* * *

  • • •

  Thus began one of the strangest stories of the Grail Quest. It was Galahad who suggested that Dagonet and Constantine travel with him for a while. After nine months in the dungeon they were thin and weak and lice-ridden, in no shape to be adventuring on their own.

  “Just…you’ll have to keep up,” he said, not unkindly.

  They found out pretty quickly what he meant. That same afternoon they spotted two knights ahead of them on the road. One carried a silver shield with three diagonal red stripes, the other’s was all little gold crosses on a purple background. Without a word both men challenged Galahad. The boy knight smote the first one so hard that not only he but his horse went down, struggled to rise, then lay still again in the dust of the road. He split the second man’s helm open with his holy silver sword.

  Then he got back on his horse and trotted on, leaving his vanquished opponents unconscious on the ground. Dagonet and Constantine tried to keep up.

  “Dagonet,” Constantine said quietly. “Do you know who those knights were?”

  “Should I?”

  “Well, you’re the only man in Britain who wouldn’t. You s-s-saw their shields: Argent, Three Bendlets Gules, and Purpure, a Semy of Crosses Or.” Constantine was a fiend for heraldry. “The first was Lancelot and the second was Percival. Those were the two greatest knights in Britain, probably in the world, and Galahad beat them both hollow inside of five minutes.”

  “With Arthur and Galahad running around I don’t know why people even bother having legitimate children anymore,” Dagonet said. “Bastards are clearly the superior product.”

  “See?” Constantine said. “You can be funny. Don’t worry, I’ll n-never t-tell.”

  That night they found shelter in a castle. In front of it stood a cursed fountain that boiled ceaselessly. Engraved on the fountain’s stone rim were these words:

  THE KNIGHT WHO LIFTS THIS CURSE WILL DISPEL THE ENCHANTMENTS IN THE KINGDOM OF ADVENTURES AND PUT AN END TO ALL ADVENTURES FOREVER

  Galahad—never one to read a warning—stuck his hand right in. The water stopped boiling.

  “It’s because I’m free from lust,” he explained.

  Lancelot loses again, Dagonet thought.

  The lord of the castle had been declining for years with a wasting illness, and on their arrival he expressed his final wish, which was to die in Galahad’s arms, which he promptly did. The young knight cradled the old man awkwardly, like a bachelor who’d just been handed a baby. In the morning when they left, the lord’s daughter swooned for love of Galahad, and the moat teemed with miraculous fishes.

  * * *

  • • •

  Dagonet and Constantine understood that by riding with Galahad they had moved from the margins of the world to its very center. They had joined the Hero, the main character of the story of Britain, taking on the roles of two mismatched background players who were about to have an absolutely magnificent view of God’s will being worked on earth.

  “This has to be the most important thing that’s ever happened to two unimportant people,” Dagonet said. He’d spent so much time in Constantine’s company that he hardly loathed him anymore, and found himself talking almost freely.

  “I suppose we’re here to accentuate Galahad’s p-perfection by comparison. Throw it into high relief, as it were.”

  “Plus if he let us roam around unsupervised he’d just have to rescue us again in a couple of days.”

  “We are anti-Galahads,” Constantine declared poetically, “the sh-shadows cast by his brightness!”

  “If this is what God likes,” Dagonet said, “why didn’t He make us all that way?”

  And now that He’s finally got it right maybe he’ll stop making people forever. And crumple up all the rough drafts and throw them in the fire.

  For the whole year that followed, spring to spring, Dagonet and Constantine followed Galahad around Britain. It really did seem like he was bent on finishing every last adventure at breakneck speed, at the rate of two or even three a day, just like the words on the fountain said. He seemed neither daunted by the challenges nor elated by his triumphs; he went about his work the way a baker bakes bread, blithely doing his job.

  It wasn’t as if he had much choice, the adventures wouldn’t leave him alone. They came at him from all sides, harassed him, in forests and in meadows, at chattering river fords and in dry wastelands, in bogs and fens and on bare, sere winter beaches. There was no refusing them. But Galahad won every time.

  If this is the story of Britain, Dagonet thought, it’s distinctly lacking in dramatic tension.

  Improbably enough Dagonet, who hated almost everyone, found himself becoming fond of Galahad. He was as exalted by the world as Dagonet was despised and neglected by it, but for all that Dagonet suspected they were equally lonely. Galahad had slain giants and banished demons but never kicked a ball or kissed a girl. He seemed to have been put on earth to make a point, but it was God’s point, not his. His own life wasn’t about him, he was just a helpless onlooker. He was as much a prisoner of his own strange nature as Dagonet was.

  Perhaps Galahad felt some distant, lofty affection for his mismatched companions, too, because one night as they were making camp he volunteered an incredible fact, apropos of nothing, which was that his father was none other than Sir Lancelot du Lac.

  Dagonet didn’t know what to say.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  It was well known that Galahad was illegitimate. He’d always deflected questions about his paternity, but the truth made a certain kind of sense. His mother was Elaine, the daughter of King Pellas, who was that selfsame maiden whom Lancelot had pulled damp and pink and naked from Morgan le Fay’s magical cauldron of boiling water. Afterward matters must have taken their course.

  But Dagonet had always assumed Lancelot was a virgin.

  “Why didn’t you say before?”

  “I didn’t want to embarrass him at court. You won’t say anything, will you?”

  “Of course not, but—” Constantine pursed his lips, then made up his mind and went on. “But you and he fought in the road, and you beat him. Your own father. And neither of you said a word to each other.”

  Galahad lay back and looked up at the first stars. He always slept on the ground, even when it snowed, with an air of comfort and contentment that Dagonet had never experienced even on the most sumptuous of featherbeds.

  “It’s a mystery.” Galahad’s clear brow was as close to troubled as Dagonet had ever seen it. “My father sinned, and from his sin came me. And then I bested him. But how could someone as strong as I am”—Galahad had no modesty, false or otherwise—“come from his father’s lowest moment of weakness? By rights I ought to be a twisted homunculus. A warning against all those who would stray and sin. Instead I am a champion.”

  Lancelot should’ve had me, Dagonet thought. That would’ve taught him a lesson.

  “But for Lancelot maybe this is worse. To be humbled by his own son. Do you think God sent me to punish my father?”

  “God must’ve had more on His mind than that,” Constantine said generously, if not entirely honestly. “You’re a great gift to the world, and to your father. He must be proud of you.”

  “Perhaps he is.” Galahad didn’t sound very sure about that. “Maybe I’m a sign of God’s forgiveness. So maybe I was supposed to let him win.”

  “Maybe he let you win.” Dagonet shifted to try to get a hard root out of the small of his back. He rarely—never—went to the trouble of lying to spare someone’s feelings, but he found himself doing it for Galahad without thinking. Lancelot would’ve sold his own mother for an extra point in the tilt.

  “I don’t think so,” Galahad said. “I know he does well in tournaments but his form’s a sieve, I could’ve beaten him six different ways. Better would’ve been not to fight at all. I don’t think much good can come from sons fighting fathers, do you? Jesus never tried to overthrow His father, for all that He suffered.”

  “I would pay to see that fight,” Dagonet said.

  Dagonet thought of his own father, who’d been so ashamed to have him for a son—a short, skinny, half-mad minstrel boy—and how much his father would’ve loved a proper son like Galahad. Whereas Lancelot felt humiliated by his son. And Galahad struggled to feel even the rage of a son at his unloving father. Dagonet was amazed once again at how unfailingly the world taxed people with the very thing that would try them the most.

  * * *

  • • •

  From time to time they met other knights along the way and exchanged news, and generally the news was bad. They seemed to be the only ones who were making any progress toward the Grail at all. Some of the knights had given up or been sent home by scoldy angels and hermits. Others had died or gone mad, and accounts of the deaths were disturbing. Sir Brian de les Isles was discovered turned into a figure of ice, and his companions watched helplessly as he melted away to nothing. Sir Felot of Listenoise had gone down fighting something that somehow attacked him inside his armor, leaving great bulges and dents in the metal. It ate him alive. The quest for the Holy Grail, which had begun in such a spirit of adventure, with such high hopes and good fellowship, had become something very much rougher and darker.

  There was grumbling about it, especially among the older knights, especially since raw skill at arms didn’t seem to count as much as it used to. On the Grail Quest it was nakedly apparent that victory really did go to the pure of heart, no matter how disgraceful their swordsmanship, and whose bright idea was that? Questing’s a hunt for glory, sir! The great game! The whole enterprise stank of the seminary. This one was for the kneelers, the cross-kissers. Any knight with red blood in his veins ought to quit while he still could.

  Maybe that’s why the great King Arthur was afraid, Dagonet thought. Too much red blood.

  Sir Percival reappeared one morning, wading out of a driving wet snowstorm at dawn. He’d recovered from the beating Galahad gave him with no ill effects or even any particular ill will; ruefully he parted his shaggy blond hair and made them feel the permanent groove Galahad had put in his skull. From then on he and Galahad fought as a pair, side by side, and the pace quickened even further. Not long after that Constantine and Dagonet woke one morning to find that they’d been left behind.

  The two champions had broken camp before dawn and left them sleeping. Percival had made them redundant, or even more redundant than they already were.

  They’d always known it would happen, sooner or later. The truth was that it was a relief. Galahad set a punishing pace, and they didn’t have his heroic constitution. Dagonet had been nursing a low-grade feverish cold for a week, and Constantine’s knee had never fully recovered from the fight with Sir Turquine. They were ready to go home. They retired to a warm inn and sat drinking mulled wine in front of a roaring fire, basking in the heat.

  Constantine ordered them a feast. He was giddy with his newfound freedom.

  “We’ve been spared, Dagonet!” He knocked Dagonet’s cup with his own. “I n-never thought we’d make it as far as we did. I thought we’d end up like Gournevain!”

  They’d found Sir Gournevain’s armor, shield, and skeletonized body swimming in a pit full of colorful banded snakes.

  “Personally I’m disappointed in God,” Dagonet said. “I thought He had higher standards.” A dry cough wrenched at his narrow chest.

  “But here’s what I want to know: Why didn’t you quit before this? Long ago? You don’t care about any of this stuff!”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Constantine squeezed cold water from his long hair.

  “It’s a fair question—excuse me, have you got any more of those apple f-fritters?” The serving girl went to get them. “I suppose I could say I’m doing it for the glory of Cornwall, or my family, or God. But really I think I’m on this quest for Arthur. Which is ironic since he d-didn’t seem to want us to do it at all.

  “But you see, my whole life my father’s been building me up with one hand and cutting me down with the other. He tells me I’m destined for the throne, then he t-turns around and humiliates me to show me I’ll never be worthy of it. I suppose he sees me as his replacement—a reminder that he will age and die. And he could never accept that. As long as he kept me down, he would never die.

  “And in fairness he hasn’t. It’s worked so f-far. Still I really ought to have overthrown him, like Galahad did with Lancelot. But instead I ran away to Camelot.

  “I knew you and he aren’t close, but Arthur’s been a father to me in ways my real father never could. He must have seen I was desperate for a f-father of any kind—I don’t suppose I hide it very well—and he was kind to me. It’s doubly generous of him really because he never had a father of his own. He gave me what he never had, without a second th-thought.

  “And I believe that whoever wins the Grail will succeed Arthur on the throne. And that would make him Arthur’s son. Symbolically at least. Wouldn’t that be something, to be Arthur’s son?”

  “So King Galahad then,” Dagonet said.

  “Maybe.” Constantine scrutinized the ragged edge of his once-magnificent tunic. “But I can’t quite see that, can you? Galahad doesn’t seem worldly enough to me to s-sit a throne. I can’t see him levying taxes and all the rest of it. I think this quest is m-more like coursing with hounds, and Galahad’s the hare. He’s not here to win, he’s here for the rest of us to chase after, to set the pace.”

  The fritters arrived, though they were still too hot to eat.

  “My other theory is that we’re to bring the Grail back to C-camelot so that Arthur can drink from it, or Guinevere, or both, and then they’ll be able to have a child. It will make them fertile. But that can’t be why you’re here. Can it.”

  It was true, Dagonet didn’t care about that. But he did care about finding the Grail. Very much.

  When it appeared that day at Camelot, drifting through the air the length of the Great Hall, its curved silvery sides smeared with the stretched funhouse reflections of gaping knights’ faces, Dagonet felt something he hadn’t since he was very small: he was happy. Dagonet had no physical wounds to heal, but he had spiritual ones, grievous and profound, and the Grail made them better. He looked around at the world and instead of a wasteland of empty signs he saw for the first time that paradise of order and meaning that other people saw.

  How could he never have seen it before, when it was all around him and always had been? He was blind, but now he saw. Tears of joy flowed freely down his face. He supposed it was what people meant by grace.

  Once the Grail was gone the clouds gathered again, and his thoughts dove back down into the depths where they habitually resided. But he remembered what it was like to feel at peace. He would do anything, anything, to feel that again.

  He didn’t say any of this to Constantine, and the prince of Cornwall had learned to accept Dagonet’s nonanswers without offense.

  “There’s a problem with my theories, though.” Constantine lowered his voice even though the hall was empty. “About the Grail.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s not going very well, is it? How many knights have died so far?”

  “I don’t know. Thirty maybe.”

  “Thirty-eight. And I’ll bet you there’s m-more we don’t know about. A lot more.”

  It was a good bet. Galahad had told them he’d seen three other knights dead in Simeon’s tomb alone—they’d suffocated down there, on the sulfurous smoke. And how many more such bolt-holes must there be all around Britain, where God had squirreled away more of those corpses he loved to make?

  “I’m worried that at this rate there will be few survivors. Maybe none at all. It’s as though God released the hare and set us coursing and now he’s cutting us down as we chase it. The huntsman is hunting his own hounds. But why? This was supposed to be like the Sword in the Stone, but if you failed at that you didn’t die, you just went off for a pint and watched everybody else fail too.

  “This is different. If you want to know what I really think, I think there’s not going to be any succession. God has turned on us. He set a trap for us, and the Grail is the bait. He’s ending the adventures and smashing the Table and terminating Arthur’s line.”

  “But why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Glumly Constantine kicked a scroll of bark into the fire. “Or it’ll go the other way. God will give us the Grail, but the price will be too high. He’ll keep killing and killing till only one knight survives, and King Galahad will wear a crown of bone and sit on a throne of blood.

  “But I put it to you, Dagonet: Who would serve the God who did that? A God as bloodthirsty as any pagan death idol? Either way, it’s the beginning of the end.”

  Outside the wind whispered hoarsely. Sleet and darkness were closing in. The beginning of the end, Dagonet thought. He didn’t know whether to be terrified of the coming disaster or relieved that it was all going to be over soon.

  Twenty-three

  The Tale of Sir Dagonet and Sir Constantine, Part III

  Someone woke them in the middle of the night. A woman.

  She had a round face, plain but wonderfully open, and a gap between her two front teeth. Something about her looked familiar, but Dagonet couldn’t place it. She’d crept into their room at the inn and shaken them awake.

  “Come with me now,” she said earnestly, “and I will show you the most lofty adventure a knight has ever seen.”

  “What, really?” Constantine still had his eyes closed.

  “Can you show it to us in the morning?” Dagonet asked.