[semi-open post -- easter sunday]

[onthewillowsthere]

Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia.

Last night, Galahad kissed Claudius while he was reading and explained that he was going to keep the Easter Vigil, and Claudius tsked and fixed his collar, and then fixed his collar again, and then said Galahad should take a scarf -- he unfolded himself neatly from the bed, his dressing gown swirling about him, to take one of out of the closet. He knotted it around Galahad's neck, and kissed him, and then kissed him again, and then said in the morning they would have to eat something special to break the Lenten fast. Galahad knew he was worried, and he was grateful to Claudius for letting him go anyway.

Holy Week has been a crushing weight, hard in a way it's never been. Galahad doesn't know why, but he knows Claudius can tell; Claudius knows him better than anyone. Galahad has been reminding himself that it will change on Easter. That's what the miracle is about.

With no chapel to keep his vigil in, Galahad took the thick wax pillar he'd chosen for his Paschal Candle outside to the lake. He should have asked Magnus to come with him -- he knows that. Magnus wouldn't mind, and he would have kept Galahad warm, too, and been glad he'd been asked. But after his Good Friday vision, Galahad has felt so detached from his body that remembering to do anything outside of the strict soothing rituals of Holy Week is a struggle. He shivered through the night alone, thinking about the past Easter Vigils he and Percival kept in Camelot, huddled around their bonfire, laughing when they were supposed to be serious, knowing the priest was scowling at them.

The Lucernarium is supposed to be joyful, hopeful, but the hour for Matins ticks by -- Galahad checks his watch by starlight, because both moons are new, and there's hardly any light in the sky -- and dawn doesn't come. He reminds himself that it's because it's winter, and daylight takes a long time to break across the horizon.

By eight-thirty there's finally a hint of sunlight, wan and wobbly as Magnus in the greenhouse on Passion Sunday. Galahad's hands are so cold he can hardly feel them, and they shake on the matches, but he lights the Paschal Candle and cradles it against his chest as he goes back to the mansion.

In Camelot, he would have followed the procession into the church for the Lumen Christi. This morning he does it alone. When he gets to his chapel-room, he unveils his altar and sets the candle down, then lights the votives from it, until the room is bathed in weak candlelight. He sings the Exultet to himself, softly, both parts. There's no assembly to give it power.

Galahad knows the Liturgy of the Word by heart. He's always been able to remember written words with little study, especially when they're important to him. He can recite all seven scripture readings and all of the psalms and canticles, the Gospel of the Resurrection.

In Camelot -- he can't keep thinking in Camelot; it only makes him feel more lost, less tethered. But in Camelot, there would be baptisms after the Liturgy. Then all the congregation would renew their baptismal vows, and be sprinkled with holy water. Galahad would stay stone-still as water freckled his face, hating the sensation, and Percival would laugh at him, and surreptitiously dry it off with his sleeve when no one was watching. The priest would give the Eucharist, and it was Easter.

In Camelot, there would be a great feast. Percival would get a little drunk; Galahad would sometimes forget to break his fast slowly, in increments, would be giddy from small beer on an empty stomach, and Percival could make him helpless with laughter. The stone was rolled back from the tomb. Everything in the world had more color. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

There's no Eucharist here. The Mass can't ever truly finish.

Galahad stays on his knees in front of the dresser-altar, watching the candles burn down, and waits to feel himself return to his body, but there's no return. He feels like a fish that can't be reeled in, thrashing in the stream. He feels like a threshed field. He feels like an empty tomb, with only the linens inside, because the Lord has been taken away, and he knows not where they have laid Him. He feels lost.

After hours of kneeling he manages to get up off the floor and slip into the bed, at least, but he doesn't manage to go any further. He's distantly aware that he's cold, that his head is aching with hunger, but those things are easy enough to ignore when he's so far from his body. He could be dead already.

When he was first restored to himself by the angel, he felt as though he were flour being ground under the weight of a millstone. It's an apt metaphor. He tries to remind himself that Claudius is waiting for him in their room, to end the fast together. He reminds himself that he is beloved, favored among men. There are good things ahead -- Easter heralds the beginning of a season of good things. But all he feels is tired and empty and spent.

[This post is open to people who already know galahad and might have a reason to know something is wrong]

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thou wilt not lose me," with quiet certainty. "I'm thine. What did Sagramore do?"

[wickedwit]

“Nothing,” Claudius says with a bitter, empty laugh. “He’s done no harm to me. But he’s intimate with a man who did, and knew it, never speaking of it. I saw them dance, holding each other like lovers — doubtlessly they already were. They were merry, and laughed, and I looked away …” Voice breaking, he says, “I bore it without thinking once. Now I remember, and each detail is a dagger in me.”

[onthewillowsthere]

Quietly, calmly, he asks, "How is that no harm to thee? Why shouldst thou let that go?" His voice is very flat, and his body is very still.

[wickedwit]

Claudius closes his eyes, and remembers with welling fondness what Magnus said, about Galahad asking good questions. “Thou ask’st me that, and not ‘why canst thou not let it go?’ That’s the question I’ve asked myself.” And the answer is the inverse. He can’t let it go because if he does, he’ll keep pulling out the stitches of a wound that’s only just begun to heal. He thinks he should, because that’s the nature of the wound. It’s a phantom itch, one scratching would relieve, but then the stitches would come out. “I’ve watched friends and lovers court the king’s favor, and disdain me in his presence. But he was their king. They needed his favor to survive in court, for their livelihoods and their families. So I accepted it. I think … I believe I should still accept it. But I want to be loved the way that thou lovest me. I want love that shelters and protects me, that won’t make a sacrificial lamb of me. I want love that will always acknowledge me, without having to hide itself in company. I’ve never decided the way I wanted to be loved ere now.”

[onthewillowsthere]

"That is the only way thou shouldst be loved." His fingers curl in the back of Claudius' cardigan, layered over his jacket and shirt, those many layers of armor that Claudius wears to protect himself. He feels that dizzying ache of fury, the way he did when Gertrude told him what Claudius is saying again now. He wants to hurt Sagramore.

Claudius has talked about Sagramore -- how he admires him and his easy way with people, how handsome he is on horseback, how warm and gentle and constant he is, how good his curls are to touch -- and Sagramore has failed to cherish what it means to be talked about by Claudius. He's failed to treat Claudius' love as the good green thing it is, growing up the trellises of the people Claudius chooses.

Galahad knows perfectly well what Claudius is talking about. Sagramore is lovers with Luo Binghe. It's one thing for Shen Yuan to choose Luo Binghe; it's another thing for Sagramore, who Claudius loves, to make that choice.

He draws his breath in quietly and lets it out, so that the only shake in his hands is their usual tremor, the one that's been with him since childhood, and which Claudius is used to. He remembers Claudius saying his brother threw his books in the fire once in anger, not because he was angry with Claudius, but just because he wanted to ruin something with his anger; Galahad's own anger can be private, held inside him, so there's no risk of it frightening Claudius with the promise of destruction.

[wickedwit]

It's a new and fragile thought, for all Claudius's philosophizing on love, all his wonder at the ways people find and fall for another. He knows no two people love the same. He felt it, as an angel, when love was like a light fracturing into many colors.

Not all love is kind. King Hamlet's love was a jealous, grasping thing, where he would not beteem the winds of heaven visit his queen's face too roughly, but neither would he let her walk in the sun. Perhaps Claudius fears that jealousy in himself, fears to peel back the curtain on his own feelings and find this is only another power play -- but he'd understand, if Sagramore told him that wasn't the way he wanted to be loved. If he couldn't be with someone who forced him to take sides. Couldn't Claudius give himself that same understanding?

There is way he wants to be loved. There is a way he should be loved. He breathes in and out and slow. "I love thee dearly," he says to Galahad.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thou art my beloved," quietly, calmly. "I love thee before all men, and all gods."

[wickedwit]

That soft blasphemy lays on him like an unction, soothing to his soul. "I think oft upon our kindred spirits," he murmurs. "How I damned myself deliberately, but ne'er defied what I believed was God's will for me. I did not not see much in my soul worth saving. I thought a life of lies, and retribution after death, were all my little existence merited. Now I want to live with thee, be true to thee, and be thy husband. No man or god would I let take this happiness from me. Do I love thee as thou deserv'st? Have I been as kind and as honest to thee as thou need'st from me?"

[onthewillowsthere]

That takes him by surprise. He doesn't know what kind of love he deserves -- he doesn't know what that means. He was never meant to be loved, not in the way Claudius does; he was meant for chastity and purity and denial, and perhaps someday, after he attained the Grail, to be loved in the ways saints are, with sexless adulation. He wasn't meant to be treasured. He wasn't meant for either the indulgence of desire or the warmth of living day to day with someone dear to him, for sleeping in one bed, for sharing meals and reading together. For Claudius' fingers between his lips, Claudius' voice urging him to moan. It's all heresy. How can he have expectations for how heresy should be done?

Galahad uncurls the angry fist of his fingers and draws them down Claudius' spine instead, stroking his back.

"I think so," he says. "But I don't know. Is it all right to ask for something else later?"

[wickedwit]

"Always. I will always be open to thee. I want thee to feel that thou canst ask me anything, tell me anything, and I will hear and heed thee, even when I cannot promise thee ay. When we make our vows to each other, I want my vow to be that I will always seek to understand thee, to understand thy heart, through all its changes."

[onthewillowsthere]

He draws back, just enough to tip Claudius' head back and look at him -- he wants to be able to see his eyes.

"Wilt thou ask me more questions? I liked when-- I took the herb that made it easy to speak, and thou asked me things. I liked answering thee." He worries at his lip, the way he had in the greenhouse at his birthday party, but his voice is certain. "Because it's hard for me to speak, sometimes I don't say anything. But I want to."

[wickedwit]

"Gladly," Claudius says with a smile, his brown eyes warm on Galahad's. "Thou know'st I am curious, and I will always pry if I can do it politely. Very oft I'll still ask impolitely. How was thy vigil, darling? I thought of thee all night."

[onthewillowsthere]

Relief washes through him. Of course Claudius knew what he wanted to say and couldn't. Claudius has always understood him.

He rubs the band of his watch, feeling Claudius' love in the soft blue leather, in the gaze of those brown eyes, in the way he knows Claudius will wait for as long as it takes him to find the words.

Claudius will always wait for him.

"I was alone," he says at last. "It was-- sad, and dark, and-- heavy. God sent visions during Holy Week. I thought--"

[wickedwit]

"Didst thou think He would send thee another?" He strokes Galahad's back again, the same slow, soothing circles. He wants to ask, too, what those visions were, but one question at a time.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I thought it meant something. I thought He might speak-- or show me what He wants of me now. Or that it would feel different when Easter came. That I would feel Him or Christ or-- light. I-- better. That it would be better now."

[wickedwit]

Claudius could almost laugh it -- despite never having visions, or messages from God, he's often felt the same. He felt it often as a child, that if he prayed right the way, prayed long enough, something would happen. "Surely thou hast earned it," Claudius says, dry but still sincere. "If there were any justice on God's earth, He would speak to thee when thou need'st him most. I am sorry, love. I am sorry thou wert alone."

[onthewillowsthere]

He's silent, feeling out the ribbed knit of Claudius' cardigan. "I had a vision of Percival."

[wickedwit]

"What didst thou see?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"He met a woman and fell in love with her, but when he chose to lie with her he-- saw me. He crossed himself, and she was burnt up, because she wasn't real. She was a test. He failed it. He cut himself to punish his flesh."

Describing it to Claudius, he realizes: this was a warning for him. It makes the anger spark up inside him again. Was it only a warning? Did God test and punish Percival only to remind Galahad how close he is to sinning again? Was there no reason for it except to remind him to whom he belongs?

[wickedwit]

For Claudius, who reflects so often on relationships of power and reads the hidden currents by which control exerts itself, it's easy to interpret the vision as manipulation. Galahad, he knows, loves Percival like Christ. He sees in Percival the holiness to attain the Grail on his own, and believes Percival worthier of it, for having allowed followed God in his own way without God's whispers to guide him. Showing Percival fail a test of God -- a test God no doubt knew Percival would fail, but put on him regardless -- seems a petty ploy to shake Galahad's idolatry and warn him at once. Percival isn't good enough is the vicious implication. Only you are, and only if you do as I say, and don't make the same mistake.

God truly is like any other tyrant. Claudius presses Galahad close, and says, "That was a cruel vision."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I wish--" He almost says, I wish I had been there with him, but it's not quite the truth. The truth is that even though he doesn't think Percival would be happy here, even though he doesn't think it's a right future for him, he wishes Percival were here. He doesn't want an ultimatum between the things he's learned about himself here and being able to comfort Percival. He doesn't want to give up love or friendship -- he doesn't want to give up Claudius. He wants to be married. He wants to have sex. He wants to choose, to choose over and over again, every day.

He doesn't know why God is speaking to him again, in this way, instead of as a Voice in his head, but he doesn't want it.

"There were others," he says quietly. "He is calling me."

[wickedwit]

"Calling thee to return?" Claudius asks, as quiet.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't understand why. I've done more than Percival has. I'm not a virgin. I'm not pure." His tone isn't regretful but matter-of-fact: these are statements of truth.

[wickedwit]

After some hesitation, Claudius says, "God had a plan for thee. I say this not as some empty consolation, that thou shouldst trust in Him and bear it -- thou know'st I would not have thee bear it. But there are earthly fathers and mothers who become just as fixed upon the plans they have for their children. If thou wert a son of a noble house, thy lord and father might compel thee to obey by reminding thee ever of the realm thou wilt inherit of him, and of thy duties as a steward of the land. If thy heart went a way he did not approve, if thou hadst passions contrary to his plans for thee, if thou didst fall for someone he would not have thee wed for the sake of his alliances, he might threaten to disown thee and give thy shares to thy cousin. But that would be a choice for thee. Thou couldst choose to surrender thy birthright, choose to take thy fortune. Then the threat would lose its power, and such a lord would be forced either to accept the choice his son has made, or compel obedience some other way. He did not want thee to think leaving was a possibility. And though thou know'st thy cousin loves thy father well, thy father will still punish him to make a point to thee, to prove thy choice was ne'er a true one." Tone turning droll, he says, "I know 'tis blasphemy, to ascribe such venial motives to the Everlasting. But though thou wert not meant to rule it, thou wert still saddled at birth with the fate of a realm, where others could've held the reins. It is unfair to thee. It is unfair to thy Percival."

[onthewillowsthere]

He thinks of the story he told Lan Wangji, of Job, and how God allowed Satan to torment him to prove his loyalty -- or how He meant to destroy the good men in Sodom along with the wicked, and tried to hide it from Abraham, knowing he would protest. That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from Thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? God is cruel, when it suits Him.

Galahad knows very few people with good fathers. Not Percival, not Claudius, not Magnus, not Laertes, not even Sagramore (he's heard Claudius talk; he listens). Perhaps not even God can be a good father.

"Dost think He loved me? Or only made me for His use?"

He's not sure he truly wants the answer, though he also thinks he knows it.