A YOUNG KNIGHT IS STANDING AT HIS PLACE AT THE Round Table, and I recognize him. Perceval. I haven’t seen him since he stole Blanchefleur’s emerald ring, and eight kisses. He wasn’t knighted then.
“Sir Perceval,” King Arthur says. “Tell us a wonder, and then we can feast.”
Perceval opens his eyes wide. “This world is a wonder,” he replies.
“Spare us!” says Queen Guinevere.
“Just whet our appetites!” the king says.
Sir Perceval scratches the back of his right ear. “Well, I did hear something last night. I was staying at a new monastery, and after supper the abbot took me to his lodgings. We drank sweet yellow wine and that unloosed our tongues all right.
“‘Not far from here,’ the abbot told me, ‘there’s an inn called the Stork because once a guest stood on a table and chalked a stork high up on the wall. It had a long beak and huge wings and stiff legs.’
“‘What’s so strange about that?’ I asked. ‘When I was a boy and lived in a cottage with my mother, we drew birds and animals all over our walls.’
“The abbot sipped some more yellow wine, and swilled it around his mouth.
“‘Next morning,’ he said, ‘the guest went on his way. But that same evening the stork flew down from the wall! It flapped its huge wings, and flew out of the door and three times round the inn. Then it came back in, and flapped up into the wall.’
“‘You mean…’
“‘I do,’ said the abbot. ‘The stork became nothing but a chalk drawing again. Well, word of this wonder flew like the wind, and people were soon flocking to the inn. The stork never disappointed them. Each evening it came down from the wall and flew round the inn three times. And the innkeeper sold so much food and drink that he soon became extremely rich.’
“‘Who was this guest who chalked the stork on the wall?’ I asked the abbot.
“‘Ah! I was coming to that. One day he returned to the inn, and as you can imagine, the innkeeper treated him like a king. The guest smiled, and he told the innkeeper to honor God by always showing generosity to each of his visitors. Then he snapped his fingers at his chalk drawing, and the stork came down from the wall and the guest mounted it. Away they flew, and neither of them was ever seen again.’”
Queen Guinevere claps her hands.
“A wonder!” King Arthur calls out.
“Was he a holy man?” asks Sir Perceval. “A saint? An angel? No one knows who the guest at the inn was. Anyhow, the abbot told me that the innkeeper was always generous to his visitors. And not only that. With all the money he’d made, he founded a new monastery—the monastery where I stayed last night. He paid for every stick and stone of it.”
“Amen,” says King Arthur, and he points at his trumpeter. “Let the feast begin!”