PLAYERS:acejillian (living a secret identity) and igpayatinlay (sees signs everywhere) SCENARIO: At the court of King Arthur WARNINGS: A lot of religious talk and some tension.
"It isn't that I see the future," explained Galahad. The stone scraped over the glinting edge of the sword with a sound that was, for all the deeper, drawn-out, abrasive tones, more merciful than the clanging of blade meeting blade. "I see signs from God, which lead me to new things, to whatever journey he has laid out for me. When I was younger, I met a man on a quest to find his son who had run away from home." He held the weapon up, squinting as he gazed along the length of it, the pad of his thumb thrumming across it experimentally with the same artistry as a musician tuning a lute. "And though I could not help him find the boy, knowing not the lad of whom he spoke or where he might have fled to, I could give him shelter on a stormy night in my bed beneath the nunnery's roof, and bread and stew from the kitchens. I stood guard at the door for the honor of the sisters, and when he emerged in the morning he told me that one day, God would reward me and send my own father to come and find me.
"Before the moon was new the man's vision was made real, and so I followed here, to Camelot, in search of my future." Galahad's grey-blue eyes looked up from the blade once returned to its sheath, and the whetstone to his pack. "The future is as much a mystery as it is to most, though I am grateful for the signs I do see, set to guide me."
Rhys carefully mended the socks with needle and double-looped thread, his dark eyes peering dutifully up from his nut-brown fringe as the knight spoke to him. For a sharp moment, their eyes met and Rhys, as befitting his position, immediately casted his eyes down.
“Fortune favors you, my liege,” he said carefully, respectfully as his long fingers set back to the work at hand. It wouldn’t do to appear ungrateful - he was not lying in the stables, huddling to the horses for warmth, nor was burrowing into bushes like a rabbit, desperate for shelter from the sea-born gusts. Still, as his eyes surreptitiously drunk in the knight’s quarters, his mind was filled with ‘but-fors’: but for his father’s weakness, but for his mother’s weakness, but for his own… he might stay in such a place. He knotted the thread and broke it away with his teeth.
“They do not share the same mercy for your socks, I confess. They are more patch than prose,” he added as he handed over the woolen affairs to the knight. He might get teased for his manner of speech, but even if he could keep nothing else of his life, he could keep the words in his head.
Galahad accepted the socks, tattered and puckered from wear and repair, and smiled. "Good sturdy socks, Rhys, are nearly as hard to find as the future, or fortunes." The life of a knight was lived almost wholly on one's feet or mount, which had been true for Galahad ever since he'd left the Siege Perilous with his life. He rolled the mended garments and stowed them in the pack as well. The journey would be long, But he had two pairs in better condition, and this would do for now.
"You've heard what we're going in search of, I suppose?" Galahad inquired. Merlin's prophecies and visions were always circulated throughout the castle and town quicker than greedy-tongued flames through the verdant forests, and he was certain that mention of the Holy Grail would make it no less desirable a story to spread.
Rhys tucked the needle and thread away in the small leather bag, which he then tucked into a larger leather bag. He looked up again, but this time made care to not lift them so high as to offend. “The next sign?” he supposed aloud; he wouldn’t admit to having heard the rumours because that would be to credit that sort of talk. That was uncouth, certainly.
He watched his hands knot the drawstring, looking at the calloused things and marveling that they might belong to some other man but himself. Whose body did he inhabit now? He hardly knew. Rhys paused as his stomach made a sound that would shame a dog. At the sound of it Galahad turned, and though he made no comment, set aside the rest of packing.
Down at the heart of the castle would be a feast, full of music and merriment and dance, and though Galahad knew it was in honor of his choice to begin the greatest quest of all, he did not want to descend just yet. "I've seen the face of a woman," he said, turning instead to the small larder cupboard in the corner of the sitting room, drawing out the contents and bringing them to the table, with a flagon of wine. "She works in the market stalls," Galahad continued, parsing the remnants of breakfasting bread in two, halving an apple and a chunk of cheese with his belt knife as he spoke. "She and her father sell pottery, and when she spoke to me I stopped to see her wares. It was a cup she offered me, one she said was only to be given to the worthy man, for whom water would taste sweet as honey mead, when drunk from this vessel. She poured a cup for me," Galahad poured two glasses of wine as he said it, "and indeed, when I sipped, it was sweeter than any well I've known."
He pointed at the chair opposite, knowing Rhys could not refuse an obvious insistence that he take the place of an equal, when directly asked. "It was a sign for the Grail, Rhys."
Rhys, of course, took the chair and tried to look neither ravenous for food or more of the tale. He failed at both. He took a bit of the apple and chewed it, letting the sweetness and acid roll in his mouth as he worked his words over again to his mind. He added some of the strong cheese -- it needed that apple -- as if the potency might sharpen him.
“Might’ve you already found it then? Did you buy the cup she offered?” he asked carefully. The reedy sounds of music and laughter that was getting more red-cheeked and foolhardy by the mug filtered in through the door, and Rhys wondered why the guest of honor bothered with… well…
And perhaps that is why he did. Rhys was too old and of assumed poor breeding to be a squire, jockeying for favour, but there was youth in him still and a certain keenness that could cipher out a need and fill it. His legs were well-built for this interminable trip, and if his eyes lingered long on letters, no one spoke of it.
Rhys took a hearty chug of wine.
Galahad couldn't help but smile, lips closed as he chewed his bread. His swallow of wine was less than his company's, more used to the available stores. "If you wanted to sell something that you knew was inferior, how would you do it?" he asked, giving pause to see if Rhys had an answer.
Rhys blinked, then looked down at the table. He had been a lot of things in the days since he fled Tywyn for southerly departures, but a merchant was never one. He didn’t have the skill of trade, the back and forth temperament or the sly tone. “Dress it well, I suspect. Enough sugar and pepper will make any horse bright for a moment, only to collapse into the glue pot not days hence the sale.”
He looked up, against training his eyes just unlevel before focusing on the morsels of bread to puff his belly full.
"This is what I would suspect too. Say some generous things about people who might buy, enough to make them blind to the state of the product, if they're focused on the water within." Galahad shaved off a slice of apple from his half. "It wasn't the Grail itself before me. It was a sign that it's out there, and perhaps I'm worthy enough to sip from it. Or maybe it was flattery, and nothing more, it depends on how you choose to read the events of your life. Signs can be everywhere or nowhere, should you wish to see them, or not."
He bit the crisp, autumn fruit in half and reached for the flagon, emptying the last into Rhys' cup. "Are you a man who looks to see them, would you say?" It was difficult to gauge someone who had been taught deference, and not to meet your eye.
Rhys genuinely felt that it would be a sin to lie to this man. His quest aside, in his short time of employ, it was rapidly apparent that Sir Galahad’s reputation had been well-earned. Devout, honest and gallant, he was exactly what every passing voice implied.
“I would say, my liege, that while we may all be a thread in God’s great tapestry, many more of us are weft than warp. Those that will accept the pattern, lifted and stilled by divine call, against those that will create the design, that will shuttle over creation to shape what beauty our lives will hold. I think you to be such a man of the latter,” he explained, liking the comparison as his own tongue slowly weaved his feelings into reality. “God has more pressing heroes to influence than myself.”
The man ought to have been a poet, or perhaps a musician.
"You may not look for signs, Rhys, but it seems you seek to find beauty in mundane moments. By my modesty I should protest, but for the fate of the quest, I hope you to be a man of vision, rather than one merely selling his wares."
Rhys drew the cup forward again and took a long sip of the semi-sweet wine. He set it down on the table and snuck a look up to Galahad. Open, honest, genial. How would this man be a knight if not protected by God? The knights he’d known in his youth were bitter, venial sorts, consumed by their relevant power and forgetful of their verses.
‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,’ Rhys reminded himself patiently. He nipped that train of thought in the bud.
“I thank you. For that.” You couldn’t see a blush under his sun-tanned skin, which he was grateful for. He felt a little scrutinized, like he was a boy again, in the rectory, before the friar. That he could give only right answers to maintain this collegial communion - it was so nice to speak with some measure of abstraction, instead of the truths that were horse and boot maintenance, and daily survival. He did try to find beauty in mundane moments -- they were the only sort that he had! -- because he’d lost his place to find beauty in his Word.
“And for all of this, really. It’s very generous of you, especially considering the company awaiting you.”
Galahad nodded, both in recognition of gratitude offered and of his obligation to descend to the feast. "It's the character of the company we keep, not the quantity or the glamour. It's better to share your meal with someone who is hungry for it than drink with those celebrating something that has yet to happen." It was the first shadow of doubt that had slipped into the conversation, though it was not the first into Galahad's mind.
What a presumptuous thing, to imagine yourself worthy of finding the Grail, let alone to press lips and drink. Surely, it was all that he could want, the greatest of blessings available to any man, but would this quest be his ascension or his downfall? "You're good company, Rhys," he offered, draining the last of his wine. "You oughtn't doubt your value so deeply. If your station prevents you, then look for a sign, for something that points you toward an opportunity or guides you onto a path."
Rhys looked up at the man, still not meeting his eyes, but instead looking somewhere into his carroty blond widows peak as he tipped the remains of his own cup back and drained it dry. He set it down on the smooth wood and took another apple. “Perhaps I already have,” he remarked looking at the apple slice. The course of life did not run smooth for any man, be he king or common, and perhaps every piece of his life that took him away from God had somehow, unevenly, brought him back to it. These weren’t the robes of a friar, nor the tonsured cut of the devoted, but this was truly God’s work, were it not? To seek the chalice?
He thought of his father, who would not keep a bastard son, and his mother, who sold herself so that he might eat. He thought of the friars that had invested in him only to see him dabble sinfully in the carnal arts. He thought of the hard winter he knew not how he survived, a shuddering chill nearly snuffing out his life before spring could thaw him. He thought himself such a piteous creature then. ‘But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’ Corinthians 2. And he had been weak.
But sitting here, with this meal in his belly, and this company before him, he admitted to himself that the trials perhaps had been to test him for this Test. To seek the Grail would be fraught with peril. He would withstand it.
“I am here,” he said simply, both a statement and a question.
Though the conversation had been ideals and abstractions, now was the time Galahad's brow furrowed in confusion. Did he mean that this was the sign, that he was destined to embark on the quest himself? Were there not dozens already volunteering to take the journey with him, to offer their protection as fellow knights, or service as squires? It was dangerous, how Rhys' flattery had satisfied him, how agreeable he was. What sort of motives could be at work, Galahad wondered, besides those presented before him? A need for a full belly, to be sure. Perhaps a desire to work against them; could he be a temptation put beside the righteous path to cloud a knight's vision and stroke his ego, shifting the course of the journey with praises too rich to be divine encouragement?
"Do you mean to offer yourself as a fellow servant to the Grail, or to those who seek it?" he asked finally.
If Galahad was confused, Rhys was not. Now that the thought had loosened some pebbles in his mind, the boulders were following suit. Yes, he thought, yes this WAS a sign, that he should be here in this time and this place. That his skills had been pecked out by the sharp beak of the knight’s intuition. He was a man of words, who saw beauty in the mundane, and all those years copying books in his neat fist had prepared him for this - to tell a story. He wasn’t destined for the hallowed halls of the rectory library. He was destined to follow in the path of the Apostles, to illuminate this next tale in the story of God’s work on Earth.
Excitement filled him like a shaft of light, so much so that he barely heard Galahad’s curiosity rear itself. “What?” he asked thoughtlessly, then flushed, suddenly ashamed at such impertinence before the knight. “Pardon me, but aren’t those the same thing?”
"One is to serve God, the other to serve men," Galahad explained, knowing which he would rather. "Both can be noble, honorable work, do not mistake the question for judgment of what you've done so far in your life. I can't say I know a great deal about your past." It was an understatement of kindness and propriety, given that he knew absolutely nothing of the young man, beyond his name and that he could darn a sock. Galahad himself had been born of deception and deceit, raised with modest means, and only come into his own once he was old enough to be called a man, and then a knight. "If you mean to join the quest, I'd hope to learn more about a companion."
Rhys bit his bottom lip thoughtfully, a childish affectation that he only noticed when it was pointed out.
"I think in this instance, Sir, you are his instrument on Earth, like Noah before you. Perhaps you do not build an ark to save the pure from God's purge of wickedness, but this quest you undertake is not simply the venture of one man. It's a venture for all of us, and though our souls can only be saved through prayer and devotion to his Words and Spirit, the Holy Grail was a blessing to His disciples. It will be a blessing to us as well."
Rhys set both hands of his on the table, flat to feel the wood underneath as he took a breath, tried to quell some of the excitement rising in his chest. They were both trembling with a fine motion as he looked down at them. He hardly knew whether it was sin to be such, but if he was to be condemned for such a thing as excitement to follow God's call, so must be all the merrymakers downstairs.
"What would you need to know of me?" Rhys didn't look up as he spoke, all focused on stilling his excited bones. "I am hardly worth much matter in this save... save a hand to pledge in faith."
There seemed to be, in Galahad's opinion, rather a lot one ought to comprehend about a man, before embarking on a journey of such importance together. The enthusiasm seemed genuine enough, and Galahad wanted to believe in this man's faith as deeply as he believed in his own. "Your skill on horseback," he began. "Your upbringing, your family that you would have to leave behind. I do not know your title, even." Was he a groom, was he a kitchen boy who could sew, was it some other coincidence entirely, rather than employment, that had brought him into Camelot? "If we're to seek salvation together, it's important to know the character of -"
There was a knock at the door, and Galahad rose, interrupted, to answer it.
"Beg pardon, Sir," said the girl on the other side. "I was sent up by the King to see what might be keeping you."
"Contemplation of the journey, and my companions," Galahad returned with a gentle smile. "But you may tell the King that I shall not be much longer in my dallying." With a dip of her knee the girl turned, and so did the knight. "Where do you live, Rhys?" Galahad inquired.
His eyes widened a little. “I do not live anywhere, milord, nor do I have family with which to sweetly part. I… am not terrible with horses… we have an understanding that I will not cause them grave ill if they accept I act with best of intentions. And as for a title, well… child of God marks all men and is the only title for which we should aspire.” He was rambling, he knew, and probably not making much of an impression considering the company. But he had spoken and he had listened and perhaps, perhaps this nervous tongue may be balanced by the recent freedom it once held.
“You have little reason to trust my word or my character, and whatever confidence you have in your sword could certainly still me from any ill use of your service. But I think… I think I am here for a reason, Sir. When I came to this castle and when I was sent to the livery and when I mended your flag and when I was sent to laundry and when I was sent here… I have been a tumbling rock for sometime, but I have finally met a tree to halt my continued fall.” Rhys, still not meeting his eyes even in plaintive request, got to his feet and went to the polished mirror, the light humidity of the English summer painting it with a light coat of fog.
With one very confident finger he swiped out strokes onto the surface. His plain features and his worn clothes belied a very elegant print that read, at completion:
Galahad 1:1
Instinctively the man recoiled at the last, mere moments after feeling as though it was cruel to doubt a young man who believed himself to be suddenly arriving face to face with the will of God, a young man ready to change his course from a hapless one to a righteous. "It's heresy, Rhys," Galahad insisted. "I am a follower of Jesus and a man of God, but no apostle, no second coming, nothing to belong in the book of God's laws and love."
“While I cannot be sure a similar sentiment wasn’t shared by Noah himself, or Abraham, or David or any of the men God inspired, surely we continue to be inspired by them today only but for the retelling of their deeds. It is not the salvation you merely bring to yourself and those surrounding you that marks this quest as righteous, but to those who’ve yet to live. Has every deed of value God has commended his soldiers to take already occurred? Or will your efforts here inspire devotion and conviction in those that are to come, in the same way we are inspired by our forefathers in faith?”
He knew that his voice was starting into that familiar cadence, the one designed for crowds on Sunday morn. The thought immediately deflated him somewhat as he looked at his handwriting on the mirror. It was starting to steam over again.
“No man need be Christ himself to inspire. An ordinary man on an extraordinary quest, indeed, can be compelling. It tells us that we must not be divine to serve, that we are, ourselves, his hands upon this Earth as his son was.”
"God spoke to those men," Galahad asserted, though it was with less vigorous protestation. It was hard not to be swept up in the excitement of the poetry Rhys could pull from the air, and he found himself laughing. Why did he protest so deeply, when a sign as slight as a pretty potter sent him scrambling to horse? "Maybe God means to speak to you," he said in uncertain wonder. "I can tell you won't be turned away. Come downstairs. We'll have a toast, and find you some clothes and a tub and a bed. And -" Galahad returned to the pack, pulling out the threads that had bound them together, gifting them to Rhys without hesitation or ceremony, "new socks, for the both of us."