So often in her short life, she had witnessed horses and men fall, had absorbed the horror of the image and moved along—as was required of her. Yet this was different. Here and now, the sight stopped her, stilled her; she was suddenly unable or unwilling to move from where she crouched half concealed among the ferns that grew along the forest’s edge.
As Percival tried to soothe the beast that had borne him across the miles, it seemed as if she were watching an essential part of the great, noble man suffer and die.
What sort of world was this, she thought, that made such a man? A person for whom violence could be summoned like an obedient hound, then put away with the sheathing of a sword.
How immediate the violence had been for her, how utterly sudden and desperate. Was it the same for Percival every time he drew his sword? Did he feel the same shock as she did? If not, how easily a person might be pulled into a life where the hound of violence became a mad wolf, pulling at its chains, ready to come out whether its master wished it or not!
But now he knelt on one leg as if in prayer, and she saw in this stance that it was not just the destrier that drew forth his silent grief.
Her throat constricted. Her eyes grew wet. She was shaking. This aftermath, this horror and shock, was what Percival endured, what they all endured, every time they were called to fight.
Abruptly Percival’s voice broke through her gray misery, speaking to his horse. “I have asked so much of you, Tonnerre. You have crossed miles and endured hardships, many of them meant for me. Always, you have been loyal, patient, and kind. A man could not reasonably ask for a tiny share of what you gave.”
The horse’s tail twitched, as though in answer. Cnán saw its head rise, and she caught a look of sorrowful intelligence in its dark eyes. There was pain, but also a remnant of questioning innocence that brought Feronantus’s words back to her heart. The lot of their faithful mounts: food and burdens, suffering and death, for the sake of the men who raised and trained and rode them.
“You have traveled far and served us wonderfully well,” Percival said, his voice almost too low to hear. He moved beside the great head and leaned over, gently taking one ear and angling it toward his lips. “I cannot take away the pain, nor ask you to run again. And so I will not keep you here to suffer, Tonnerre.”
As Cnán watched, the knight drew his dagger with the reticence of a man who would sooner cut off his own hand than do what he was about to do.
Her view of him blurred, and she felt hot tears roll down her cheek.
Her knife, in desperation; Percival’s, in mercy.
“We are lessened by your departure,” Percival said, his voice breaking. Two companions lost, one at the hands of the enemy, one he must now release himself. Again, she had seen this last rite many times across the years and across the miles. Animals so grievously hurt that it was a mercy to put them down rather than leave them to suffer and die slowly.
But never before had it been like this. The truth of that was etched in the way he held the blade and in the quaver of his eternally calm voice. Cnán turned away and tightly closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to look.
There came a spasmodic pounding of hooves, a brief, rustling flurry of violent shuddering, and then stillness.
The trembling and heaving of the Mongol she had killed flashed before Cnán’s closed eyes. She clenched her teeth. When she forced herself to look again, she found Percival standing alongside the unmoving animal. He turned toward her slowly.
In the shadows of the woods beyond, she also saw Raphael, arms crossed, watching with that analytical expression she sometimes found so irritating. How could the physician not be moved?
Percival, however, saw only Cnán. He opened his mouth to speak. His cheeks were slick with tears. But he said nothing. He faltered. Slowly his body turned sideways to her, and his eyes rose up in his head until only the whites showed. He sagged to both knees and dropped his chin to his chest. He might have been sleeping, but his head moved slowly from side to side, as if he were listening to secret music. Then, impossibly, he smiled, as if at the sight of a long-absent friend. He raised his eyes to the branches and sky overhead and stretched out both arms, palms upward, as if catching a warm rain. From the former rigidity of grief, she saw the knight’s body loosen, and then he jerked once, twice, at some inner paroxysm.
He began to murmur in Latin, and she strained to hear his words. “Ego audio Domine. Animus humilis igitur sub ptoenti manu Dei est. Mundus sum ego, et absque delicto immaculatus. Verbum vester in me caro et ferrum erit.”
The glow upon his face—impossible in the morning light, in the woods! He looked around, seeing nothing earthly, but beaming like a small child, and the light of his expression seemed to flash through the forest.
Light without shadows.