Lilith (37 page)

When the formalities had been concluded there was a trumpet flourish from the herald in the bandstand, and the first challenger—the Knight of Darnestown—was announced. He was a boy of not much more than eighteen, mounted on a slender black mare who stood dancing prettily by the starting flag. She had a look of enormous, disciplined speed, which was not misleading, for she broke swiftly, in perfect control, at the starting gun. I watched her flash past the stands under the banners and balloons to the wonderful triple throbbing of her hoofs, her head thrust forward avidly, her haunches glittering like black satin in the sunlight. Her knight rode standing in the stirrups, his body poised in an attitude of fastidious and earnest action, both elbows up, his shoulders tensely rounded, the long shaft of his lance piercing the sunlight in a precise level projection, thrilling in its accuracy. He took the first ring cleanly, without the smallest perceptible adjustment of his weapon; I saw the ring slip onto the tip of his lance and skitter for an inch or two along the shaft. The second he took with equal skill; and although I was too far away to see the details of his try at the third arch, I could tell by the burst of applause from the spectators that he had captured that as well. I felt like cheering, myself, for it had been a beautiful performance.

“He’s going to be hard to beat,” I said to Howie.

“Boy, you know it!”

The knight had reined in his mount and came cantering back down the list, grinning with pleasure. As he passed the judges’ stand the result of his charge was announced over the loudspeakers: “Three rings, with a time of 11.6 seconds.”

Howie had taken out a small pocket pad and pencil and was keeping a record of the results.

“That’s real good time, too. They usually start off a lot slower than that.”

“Yes. I’m going to have to push to beat that.”

“Well, old Prince can do it; I’ve done better time than that with him. Hell, you ain’t lost yet.”

The Knight of Three Forks had now entered the list, a young man of about my own age, mounted on a big-chested sorrel gelding. It was an ugly horse, which proved to be as uncontrollable as it was unattractive; it balked and bridled at the starting flag, and broke away broadside at the gun. I could see that the knight was having difficulty managing it, because he was very busy with his left hand. The sorrel carried him so far out of line at the first arch that he had to lower his lance; at the second he was working too hard with his heels and reins to make a good approach, and knocked the ring off its clip into the dust. He managed to take the final ring, as I could tell from the scattered handclapping at the far end of the course, but in a time of over fifteen seconds, which was far short of the first challenger’s. He rode back to the paddock gloomily, cursing his mount.

“Nothin’ to worry about there, anyway,” Howie said.

“Not this time.”

As the tournament progressed I looked up often to where Lilith stood at the far end of the list. She had not moved, and was obviously entranced by the event. Sometimes, after a particularly skillful charge, she would laugh and clap her hands with pleasure; and I felt—with a rather shamed and startled sensation, for it was the first time in my life I had recognized the feeling in myself—a painful stab of jealousy. I awaited my turn in the list with growing excitement and with growing trepidation as well; for I had a terrible fear of being proven unworthy.

The initial charge by the Knight of Darnestown had proved to be even more remarkable than we had thought, for it was not matched by the time I entered the list. Three other knights, including the last who rode before me, had taken all three rings, but in poorer times; and with only four riders left to follow it seemed almost certainly to be this first performance which I must better if I hoped to win the charge.

As the seventh knight reined in and rode back down the list I turned the big stallion’s head toward the paddock gate, my heart pounding wildly and a brave commotion warming my whole body.

“Now take it real easy,” Howie said. “If you don’t win this’n they’s lots more to go.”

“I want to win this one,” I said. I did, indeed, for I had no hope whatever of taking the Tournament Prize, and to win the initial charge seemed to me almost equally desirable. This was Lilith’s first experience of a tournament, and I felt that what happened on the opening joust would make as great an impression on her as the whole succeeding course of the day’s events. If I could come off gloriously in it, I would have had enough of triumph, no matter what followed. I reached down to take the lance from him, and when I felt its limber, cleanly balanced and heroic weight, a feeling of composure came over me like a benediction. I rode out of the railed enclosure to the starting flag and turned the stallion to face up the list, while the Knight of Washington Grove, who had preceded me, trotted back toward the paddock, shaking his head at me and grinning as he went past. I stared up between the roped boundaries, making many instant observations—the height of the arches, the lighting on the rings, the deep hoof prints where dark soil showed through the scattered tanbark of the course—to where Lilith stood at the end of the list. I saw that she had raised her finger tips to her cheeks and waited breathlessly. There was a brazen flourish from the herald’s stand, and my name rolled forth with monstrous portent from the loudspeakers: “The Knight of Poplar Lodge.” I waited the exactly accurate fraction of time, loosening my rein and racking the stallion’s sides with my knees at the very instant that the starting gun went off. He bolted forward like a loosed arrow, gaining his full stride almost instantly, his forequarters plunging and his bronze mane raving like flames before my face. I had not realized his full quality before; the list awakened a spirit of competition in him that was truly thrilling, and I could feel the exultation of his great body as he carried me up the course under the fluttering crepe-paper bunting with the wind like warm surf in my face and the blue silk of Lilith’s scarf streaming from my arm. He took the delicate directions of my knees with wonderful intelligence, making our approach slightly to the left of the arch’s center as I wished, for my style of jousting was to ride with a very high elbow, leaning my head far to the side and sighting my lance like a rifle.

The body has an astonishing kind of kinetic memory which seems to be quite apart from any intellectual faculty. It can, after years of disuse, recall and perfectly execute a very complex pattern of physical behavior which the mind has long forgotten, as if the memory were buried in the muscles themselves, and preserved there. I was fascinated to behold my own body now demonstrating this remarkable ability, making instant calculations and adjustments of its own with perfect authority and a kind of joyful renaissance of faculty, which made me almost more a witness than a principal to the event. Every factor of horsemanship that I had learned in the tournaments of my boyhood was redeemed through this magical bodily intelligence: the stance of foot in stirrup, the angle of knee to thigh, the slant of back, the slope of shoulder, and all the many delicate degrees of tension in the muscles required to preserve them.

I watched the tiny cord-bound circle of the jousting ring swell slowly in diameter as the steel tip of my lance bore in upon it; it was a white dot, then an embroidered eyelet, then the loop of a window-shade cord, then, as the bar of shadow from the arch darkened the gleam of my lance tip for an instant, a mouth, open and pale-lipped with horror. I lunged my shoulder forward with a triumphant ferocity which astonished me, shattering the skull of some royal phantom foe and ending his ancient lineage forever. I could not lose; I was inspired. Burning with my own invincibility, I thundered down the list on my incomparable charger, taking the second ring, and then the third, with equal magnificence. As I swept beneath the final arch I lifted my lance, with the three captured rings encircling it, in a salute to Lilith, whose bright hair blazed by me like a torch.

I reined the stallion in and turned him about slowly, loitering back down the list with arrogant indolence amid the cheering of the crowd and seeking out Lilith’s eyes with my own. As I came abreast of her my time was announced over the loudspeakers: “Three rings, with a time of nine seconds.” It was the best charge made so far; I had bettered the Knight of Darnestown’s time by more than two seconds. There was a second great round of applause and a waving of straw hats and handkerchiefs; then my heart halted for an instant with delight as Lilith slipped beneath the boundary ropes and ran out into the list beside me, her blue skirt rustling about her legs and her hair flying. At this demonstration there was an even greater burst of cheering, whistling, and a ribald flurry of handfuls of flung popcorn. She ran to the stallion’s side and reached up to take my rein hand in her own, her eyes glittering with triumph.

“Oh, Vincent, you were beautiful!” she whispered. I looked down, drunken with pride, into her flushed face—never had it been more beautiful—reading in her eyes the acknowledgment of myself as her lord and suffering the possession of her white hand as she ran laughing down the list beside me through showers of white popcorn and pleated paper fans. At the paddock gate she kissed my fingers and fled back into the crowd, while I rode burning with triumph into the enclosure.

Howie took the lance from me, chuckling with delight. “You got this’n for sure!” he said. “They ain’t anybody goin’ to beat that!”

I knew that it was true; and indeed my performance seemed to have demoralized the remaining riders, for only one of them took all three rings, and he in a time far inferior to my own. As he finished his charge one of the page girls ran down from the judges’ stand to the paddock and asked if I had a banner to run up.

“Give her the scarf,” Howie said. I did so, untying and dropping it down to her; and after a particularly elaborate flourish from the herald’s stand I saw the square of blue silk being hoisted up the pole above the pavilion, billowing out into the breeze with airy lightness, as my victory in the charge was called across the tournament grounds.

I have never known such happiness in my life as I felt at that moment. I have set down its circumstances here in some detail, hoping, by doing so, to recapture it in some poor measure. I have not, of course; here there are only paper ribbons and the ghosts of horses, where in my heart there was the splendor of all chivalry.

I did not win the tournament, but I very nearly did—and all that I desired, as well. On the second charge neither the Knight of Darnestown nor myself placed among the winning three; perhaps we had spent too much in the first. But by the third, both he and the little black mare that he rode had regained their fire and won it easily. I did not ride well again until the fifth charge, when I took second place. This gave me the sudden fantastic hope that I might yet win a ribbon, and brought ambition singing back into my blood. I martialed all my skill and strength, took second again in the sixth, and by an almost brutal act of determination won my second charge of the day in the seventh joust. This was my final victory, but it was enough. When the final scores had been tabulated I heard my name proclaimed again—as winner of the Tournament Red Ribbon—and for the third time on the afternoon saw Lilith’s blue scarf ride shimmering against the summer sky, this time just below the black banner of the Knight of Darnestown.

In a blaze of fanfare we paraded past the pavilion, each escorted by a herald in a red hunting jacket, to receive our trophies from the tribune. When the huge red rosette had been pinned to the stallion’s bridle I galloped up the list to where Lilith stood watching with shining eyes, and, reaching down my arm, lifted her up onto the stallion behind my saddle. She fastened her arms about my waist and clung to me with frightened exhilaration as we galloped down the list, past the paddock rails and out into the oak woods beyond the tournament grounds.

The forest was golden with the late-afternoon light, and full of birdsong which seemed to fall in jeweled notes from the ballad-laden trees. Veil after veil of sunlight broke before our flight, and the warm air washed our faces in a torrent of delicious odors: stone, soil, wild blackberries, water and honeysuckle. We leapt over boulders and fallen logs in breathless, weightless, soaring flights, reaching up, once, to shake down a shower of wild persimmons that fell about us like bursting hearts. At the edge of the forest we plunged out into open meadowland, scattering a flock of red-winged blackbirds who rose about us with a great hoarse scuffling sound of wings and broke apart in vivid shards of black and scarlet, like fragments of a shattered urn. I do not know how long we rode like that—with Lilith’s arms about me and her golden hair streaming—for it is well known (or often reported, at any rate) how ecstasy deforms the sense of time; but I think it must have been half an hour, at least, for we were far from the tournament grounds when the stallion at last began to tire. I held the reins loosely and let him walk at whatever pace he chose, our bodies rolling gently with the idle rhythm of his own. He followed the bed of a small creek westward through the valley floor, stopping sometimes to nibble a choice tuft of grass or to stand with darkened hoofs in the shallow, shining water and dip his muzzle into the quickly flowing stream. There were sheep grazing in the valley, their shadows lengthening in the declining light; they scarcely lifted their heads to us as we went by. Lilith lay against me lightly, her head resting on my shoulder, murmuring softly in her own tongue. The faint, verbena-like perfume of her hair touched my nostrils intermittently, a delicate, inconstant rumor of some bewildering event.

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“That we are heroes. That it is the most beautiful of all days. That I love you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it is true.”

The valley ahead of us was wooded, and a fallen stone hut of some kind stood in ruins among the trees.

“What is that?” Lilith asked.

“An old springhouse, I think. There are lots of them in the woods.”

“Can we go there?”