to, it would be the representation of an ideal. And you know how I feel about that.

I knew that representation would be a stumblingblock. To any other smith the forging of the sacred object would be an outrage to our Lord. One so heinous as to put him in the frozen lake next to Lucifer, for eternity. Though I don’t imagine that’s a concern of yours.

Not really. No.

Dare I suggest—

Gale stopped himself, wondering how far he could set Occam against dogma.

Yes?

Dare I suggest that the vessel is a fiction. In which case you are not initiating multiplicity. You are contriving unica.

Occam thought on this and became guardedly intrigued.

Let me guess. I make it appear centuries old?

Would that be possible?

Occam waved the problem aside.

Accelerated patinas are nothing new under the sun. An agèd Breton showed me the technique.

Then I leave you to it. With the object in hand I will reënter the order of knights. They will bow down before me. They will fear me. They will offer their wealth to me for my discovery of it. A discovery only a righteous man could make. And being proven to be a righteous man, the allegations against me will be false ipso facto.

You were slandered by Sir Ancel as I recall.

I’d prefer the term betrayed to slandered. But fair enough. You know this how?

Sir Erl mentioned it. In confidence.

In the past Sir Erl had never suffered from loose lips. Niniane was a pernicious influence in every way.

Yes. Indeed. He levelled spurious charges. Though my innocence or guilt is irrelevant. It’s the might of a man that inspires the loyalty of others.

A not uncommon sentiment in philosophy, though flawed.

For this job you needn’t concern yourself with philosophy, though I’d be happy to read whatever you publish on the subject.

Occam winced.

Will the job take long?

No. I’ve worked with Erl’s gold before.

For the second time in less than a minute Gale was surprised by Occam’s association with Erl.

It’s easily malleable and can be cast in any die you might chose. The size, as you said, isn’t limitless, but the substance is wildly expandible. Our Lord would likely have shunned such glory in a worldly thing. Knowing what we do of his attitudes.

Occam smiled with one side of his mouth as he said this.

In the final light of day Gale went outside and sat, resting his back against the wall of the entrance. It was cool at night but the bricks were pleasantly warm from the forge. He was surprised when he turned to see Occam’s daughter beside him, with her hands retracted under the cloth and her face concealed under the hood so that none of her flesh was visible. Standing to her full height she was slightly taller than Gale was seated. She said nothing but remained next to him for some minutes before a hand emerged from the cloak and rested lightly on his shoulder. When she returned to assist her father neither of them had spoken a word.

XII

At the summit of a hillock Gale lay on his belly listening to the exchange between knights. After some minutes he was able to piece together the sequence of events.

The knights had returned from their fruitless quest for the Grail on the same night that Gale departed from Gena and left Salaburra. On learning that the Queen had fled and was rumoured to be with Gale, the obvious task was to recover the Queen and deliver vengeance upon Gale.

So it is that one campaign replaces another.

But the impromptu mission had gotten off course when the knights entered Kryosote, a fiefdom consisting of two bulbous acreages joined isthmuslike by a narrow stretch of bogland running between Kardoel and Salaburra.

On the evening in question the knights of Kryosote were trawling this troublesome landscape for leaches, the court physician needing to apply them to the neck of their Lord who was afflicted by goiter. 

Kryosote’s men saw Ura’s men encroaching. Ura’s men saw Kryosote’s men at the ready. The result being that opposing forces went to war for no other reason than that both sides were armed for it. The combined losses were catastrophic and each army returned home claiming to have won the day in battle.

Sir Ancel came through without a scratch.

The horses began to snort and the narrative became hard for Gale to follow. From his vantage behind the hillock he was surprised to see the Queen among the company. And on a new horse, a striking perlino jennet that her turquoise riding apparel looked smashing against.

Thankfully three knights separated from the larger group and moved closer to Gale’s hiding place, which meant he was able to catch every word of their hushed discussion. Added to what he already knew, Gale constructed a probable series of events.

Upon awakening from their final night together Gena discovered that she’d not only been abandoned by Gale, but that he’d even taken back the ring he’d given her. In fury she dispatched Segramor’s knights to recapture him, realizing too late that a man of Gale’s intellect would outsmart so predictable an action.

Defeated on that front, she turned her thoughts to the impending, albeit tenuous, patrimony of her first-cousin-once-removed. While she had no idea what her next move should be, she knew that installing herself at the dying Segramor’s bedside would at least buy her some time. Returning to her chamber after many hours of holding Segramor’s gnarled and bewarted hand for what would turn out to be his last night on earth, she had the good fortune to overhear the court treasurer boasting to one of the scantily uniformed chambermaids that he had fresh intelligence on Segramor’s successors. Orkneymen Thorrin Hard-Lips and Einmar Breast-Rope—twin nephews, eight hereditary degrees of separation from Segramor—were at that very moment approaching Salaburra on Orkney’s mightiest sea-craft powered by 144 oarsmen.

As the pair were universally described as bellicose, concupiscent, and hirsute, Gena wisely chose to depart Salaburra immediately. She got Havergal to saddle the swiftest jennet and galloped back to Kardoel. The intermediate bogland was thankfully knightless for her passage, the Lord of Kryosote having died the same hour as Segramor.

Utterly surprised by his Queen’s return and at a loss as to what he should do with her, King Ura ascended to the battlements of the west parapet to practice his bladderpipe, the improvisations increasing in volume by the hour and reaching fortississississimo by the first light of dawn. The sound prevented everyone in the castle from sleeping that night, a deprivation particularly unfortunate for those knights convalescing after the battle.

It wasn’t until the afternoon of the following day that the Venerable Bene, Ura’s advisor in theology and statecraft, approached his Majesty and suggested that the King would do well to pronounce the recent campaign a resounding success. How in heaven’s name could I convince the people of that? the incredulous King had asked. Well, the Bene continued, manifestations of God’s will are measured by outcome, not by intention. I don’t follow, admitted the King who was a simple man when it came to doctrine. The Bene nodded respectfully and rephrased. Another way to put it is that the unlikeliest human endeavors can turn out to have been destined by God. Yea, they can even prove have been his divine blessings. Therefore, it would be no false testimony to inform the people that after ruthless battle incurring heavy losses on both sides, an avenue through which Salaburra Castle could be stormed presented itself and, with stealth and ingenuity, the Queen was rescued from her imprisonment in its darkest dungeon. Kardoel’s subjects will be relieved to know that by the bravery of the King’s knights and the grace of God the purity of the virtuous lady remained unsullied by the depraved and now happily deceased Segramor.

King Ura nodded, asked the Bene to gather the people, and conveyed the narrative. A Pyrrhic victory scores over senseless carnage any day.

Gale looked back now at the group that contained Gena, Ancel and the King.  Gena’s new horse pranced about so proudly and firmly one could almost imagine it was the previous horse that had lead the Queen astray, rather than any lapse in her virtue. A virtue forever celebrated by poets of the court.

He watched for knowing glances between Ancel and Gena but could discern nothing from their movements. Their eyes seemed not to meet, but neither did they seem to consciously avoid meeting. They might be any two people mounted in a group. Nonetheless, it bothered Gale that Gena saw so much in a man like that. And it bothered him that it bothered him.

In his mind Gale rehearsed the words he would say. Along the lines of: I see myself as a humble, inglorious Judas. For surely, without the Christian drama of betrayal and forgiveness, the holiness of this object is annulled. I bow before you in abasement.

Satisfied with the plan he rose and began to descend.

But Gena knew he was there. She turned to him, shook her head emphatically, and quickly directed her horse to the party of knights who were reconvening for their return to Kardoel.

And at that moment Gale knew that even if the gift was accepted and he was exonerated by it, he had no place in the court of Kardoel. Surely that’s what Gena’s shake of the head had meant. The chalice itself seemed to tremble in confirmation.

But he would make sure they received it. He felt that to be a thing he owed. And he was confident that Gena would find an oblique way to inform them of its donor.

Gale placed the chalice on a rock at the highest point on the hillock. Then hid himself again behind the summit. Having mastered the imitation of birds, he simulated the shriek of a magpie to get their attention then ducked away. By the sound of approaching horses he knew they’d heard it and turned and that the vessel had caught their attention.

Gale quickly retreated into the thicket where he’d secured Terraplane and waited with his eyes on the hillock. The Knights surrounded the object, concealing it from his sight.

Gale was hit by an eruption of sound unlike any he’d heard before. Then silence. Then the clatter of armed men in confusion. Horses reared. There was a shriek of anguish followed by shouts of ‘She’s fainted.’ Gena was helped by the other knights onto the back of Ura’s horse and all of them made a hasty retreat.

When he was certain they were long gone Gale mounted Terraplane and returned to the hillock. But when he reached the spot where the chalice should be, he found only a spatter of gold powder in a broad distorted circle.

He removed a gauntlet and touched the power with the distal of his right forefinger. The substance burned him and he pulled his hand immediately away.

The burn left a painful red welt, which within hours had subsided to a darkened marking that reminded Gale of alchemic symbols for compounds like aqua vitae and lunar caustic; or the graffiti of Gnostics, Ebionists, and Zoroastrians which survived on scattered rocks and mountainsides. But over the next several days, while shrinking in size, the epidermal phenomenon gained definition and began to stand out in relief as a distinct three-dimensional shape. He would later forge replicas of the growth, in metal, and discover that they tessellated perfectly.

XIII

Gale approached the grotto of Sir Erl, whose explanation of the goblet and its disintegration Gale was curious to know. He anticipated that it would be elaborate but rational.

But when Gale neared the place he knew something was wrong. The cairns had been knocked to ruin and the surrounding trees, broken at their roots and lying flat in a disorganized grid, gave evidence of violence to the Earth.

At the entrance to Erl’s dwelling Gale discovered that the stones that had formerly supported the flat horizontal rock were ground to dust, and that the roof had collapsed onto the earth. This must have been the source of the trembling Gale had felt while lying next to Gena two circuits of the moon ago.

Emerging from beneath the rock, Gale discovered the extended arm of a man in the act of fleeing the catastrophe. He knew the arm must be Erl’s, decorated as it was with rings bearing runes only Erl could have engraved. Thinking back to the gold chalice, Gale was wary of the elements the rings might contain and thought it best not to take them for himself. Best not even to touch them.

It seemed strange to Gale that a man of Erl’s wisdom had fallen foul to the whims of the earth.

He looked closer at the arm. It was strangely coloured, but it was hard and free of decay. The flesh of a man poisoned by asp, ecidemon, ehcontius, lisis, jecis, meatris or some similarly venomous saurian.

Niniane’s moods were legendary, and when she’d at last awoken her rage would have been exacerbated by hunger. Despite the preparation and consumption of the substance being her own choice, she’d blame anyone around her for the days robbed from her youth by sleep. Gale pictured her dropping a tincture of serpent venom into one of those teas Erl was always drinking and which he said reversed aging. Knowing he was stricken Erl would have made a desperate effort to fill his lungs with the clear air of outdoors and crawl with whatever strength he could muster to the front entrance. 

The chance of their discoveries falling into the hands of triflers would be unthinkable to Niniane. So by means of some volatile substance applied to the ground beneath her feet she would have made the bedrock rage and the rocks crumble, before disappearing rabbitlike through a safe and hidden exit of which there were many in that place. The science that Niniane practiced was more lethal than the magic spoken of in legends of witchcraft and Gale suspected that her formulas to upset the material world were beyond the ken of any alchemist. Potent combinations of elements unknown even to Master Erl.

A tremor felt as far afield as Salaburra castle. You had to admire the craft.

Although a week later it occurred to Gale that the destruction might have nothing to do with Niniane. That it might simply have been brought about by the convergence of forces within the earth. A geologic fluke which just happened to put Erl’s laboratory at the centre of destruction.

The indeterminacy of this problem would trouble Gale to the end of his days.

Gale looked again at the exposed appendage and was startled to discover a growth on the distal of Erl’s right forefinger, identical to the one that had burned onto his own forefinger days ago. He was confident the two marks would nest perfectly together but didn’t dare test his theory. As Gale’s eyes moved back and forth between the twin markings he thought about the petty disputes that had absorbed so much of their friendship and for the first time in longer than he could remember he became overwhelmed with sorrow and wept until he had no tears left.

Thinking that it would be an abomination for jewellery of so exceptional a man to be pilfered by brigands and scavengers, Gale piled stones in a mound to cover the arm. He then planted a vertical branch in the centre of the mound and lashed a second and smaller branch perpendicularly against the upper third of the first. Criminals were the most superstitious people on earth and wouldn’t dare upset the symbol of their God.

At least that was what Gale told himself as he sunk the rood into the rockpile.

XIV

Gale wandered the forest, building traps to catch small animals and roasting them in a pit he dug with his hands. Slow cooking to avoid any smoke which might allow Ura’s knights to locate him.

During this time Gale tried hard to reign in his thoughts. In solitude it was so easy to crave a meaning beyond the heat and the cold and the damp and the movement of branches and the creeping things that crawled upon them. He began to sense a universal omniscience within which his consciousness was contained, felt betrayed by his mind’s insistence on the illusion, and thought endlessly about himself thinking. But trying to arrest thinking only produced another layer of it. And another on top of that. So that thought became like the nacre an oyster layers over a grain of sand to create its pearl. And surely, like the grain in the shell, thoughts must be enabled by something foreign invading the mind. In the end it was easier to simply accept that thoughts were his only friend and not worry if they were self-contained.

At times he would sit cross-legged and with closed-eyes upon a rock hidden by foliage, pricks of sun stabbing through like swords. If he thought long enough on his own thinking, the tangle of thoughts would eventually implode, leaving him with only the forest and a feeling that whatever happened now had nothing to do with what had happened a moment ago. And nothing to do with what would happen in the next moment.

It impressed Gale that the new surroundings had no effect on Terraplane, who travelled the forest easily, found plenty of groundcover to graze on, and acted no differently here than anywhere else.

The fecundity of this place made for a constant slapping of foliage against anything they passed through. Some of the spikey growth even found its way through cracks in Gale’s armour, causing Gale’s skin to itch and burn. So for days he found it safest to walk behind Tarraplane who was unaffected by lashings of vines and branches.

But rather than being an anchor to the world of men, the horse’s serenity in this malign place merely underlined the frailty of the human spirit. Unlike Gale, Terraplane’s disposition was unchanged in the face of loss and suffering.

On the 21^st day, when Gale was striving to achieve the state in which no moment had anything to do with any other moment, a pinecone fell beside him. He examined it. There was a scale at its tip. Two just below. Then a circuit of three. Followed by one of five. Another of eight. Another of 13. Another of 21. This pattern resonated with something he’d learned in Pisa, from the same scholar who’d introduced him to Hindu-Arabic place-value numerals.

Gale examined several other pinecones and found identical patterns of circles and recorded them, along with the numbers, in his book.

But even the observations he wrote in his notebook were beginning to lose import.

Perhaps if the book was preserved it would speak to someone in a future age. But that was the paradox of genius. Zeno would matter to mathematicians until the end of time. But that didn’t do Zeno any good.

By the 34th day he’d wandered deeper into the valley than he thought possible, to a place of flora so lush that sun barely penetrated even at midday. Here Gale ceased to think about the intrigues of women and men. Now it was only wolves who saw him, retreating quickly from this animal they had no reference for but knew instinctively to fear.

By the second circuit of the moon these uncharted woods offered him no living creatures except snakes, who unlike the wolves lacked even an imagination for other species and didn’t bother to hide. Gale snatched them up as they slid over his feet, twisting off their heads and eating them raw.

Terraplane continued to find edible growth and consumed it along with the creatures that moved sideways across its leaves. Things that Gale would have thought toxic and repugnant to an animal. Then again, Gale reminded himself, I’m dining on uncooked snakes.

At dusk strange avians would launch from high altitudes, circling in figure-eights above him. Like bats but wingspanned wide as oxen, moving so swiftly their forms defied sketching in his book. He was convinced they couldn’t be real and wrote that they were a delusion, of the kind known to visit men with no company but nature. Gale chose never to have seen them.

On the 55th day he moved out of the deep shadowed valley and back into the light.

He suspected that the Knights of the round table assumed him dead by now and had given up the search. Perhaps they’d visited the home of Sir Erl and guessed that Gale had found sanctuary with the master and been crushed alongside him. On the other hand, if they believed him still to be alive, they might be searching for him in far-off kingdoms. No knight could resist a perilous journey in the name of quarry unlikely to be captured.

But they’d never suspect me to be living a few leagues from the court of Kardoel, Gale thought.

XV

As the forge never went out completely the entrance to the smithy was candent even in the darkest hours of night. From the stone chimney curlicues of smoke merged with the dark of trees.

Gale entered and descended to quarters illumined in the soft glow of two candles, their flames very still. Equally still was their reflection in her eyes which doubled them again. A doubling that must irk her father immeasurably, Gale thought.

Without asking, Gale began to remove his armour.

My father said to expect you.

Is he here?

No. He left for good.

Where to?

He heard of an island, uninhabited and containing one and only one of everything needed to sustain life. Before departing he changed his name from Occam to Ocam.

I fail to distinguish the difference.

You’d need to see it written.

When did he leave?

Fifty-five days ago.

To his eyes the woman had received no investment of beauty since he last saw her. Yet in his mind her stock had increased immeasurably. As he lay down beside her he made a mental note to give this economy some thought.

The next morning Gale awoke first. Sunlight fell on the dirt floor just before the entrance, illuminating words written with a stick by Ocam in Erse. As it was the language of Gale’s mother, he had no trouble translating as he read.

I invite you to give your family name to any offspring you may have with my daughter, and I accept that both she and her children use a forename. The simplicity I seek is unwelcome in a world that wishes things to multiply.

Gale looked up from the words to see the daughter herself, standing before him blackrobed but unhooded.

What would you like to be called?

She answered without hesitation.

Fabro.

Why?

I make things.

Wouldn’t you prefer the feminine. Fabra?

I can forge anything a man can.

How about Fabró.

Why Fabró?

I feel it has more élan.

Fabró sounds like a calligrapher who waxes his moustaches.

Fabro it is.

The first task was to dispose of his charger. He rode Terraplane to the edge of the forest and pointed him towards Kardoel. A few rough cracks of the whip sent the horse galloping on his way.

Gale returned to the smithy where he and Fabro spent the day melting most of his armour in the forge. Making it into pans, utensils, and accoutrements of a homely private future. But the substantial remains of it he set aside for future contracts.

Fabro supplied Gale with a robe that Ocam had left behind, and that fit him well enough.

There’s something else.

When he turned to her Fabro held two objects unimaginably small but blindingly bright in the palm of her red and rough-skinned right hand.

My father held back two slivers of the ring you gave him. Each one a thirty-fourth of the total. He said we’d know when to use them.

Gale was wary about this metal, volatile as it had proven to be. But Fabro and her father had understood it better than he did, and so far it had worked in his favour.

I’ll take his word for it.

She nodded.

Thankfully her father had left his razor behind, and Fabro used it to shave Gale’s pointed beard and moustaches. When that was done she used it to slash away most of the hair on his head, leaving only the rude stubble you’d expect of a peasant. Gale smiled in the glass. He’d been granted a new life.

XVI

One morning when Gale was forging horseshoes he heard the approach of a destrier and from the melancholy of its footfall knew it could only be the horse of King Ura. Fabro nodded. Neither spoke. Gale remained below as she went up to greet the customer. She was gone a good while.

Gale felt sad whenever he was away from her. Even for the least division of an hour. It always pleased him that she looked no different when she returned than from when she had departed. Something he could never count on with Gena.

She was back in minutes.

It was the King.

What did he want?

A gauntlet has been thrown down.

In need of repair?

No. Metaphorically. Although the King was barehanded and beringed. I’ve heard it’s to show that the pattern of the rings he wears is identical to what he forces on the Queen.

So what did he want?

He has a competition to win. The most desperate in the history of Kardoel were his words. And knowing Ocam makes the best lances and never duplicates one, he expects nothing less than a masterpiece. The crowning achievement of my father’s artistry, appropriate to the valour of a King. He’s happy to pay for the finest materials and our most inspired labour. Something so strong, so unique, that it can never be duplicated. His words again. If I talked as much as royalty I’d have no throat left.

It was still the time of Gale’s apprenticeship, so he followed Fabro’s direction in melting down one of the greaves of his former armour. When Gale went to add one of the remaining gold fragments she stopped him. Taking the object in a pair of slender tongs, she heated it lightly and let it expand to the diameter of a man’s hand. Tributaries grew from the rounded end to suggest fingers.

Why do that with it? It will just melt again when it’s added.

Forms stretched to their limits are explosive. Compared to Erl’s gold at maximum expansion the potential force of a loaded ballista is like a grebe to a goshawk.

You learned this from your father?

My father learned it from me. He’s brilliant, but he concerns himself with restriction. Not expansion.

The heated gold continued to grow. When it reached the proportions of a teardrop buckler she dropped it back into the forge.

Fabro tooled the metal and assembled the parts. Gale watched as she scored the handgrip with ornament. A mark repeated. Spiraling upward.

I’ve always wondered why smiths do that to the handle.

It identifies the artisan. More importantly it gives the knight a better hold.

Fabro started at the tip, with one ornament on either side. As the grip’s circumference widened she spiraled with three, then five, then eight, then 13, then 21, and so on.

Wait. How did you come upon those numbers?

What numbers?

The numbers of each circuit. Two, three, five, eight, 13 21.

She shrugged.

It’s how every smith does it. They just naturally fit that way as the handle flares out. But it’s not what matters. It’s the cut of the ornament that makes the grip effective.

The king returned. He wanted to thank Ocam in person, but she told him her father had been working night and day on the project and was sleeping the sleep of the dead from exhaustion. And reminded him that it’s bad luck for the artisan to present the weapon in person. The King nodded as though remembering this wisdom. After assuring the King that the lance would defeat any adversary, she made the sign of the cross.

A day later they heard the approach of a courser whose prolix foot-clop could only belong to the horse of Sir Ancel.

This time the customer wouldn’t engage with a mere assistant. He pushed past her and down into the smithy.

Gale refused to turn his head. And spoke no words. Fabro had followed Ancel down and stood behind him with a concealed quillon she was prepared to use on his throat if he identified Gale.

Frustrated with the mute before him Ancel turned to Fabro.

This man is not your father. Which supports the rumour that he has abandoned the forge for opportunity in a distant land.

If my father has been seen in distant lands it’s only for the sake of his business. He heard rumours of your lord requiring a weapon. And as even the King has acknowledged you as the finest Knight who ever went forth into battle, nothing less will do than the strongest, sharpest, fiercest lance ever a forge has produced. It is an assignment of such import that even as we speak my father is visiting mines that would provide the best metals.

I see. But who is this man? And why does he insult his betters by refusing to turn and speak?

Surely you remember?

Ancel did not.

Remind me.

He once had his own forge, from which you commissioned a sword that failed you. When you returned and demanded an explanation, he stuttered. You rebuked him and told him he might well stutter since there was no defence for such slovenly work. ‘Learn from this that a dull blade cuts more painfully than a sharp one’ you said and took the very sword he’d rendered and cut out his tongue, which you followed by slicing off his nose to end what you referred to as ‘that womanly sniffling.’ Now he takes work where he can get it. Shamed at the disfigurement, he shows his face to no one.

Sir Ancel had no memory of the act, but he’d severed so many body parts from commoners who’d disappointed him similarly that he didn’t doubt her account.

He looked to the back of Gale’s head, then at Fabro, and scowled.

Such a man is an affront to the human form. Surely you don’t expect me to entrust the most important battle of my life to him?

Remember that there is no greater incentive for mastering an art than harsh but fair correction from a noble knight. He is not the same man who failed you in the past. And have no fear. He is under the instruction of my father who will oversee everything and who is due back tonight.

Advise your father of the situation and tell him to deliver to the highest standards of his art. Otherwise he will long for a punishment as mild as what I visited on his servant.

Ancel left the smithy and galloped off.

Gale and Fabro melted the second of the greaves from Gale’s former armour and added the remaining gold. The final particle of Erl’s ring.

Gale was still learning his craft but Fabro was patient with him, only giving him occasional directions. As he didn’t have her years of practice his fingers tired easily, and on one occasion during the work he put the lance down and looked at her with intense regard.

By having me do one and you another it makes them unica.

Father would have been proud.

At that moment Gale knew that the island of unique things was an invention and that Ocam had died. He sat in silence for a time and then went back to work.

When they were finished Gale shaped and decorated the coronal and the handgrip. So that neither man would know the objects were from the same smithy, Gale made sure his marks on the handle were different than Fabro’s. But their numerical expansion followed the same pattern as Fabro’s decoration on King Ura’s lance. There was no other way for it to be if you spiraled them on a tapered handle. So much for a sequence derived from God, Gale thought.

When he’d finished Gale leaned the weapon against the wall. In the flickering reflection of the forge it looked animate and irate. Impatient to do battle. When he looked again at Fabro he could read nothing in her aspect as to what she thought of his work. But with Fabro it was never her expression that counted. It was what she did. Or didn’t do. And this was the first thing he’d made that she hadn’t reheated and corrected.

The two enjoyed a simple meal of radishes Fabro had gathered, and two squirrels Gale had caught and lightly smoked. When he had some food in his stomach Gale felt a need to speak of the gold that could have made them wealthy rather than being squandered on lances, and more substantially on the forgery of an icon.

Does it bother you we’ve used up all the gold?

Fabro looked surprised.

That volatility of the substance does no good for anyone.

Still. The money from it would have been useful to us. Once spent, whatever malign forces it brought would be out of our hands.

But not out of conscience. Having passed it on to others whom it might harm.

Perhaps you’re right. Still, I can’t help thinking it could have done something better than to become a self-immolating chalice.

It was the best possible thing to do with it. You were wise to think of it. I never would have.

The kettle was boiling on the edge of the forge. Fabro got up and poured it into a pot. She added leaves to the pot and let it steep.

If I could have any of the gold remaining, Gale thought, I’d purchase a fresh set of clothes for Fabro. Surely that thing she wears will simply disintegrate before too long.

As though reading his mind she looked down at the garment and smiled.

You can do something for me though?

Anything you can name.

Buy me apparel suited to both work and walking about in the world. For the thing I’m wearing will need to be disposed of in a matter of days. I’m ready to have more than one set of clothes.

Fabro got up, finished preparing the drink, and returned with it. The concoction possessed an amazing ability to soothe Gale’s muscles after a hard day of work. He took a sip, handed it to her, and they took turns with the vessel as they talked.

Father used to say that we live on the cusp of a new age.

He hints at that in his writing.

Fabro nodded, but Gale suspected these were more her thoughts than her father’s.

Ideals that have served us for centuries are now irrelevant and a distraction from innovations that will take us to the future. The Grail is one such. That the King saw it disappear before his eyes brings an end to a concept that no longer serves its people. You did well to make that happen.

That hadn’t been Gale’s intention at all when he’d suggested forging the object. He knew that she knew that and changed the subject to practicalities.

Still we could do with a little more money. Even to maintain the equipment we have now.

She moved closer to Gale putting her arm on his far shoulder to raise herself up so she could whisper in his ear.

Father had more money saved than you know. But that’s the least of it.

The least of it?

We will soon have a windfall. Even in excess of what Erl’s gold could have brought us.

How is that possible?

I can’t tell you.

Why?

You won’t think me capable of it. Or you’ll think it’s too risky and try to talk me out of it. Or you’ll want to assist me. Which is impossible.

Should I be worried?

If you think that will help.

They finished the tea and together they cleaned up. People see blacksmiths eating and drinking before washing the filth of the day from their bodies and are repelled by it. Had they ever done such work they’d know that blacksmiths are too exhausted to undress and wash after a day at the forge. That they need rest and nourishment first.

Fabro and Gale cleaned themselves and their few implements, then fell to bed and into the dreamless sleep of exhaustion.

In the morning Ancel returned for his weapon. Satisfied enough with its heft and decoration he didn’t descend to the forge but simply paid Fabro and rode out, twirling and swishing the weapon as he went.

XVII

The date chosen for the tournament was September Ides. The perfect time for such a dispute to be settled, both men had agreed.  

The knights of the round table went over the rules, each of them possessing slightly different ones on scrolls copied by monks at their own expense and with wildly varying details.  The lesser knights worked out the logistics of the fair that would accompany the joust itself.

As the Grail quest and the latest warfare had depleted the royal coffers, Ura was supportive of any initiative that would replenish them. This meant that the fair was replete with sport including, but not limited to, dogfights, cockfights, peacockfights, squirrelfights, goatfights, toadfights, ratfights, and newtfights. Jewellers offered bright but worthless stones mounted on base metals. Maidens—or alleged maidens—were raffled off as brides. Continental haberdashers tried and failed to sell garments of incomparable style (the clothes appearing ugly, alas, to a nation bereft of sartorial refinement.) Roasted chicken parts advertised as storkloins were purchased and devoured. Barrels of ale were ingurgitated. The finest trained birds flew above. In pits dug as close to the event as the court legislators allowed came a hissing from snakes, and men would pay to dive in and possess one for whatever utility it offered.  

There was all manner of gambling backed by the King’s treasury and giving the best odds to that treasury.

Vendors paid dearly for the patch of ground on which to pitch their stalls. Lords from fiefdoms at distances beyond imagining were to arrive. Carpenters worked day and night to provide them something to sit on. The population of riff-raff strewn willy-nilly over lawn and meadow was inestimable.

It was the fair of the century and the King would have been thrilled to see an accounting of the profit it garnered.

The contestants circled one another. Sir Ancel’s horse reared. Then King Ura’s. Then Sir Ancel’s. Then King Ura’s. This went on for a while. Bets were wagered among the lords. Vassals made side bets against those of the lords. Peasants made side bets against those of the vassals. Odds shifted and skittered just like the horses.

Finally the contestants took position and faced one another, each man adjusting his cuirasse and setting his newformed lance in its fewter.

King Ura spoke first.

It pains me to fight my dearest and oldest friend, but a man has no choice in the defence of a lady’s honour.

It is you who impugn the reputation of the purest lady in the realm. And do so in the name of nefarious and factitious accusations. And it pains me far more to have to challenge the King to whom I have been loyal as no subject before me ever has.

No Sir Ancel. It pains me more. For you were like a son to me. And that sun has set.

The metaphors declined still further as the exchange continued, each man attempting to exceed his opponent in eloquence, nobility, rectitude, and regret. But as pre-joust ceremonies had reached so fevered a pitch—a lakesworth of varied brews having been consumed by now—any further expostulations were lost in the fervour of the crowd.

XVIII

No. The knight moves two spaces forward and backward and then one to the left or right. Conversely the knight may move two spaces left or right and then one space backward or forward.

This rule annoyed Gena.

Why not two forward or back and two left or right?

Were that the rule a knight would be no more than a constrained bishop.

A fair description of the Venerable Bene himself, Gena thought.

At Gena’s instigation the Venerable Bene was teaching her the royal game, a request that struck the Bene as the apotheosis of folly. Folly not only of a woman trying to grasp the tactics of war, but of doing so in a format demanding rigorous logic. Queen Gena, who knew nothing of geometry, calculation, and metaphysics. Who in fact only knew her numbers to the low orders of double digits. No doubt she’d been attracted by the jewelled men standing sentinel on the agate and onyx board. Like a magpie, the Queen couldn’t resist sparkly objects. Just look at those fingers bedecked with rubies.

Gena practiced sending her knights into permitted locations, then looked up at the Bene.

Is that correct?

Yes. All those maneuvers are allowed.

Right. I have it now. Let’s play.

If you feel you’re ready. I’ll correct you if you make a forbidden move.

But by now the Queen had a firm grasp of the game and made no forbidden moves. She was even winning, until the Bene employed a queen’s castle to save his king, after which he checkmated in three moves. Hardly fair, given that the Bene had neglected to explain the lubricious machinations of castling.

Are there any other tricks you’ve withheld from me?

I don’t believe so. To be honest I didn’t foresee the game lasting long enough to require the knowledge of castling.

Then let’s play again.

They played five more games. Gena won all of them, each time in fewer moves than in the game prior. She’d have challenged him again were it not for a sudden uproar from the audience at the tournament. A cacophony of such violence that she and the Bene could hear it from where they sat in the Hall of Contests and Pastimes.

Not caring for fairs or tournaments, Gena had planned to forgo the entire event and spend the time learning chess. But given that the outcry was intensifying rather than waning, the Queen and the Bene felt obliged to abandon the competition of reason and investigate the competition of blood.

And so they left the castle and proceeded to the list field.

XIX

In the retelling no one could agree on whether King Ura’s lance had penetrated Sir Ancel’s armour a moment before Sir Ancel’s lance had penetrated King Ura’s armour, or if Sir Ancel’s lance had penetrated King Ura’s armour a moment before King Ura’s lance had penetrated Sir Ancel’s armour. In any case the lances transpierced armour as effortlessly as a heron’s beak penetrates the still surface of a lake to snatch a mullet. When the bodies were examined it was discovered that both lances had passed through the escutcheon of the enemy’s breastplate and exited the enemy’s backplate, the shaft continuing on with such force that each man was skewered up to the other’s vamplate. It took hours to extricate the bodies from the weapons, and when removed from the armour their remains spilled out in shreds and jellies. Save that the heart of each man was intact.

(The horses were unhurt and later fetched ferocious sums at auction to kings in foreign lands.)

A residue, black, caked, and corrosive was left on the inner armour, and burnt any finger that touched it. Boiled water in buckets was poured on the sticky viscera, but the repeated washes failed to extract it from its shell and only made it glow an unnatural blue. In the end, there was no choice but that the remains be interred with the armour itself. For despite its quasi-religious status no one dared hire a smith to melt the armour and reforge it as a holy object.

The plan was to bury the remains of King Ura and Sir Ancel respectively at the right and left foot of a chalk giant, embedded on the hillside by Druids or some savage people like them. But when the burial masters attempted to break the earth with spades, it was the spades that broke. At which point the Venerable Bene stepped forward to suggest that a ferry to the Isle of the Dead would not only be more practical, it would assure metempsychosis befitting the exalted souls of King Ura and Sir Ancel.

XX

Gena remained mounted at the shore, looking out over the cold lake at sunset. She’d commissioned a suit of armour built to her body’s specifications and had gone out with it today for the first time. She intended it partly as disguise, but mostly to condition herself to her new and masculine responsibilities.

Despite her attempt to contain it, her hair flowed out from under her helmet and down the backplate. Hair that had, in the days following the tournament, gone from auburn without a strand of silver, to the uniform white of newfallen snow.  Though for a few moments every day, sunset did her hair the service of returning it to what it had been. And tonight the sunset was incendiary.

The lake was a perfect circle with a break in the line of trees on the far side. As though the still water held a memory too vast to be embraced by the shore.

She’d brought Gos with her and was mounted with him on Terraplane, Gale’s charger, who’d returned riderless days before the tournament. It was VIII Kalends Octobres, the autumnal equinox, and she would repeat the journey every year on this date for the rest of her days, always dressed in the costume of a knight. Though it never fooled anyone, and those she passed would salute her just as they would a man above their station.

Gos bated and squawked, rocking back and forth and playing havoc with his jesses. She pushed her visor up now to drink in every impression of the ceremony. The low and nearly motionless clouds above the lake were the colours of a bronze statue.

The ooze and armour of King Ura and Sir Ancel had been shovelled into slender barges and the vessels set adrift.

The King and Sir Ancel. Two men of matching nobility, in boats of matching design, drifting slowly to the Isle of Avonmore. By a physics that the Bene would later describe as ‘the piloting of our Lord,’ the boats observed a straight path, remaining parallel with one another until they vanished from sight.

The match that had killed Sir Ancel and her husband would forever be described as the essence of the nation itself. Upholding the highest ideals of the Round Table, its legacy would be more lasting even than the ancient oaks from which that table was wrought.

Indeed the drama had seeped into every pore of the kingdom. Into its solvency.  Into its morality. Even into its faith. The peasants said it was the reason that crops failed and fallow fields remained so. That it explained the years of rot, the years of poverty, the years of starvation, and the years of men drawn pitifully into ever more dubious battles waged by ever more intemperate lords.

The ideal of divine right is inextricable from the ideal of holy matrimony. And violation of one begets violation of the other. Let what propriety forbids us from speaking be a terrible lesson. This and like pronouncements were common refrains from the pulpits of the age. No example was given. No names were spoken. But virtuous women and faint-hearted men were known to weep at the words.

Lords, knights, and kings

Dance now and forever

In Avonmore,

Isle of the Dead.

These and similar lyrics became the stuff of jangly popular songs, a new one appearing almost daily in the wake of the noble contest.

Gena, like most of Kardoel’s population, assumed Sir Ancel would triumph. A few, tempted by the long odds, put money on the King. Only one, a hooded and faceless peasant scarcely taller than a dwarf and with the voice of a woman, foresaw the defeat of both men. As she’d staked a life’s earnings on it and as the numbers had weighed so heavily against the probability, her winnings were vast enough to sustain a modest household for generations to come. Reappearing after dark, the saturnine figure collected the bag of gold, ensconced it under her cloak, and vanished back into night. The transaction was so silent and swift it took stragglers at the fair longer to recount than to observe, and the movements were so fearsome and assured that even the boldest marauders were disinclined to pursue this grimrobed doomster back to whatever circle of hell she called home.

Ura, for all his virtue and goodwill had never won Gena’s heart. Ancel had won half of it. Well, maybe 34 one hundredths. (Thirty-four because that was how high Gena could count.) That was about half a hundred. Wasn’t it?

The rules were different here than in Segramor’s kingdom. The death of the King, and of the rival who’d have demanded the throne, left Gena the reigning monarch. Queen of Kardoel.

There were rumours that Gale had vanished to distant lands and become a humble artisan with a witch for a wife. The very thought was an affront to Gena. If that was the truth they could live happily ever after in the mud and the shit for all she cared. A Gale who’d sunk to that condition was no longer the man she’d loved.

As though her thoughts had inflamed him, Gos bated again. The bird didn’t think much of her jewelled vambrace and was hopping now on the bare fingers of her right hand. Gena had left her gauntlets back at the castle for the simple reason that they wouldn’t fit over her rings. Eight of them in total now. Ura had been giving her a new one every anniversary, each one bigger and rubier than the previous one, as he grew more desperate to possess her heart. As it would be unfitting to remove the encumbrances during the mourning period the nightmare still visited her. In her dream she’d run out of fingers on which to bear rings and the King had escalated his gifts to necklaces, each one heavier than the one before. Until eventually her body broke through the earth’s crust and deposited her next to Paolo and Francesca. That was always when she woke up.

In a movement she’d never seen in a bird, Gos slipped from his jesses, tossed off his hood, and launched. After circling her three times, he landed again on her right hand, this time with his face to her, tilting his head as he had that time Gale had mimicked the posture on approaching her in the Meadow of Unremembering. She half-expected to see Gale materialize before her, but when she gazed into the lake there were still only the two boats, with cargo that no longer had anything to offer her.

As for Gale’s claim on her heart, it must be whatever number you put with 34 to use up the rest of the hundredths. It irked her not to know the number. Starting tomorrow she’d have the Bene instruct her in the principles of mathematics.

Gos had perched with the left talon and right talon upon the two largest stones. Now he wrenched them free of their settings, flew up, did a half circuit, and with two beats of his wings moved over the lake with them. She called to him to return but he continued on his way, spreading his wings and gliding between the two boats, and from there towards Avonmore until he was lost in mist, never to be captured by man or woman.

When the boats were so far advanced that even the furrow of water they’d displaced had vanished from sight the Priests spoke their final Latin phrases and left the Queen to her farewell.

Eventually it became too dark to distinguish the lake from the sky. Who knows how many hours she might have remained if Terraplane hadn’t shaken the reins. Urging her back to Kardoel and her infinite duties.

XXI

Since the death of King Ura the practice of war had advanced from an art to a science, and one of its greatest innovations lay in the conquering of enemy territory by burning the land to nothing. The finest engineers of the day taught commanders how to take precise measurements of airflow and wind direction from movement in the tallest treebranches, then use the measurements to determine the strategic placement of fires downwind. If executed correctly the immolation of a fiefdom would be precise and total, forcing the surviving population into regions wherein they were quickly killed or enslaved, and giving the conquerors dominion over the charred landscape.

Assisted by a staff, as men require in the last stages of life, Gale moved slowly along a winding road that passed through just such a territory. He stepped carefully over desiccated branches fallen onto the path and negotiated blackened and precarious bridges under which brown water reeked of dead fish.

The sole living thing Gale had seen this hour was a kingfisher. The bird had perched atop a lone tree that would have sunk with its companions under the foetid ooze had its fall not been broken by a heap of vanquished lancers, now a formless mound of bloated flesh and rusted metal.

The moment Gale’s eye fell upon the bird, it shook the feathers of his crown and flapped away.

Far ahead of Gale a figure approached, one that at this distance bore no more distinction than the inkstroke of a hasty calligrapher. The figure disappeared as the road dipped into a valley that lay just ahead. Then reappeared and met him.

The man was of middle years and introduced himself to Gale as a practitioner of the medical arts. After exchanging courtesies Gale enlisted the expert’s opinion.

Perhaps you’d be so kind as to assess this marking. It appeared following a burn I received some decades ago. But it has become more pronounced with the passing of time.

Here Gale pointed with his left forefinger to the distal of his right forefinger. The physician bent forward inquisitively, giving the unusual growth his strict attention. In so doing he revealed an identical formation on his own forescalp, where the hair had receded.

Suddenly, as though hit by a furnaceblast, the man took two steps backward, becoming immersed to the ankles in a bog of rotting dace and roach.

I can make nothing of it, he said, and hurried rapidly on.

At least he didn’t demand a fee, Gale thought, and continued along the road and into the valley.

FINIS

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This has been an Albatross Event.