The Knight's Visit

Preface

Several years ago, during a visit from a friend who had just returned from being awed by the gem collection in Washington’s Smithsonian Institution, the subject came up that marvelous settings of gemstones, when worn appropriately, acquired meaning unique to the occasion. For example, it is one thing to see a precious tiara, matching necklace, and earrings in an exhibit case but altogether something else when worn by Princess Diana or Queen Elizabeth.

The idea stuck peculiarly in my head. That night, after reading until midnight when my eyes were tired, I reached to turn out my bedside lamp – and spotted nearby, on the floor, a yellow legal pad. Picked it up, leaned against my pillows, started writing automatically. Not a conscious thought in my mind. By 2 AM, the story had played itself onto those lined pages.

Next day, when I read it, my eyes bugged. As I typed it into my computer, I needed only to correct a few verb tenses and some prepositions. It was complete, as it appears below. Disbelieving the purity of its few pages, I forwarded the story, now dubbed a ‘fable,’ to seven friends. Their reactions were staggeringly different from each other.

Several took it at face value. Others saw it as implying sublimated sexuality behind Ugo’s behavior. I was accused of letting the story front for my own desires. All wondered at the ending’s ambiguity. Only two readers thought that wonder-full because it allows for multiple interpretations.

By posting here, where many have indulged my explicit tales with understanding and appreciation to one degree or another, I invite you to conclude as you may. Be mindful, however, that I do claim any real authorship. No tale as ineffably sweet as this ever occurred to me.

I tell you: It wrote itself.

It befell upon a particularly sparkling Spring day, as his court was arrayed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Good King Wilfrido’s ascent to the throne, that every chamber of his storied castle had its full complement of residents and guests, every adjacency its quota of persons-in-waiting, retainers, squires, and servants, all the stalls in its grand stables the household horses and those of the visitors. Kitchens bustled with preparations for the feast. Fresh fish and fowl were shorn of their outer and inner inedibles. Spitted pigs already turned over tended flames. Kettles boiled to spew their steam like volcanoes. Hubbub throughout, orderly and happy.

Good King Wilfrido himself was happy and orderly. He and his advisors thought ahead, made plans accordingly, and oversaw their being carried out smoothly. Theirs was a peaceable kingdom off the path of crusading or marauding armies (much the same for the damage they could do). The small kingdom’s farmlands produced what Nature’s generosity allowed. Owing to location and policies, farm workers and villagers led reasonable lives, reared their young safely, and honored their king. They, too, flocked the castle to marvel at its breeze-rustled garlands and wind-blown banners. The promise of free food and drink was lost on no one, from youngest to eldest. And entertainment – mummers, jesters, minstrels from far and wide! What could go wrong? The air brimmed with merriment.

Word reached the heralds, with appetites as ready as embouchures, to mount the drawbridge towers. A signal, the release of a dozen white doves from the King’s balcony, would trigger the processional with its flourishes. The entire, if small, court in elegant array would pass through the hundreds accepting the gift of a single flower from each person present. An already old tradition, started decades before by the King’s revered father, that of presents for the monarch’s accession day, presents which cost nothing, each of which was natural and lovely.

Oohs and aahs soared as the birds flew into the azure sky. Trumpets, sackbuts, and drums echoed from the stone ramparts to the firmament as the keep’s great, arched doors flung wide to reveal Good King Wilfrido dressed splendidly in robes of crimson and purple. A simple gold coronet glittered about this noble head. With a pause to smile, the King stepped forward with his followers, wearing their own family colors, to cheers and began greeting his people.

First to hand flowers to the King were a small boy and girl chosen for their good behavior. With murmured thanks and a touch of their heads, he moved on, passing the blossoms to the man behind. Like clockwork, the group progressed. Each flower handed along the rank of court members until it could be returned to the person who had presented it. Such blossoms then went into hair, buttonholes, pockets, or over ears so that the revelers who had given had also received. A symbolic continuity of good will appropriate to the royal family’s benevolent monarchy.

The merest stable boy – an orphan with a gimpy leg, a slight harelip, and a tendency to illnesses of the chest – after mucking horses all morning, had managed to bathe from water in the troughs and to wash his homespun shift before trying to find a flower. Alas, none was to be had within the battlements, nor had his work allowed him time to cross the lowered drawbridge in search of one before the festivity. He stood forlorn at the back of the crowd hoping to spot a flower someone may have dropped or to see someone with two, one of which might be begged. He had never been allowed near the King. Poor lad that he was, turning this way and that, he noticed through the open gateway a figure on horseback approaching from a great distance.

A foot on the bridge and a hand on the portcullis’ chain, he looked harder and blinked at what he saw. The horse, pure white and of some lineage the boy had not seen in the King’s stables, galloped fast. Astride, a knight in armor more brilliant than the boy’s mind could grasp, its metals flashing tones of silver, copper, and gold in the sunny day’s glaring light.

Instinct should have told the boy to call the drawbridge guards but they were nowhere to be seen. This mirage – it could only be a mirage – exercised a magnetic draw upon the simple boy. Perhaps a miracle. He had heard about those. One of God’s angels it could be. The rider’s white cloak fluttered out like wings in flight. As horse and rider neared, the boy found himself limping over the moat’s bridge in awe. He had looked back. There was no one to greet this stranger, no one but he, in his elation, to witness the glorious sight.

Encouraged despite his sorry state not to retreat but to look up and wave with both arms, the boy stood at the tip of the bridge smiling from ear to ear.

Dust settled where the rider drew his great snorting steed to a halt.

“What is this place?” his bold voice asked.

Somehow, instead of cowering as the boy usually did in the stables when confronted, he bowed low. “Sir,” he looked up, “it is the castle of Good King Wilfrido. Today is the Festival of Flowers.”

“And have you a name, boy?”

“Ugo, sir. I am the stable boy,” he replied clearly and without fear.

“Good. Help me alight.”

When he stood, a tower of strength made taller by the white and gold lance he held, the knight’s blue eyes looked down at the boy’s bare arms. “Are those arms of yours strong enough to bear my lance?”

Ugo shivered at the question. “I can try, sir.”

“It must be carried exactly as I do. Straight and proud.”

“I will do it for you, sir.”

“Then do it well and walk ahead of me to your King.”

“Sir, I do not have a flower. Everyone must have a flower to approach the King.”

A moment’s reflection and the knight’s commanding voice grew gentle. “Then you shall have mine.” With those words, he unclasped from his sinewy neck a golden chain, its medallion a ruby-centered flower with teardrop-shaped pearls for petals. This he fastened over the boy’s freshly cleaned if threadbare shift and around his slender neck and said, looking across, “Now hold my lance steady.” Then he nodded.

Ugo did not question the strange apparition nor dare say another word. His steps at first were slow but grew more certain as he felt the lance balance perfectly when held erect. It was lighter than he imagined. The toes of Ugo’s bad leg were strong and compensated as never before for its shortness. He did not limp, could not limp, because the lance was such a source of pride. He breathed easily for the first time in days.

Their procession, stately in its formal tread, crossed the bridge, passed under the ramparts’ heavy portcullis, and entered the castle grounds where, as the populace became aware, a path appeared piecemeal in the direction of the King’s party which was in progress toward the outbuildings.

Stillness spread through the assembly until it reached an old lady near the last courtier. She tapped his arm not for the flower he thought she wanted but to point silently, eyes wide, mouth open, back toward the gateway. Constable Augustino gaped and tugged the sleeve of Baron Enrico who poked Lord Lazaro who nudged Chamberlain Augusto, the Constable’s aged father, who reached for the King who had stepped just out of reach. “Sire,” he called with some urgency.

Good King Wilfrido in annoy turned to admonish the interruption of his converse with the miller’s pretty daughter. “What,” he started to ask, “is… – but stopped at the rows of heads looking back. The music had ceased. Jugglers dropped their balls. No one was moving except for two unlikely figures, a ragged boy with unkempt hair and high-held lance who preceded a splendid knight, helmet in his left hand and, in his right, gemstone-set reins leading an equally bridled steed of heroic, nay legendary proportions.

This was no etiquette ever seen, an event with no precedence, a shocking contradiction of protocol. No one knew what it meant. No one did anything. The Knight, his horse, and Ugo stopped some feet away from the royal party.

“Tip my lance forward,” the Knight instructed Ugo, “until it parallels the ground, then lift it and place its hilt beside your foot. You do me proud.” This in a voice which commanded attention and respect no less than his appearance.

Stymied by a circumstance for which there was no plan, Good King Wilfrido and his Court made not a move but regarded their unexpected, and thus far unannounced, visitor with rising curiosity.

“He spoke to that boy before addressing the King,” it was whispered.

Ugo was recognized by the stables’ boss whose open mouth was stuffed by a dirty hand. The sight of so fabulous a jewel around the miserable waif’s scrawny neck caused him almost to choke. Nothing could explain this!

At that instant, one of the occasion’s white doves circled the pair of arrivals, alit for an instant in the space separating the parties involved, and flew away, causing general astonishment at what seemed a message perhaps from Heaven.

One of the tower guards, having edged his way forward, caught the Knight’s eye. To that man, he handed his reins, saying, “Hold these for me.” Numbly, the guard obeyed.

With a few steps, the Knight asked Ugo for his lance and said aloud, “Present your flower.”

Little Ugo needed a moment to remember the necklace. He drew it over his head, walked carefully to his King and, by extending the priceless adornment, offered it to Good King Wilfrido. Astonished all the more by the object’s fineness, now that he held it, Good King Wilfrido thought briefly of keeping the jewel but could not bring himself to break tradition, so passed it to his Chamberlain, who passed it to Lord Lazaro, who examined it closely (his nature suspected trickery) but handed it to his friend Enrico who in turn, if reluctantly, passed it to the Constable.

Everyone waited. Tradition held that a flower, once gifted on this special day, must be returned. Constable Augustino squared his shoulders. Nothing so luxurious had ever been in his manicured hands. He looked at it with never-to-be-forgotten admiration, righted himself fully, and strode toward the watchful Knight.

The Knight looked at Ugo. “Kneel my boy. Your flower is being returned with, I believe,” his rising voice broke the silence decisively, “with appreciation for all you have done here.”

Augustino could not but believe he was meant to replace the necklace – literally – from whence it had come, the stable boy’s neck. Yet, from the intent of the Knight’s expressive authority, there was no doubt. He must sully his own knees in the dirt to accomplish the task!

Ugo had trouble realizing the flower was really his. But he stood and beamed unselfconsciously as the crowd broke into applause.

The Knight spoke, “With your leave, Good King Wilfrido, this brave and honest lad will journey with me for my land where he will serve as my squire. I have chosen him.”

With a gesture of his right hand and a slight nod of his crowned head, the dumbstruck King, who had not moved, saw the Knight don his finely worked helmet, hand his lance back to Ugo, mount the white stallion with singular ease, reach for his lance to secure its place by saddle-straps, extend a hand to the boy, lift him as though he weighed nothing, sit him behind the fantastically designed saddle, take up his reins, turn the horse, and ride in great quiet out of the castle and into the distance.

* * *

It was the morning after the Festival of Flowers that clean-up began while guests took their leave expressing fondness for so many pleasures. With the departure of many horses, the King’s stables returned to normal except that no one saw the stable boy. They did note that none of his work had been done.

“Where’s that kid?” demanded the chief stable hand. The other hands looked about and shrugged. “Well, find him and remind him where he belongs.”

“Hey! He’s over there sleeping,” one called, pointing toward the muck heap.

They saw that he was not sleeping and that on his face was a relaxed smile. They had no idea why.