(A sample chapter from the Arthurian tale The Killing Sword.)
© 2011 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
XVI. The Castle by the Lake
THEN BALYN LED GARNYSHE through the castle to the walled garden. They found the couple asleep and naked on the garden grass, and the fair lady’s hand still clasped about the foul knight’s cock, so that Balyn had great shame to see it so.
And when Garnyshe beheld her so lying, for pure sorrow his mouth and nose burst out bleeding and with his sword he smote off both their heads.
And then he made sorrow out of measure and said, ‘O Balyn, much sorrow have you brought unto me. For had you not showed me that sight I should have passed my sorrow.’
‘In truth,’ said Balyn, ‘I did it to this intent, that it should better thy courage, and that you might see and know her falsehood and to cause you to leave love of such a lady. God knows I did none other but as I would you did to me. For I have hurt one damsel for hasty killing of her lover, and so she died, and then I served another damsel and passed my bounds to right her wrong. But of that righting she fell dead. And both those ladies were true to their love. But now I show you the falseness of this lady and she is now dead from it. She alone of the three deserved what she has won, and yet you blame me for it. I would rather be in war and battle than to do with ladies.’
‘Alas,’ said Garnyshe, ‘now is my sorrow double that I may not endure. Now have I slain the one I most loved in all my life.’
And therewith he rived himself on his own sword unto the hilts.
‘O knight, why did you work such a crime upon yourself?’ asked Balyn. ‘This lady was false and deserved none of your love.’
Then Balyn dressed him thenceward lest folk would say he had slain them.
And within three days he came by a cross, and thereon were letters of gold written that said,
NO KNIGHT ALONE
SHALL
RIDE TOWARD THIS CASTLE
Then he saw an old hoary gentleman coming toward him that said, ‘Balyn the Wild, you pass thy bounds to come this way. Therefore turn again and it will avail thee.’
And he vanished away.
Balyn said, ‘I shudder to think what lies before me now. But I bargained and was paid. And now has come my turn to pay. Only the weakling takes but will not pay. A man takes what he wants and then he pays for it. And so by God will I.’
Even then he heard a horn blow as if for the death of a beast.
‘That blast,’ said Balyn, ‘is blown for me. For I am the prize and yet am I not dead.’ And he knew his end was very near to him.
But when he looked up he saw a hundred ladies and many knights that welcomed him with fair semblance and made him passing good cheer unto his sight and led him in to the castle that stood beyond the cross.
And there they made dancing and music and all manner of joy. They seated Balyn in the seat of honor opposite his host, and he saw how the lord of the castle was an old knight with a kingly mien, although sorrow was written in it, and his eyes fell under the shadow of his shaggy brow.
Beside the lord the lady of the castle sat with a babe in her lap sucking on her breasts. She nodded and smiled to Balyn and made much of him. And a damsel came round to Balyn’s right hand and said, ‘My lady gives Balyn the Wild to drink, and she honors well the Knight of Two Swords.’
‘I will take that gladly,’ he said, and he drank down the cup. That wine was dark as blood and foaming, and it cast his mind back to the silver dish where the lady with the spear had bled for the pale sorrowful lady of the bier.
‘My lady will come to you later for good measure,’ said the damsel, and she went back to the lady’s seat and spoke into her ear. And the lady lifted up the babe and smiled more broadly at Balyn. And he with the wine aroar in his ears could not hear what they said at the feast, but the roaring and the music filled his ears.
The lady took her leave with her damsels and her child. The lord of the castle watched her go. He tugged on his mustache and then followed her.
They were late to go to bed in that place. Well upon the midnight the lady’s damsel took Balyn to his chambers. There he found the lady waiting.
‘I give you greetings, sir,’ she said.
‘My lady, thank you, for your feast and its merriment have cheered my heart, that was much downcast ere I came here. But it seems I ought to know you. And yet I do not know your face.’
‘Your eyes must be clouded,’ she said, ‘not to see if you have ever known me before.’
‘They are clouded,’ he said. ‘It is my doom clouds them.’
Then the lady said, ‘Knight of Two Swords, tomorrow you must have ado and joust with a knight hereby that keeps an island. For there may no man pass this way but he must joust or he pass.’
‘That is an unhappy custom,’ said Balyn, ‘that a knight may not pass this way but if he joust.’
‘You shall not have ado but with one knight,’ said the lady.
‘Well,’ said Balyn, ‘since I have come, I am ready. But traveling men are often weary and their horses too. But though my horse be weary my heart is not weary. I would be glad to find my death there.’
‘Your death need not come so quick as that,’ she said. And then she gave him wine and kissed him, and held him to her breast. She put her breasts into his mouth and her milk squirted down his throat. And that milk burned his throat, so that his voice was hoarse and croaking.
And he fell to kissing her and that night he kissed her seven times, and halsed her sevenfold, until the world swam in his eyes. At the very last she bit his ear and said into it, ‘You must overcome the Red Knight tomorrow on the island in the lake. You are the most worshipful knight that is on earth, and if you cannot overcome him then no one can and my wrong will never be righted!’
And he said, ‘I know you now. You are the Naked Damsel who brought the sword I wear.’
‘I am that one indeed,’ she said. She laid him down and covered him with the coverlets. Then she took up his mantle and wrapped it about her nakedness and passed out of that chamber. Through the dark cold halls of the castle she went, down the stone steps into the feasting hall. She came and sat there in her lord’s throne with her knees clasped close to her breasts. She stared into the dying embers of the fire.
Her hounds came and sniffed at the strange man’s smell that was upon her fingers, and licked at them.
Late in the night a light gleamed up the steps and the lord descended. He sat by her in the lady’s chair, holding up the candle and regarding her.
‘Is it done yet,’ he asked, ‘are you done with him?’
‘Yes, dear husband,’ she answered. She gave him her hand and he kissed it as though it did not reek of Balyn’s sweat.
‘And is that the Sword he bears, that the Lady of Avalon worked for you?’
‘It is the sword of my paramour the King of the Dales and Lakes. And it shall prove Balyn’s doom, alas.’ She reached down and stroked her lord’s white beard. ‘Husband,’ she said, ‘do not grieve that I have betrayed you so many times. For this was part of our compact as you know.’
‘Every knight who has wandered to this castle has halsed you in his bed, and gone to joust upon the Island in the lake. But is this man the last of them?’
She drew him up beside her on the great throne and nestled in his arm. ‘I deem indeed he will prove the last of them, for he wears the cursed Sword with the pommel Lady Lille fashioned for this end. And Balyn is the greatest knight of the courts of fourteen kings, as I proved before all the knights of King Ryons and King Arthur both. And if he cannot slay the Red Knight, that is my worst enemy that is on earth and abides now within the Tower of Adventure upon the Isle below, then no knight ever will or can. But with the cursed Sword how can so worshipful a man fail?’
‘It is a hard doom to put upon a man, that you have put upon the Knight of Two Swords,’ said the lord of the castle. ‘And I feel pity for him, even though he lay with you this night and put that sweet sweat upon your lip.’
For this she kissed him and told him, ‘But with you I know the nearest thing to peace my heart has known since my one true love was slain by the Red Knight. In all these years torment has ridden me as if I were its palfrey and my one aim and end has been that knight’s destruction. Many foul deeds have I performed in seeking it, and few gave me any taste but bitter. But your love, my dear husband, has not been bitter.’
‘So you say,’ the lord answered her.
Soon he was sleeping as aged men do, with fits and starts. She held him and stroked the scant hairs upon his head and stared into the fire. And when first light stole in through the upper windows she beckoned to one of her women who came, and together they bundled the old man into his bed.
The damsel of the sword then took her child and gave it to suck. And her milk for the babe was soft and warm and sweet. Then she gave the child to the nurse and let herself be dressed in fine raiment. And she took down a shield that hung on the wall of her chamber and took it to one of her knights.
And that knight bore the shield down into the yard where Balyn made ready to fight the Red Knight on the Island in the lake.
‘Sir,’ said the knight, ‘it seems your shield is not good. I will lend you a better, take it I pray you.’
And so Balyn took the shield that was unknown and left his own and so rode unto the island and put him and his horse in a great boat.
And when he rode on the water he saw something that flashed and swam alongside like a pale fish. But when he took his horse off that boat onto the shore, he found a damsel rising out of the water. She was all in white.
She kissed him and said, ‘I have no great cause to love you, Balyn the Wild. For you smote off the head of my sovereign lady, the Lady of the Lake. And yet my heart grieves at the cruel fate that closes now fast about you. Why did you give up your shield? For by your shield you should have been known. It is a great pity of you as ever was of knight, for of your prowess and hardiness you have no fellow alive.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Balyn, ‘that ever I came within this country. But I may not turn now again for shame. And what adventure shall fall to me, be it life be it death, I will take the adventure that shall come to me.’
And the white lady bade him farewell, and she went back down into the water and wriggled under the waves like an eel. But Balyn looked to his armor, and saw that he was well armed and ready. He knelt on one knee and put his hand to the ground, and took up a fistful of the clay of the island’s body.
‘O you Devils of the dark,’ he said, ‘you have given and now you take. But let this adventure be the end of my pains and punishments, I pray you, for I doubt I can endure them more.’
And he would have prayed, but there were no words for prayer in his heart. By this he was gladdened, for it meant that day would be the last. And he looked to die in combat as beseemed a goodly knight. But he did not know what pains awaited him.
So he blessed him and mounted upon his horse and rode into the island.
