Swan Knight's Sword

  The glass bead was the one that held Nerea’s hair, her token to him.

  So Gil stepped back out of the girl’s reach, and thrust out his hand, and shook the dark-eyed waitress’s hand. “There, there!” He said. “Here is a handkerchief.” He thrust the hanky into her surprised hand. “Stop crying. It is not very…” He meant to say something like “not very ladylike” or “not very pretty,” but what came out of his mouth was “… not very convincing.”

  A hard hand fell on Gil’s shoulder and spun him around.

  Bredbeddle’s eyes narrowed, and his color rose. The man seemed angry. “What kind of person are you? Coming into my restaurant and upsetting the staff! We gave you free food and free drinks and treated you like a king! And you won’t give this poor crying dame a simple hug and a kiss on the cheek!”

  Bredbeddle was taller than Gil by a head and half and broader at the shoulder.

  Gil tried to keep his face a poker face, but a glint of eagerness escaped from his eyes nonetheless. He was curious how a battle with so tall and strong a foe might go. He stepped back, picked up the steak knife by his plate, fell into a crouch, and measured the distance to his foes with his eyes.

  Bredbeddle let go of Gil’s shoulder and stepped back out of knife range. Now he smiled again and spoke in a more soothing tone. He said, “Listen. I can see you are not the kind of man who can be pushed into doing anything you don’t want to!”

  Gil put the steak knife carefully back by the plate.

  Bredbeddle smiled more broadly. “But what do you really want? I am not talking about you giving the girl a long, passionate kiss! Just a little friendly peck. On the lips. Following by a wild evening of heavy drinking, dancing, and wanton revelry. What happens in Knockers stays in Knockers! That is our one motto! Come on! She feels really lonely right now. Really kind of vulnerable. Just give her a little kiss behind the ear. Cheer her right up! Have you not vowed to help maidens and, uh, widows in distress?”

  Gil at looked at the very young lady. “She’s a widow?”

  “Practically the same as! I did not want to tell you, but—her boyfriend just dumped her, and ran off with the parlor maid to Patagonia!”

  Gil raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Really? What is her name?”

  Bredbeddle blinked. “Um… um… Her name is… her name is… Knockers Waitress is her name.”

  “Is that the best you can come up with?”

  “They, uh, named the restaurant after her.”

  “Who did?”

  “The, uh, guy who owns this restaurant chain.”

  “And what is his name?”

  “Um… um… He is called Mister… uh… Knockers.”

  “His first name?”

  “Knickers.”

  Gil said slowly, “So this restaurant chain is owned by a Mr. Knickers Knockers?”

  “It’s an Irish name.”

  “I thought you said they named the restaurant after this waitress there?”

  “Well, yes! Definitely! But her mother named her Knockers in honor of our owner, Mr. Kickers Knockers, on account of him being such a nice guy. In fact, all the girls here are named after him!”

  “You did not say Kickers before. You said Knickers before. Like Kneepants. Don’t you know the name of your own boss? That you work for?”

  “Knickers Kickers Knockers. And he took the name Kanten as his saint’s name at Confirmation.”

  Gil said slowly, “Knickers Kickers Kanten Knockers. Is that it?”

  “Of Knochnasheega! That is it! Right proud of his name, he is! And why shouldn’t he be? Now, he would not like it if we sent a customer away hungry, so please sit down again! Sit! Drink! Hey, you, Knockers Waitress! Bring us a pitcher of beer!”

  “I am too young for alcohol.”

  “Not in here in France. The drinking age here is… twelve.”

  “It was fourteen before. And this is Canada.”

  “I mean the Canadian part of France, of course. Normandy.”

  Gil said, “Normandy is in real France.”

  “Or wherever. Who cares? Listen, friend… you know I have your best interests at heart. There are girls at the bar younger than you who can hold their liquor like sailors. You don’t want to seem like some little kid to them? Aren’t you all knightly and bold and brave and stuff? If today is your last day on Earth, why not try some earthly pleasures? You are never going to grow up and find out what you are missing.”

  7. Being Led

  The girls tried to gently press him back into his seat, but Gil merely set his feet, stood his ground, and looked stubborn, and the six or eight cooing young women pushing and pulling on him had as much chance to move him as to move a boulder of granite.

  Gil said, “I seek the Green Knight! Where is he?”

  Bredbeddle said, “Ah! You are in luck. He comes here every few days. This is the only place you can find him! He wanders. We have beds in the back, plenty to eat, and plenty to drink. Games. Do you gamble? So you have to stay here to see him.”

  Gil said, “I must find him before tomorrow. That was the date set.”

  Bredbeddle spread his hands. “But listen! You looked, didn’t you? You must have already come a far way, right? What more can he expect you to do? If he did not tell you where to go, you have to stay here. There is a dance contest later. And a hot tub. Mandatory for all guests. Health regulations, you know. Nothing we can do. But unfortunately, we are overcrowded right now, so you have to…”

  Gil said, “I have to do nothing but keep my word. The Green Knight said that if I sought him, I would be led.”

  Bredbeddle smashed his fist on the table so that all the silverware jumped. “But why do you trust him? How do you know you are not led here, to have a comfortable night in a comfy bed, a filling and rich steak dinner, spirits as fine as what Mahound quaffs in paradise, and the fairest of companions to warm your loneliness? Maybe you were led here! Don’t you want to live?”

  Gil gritted his teeth. “I want to live….”

  “Aha!” Bredbeddle smiled.

  “…I want to live like a knight!”

  “Oh.” Bredbeddle scowled.

  “The Green Knight said that if I gave up or tarried while seeking him, I was foresworn. I lost two or three days when I went ashore and hid from hunters who drove me into the mountains, but that was not my doing, so it is not on me. But if I stay here even another moment, it will be lingering, it will be my doing, and I will have broken my word. So I thank you for your hospitality, which has been remarkable and generous. Too generous. But I must be on my way.”

  Bredbeddle said, “I tell you, in this house alone will you see the Green Knight! He wanders whither he will, and his steed, Vertifran, is swifter than the sound of the shockwave he sheds as he passes and can put a girdle round the globe in forty minutes. No one can say where the Green Knight goes one hour to the next!”

  Gil said, “And the Green Chapel? Unless it is on legs, you can tell me where it is.”

  Bredbeddle said, “Its portals are locked and guarded by the three-headed hound of Hell itself. No mortal man enters or departs save he that dies!”

  “Where?”

  Bredbeddle sighed and said, “The stream that runs by this house comes from the fountain that springs up from the threshold stone of the doors of the Green Chapel, for it was there that the most sorrowful stroke that was ever struck was struck, and the waters came up to soothe the wound that no earthly leech can heal.”

  Gil stood. He looked longingly at the hamburger and the steak.

  Bredbeddle said, “You want a doggy bag? You can nibble on it when no one is looking….”

  Gil said, “It would be rude of me to refuse so generous a host, good sir.”

  One of the waitresses wrapped the steak and the burger patty in tinfoil, along with a napkin, silverware, and a brass flagon of Long Island iced tea. He bade his farewell to the waitresses, the hostess, the cook, the sister, the cocktail waitress, and the other lovely young creatures.

&nbs
p; Whenever any girl tried to step too close to give him a farewell kiss before his untimely death, he held up the amber bead he carried, and the girl would shrink back, alarmed. It worked like a charm. For all he knew, it was.

  He could not stop the three pretty girls who helped him on with his armor, which, as promised, had been burnished and polished and reset with any missing gem of diamond or jacinth.

  He went back out into the strange landscape of early spring buds, long summer grass, and biting winter wind. Under one arm was a paper bag with the uneaten meal in it.

  Rabicane gave him a sardonic look. “Well? Find out anything?”

  Gil said, “We go upstream.”

  Chapter Six: The Doors No Mortals Pass

  1. A Change of Season

  At two hundred miles an hour, Gil should have been able to cover three days’ travel in thirty minutes. But hours passed as the steed alternated between gallop, canter, and walk. Gil wondered if time were passing normally. He could smell the untouched steak wrapped and packed in his saddlebag, or he imagined he could.

  Eventually, Rabicane slowed and halted. “This is a Brobdingnag trick. They have placed their distance-warping stones sidewise in the road to keep the wall an ever greater distance from us. It can only be approached slowly.”

  Gil said, “No doubt to give anyone attempting to reach the chapel plenty of time to change his mind. I wish I could find out why people are so afraid of it.” Then, he closed his mouth and looked around warily, remembering folk tales of people who uttered unguarded wishes in unearthly places.

  Despite the cold and his own hunger, Gil took the time to curry Rabicane. There were brushes in the saddlebags, a small and soft one for the face, and a larger one for the body. He was not sure whether to use the winter brush or the summer brush. He tried both, asking Rabicane which he preferred, and being careful around spots where Rabicane said he was ticklish. He picked out the hooves. The black silk caparison was uselessly thin in this weather. Gil threw his heavy silvery mantle over Rabicane.

  The night was cold and cheerless. The grass was warm and smelled of summer sunlight, which only made the benumbingly cold wind worse.

  Gil lay there, shivering. There was a stir of motion. Rabicane, without saying a word, knelt and rolled, and came to lay on his side, blocking the worst of the wind. Gil huddled up to the great beast’s spine for warmth.

  In the morning, the landscape had changed. Now the ground was covered with snow as far as the eye could see. The air was now warm and smelled of spring. The trees were covered with the many colored leaves of fall, but Gil, looking for any fruit among their branches, saw tiny knobs of green, unripe fruit, inedible.

  The gray walls of the cliff were now close at hand, a bowshot away, or less.

  Unlike the outer wall, this one clearly showed the outline of titanic blocks, each the size of an ocean liner, that had been cut and piled one atop the other course by course to raise the immense wall. The cyclopean blocks were fitted so tightly together, Gil saw there was no purchase for seeds nor weeds to take root, yet he saw no trace of mortar.

  In the wall rose a pointed arch some forty feet high. It was not a gate, for there was no light on the other side. A tunnel forty feet high drove back into the cliff rock, heading downward.

  Rabicane said, “Saddle up.”

  Gil said, “The door is a hundred yards away. I can walk there.”

  Rabicane said, “But can you walk away? You may need to run. This place is unchancy. I like not its smell.”

  Gil decided that a horse ridden by a duke of Charlemagne probably knew the proper habits for knights. Even though his goal was only a short walk away, Gil took the trouble to curry out the grass and snowy slush clinging to the horse’s coat.

  Gil did not bother with bridle and bit, but merely looped a hackamore around Rabicane’s nose. “I appreciate the kindness, master,” said the steed, “But I have a bit of a temper. Are you sure?”

  Gil said, “When you no longer serve me of your own free will, I am no longer deserving of your service.”

  Rabicane made a skeptical snort. “Is this a colonial thing? Giving your beasts of war a vote? Lord Simcoe made a great point of keeping the aristocracy intact so that masters rule and servants serve!”

  Gil said, “I was taught that the first shall be last and that the servant is not greater than the master.”

  They approached the archway. The sun was on the far side of these tall cliffs, making their whole face a shadow, which seemed doubly dark compared with the dazzle from the snowy ground.

  At the foot of the archway was a great marble slab of a threshold stone. Gil saw the crack from which the waters poured. A spear had been jammed into the crack as if someone had meant to pry it open. Half the spear was iron; half was wood. The head was a long, square blade red with fresh blood. Gil saw droplets of blood falling into the rush of water and being carried downstream so that the first foot of the stream was dark pink, the next foot or so light pink, and beyond that the agitation of the water rushing over the stones of the streambed hid any sign of the contamination.

  On the white stone beyond the spear, someone had laid a red cloth. In the middle of the cloth was a circle of green, a wreath woven of pine and adorned with holly, lying like an empty dinner plate. There were four candles in the wreath, equally spaced about the circumference, lit and burning: three purple candles and one pink candle. A white candle, taller and fatter, was in the center of the wreath, unlit.

  To one side stood a golden cup. To the other, a loaf of bread.

  Gil said, “What does it mean?”

  From the darkness of the tunnel beyond the tall arch now shined a pair of green eyes. A deep growl trembled through earth and air. A second pair of eyes, green as poison, opened a yard to the left. Then, a third pair opened up, a yard to the right. Six eyes gleamed menacingly at Gil.

  2. Watchdog

  A breathy, growling voice issued from the darkness where the central eyes glinted. “Had you not asked of the mystery, your worthless throat would have been torn out already.”

  A second voice, twin to the first, spoke from the left. “You spoke of the first being last. For this reason, I have not already disemboweled you.”

  A third voice spoke, “No elf passes this door but that he dies, nor any mortal man, who are born once and then perish.”

  There came a slithering, massive sound, and Gil saw the muzzle and head of a monstrous dog emerge from the shadows. The distance between his ears was greater than Gil’s outstretched arms, and the red mouth was so huge that Rabicane could have been swallowed by those jaws in two bites, Gil in one.

  Gil glanced down at his empty scabbard. It was still empty.

  When he looked up, he saw the second and third heads emerge from the shadows, and each one seemed larger than the one next to it.

  Gil dismounted. He squinted at the three giant dog heads, and took his shield from the saddle bow, and slung it before him. He took up his helm with his right hand and stuffed his head quickly into it while muttering, “Please have three bodies. Please have three bodies….”

  But when the eyeslits of his helm fell in place before his eyes, the monster had emerged, and there was but one body. The three necks were longer than they should have been for a wolf, giving it a freakish, disproportionate look. Fortunately, there was a chain around the neck of the middle head.

  Gil groaned in disappointment. He and wolves tended to get along. He was not so sure about monsters.

  The monster said, “Who are you?”

  Gil said, “I am called the Swan Knight. Who are you?”

  The monster shook its three heads. From the thick wolf mane coating its three necks and complex shoulders now rose dozens of spotted snakes, their eyes as green as emeralds, tasting the air with their forked tongues. They danced and swayed with a hypnotic motion, two scores of them or more, curling and uncurling restlessly. The patterns of scales on their backs were as bright as enameled mosaics.

  Rabicane was t
rembling. “The snakes with bright colors are bad.”

  “Cerberus, call me,” said the middle head.

  “…the son of Typhon,” said the left head.

  “…the son of Echidna,” said the right head.

  Gil said, “Pardon me, and meaning no disrespect, is that one long name for the three of you, or does each head have its own name, or how exactly does this work?”

  Rabicane nudged him in the shoulder with a nose, saying, “Mount up, and let’s get out of here!”

  Gil said, “You go. Save yourself. I am staying.”

  Rabicane shivered and snorted, dancing restlessly, but he did not run.

  Gil said, “I seek the Green Chapel.”

  The monster said, “Then you seek death.”

  Gil said, “Will you let me in?”

  The three heads laughed a horrible, creaking, croaking laugh which sounded like choking, and all the snakes twining and writhing in its mane hissed in a merry fashion, their hundred serpentine eyes never blinking.

  “Yes!” said all three heads in unison. “All are welcome to enter here!”

  Rabicane said, “Ask of him whether a mortal man might depart again.”

  The left head said, “Those covered with blood may enter…”

  The middle head said, “…those who are dead may enter…”

  The right said, “…no elf departs from here, nor mortal man who lives but once then dies.”

  Rabicane said, “Master, take my reed; this is an evil place. Flee it.”

  Gil’s stomach growled. He said, “You are very generous, Cerberus, to allow me entry. May I eat that loaf of bread? I assume a dog cannot eat it.”

  The middle head said, “There is no bread.”

  Gil said, “What is in the cup? If it is not wine, I can have some.”

  The left head said, “There is no wine.”

  Gil started to step forward, but Rabicane snorted and said, “Master, they lie. I smell wine.”

  Gil paused. “Noble Cerberus, what is in the cup?”