Parzival Read Free Page B

to the lady’s defense, Sir Kay beat them both.
    Poor Parzival was dismayed. He had no idea that the princess was the sister of his sworn enemies, but that would not have mattered. The boy’s heart was tender toward any defenseless creature who had suffered because of him. He wanted to hurl his javelin at Sir Kay, but there was too great a crowd for him to do so.
    I shall not come back to this court, he vowed to himself, until I make amends for the wrong done to this poor lady.
     
    The Red Knight was surprised to see Parzival coming toward him, riding his pitiful little horse. He had been expecting a joust with one of the knights of the Round Table. “God keep you, sir,” Parzival called out. “The king has given me your mount and your armor. And if you are wise, you’ll hand them over at once.”
    “If the king gave you my armor,” the Red Knight answered, “he has given me your life. I wonder what you’ve done in the past to deserve such a favor from the king.”
    “Stop your chatter and give me your armor,” Parzival said, and he grabbed the reins of Ither’s horse. “You are Lahelin, aren’t you? The enemy about whom my mother warned me.”
    The angry Ither jerked his reins from the boy’s hands and gave Parzival such a blow with his lance that his poor little horse fell to the ground. Then the Red Knight beat the boy with the shaft of his lance until the blood gushed. At first, Parzival could not move under the blows, but as soon as he could, he raised his javelin and hurled it through the gap in Sir Ither’s helmet.
    The Red Knight fell to the ground. Seeing that his enemy was quite dead, Parzival began tugging at the Red Knight’s armor. But pull and struggle and twist as he might, he couldn’t wrestle the armor off the knight’s body.
    At about that time, Iwanet, the page, came running up, having followed Parzival from the city. Iwanet was amazed to see the great knight dead and Parzival yanking and tugging at Sir Ither’s armor.
    “God keep you!” Parzival said. “Now how do I get this armor off this knight and onto me?”
    Iwanet helped Parzival unfasten the armor and remove it from the dead knight’s body. “Take off your buskins,” he said to Parzival. “They have no place under a knight’s armor.”
    But Parzival refused. “No,” he said. “My mother made them. I won’t discard anything that my mother made for me so lovingly.” Iwanet sighed, but there was no way to change Parzival’s mind, so he helped him don the Red Knight’s gleaming armor on top of his sackcloth and raw leather.
    But when Parzival asked the page to hand him his quiver of javelins, Iwanet refused. “The order of chivalry forbids javelins,” the page said. “Take instead the sword and lance of the Red Knight. These are the weapons of chivalry.”
    Parzival did as Iwanet commanded, buckling on the great sword of Ither and fastening the lance to the shield as Iwanet directed. Then, impatient to be off, Parzival leapt unaided into the saddle of the Red Knight’s horse. “Take the goblet to the king and give him my greeting,” he said to Iwanet. “I myself can’t enter the court, for I have caused a lady to be humiliated on my account. I’m too ashamed to return.”
    Iwanet made a cross out of the javelin that had killed poor Ither to mark the site of his death and then threw the rest of the quiver away. The knight’s body was later carried back to the castle, where all the ladies wept that one so handsome and brave should die without honor—slain by a mere dart in the hand of a raw and foolish boy.
    Meantime, the great sorrel horse had carried Parzival far away until it came to the castle of a prince named Gurnemanz. The prince had lost three sons in battle, so when he saw Parzival at his door, his heart went out to the youth as though Providence had sent a fourth son into his life.
    “God keep you!” Parzival said upon meeting the prince. “My mother told me to seek advice from a man whose hair