Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon Read Free

and he found them a motley lot – underfed and inbred. He treated them well enough and was known as a fair, if uninvolved master. He was known as moody, a fool for women, a knight who’d lost interest in performance and battle but was too sophisticated for rustic retirement. Since he’d come home, all agreed, everyone ate better because he harried the serfs into working harder and protected their fields; and for reasons he never expressed, he’d freed them and turned them into dependent peasants. He’d been heard once to remark that man had no real property, everything was borrowed and that even his horses and mules were mere responsibility and possession of land was a jest of time. Nobody was sure what he meant and he chose not to elaborate. Layla always believed he tried to live according to some idea he had of how life should be and, as a result, there were no real feelings behind many of his actions. His son, Lohengrin, had vowed never to be like his father because he was sure Parsival took no more pleasure from his passions than from his skills.
    “Am I alright?” he belatedly responded. “I have to do something… something …” he murmured again; then to the lad, “Bring me a robe, will you, sirrah?” The men had taken his clothes, naturally.
    The youth, at once, stripped off his linen longshirt and handed it to Parsival who tugged his wide back and shoulders into it with some effort. It covered him to just below his butt end.
    He waved up to his wife.
    “Good morning, Layla,” he called, not quite loud enough for her to hear distinctly. She didn’t reply, if she’d heard.
    He was now looking around, squinting his tired eyes, to see what had happened to the chunky, soft-bodied woman he’d been with last night. Just as those men had surprised him he’d been on his knees with her facing away, “driving her to market,” as the villains called it.
    He wondered if she’d fled back to her husband’s bed in the guest tower and disturbed Layla. The idea amused and annoyed him. What a life.
    We are all come to depravity, he thought. And it is so ordinary and dull, after all…
    “Were you injured, my Lord?” asked the captain of the guard, Lego of Stillwater. He was a solid, high-shouldered, lanky, grizzled, graying fighter with a hooked nose and eyes like ruminative drops from a pond.
    Parsival was still thinking about his way of life. He didn’t like what he thought.
    “I intend to reform a few things,” he said.
    “Did you suffer a head blow?” Lego asked, concerned. He saw no blood, however.
    “What? … Ah, no.” Parsival gestured. “Changes. I mean to make changes.”
    “But my Lord,” Lego was concerned, “how could we have known of your plight sooner or come a step quicker, once we did?”
    “What troubles your mind, good captain? I don’t mean to change my men. Just myself, I think.”
    He was heading towards the main gate which now stood open. The men moved together, more or less flanking him. He stopped just under where his wife was looking down the sheer, gritty wall.
    “Layla,” he said up at her, “are you well this morrow?”
    “What mischief have you just made?” she wanted to know.
    He smiled. He felt fine. He was alive; sober, cleaned-out, ready to make vows.
    “Where is my son?” he called up to her.
    Just her head and neck showed, cut off by the smooth, weathered stones. The angle made her long face longer. Her dark, back-length hair was billowing out, riffling in the draughts.
    “By St. Anne,” she called down, “and you take an interest?” She looked around in mock wonder. “This is a holy day.”
    “I wonder that your tongue does not slice your lips,” he said, not loud enough for her to hear because there was no point. “A blade like that would shave a wudewasa,” which meant a wild man of the woods.
    “Behold.” she was elaborating, “This is a day of marvels. I see an ox in the field driving a villain in traces.”
    Parsival was paying scant