SOMETIMES I WAKE NOT BLINKING OR YAWNING BUT alert, thinking I’ve just heard my stone calling me. At once I pull on my shirt and hose and then I unwrap my stone. With my right hand I grasp and warm it; I become part of it again.
It was like that early on this pale green Easter morning. I woke in my little room at the top of the castle before all the villagers began to gather in the courtyard, sniffing and coughing, talking in low voices, ready to climb Swansback and stare into the rising sun.
I remember doing that, and Haket crying out, “The Lamb! Can you see his banner burning white, and its blood cross?”
Rowena said the sun looked bloodred, and Izzie saw it black as a cormorant’s wing, and I thought it was gold, then purple and green, and spinning, but Lord Stephen said it was burning white, and told me that each man who takes the Cross has seen the Lamb.
My stone glistened.…
Three knights are kneeling in an arbor beside the Guardian of the Grail. The wounded king. Shining blood is still seeping from the gash between his ribs.
The arbor with its shriveled vines and parched grass swells with light more dazzling than the rising sun.
“You have come to Corbenic at last,” the king whispers. He’s in such pain. “Sir Perceval and Sir Galahad and Sir Bors, you are one in three, three in one. You have mended Solomon’s sword and voyaged to the Island of Elephants and stopped the spinning of the Turning Castle and fought with Joseph of Arimathea’s shield against the demon Knight of the Dragon, and many other wonders. But more than that, far more, you are true knights-of-the-head-and-heart.”
The three knights bow their heads.
“You are the chosen ones,” the Grail King says in a hoarse voice. “You know a man is never worthy to become a knight simply because of his prowess. Strengths and skills are only means; they’re not ambitions or ideals. A knight always has duties.…”
Yes, to have one heart hard as diamond, one heart soft as hot wax. To be open-minded, openhanded, and generous.
“You are the chosen ones,” King Pellam says again. “Sir Perceval, Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, you have given yourselves to God. Rise now and go to the Grail chapel. Go now and ask the question.”
My seeing stone flashed; it half-blinded me.
The Holy Grail is uncovered. It is made of light. Apillar of sunlight flows upwards out of it.
Sir Perceval and Sir Galahad and Sir Bors kneel in front of it. I see their faces reflected in it.
The air is thick with frankincense and myrrh.
Out of the Grail a man rises. He rises, with dark eyes. Except for His loincloth, He’s naked, and His feet and hands and ribs are all bleeding.
“My sons!” Jesus says. “My sons! I will hide Myself from you no longer.”
The cheeks of the three knights are wet and shining.
“So many knights have quested,” Jesus says. “Many have come close. Each man and woman and child in this world can cure the wounded king and heal the wasteland.”
Sir Perceval and Sir Galahad and Sir Bors: three men, speaking as one.
“Whom does the Grail serve?” they ask.
“The Grail serves Me,” Jesus replies. “The Grail serves you.” Jesus lifts His voice. “My body and blood lie within you and each of you becomes the living Grail. You are knights-of-the-head-andheart. Vessels of the spirit.”
The three knights bow their heads, and raise them.
Above the Grail, within the pillar of light, Jesus rises. He rises again!
For a long time my stone shone. It sat in the palm of my hand, and shone.
The young woman wearing a wimple—the one who rode into Camelot on a mule—kneels beside King Pellam’s bed with Sir Perceval, Sir Galahad and Sir Bors, and many other ladies and knights. She begins to sing the lullaby I heard her sing before:
“In that orchard, there is a bed, Hung with gold shining red,
“And in that bed there lies a knight His wounds bleeding day and night…”
King Pellam’s terrible wound, the gash in his ribs, stops bleeding. It closes. All his wounds close.
His skin looks unblemished again.
Around the king, all the knights and ladies weep and pray. The young woman reaches up; she pushes back her wimple. Already her hair is beginning to grow, corn-gold.
The trees gently shake their heads, shoots of green grass begin to grow again, finches twitter and carol. On the arbor vines the grapes swell, misty-skinned.
King Pellam sighs. At last he’s able to die in peace. He closes his eyes.
The earth itself sighs and begins to breathe.
The wasteland lies waste no more.
“But our world still waits and suffers,” Sir Galahad says. He’s holding the shield the young woman left hanging on the pillar at Camelot: the snow-white shield on which Joseph of Arimathea painted a cross with blood. “I have work to do,” he says. “I will sail to Sarras, near Jerusalem, and fight Estorause, the pagan king.”
“For as long as I live, my quest will not end,” says Sir Bors. “I will go on a crusade.”
Sir Galahad leans over the Grail King and gently takes off his scarlet hat emblazoned with a gold cross. He places it on Sir Perceval’s head.
“Guardian of the Grail,” he says.
“So many of us have quested,” Sir Perceval says. “Many have come close. Each of us must have a dream.”
Below me, in the courtyard, everyone is gathering. A peacock swaggers across the drawbridge. It screams the resurrection.