Chapter Text
The mists from Avalon drift over the sea and clear long enough for Galahad to see where he is.
Before him, a bluff high above a roiling sea; below him, the verdant clover that serves as a thick ground cover. It is a paradise, but a false one, as a seer appears at his side, different from the other wizards introduced to him. He has a snout and horns poking from it.
The seer takes his hand and traces the lines along his palm with a claw. The lines are etched deep and long, and for a moment, Galahad glances up at the seer, quizzical.
He yanks his hand back as he regards the seer as a sow. They are standing on the edge of bluff, the sow on two legs. Galahad takes a cautious step back, pulling his hands away.
“You are the illegitimate son of Lancelot,” the sow tells him, as if this is a curse. This from a pig. Who has called him a bastard.
“I know I’m a bastard,” Galahad spits out, his hands folding into tight fists. Anyone who knows him never fails to remind him of this fact. His current circumstances – finding himself stuck in a nightmare -- scream of the tragic event of his birth.
The pig tries to soothe him by telling him about evidence he’s never heard before of Lancelot. “Galahad” is his father’s original name he was given at birth, but the name was changed when he was but a child. The son of Lancelot will surpass his father in valor, and Galahad will return the Grail to his maternal grandfather, Frederick.
Galahad, rather than trust his own ears, insists he is sleepwalking. Since he was as young as six, his dreams have been fantastical. In his dream phase, he has travelled from cloud to cloud, reaching distant lands. He’s flown to the moon to look out at the sun and the stars. This dream, however, is strange to him.
This pig is saying the meaning of his name is the same as Lancelot’s true name. Galahad has heard mention of this, but he’s had his doubts. Now, the truth washes over him with a conviction that seems undeniable. And the sow is not finished spilling secrets. Its lips are moving and sharing another name. The name of his beloved. Who will bring him to the castle on the lake where the Holy Grail awaits.
The name catches the mist that rolls off the sea and over the coastline. He can’t hear it for the crash of the waves. And the trees are rustling with the sound too.
“They will come for you, Galahad,” the pig presses him forward, “but only one man is the gatekeeper. Pa gur yv y porthaur?”
“What man is the gatekeeper?” Galahad translates the native Welsh, desperate to hear the name, knowing his life depends on it, but he’s not fast enough for Twrch Trwyth (how did he know the pig’s name suddenly?).
Twrch Trwyth is suddenly out of reach, remaining on the bluff’s edge, its snout nudging at the eroding earth. The sea breeze is pushing him towards the woods where the trees are known to walk among man.
And like the magic in his dreams, he begins to float through the hemlock grove, its thick branches bending in the direction of the wind. Like the boughs, he bends too and closes his eyes to the sensation of the trees walking and talking with him. Their branches tickling his nose as he sways with them.
“Tristan,” the trees whisper. “Tristan…”
And then Galahad sees him.
A dying knight, his long hair shielding his face, is speared on the trunk of the hemlock that lords over the center of the forest. Its poison exposes the veins spider-webbing along his face and blooms like lilac under the canopy of long hair.
Galahad smiles at the knight, brushing back thick braids. His touch makes the man shudder. Galahad is drawn to his face and leans down to caress his grey cheeks and his bluish lips. The knight can barely open his eyes, but his eyelids flutter as Galahad draws his lips over his. Galahad’s kiss sends his heart pounding and his eyes snap open.
Mirth dances in Galahad’s eyes before he notices that the knight has awakened. He is the giver and taker of life, it would seem. A god among men.
As the knight fumbles to the ground, Galahad stumbles back, frightened. The knight wrenches himself from the stakes of the tree and rises to his feet, clearly alive and breathing again. He bows at Galahad’s feet and kisses the earth he walked on. He brings his eyes up to meet Galahad’s. Even the trees come to a standstill, watching the knight’s next move.
Galahad takes in the sight of the knight pledging his allegiance to him, as if he were some king. The knight clutches at his boots, climbing up his legs, until his arms wrap around his waist, his head resting in the curve of his hips. Chest heaving, Galahad tries to back out of this embrace, the contact overwhelming to him.
Galahad’s hand flies up to his mouth, his delayed reaction to kissing a man suddenly hitting him full force, and he forces out a long breath, screaming for help, for his father, Lancelot, to come.
*
Galahad gasps, Lancelot’s name lingering on his lips, eyes flying open to his familiar room. Snow falls outside his frosted window. He reaches for his robe and wraps it loosely at his waist.
He walks at a fast clip through the convent, ducking any eye contact from the maidens who cross his path. He is a man now, among virtuous women, and despite his aunt’s protection, it is time to return to the home of his mother. He is eighteen and has rudely been told he may as well be a babe in the henhouse. At first he was offended that someone would question his chastity. And then he realized that the nuns’ virtue was being called into question. Each time, the thought gives him pause.
Despite his seclusion here, he is learning how difficult it is to remain pure in a wicked world. At thirteen, he was told about his mother’s seduction of Lancelot and that he was born to bring the quest of the Holy Grail to King Arthur. Only the pure could undertake such a quest. Galahad was tormented that he would not be accepted by the King and his famous court. But he could not bring himself to sabotage his life and fall between the legs of some wench to never know if he would truly belong.
He reaches the chapel and closes his eyes as he plants his knees against the cold stone floor. His eyes dart underneath his lids, still alarmed by the twists and turns of his dream. How could his kiss save his dying knight? And why did this knight feel like his beloved? What was the name the trees whispered to him?
Hours pass, and luckily, his aunt enters the chapel and pulls him to his feet. His legs have long fallen asleep. His mind, as ever, is alight and his thoughts are particularly worrisome. Impure. Immoral. Tasteless. He is not the man he has been raised to become.
He sinks into Bedelia’s arms, unsteady on his feet. He can feel his legs again, as invisible needles prick his nerves. A sheen of sweat beads along his face, dampening his curls to his forehead.
“T’is time,” Bedelia states simply.
Galahad never wanted to leave like this. He would have been content to live among the maidens and taken his nightwalks among the clouds. Yes, he’s friendless. And this convent lacks monsters and swears off the magic that roams these lands. But hiding here has to be better than what awaits him out there. This he’s sure of.
*
Only Bedelia knows the way to her sister Elaine’s castle. Elaine had worried if she knew where her only son was kept, she’d seek him out before his time had come.
As their horses race through the snow-covered woods towards his future, Galahad drifts back to the past, returning to the Cornwall where bears and big cats roam among the witches and dog-heads. His mother promised to protect him against these monsters, but she could not say the same for the man he knew as his father, Eliazer.
Eliazer and Elaine constantly fought. Their son was not his. Elaine willingly asked the wizard Merlin to magically weave her way into Lancelot’s bed so she could seduce him into believing she was his wife, knowing her beauty would captivate and entrance the Knight. But she had to live with the consequences of deceptive magic. Yes, she bore his son, but she, too, was betrothed to another. And Elizaer was most displeased by her infidelity.
Only the new god from Rome was spoken with more frequency than Eliazer’s use of “whore” whenever his gaze fell on Elaine. As Elaine weaned Galahad off the breast, Eliazer could only regard the toddler with stony silence. The silence became more and more frightening as time went on.
But Eliazer spoke to him once. The moon was so round and bright it filled the night sky, and in a fit of whimsy, Eliazer took the heavy babe out to look at it. He pointed so Galahad would look upon the stars in the night sky and told him to find the New God there. Even if Galahad wasn’t loved in this cold world, something believed in him or his feet would not be planted here. Someone above loved him enough to guide his steps as long as he walked upon the earth. And that was the last he spoke to Galahad, blessing him with the secret to bearing a lonely life, before the child was taken to parts unknown.
Bedelia, who was just as beautiful as Elaine and who had any number of suitors, had fallen under the spell of the Roman god and desired to become one of his virgin brides. To baptize a child in His name would only increase her devotion in His eyes. She gladly lifted young Galahad out of her sister’s house of strife.
Bedelia was devoted to her faith and so grew annoyed by the child who pulled her out of the chapel. In these times, Galahad would hear often about how she could not wait to return him to Elaine when he turned 18. Her resentment and coldness towards him did not keep her from the other promise she made to Elaine – to raise him to be a pure man and a fine warrior, known as the greatest knight in the world. The knight prophesied to achieve the Grail and heal the Wasteland.
Like anything to do with the Saxons and Brittonum, family ties complicated the prophecy. One day, she would have to tell Galahad of the family shame about his grandfather, Frederick, and how he engineered Galahad’s birth, basically using his own daughter to bring the Grail back to Chilton Castle. She was not looking out for her sister’s child or doing a good deed for her God. She was protecting her family’s legacy by ensuring Galahad would be selected to go to the Grail Castle and heal the Broken King.
The Broken King is the wounded guardian of the Grail and is related to Frederick. Incapable of performing his tasks on his own, his kingdom suffers. His thigh wound makes him impotent and his inability to produce an heir affects his land and reduces it to a barren wasteland. Knights come from many lands to heal the King, but only the chosen one, who can correctly ask the healing question that can only come to one who is pure, can accomplish the feat. Frederick’s bloodline is also wounded by their failings by virtue of their shared bloodline. By bringing the Grail home to Chilton, his hope is that the next generation will continue on and peace would rule the land once again.
Pulling herself out of her prayer book, Bedelia met her charge out in the roundabout where they spar with swords. She was the youngest of her father’s brood and he had never had sons. Young Bedelia had shown interest in the swordfights when Frederick took her to market and she always accompanied him to the duels throughout his kingdom. He never refused her sword lessons, even when her body began to bud into a girlish figure.
And so Bedelia was able to train Galahad to be a great fighter. Her discipline and skill were unrivaled, and along the way, Galahad also gained insight into reading people and what drove them to the decisions they made. He became convinced that Bedelia’s biggest drive was her grief. Her father, his grandfather, Frederick, was her first true love, as most fathers were to their daughters, and he had been her bedrock. Galahad heard how Frederick fought to put her in school when girls were not expected to go and told her she could do anything a man could do.
Her relationship with her father was the opposite of his experience, and Galahad drank up these stories like a man lost in the desert only to realize how Eliazer could never be a father to him although he was the only one he’d known, and Lancelot, whose name rang out in all the songs and prayers around the land, could not even be bothered to quest for his own son.
Frederick had died shortly before Galahad had been born and Bedelia had grieved beyond the normal mourning period. For years, she believed Frederick was not dead and would return home. When she finally accepted her loss, many thought her sudden conversion to religion was born out of her hopelessness for her father, but in truth, the quest of the Grail came to her in a vision. Frederick’s spirit would not rest over the land – indeed, in her own mind – until the Grail was brought back to him. Frederick’s blood coursed through Galahad and he served to remind her daily of this vision. Her suitors believed she would stay at the convent for less than a year and that she would return to Gaul to keep up her father’s estate. But she could not return to Frederick’s grave empty-handed, and to their surprise, she remained at the convent, raising her nephew for the court of Camelot.
And finally the perfect bubble created around his ideal of Frederick shattered when Bedelia admitted his role in Galahad’s birth. For days, Galahad walked among the trees, which rambled with him as far as the mountains. He made it halfway up the slope, alone, before he turned around and headed home.
As Bedelia took him through the thrusts and parries with the sword, Galahad would think about the dragons and giants he would slay at King Arthur’s command. He would have to kill alongside his father – men and monsters alike. It scared him that he looked forward to that day. As Lancelot’s legend grew, the battle cry was constant. The abandonment and rage Galahad felt inside needed a release, despite how stoic his countrymen were known to be. The battlefield seemed to be the only place he could confront the demons that haunted him.
The sun is setting when they reach the bridge that crosses into an ancient holloway through his parents’ land. Frost crunches underfoot and the horses’ breath steams in the air. Birdsong filters through the thick roots and canopy of the tree cover lining the dirt trail. Galahad and Bedelia can see the clearing up ahead and a glimpse of the castle in the distance. A greeting party is waiting down the road.
The horses pick up the pace in anticipation. Galahad’s heart races too. He sneaks a glance over at Bedelia, who looks every part of the nun, covered in flowing silks and wooden crosses dedicated to her religious union.
Galahad’s windblown hair courses over his shoulders and he worries that his simple Roman robe and cape will disappoint next to Arthur’s knights’ chain mail and armor. It is too late to turn back now. He should have anticipated that Elaine would be ready to claim her fame and glory at the moment of his arrival.
As they pass through the gates to his parents’ property, a cemetery rests in the field. Eliazer’s name is scratched on a marker, and to his shame, Galahad breathes a sigh of relief. He does not know if he could have faced Eliazer’s wrath at this age without there being bloodshed.
Elaine stretches out her arms, overjoyed to lay eyes on her son after all these years. Galahad slows his horse further away from her. He needs time to collect himself. Smooth his hair over, at least. And his thoughts.
Waiting with her are two knights, wearing the crest and arms of King Arthur on their armor. One he recognizes and the other, a stranger. The stranger is too young to be Lancelot. Galahad is disappointed, but not surprised at Lancelot’s absence. His father refused to see Elaine after the night he was conceived.
Galahad crouches behind his horse, using the mare as a shield to keep his distance between them. He yanks at his unruly curls to give them some semblance of order on his head when he overhears Gawain muttering to the other knight, “Can you tell whether he’s male or female?”
Galahad brushes the coat of his horse to hide his deep embarrassment. How can he be the greatest knight if he doesn't look like one? He has lived among wenches all of his life and he never cut his hair because they didn’t. Bedelia was supposed to prepare him for this world. His anger rises, tightening the muscles of his jaw.
With a stiff gait, he walks around his horse and draws himself up next to the knights. Elaine has her arms full of Bedelia and she can wait.
He reaches the knights and hopes that his face is as pale as the Winter landscape and not the burgundy of the famous wines from Listeneise. They greet him as knights do, bowing to one knee, their eyes fixed on the ground, hand on their swords.
Galahad’s gaze falls on the familiar one. He remembers the name from the dream now. Tristan. His beloved. He winces at the idea of a man being his true love. Tristan kneels before him, as he did in his dream, his hair (even longer than Galahad’s) whipping in the wind, like he too could fly among the stars. There’s no denying – Tristan is beautiful. He could not stare at him much longer without casting suspicion. He gestures for them to rise and he ignores Tristan in favor of reassuring Gawain he is, in fact, a man.
“We’ll run into trouble if Arthur chooses us to visit the Broken King for the Grail,” Galahad regales Gawain with a deep register in his voice. “He holds feasts which no knight may attend but if he bring his wife with him, or his paramour.”
Galahad is not as convinced that he sounded as manly as he wanted. Why did he add the “or his paramour”? His chastity cannot be questioned when it is associated with the Grail. He forces himself to listen to the rumors Gawain’s heard about the Broken King Hannibal and the Fisher King, Will. Galahad makes a gallant effort to listen and not dare let his gaze land on Tristan.
Tristan steals several glances at Galahad. Luckily for him, Galahad’s locks curl past his shoulders, long enough that the wind could lift it and it would still hang down his back and over his eyes so he cannot detect the fullness of Tristan’s gaze. He is fair and hairless on his face and chest. His skin is flawless with a hint of a blush along his cheeks. His gaze demure. The color of his eyes are constantly changing so that one could not help but seek his gaze, trying to fix on a grey blue or a green brown. It is vexing and leaves Tristan blushing.
He will put the men on edge. And Geneviere will hate him on sight. Galahad stands as proof of Lancelot’s infidelity, despite the fact that he was tricked and in his heart would never take another.
Lancelot has forgiven the wizard Merlin. Has forgiven Elaine, even. But what would he do when he lays eyes on his beautiful son, his true namesake, pure enough to capture the Grail and put an end to the magic that stubbornly clings around the Wasteland?
Tristan watches as Galahad finally approaches his mother, the mistress to many men even in widowhood. Galahad’s beauty is just as breathtaking as hers. He too could have anyone he desired. No wonder he has been sequestered for so long.
Galahad can feel Tristan’s gaze upon him as he exchanges pleasantries with Elaine. As they embrace, he buries his heated face in her hair. His own mother has noticed the looks the two knights have thrown in each other’s directions. She is the queen of the language of love. She admits to Galahad she does not understand this chastity vow that he took. She had prepared a feast for his arrival, with two milkmaids each to hold his cup and two handmaidens to feed him till he’s satiated. Bedelia now rides ahead to clean up this “mess”. She teases Galahad with a glib “Where’s the fun in that?” He looks aghast.
It sinks in that he’s not merely alarmed, but repulsed. She realizes her mistake in trying to make light of her mistake.
“You are a young man, and only human,” she reminds him. “I am too. And a woman at that.”
His lips have pursed into a thin line. She can’t bring herself to apologize in the English way.
“The problem with our family,” she whispers in Galahad’s ear, “is we love too much. We feel everything as a newborn babe would. This can be perceived as weakness, but I believe it will benefit you in your quest, as it’s benefitted me.”
Galahad looks her fully in her eye. He soaks in the heavy rouge that darkens her cheeks. The bright color of her lips. Bedelia has never done such a thing to her face. Nor would she need to. Men must still be calling upon Elaine's door even at her age.
“I am nothing like you,” he tells her primly. He has all but dismissed her and they share a look, feeling each other’s distress. He girds himself to remain stoic and knightly and to remember his mission. Louder, for the others, he shares his need to escape this world for another: “We’ll ride for King Arthur’s court at first light.”