Wolfram + Kyot Part II: The Night Journey
a play by Chas LiBretto
Draft date: 10/5/20
Agent contact: Katie Gamelli [email protected] A3 Artists Agency Literary Division The Empire State Building Fifth Ave. 38th Floor New York, NY 10118 ii
CHARACTER NAME BRIEF DESCRIPTION AGE GENDER Frederick VI Duke of Swabia 23 M Advisor Attendant to Duke of Swabia 60s M Wolfram von Eschenbach young knight early 20s F Fatima of Toledo Muslim astronomer early 20s F Esclarmonde de Foix Cathar priestess early 40s F Berengaria Princess of Navarre early 20s F Highwayman 1 German criminal 20s M Highwayman 2 German criminal 20s M Priest English priest 40s M Richard I King of England 33 M John Prince 24 M Eleanor Duchess of Aquitaine 68 F Robert de Boron Poet late 20s M Sir Hagan Knight Templar 40s M Gerald of Wales Welsh archdeacon mid 40s M Peredur Welsh knight 30s M Fulk FitzWarin Young Noble late 20s 20s M Soldier 1/Roger French soldier 20s M Soldier 2 French soldier 20s M Soldier 3 French soldier 20s M Ibn Rushd Muslim Astronomer 50s M "Frederick" Ghost M "Christina" Ghost M
Actor 1: Frederick VI, Highwayman 1, Fulk Fitz Warin, Roger Actor 2: Wolfram Actor 3: Advisor, Highwayman 2, John, Soldier 2 Actor 4: Fatima Actor 5: Esclarmonde, Eleanor, Christina Actor 6: Berengaria Actor 7: Richard Actor 8: Sir Hagan, Gerald, Peredur Actor 9: Robert, Soldier 3 Actor 10: Ibn Rushd, Frederick
Time: 1190 AD Setting: Europe and the Near East iii
"Here time becomes space." - Wagner, "Parsifal"
“Come, let me know whether thou art a creature of good or not.' And he replied: `I am a man.’” - Chretien de Troyes, "Yvain"
“Shall I then bring the crown That was made by 60,000 angels? Who wished to force GOD out of the Kingdom of Heaven. See! Lucifer, there he is! If there are master-priests, Then you know well that I am singing the truth. Saint Michael saw GOD’s anger, plagued by His insolence. He took (Lucifer’s) crown from his head, In such a way that a stone jumped out of it. Which on Earth became Parsifal’s stone. The stone which sprang out of it, He found it, he who struggled for honor at such a high cost.” - Wartburgkrieg
“When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet ACT ONE
Projection:
“1190 AD. One year after embarking on a Crusade to retake Jerusalem, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa has drowned crossing a river in Anatolia. His army has now limped to Antioch, with little hope of success. And in England, a new King named Richard prepares to launch his own attempt on the Holy City....”
SCENE 1: PRINCIPALITY OF ANTIOCH - JUNE, 1190
A young man, FREDERICK VI, looks out a window.
FREDERICK VI “...And the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
FREDERICK VI shakes his head. An ADVISOR approaches.
ADVISOR My lord?
FREDERICK VI I’m sorry. My mind must have nodded off there for a moment.
ADVISOR Are you feeling well, my lord? You should let a physician have a look at you. There have been reports of a sickness in the barracks ever since we arrived in Antioch. It’s the swamps we marched through, I fear. Marsh fever.
FREDERICK VI No, I’m all right. Just a good deal on my mind. That’s all.
ADVISOR Quite understandable. It has been an enormously taxing time for you. Consoling your army, prostrated as we all are by grief. And so soon after your own injury. And, of course -
FREDERICK VI With my father gone, the future of this endeavor is on my shoulders. It is a wonder I have slept at all. 2.
ADVISOR Have faith, my lord. You’ve led us unscathed to Antioch, you’ll lead us yet to Jerusalem. You are the glory of the Christian army. And its only hope.
FREDERICK VI smiles, pained. He grips the ADVISOR by his shoulder.
FREDERICK VI Well. You do know how to relieve a man of his worries, my friend.
ADVISOR I certainly endeavor to try, my prince.
Bells are heard.
But come. We don’t want to be late for the ceremony. You will feel peace once we have interred your father.
The ADVISOR begins to go, and stops when he sees that FREDERICK VI has not left.
My Lord?
FREDERICK VI I was dreaming...of a stone.
ADVISOR A stone, sire?
FREDERICK VI There was statue of metal...or many metals, actually. And then a stone broke it apart, and then it grew to become a mountain, crushing everything in its wake.
ADVISOR That’s the Book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The statue, the stone. The Destroyer of Nations.
FREDERICK VI What does it mean? 3.
ADVISOR That’s precisely what Nebuchadnezzar wanted to know. When he told the seer Daniel of his dream, Daniel told the king that the statue represented all the kingdoms upon the earth. Babylon, Egypt, the Medes. Its collapse means the end of all earthy rule.
FREDERICK VI And the stone?
ADVISOR It’s an apocalypse, sire. The Last Days, when the Kingdom of God arrives, falling like a stone and dispersing the wicked crowd through the might of God, scattering them like dust on the face of the earth. You really should consult your scripture more often, sire, given that you are -
FREDERICK VI Yes, the last hope of Christendom and all that, indeed. I will. One more thing...
ADVISOR Yes, my lord?
FREDERICK VI Nebuchadnezzar. He is not generally a beloved figure in the Old Testament. Is he?
ADVISOR No. He is not.
Paue.
FREDERICK VI Let them know I am on my way.
ADVISOR leaves. FREDERICK VI watches him go. And then he reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a glowing STONE.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 2: PRINCIPALITY OF ANTIOCH - JUNE, 1190
The funeral of the Emperor FREDERICK. It’s a humble affair, in a small church built by crusaders less than a hundred years earlier. Some bells are heard and some chanting. 4.
FREDERICK VI and the ADVISOR walk outside the church, along with the other congregants, generals, and advisors. FREDERICK VI looks back toward the church.
FREDERICK VI I hope you’ve found your peace at last, father.
ADVISOR Burial in the Church of St. Peter has a certain...directness to it, I think. A straight path to the apostle, waiting at heaven’s gate. Yes, I think your father would like that.
FREDERICK VI There’s talk of bringing his bones to Jerusalem, so that he may be laid to rest there too. Dead in Selucia, his flesh and intestines in Tarsus, his bones here in Antioch, his skull in Jerusalem...God. He was coming apart for so long...I didn’t...I...
ADVISOR puts his hand on FREDERICK VI’s shoulder.
ADVISOR My lord. Do not dwell on such things. He had his eye on Jerusalem. It would make him proud to see you bury him there.
FREDERICK VI He needed me.
FREDERICK VI looks up at the desolate landscape of Antioch. A crow is heard.
Such a humble place.
ADVISOR Indeed, sire.
FREDERICK VI If he’d known the war would be ended for him here, would he still have gone?
ADVISOR But it’s not ended. Not with you leading us forward.
ADVISOR goes. FREDERICK VI looks at the sky. A hooded figure comes out of the church, hoping to avoid being seen. FREDERICK VI spots him. 5.
FREDERICK VI You there! Stop! Who are you, skulking about this holy place?
The figure stops, hesitates. Should he try to run for it? Finally, he removes his hood. It’s WOLFRAM, a young knight.
You! I know you, don’t I?
WOLFRAM Yes, m’lord.
FREDERICK VI Last Christmas, wasn’t it? In Phillipopolis?
Pause. ...Wolfram?
WOLFRAM Wolfram von Eschenbach. Yes, sir. You have a very good memory.
FREDERICK VI I remember you wanted to speak to my father about something.
WOLFRAM I did.
FREDERICK VI I’m afraid it might be a bit late for that conversation now.
WOLFRAM I just wanted to see him again.
FREDERICK VI Not much to see. Just his bones. His flesh is in Tarsus, or haven’t you heard? Rotting in bad vinegar under the Turkish sun. You said last Christmas that you believed the army was doomed if we kept marching to Jerusalem.
WOLFRAM doesn’t say anything. It seems you were right.
WOLFRAM I won’t trouble you, sir. I should be returning to the barracks anyway. There’s a fever going around, and I’ve been helping to treat - 6.
FREDERICK VI Why did you wish to tell my father such a thing?
Pause.
WOLFRAM It was a feeling.
FREDERICK VI It was more than that, Wolfram. You can tell me. I won’t be mad at a friend.
WOLFRAM is startled by this. The son of the Emperor thinks of him as a friend?
WOLFRAM It was last year. The night before we left Germany. In Ratisbon. I met someone...a girl.
FREDERICK VI A girl? You don’t mean the spy who snuck into my father’s room? The one who tried to kill him? You saw her? Spoke to her?
WOLFRAM She didn’t try to kill him. She - she wanted to warn him. She said there was a sign in the stars, that something terrible would happen if our army ever reached Jerusalem.
FREDERICK VI Terrible?
WOLFRAM The end of everything.
Silence.
FREDERICK VI Did you tell my father this?
WOLFRAM No. I...no. I never did.
FREDERICK VI There are many among us who might look forward to such an event. Scripture speaks of it.
WOLFRAM I don’t think that’s what she was speaking of. 7.
FREDERICK VI looks out at Antioch.
FREDERICK VI You know, Wolfram, many Christians died taking this city. Just under a hundred years ago, during the first great Crusade. Many among them were fairly certain the Last Days were beginning, that their march eastward had ignited Armageddon. And then they reached Jerusalem, and the world kept on going. What makes you think this...girl’s story is so different?
WOLFRAM She was a Saracen. Not a Christian.
FREDERICK VI Her people have a vested interest in our failure. Or did that not occur to you?
WOLFRAM I believed her.
FREDERICK VI What form would this end take? Were it to come.
WOLFRAM I don’t know.
FREDERICK VI Didn’t she tell you?
Pause.
Well, perhaps its just as well you didn’t tell my father any of this. He was so racked with delusions by the end, it would have only clouded his mind further.
WOLFRAM He seemed fairly clear to me.
FREDERICK VI What?
WOLFRAM I mean...that is...they say, after the battle, he found...clarity.
FREDERICK VI Who told you that? 8.
WOLFRAM It’s just what the men are saying. They say he...they say he visited the wounded after the battle. That he spoke with some of them. The night before he died.
FREDERICK VI Seeking absolution in the face of oblivion from the only people who might give it. Wolfram, if my father had refused to listen to you, what then?
WOLFRAM I hadn’t...I hadn’t thought about that.
FREDERICK VI No? Do you think this...girl did? For it seems to me my father’s death has resulted in the very thing she sought to accomplish.
WOLFRAM Will - will you now seek to reach Jerusalem?
FREDERICK VI You mean after what you’ve told me? Even with the world itself at risk if I succeed?
WOLFRAM Yes.
Pause.
FREDERICK VI Of course I will, Wolfram.
WOLFRAM Oh.
FREDERICK VI I lead the army now. It’s my duty to bring us there. So what will you do now? Knowing I have ignored your warning. What would your friend the Saracen do? Kill me?
WOLFRAM No.
FREDERICK VI Are you so certain?
Pause.
You should get back to the camp. Meals will be served soon. 9.
He starts to go and then stops.
WOLFRAM My lord?
FREDERICK VI Yes, Wolfram?
WOLFRAM I don’t know what form the end would take. But I do know your father carried on his person the very thing that would set it in motion. It was a stone.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 3: NEAR MONTSÉGUR - JUNE, 1190
The courtyard of a castle. Birds are heard. Children can be heard playing. It is the most peaceful place in the world. FATIMA sits on a stool and rubs her sword with a piece of cloth. An older woman, ESCLARMONDE DE FOIX approaches.
ESCLARMONDE The Lady Eleanor of Aquitaine sent you here so you might rest and recuperate.
FATIMA I am resting.
ESCLARMONDE You’re polishing your sword.
FATIMA I don’t plan to stay much longer.
ESCLARMONDE looks closely at her. What? What is it?
ESCLARMONDE I am looking at you.
FATIMA turns back to her sword.
FATIMA The bruise is fading. 10.
ESCLARMONDE And what of the one inside?
FATIMA I’m not bruised inside.
ESCLARMONDE Monstegur Castle a place of rest and contemplation. You will be safe here.
FATIMA I’m not looking for safety.
ESCLARMONDE Nevertheless, the Lady Eleanor thought you were in danger. That her son might hurt you worse than he already -
FATIMA I’m not afraid of Richard.
ESCLARMONDE You would like revenge?
FATIMA I would like... answers.
ESCLARMONDE You should leave certain things alone. Next time Richard may hurt more than just your face.
FATIMA I can take care of himself.
ESCLARMONDE Did you love him?
Pause.
FATIMA He is the devil’s stock. He is not capable of receiving such a thing.
ESCLARMONDE We are all of us Satan’s children, whether we are proud of it or not.
FATIMA A Muslim would argue against that point. Most Christians too, I suspect. 11.
ESCLARMONDE You will find we Cathar are quite different than other Christians you may have encountered, Fatima. There is no priesthood here and men and women are equals.
FATIMA You must have a lot of enemies.
ESCLARMONDE Yes. Come with me.
They begin walking through the courtyard.
FATIMA It is a remarkable place.
ESCLARMONDE Thank you. We strive for perfection because the rest of the world is not.
FATIMA But the world is God’s creation, is it not?
ESCLARMONDE What do you believe?
FATIMA My father would say perfection is only attained when something is complete and has attained its purpose. And if the world were perfect, it could not improve.
ESCLARMONDE Aristotle. "True perfection" depends on progress.
FATIMA Also Aristotle.
ESCLARMONDE The very fact that so much misery exists is proof of this world’s flaws. Our lives are an attempt to purify ourselves enough to enter God’s world of light.
FATIMA Whose creation is this world, then?
ESCLARMONDE As I said...we are all of us Satan’s children. 12.
They walk. The garden is beautiful.
FATIMA In Islam he is called Iblis. But he is not a God. He was an angel who refused to bow down before man, banished by Allah and sent to hell. Grief. Despair. That is what Iblis means.
ESCLARMONDE Did he despair for God’s folly or for his own fate?
FATIMA There are Sufis who hold that he refused to bow to Adam because he was devoted to God alone and would not bow to anyone else. They say that believing in evil as...a force outside of God, is shirk, or...belief in a second God. They hold that Iblis...still loves God.
ESCLARMONDE Then Iblis chose hell over man, because his love for God was unrequited?
FATIMA That is what a Sufi would say.
ESCLARMONDE What is it you think?
FATIMA That is the second time -
ESCLARMONDE Because you refuse to answer.
FATIMA I believe...that love can easily cause envy and distress.
ESCLARMONDE Hate too.
FATIMA I don’t hate Richard.
ESCLARMONDE And when I asked if you loved him -
FATIMA M’lady. I appreciate your hospitality, but it’s clear the answers I seek are outside. 13.
ESCLARMONDE Are you certain, Fatima?
LIGHTS SHIFT
SCENE 4: NEAR MONTSÉGUR - JUNE, 1190
BERENGARIA, a young woman, has her hands tied behind her back and a blindfold on. She sits on a log. Several highwaymen count gold coins and look at some of the silks and jewels in chests they have out.
BERENGARIA This is outrageous! When my father finds out you’ve attacked my royal envoy -
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Who’s going to tell him?
BERENGARIA I will tell him myself and I will make certain he metes out the strictest punishment for you.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Really? Because I think he’ll pay the ransom, princess. And happily.
BERENGARIA Well then, you clearly don’t know my father.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 I do know that if he doesn’t pay us ? You aren’t going to be telling him much of anything.
HIGHWAYMAN 2 ‘Cuz you’ll be dead.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 That’s right, ‘cuz you’ll be dead.
BERENGARIA You wouldn’t dare.
HIGHWAYMAN 2 No? Let’s go ask the other members of your Royal Envoy. 14.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Wait. We can’t.
HIGHWAYMAN 2 Why not?
HIGHWAYMAN 1 ‘Cuz they’re dead!
They laugh.
FATIMA steps out into the clearing. She wears the guise of a man and bears a sword.
FATIMA So are you, if you don’t let her go.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Who are you?
FATIMA My name is Kyot the Provencal. And you’ve caught me in a sour mood.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 You should mind your own business, or you’re going to end up like this one’s companions.
BERENGARIA Sir Kyot? My name is Princess Berengaria of Navarre and my family would greatly appreciate any assistance you could offer.
HIGHWAYMAN 2 Get the gag on her would you?
HIGHWAYMAN 1 stuffs a cloth in BERENGARIA’s mouth.
Afraid we can’t let you walk away now that you know who we’ve got.
FATIMA Unfortunate, as I’m inclined to give you one last chance to walk away.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 pulls out a sword. He runs at FATIMA. 15.
She barely pivots away, and knocks his sword from his hand. HIGHWAYMAN 2 looks at her and then runs away. She turns back to HIGHWAY 1.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Oh! Please don’t kill me!
FATIMA Why not?
HIGHWAYMAN 1 I’m just a poor soldier with no trade left! Have pity.
FATIMA Is pity what you showed to these travelers?
HIGHWAYMAN 1 I’m a deserter, my army’s gone, my emperor’s dead, please -
FATIMA What did you say?
HIGHWAYMAN 1 I’m a deserter. I’ve shamed myself before god and -
FATIMA Who was your Emperor?
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Why, Frederick Barbarossa, the Holy Roman -
FATIMA He’s dead?
Pause.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 Everyone is.
FATIMA Everyone? 16.
HIGHWAYMAN 1 The whole army’s fallen apart, it was death if we stayed! We ran away, couldn’t go back home, had no money, no food -
BERENGARIA Take that!
BERENGARIA hits him on the head with a tree branch. He falls over.
Got him! (to FATIMA) Are you all right?
FATIMA Yes. Yes, I’m fine.
BERENGARIA Oh, no. You were interrogating him! I interrupted! (she starts slapping the HIGHWAYMAN) Hey, wake up! Sir Kyot was talking to you!
FATIMA walks away. She leans up against a tree. She looks devastated.
Sir Kyot? What is it? Are you crying?
FATIMA turns away.
FATIMA It’s nothing.
BERENGARIA What is it?
Pause.
FATIMA I have learned that...someone very dear to me has died.
BERENGARIA Oh. Oh, I’m so terribly sorry. What was their name? 17.
FATIMA Wolfram. (wiping a tear away) There’s a place nearby you can stay until your people are told you’re safe.
BERENGARIA Oh. Well. I’m actually in a bit of a hurry. You see, I’ve an appointment to keep up north.
FATIMA An appointment?
BERENGARIA Yes. You see, I’m meant to marry King Richard of England.
Pause.
FATIMA What.
BERENGARIA Do you know him?
FATIMA I...yes...but -
BERENGARIA You do?! Well, that’s fortuitous! Maybe you can explain something to me: why does the King of England live in France? Is that just how it works in big countries? My kingdom of Navarre is quite small, so that’s where I live and -
FATIMA Wait, go back. What do you mean, you’re meant to marry him? Since when?
BERENGARIA Oh, not long! I only just learned about it last week! But how do you know him?
FATIMA I...I used to work for him.
BERENGARIA Oh! Well, that is a remarkable twist of fate! What did you do for him?
FATIMA I was his poet. 18.
BERENGARIA His poet! Well, what are you doing down here, then?
Pause.
FATIMA Uh...research. For a commission. For King Richard. From his mother. A family history. To commemorate his...ah...engagement to you!
BERENGARIA Sir Kyot! What a wonderful idea. Oh, he’ll love it!
FATIMA I thought you didn’t know him?
BERENGARIA Well, yes. But...I just know that...well, that I would love it. If you...well, if a handsome poet were ever to write something for me.
FATIMA Well. I hope someone does. Someday.
BERENGARIA And you’ll read it at our wedding? I mean. Richard’s and my wedding?
FATIMA Yes.
BERENGARIA Thank you. Oh, I’m sure you’re a marvelous poet.
FATIMA What makes you say that?
BERENGARIA Well, you were crying. The poets always speak of doing that when they - oh.
FATIMA What?
BERENGARIA I just realized...I’m all alone here. (she starts crying herself) They were helping me...and now they’re dead. 19.
FATIMA It’s not your fault.
BERENGARIA But it is! They were here because of me. I have to bury them. Have to honor them with prayer. And then...somehow...make my way north...
Pause.
FATIMA I will help you.
BERENGARIA You will? But you don’t have to...
FATIMA I know. But you’re without friends now. And it seems I am as well.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 5: GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND - JUNE, 1190
A PRIEST gives RICHARD a tour of the newly refurbished church.
PRIEST Well, this is a most momentous day! A new king here to commemorate the new Glastonbury Abbey! You know, sire, your father came to visit us here six years ago. Why, I remember it like it was yesterday. The monks poured their finest ales, and your father’s troubadour Chretien de Troyes sang songs to make any Englishman proud, songs of Lancelot, of Percival, of the legendary King Arthur himself!
RICHARD That’s actually what I’m here about.
RICHARD pulls his sword from his scabbard.
My father discovered this sword here at this abbey on that very visit.
PRIEST Excalibur! The Sword of the Lake! 20.
RICHARD Yes. He said it belonged to Arthur and that Arthur himself had been buried here, back in the days when it was known as Avalon. Now, I’ve come to claim the rest of his treasures.
PRIEST Sire, I hate to disappoint you, but if King Arthur was buried here, his tomb has certainly never been found. And unfortunately, the original church burned to the ground shortly after your father’s visit. If there were any relics, they would be long gone.
ELEANOR arrives, alongside JOHN. M’lady!
ELEANOR Good evening, father. If you’ll excuse us, I’d like to speak to my son in private.
PRIEST Of course, my queen.
PRIEST goes.
ELEANOR Richard, what are you doing?
RICHARD Why, visiting my realm and speaking with my subjects, of course.
She looks at him sternly.
...and seeking out a weapon with magical properties to help me win the war...
ELEANOR You are supposed to be in Vezelay preparing, not..treasure hunting in this godforsaken place.
RICHARD It’s England, mother. I thought I’d get one last glimpse of it before I go. I’m king of it, after all.
JOHN But you hate England, brother. What was it you called it? ‘A dreary place of dullards and yokels speaking a guttural, awkward language.’
RICHARD Mother, what is he doing here? 21.
JOHN You kmow, I would be more than happy to take over stewardship if it’s all too much for you. Or perhaps you’re just distracted? Still smarting from your affair with...who was it? An infidel assassin? Why, that must have been a surprise! She’d fit right into our -
RICHARD grabs his brother and throws him to the ground.
RICHARD Like that would you? Think to get me out of the way so you can be King?
JOHN W-well, I am next in line...
RICHARD Indeed! And do you not have work to do, brother?
JOHN W-work?
RICHARD There’s a war against the infidel to fund and nobles to squeeze. My war. My nobles.
JOHN We-we’ve put up everything for sale we have here. Castles, offices, lands, lordships. Levies on the barons -
RICHARD And yet, we are still short on funds! Remarkable!
He lets his brother go and gives him a scroll.
Some of the Barons haven’t paid the Saladin tithe. Go down the list and make sure they do.
JOHN (reading) F-Fulk Fitz Warin?
RICHARD That’s right. Fulk Fitz Warin.
JOHN The Wolf? But he said he’d kill you if he ever saw you again. 22.
RICHARD Well, that’s why I’m sending you. Don’t come back until you’ve squeezed every baron in this godforsaken country dry and funded my army! Sell London if you must, do you hear me?
JOHN Y-yes, brother. As you wish.
JOHN scurries off.
RICHARD Simpering little worm. He hated father just as he hates me.
ELEANOR You hated your father too, dear.
RICHARD Well, perhaps I’m coming to understand father’s point of view! Being king does change one’s perspective.
ELEANOR Richard, what are you looking for?
RICHARD Guidance.
ELEANOR There are many priests closer to home than this.
RICHARD King Arthur was guided by a sage who could see the events of history, past, present, and future. Father knew this. It’s why he came here. He found the sword here, so there must be other...artifacts. With the stone still missing, perhaps -
ELEANOR I know your pride has been injured, son. She was special to you. I understand that.
RICHARD She was a godless heathen.
ELEANOR She was not godless.
RICHARD You act as though you knew her. As if you know anything. 23.
ELEANOR I know I am saddened by the role you are asked to inhabit.
RICHARD I’m King.
ELEANOR And if you weren’t, perhaps you might have had a chance at happiness. I think meeting someone else would -
RICHARD Mother! Go make sure my brother isn’t getting into any mischief, will you? I have business with the poet.
ELEANOR Very well.
She goes and then turns back to her son.
Richard? Open your heart and you will see marvels.
RICHARD It’s too narrow a space.
She goes, shaking her head. ROBERT, a young poet, arrives.
What is it, poet?
ROBERT Their shovels have just hit something, sire.
RICHARD What! Well, where is it? What is it? A weapon of some kind? Speak, poet!
ROBERT It’s a body.
Two priests bring forth a stretcher with a rotted corpse and lay it on the ground.
RICHARD My God. Can it be? The bones of King Arthur himself? Defeater of the Saxons! Destroyer of the Romans! Can these old bones speak across the ages? 24.
He touches the head.
Show me the way to defeat the infidel, Arthur.
The skull falls from the neck and rolls away. Oh. Uh. Sorry.
It rolls away, but something else falls from the neck. A necklace with a metal pendant. ROBERT picks it up.
ROBERT Hello. What’s this?
RICHARD What is it? What did you find?
ROBERT Hmmm.
RICHARD What? What?
ROBERT I don’t believe this is King Arthur’s skeleton.
RICHARD No? Whose is it? Merlin’s? Guinevere? Lancelot? Percival? Who?
ROBERT looks at the necklace.
ROBERT This is Chretien de Troyes. Your father’s lost troubadour.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 6: PRINCIPALITY OF ANTIOCH - JUNE, 1190
A room in Antioch. WOLFRAM enters. It’s empty.
WOLFRAM Hello? My lord? I was told you wanted to see me?
SIR HAGAN, a Knight Templar, steps from the shadows. 25.
SIR HAGAN Ah, von Eschenbach. I had heard you were wounded in the battle. Some congratulations are in order.
WOLFRAM Congratulations?
SIR HAGAN You have defeated terrible odds to be yet among the living. The knight you served was not so lucky?
WOLFRAM Count Hermann...was struck down at Iconium.
SIR HAGAN A pity. But God looks favorably on those who die in his service. How is your wound healing?
WOLFRAM Fine.
SIR HAGAN Good. Good. I need your insight more than ever.
WOLFRAM Mine?
SIR HAGAN About the emperor’s death. It is the sacred trust of the Templar to protect travelers on the road way to Jerusalem and there was no more important a traveler than the Emperor. A tragedy. But one, perhaps, that might yet be avenged.
WOLFRAM Avenged? But I thought it was -
SIR HAGAN An accident, yes, of course. Do you remember how we met, Wolfram?
Pause.
Just before we were to depart Ratisbon. You came running into the war room, desperate to have an audience with the emperor! Imagine! Thinking the emperor had time to speak to a mere squire just hours before the greatest journey of his life. Me, though...I had time. 26.
And then to discover you were the son of Ulrich von Eschenbach. Remarkable. You remember what you told me?
WOLFRAM I told you I had...encountered someone.
SIR HAGAN Yes, the spy. The one who tried to murder the emperor the night previous. And now, a year later, the emperor is dead.
WOLFRAM What are you saying?
SIR HAGAN He met with someone the night before he died. I believe it was you.
Pause.
WOLFRAM Yes. It was.
SIR HAGAN I see. And how did you do it, that the effects would not be felt until the next morning?
WOLFRAM I don’t understand.
SIR HAGAN The poison you used.
WOLFRAM Poison!
SIR HAGAN You murdered him.
WOLFRAM No!
SIR HAGAN pulls his sword.
SIR HAGAN Empty your bag. 27.
WOLFRAM Sir Hagan! I didn’t even know it was him! I swear to you! He wandered to my tent, and I just thought him a very old soldier in need of company. I swear it!
SIR HAGAN picks up a stone cup from WOLFRAM’s bag. He sniffs it.
SIR HAGAN The murder weapon?
WOLFRAM It belonged to him! He offered me wine to drink. It wasn’t until he left, that I realized who he was!
SIR HAGAN And what was the giveaway?
WOLFRAM He said I would be declared a knight after we crossed the river.
SIR HAGAN You? A knight?
The door opens. FREDERICK VI appears.
SIR HAGAN This is he, sire. I am certain he murdered your father. He used this.
He hands FREDERICK VI the cup. FREDERICK VI looks at it.
FREDERICK VI Leave us, Sir Hagan.
SIR HAGAN My lord?
FREDERICK VI I would have a few words with this boy.
SIR HAGAN I really don’t think that’s a very good idea, sire. He is treacherous, this one. His father was a rogue as well. 28.
FREDERICK VI Did you not hear what I said? Leave us.
SIR HAGAN Very well, my lord.
SIR HAGAN goes, giving a last untrusting look at WOLFRAM.
FREDERICK VI Why?
WOLFRAM I swear to you, I didn’t murder anybody.
FREDERICK VI No, why did he give you this cup?
WOLFRAM I don’t know that he meant to. He gave it to me to drink from. On that night by the river.
FREDERICK VI And why did you not tell me this before?
Pause.
WOLFRAM I was ashamed.
FREDERICK VI Ashamed?
WOLFRAM Sir Hagan said I poisoned the Emperor that night. I didn’t. At least, not in the way he means.
FREDERICK VI You’d better start explaining.
WOLFRAM I think your father...I think the emperor drowned himself on purpose.
Silence. 29.
FREDERICK VI And why do you believe that.
WOLFRAM We sat together. He gave me this to drink. We talked for a while and he told me a story.
FREDERICK VI A story?
WOLFRAM A poet had brought it to his court when...when his sons were younger. It was the story of a young knight, who meets an old king by a river and...I’m sorry. The name escapes me now...
FREDERICK VI Parzival.
WOLFRAM Yes! The king fishes by the river, and he’s sick and lost...his kingdom is collapsing around him, on the precipice of disaster...and the young knight is completely out of his depth, and doesn’t wish to look a fool, and has been told by his mother to keep quiet in moments of doubt, and so he neglects to ask the old king what’s wrong...
FREDERICK VI Yes. And because of that, he loses the very thing that could cure the old man and the kingdom.
WOLFRAM But don’t you see? He was begging me to help him. And I didn’t! I couldn’t even recognize who he was! By telling me that story, he was showing me exactly what was wrong and I...I didn’t see it. I could tell something troubled him but I didn’t ask him what was wrong.
FREDERICK VI looks at him a moment and then he laughs.
I don’t see why it’s funny.
FREDERICK VI My father’s fate has passed from the tragic to the comic. Your compassion serves you well, Wolfram, but there’s nothing you could have done. 30.
WOLFRAM So you believe it was an accident, then? That he slipped from his horse and...
FREDERICK VI hands WOLFRAM back the cup.
Why?
FREDERICK VI Because he did exactly as he intended. Just as his gift of this was to me.
He takes out the stone and shows it to WOLFRAM.
WOLFRAM You have it?
There’s murmuring from off-stage.
FREDERICK VI You should go. You can’t stay here.
WOLFRAM Where would I go?
FREDERICK VI Home. Anywhere but here. This army, what’s left of it, will march on Acre in three days.
WOLFRAM Let me go with you.
FREDERICK VI No.
WOLFRAM But -
FREDERICK VI I’m saving your life.
WOLFRAM I’ll explain it to Sir Hagan. Make him understand.
FREDERICK VI I’m not saving you from him. Wolfram, there’ll be no victory at Acre. It’s been a slaughter there for over a year and we’re just seven hundred men left, hardly the reinforcements they are waiting for. 31.
WOLFRAM I won’t leave.
FREDERICK VI I order you too. And there’s something else too.
He gives WOLFRAM the stone.
Take this as far away from here as you can.
There’s a knocking on the door. Through the window.
There’s more knocking. You have to go now.
WOLFRAM pauses a moment, then takes the pack and goes.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 7: MONTPELLIER, THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE - JUNE, 1190
BERENGARIA sits on a bed in an inn. FATIMA, still wearing her lute on her back, is just leaving.
FATIMA You will be all right here?
BERENGARIA Oh, yes. The accommodations are more than adequate! Actually, it’s quite cozy! Only, the thing is, I’m not at all tired.
FATIMA I am. And I’m sure it will catch up to you soon. We’ve been traveling all day.
BERENGARIA Yes, I’m sure that’s true. Perhaps I should pray and turn in. Would you pray with me?
FATIMA I...I thought I would check on the horses before turning in myself.
FATIMA turns to go.
BERENGARIA Sir Kyot? Would you...could you play me one of yours songs? Before I fall asleep? 32.
Pause.
FATIMA Yes, I suppose I can do that.
BERENGARIA My mother used to sing me to sleep. I’m actually feeling rather homesick. I miss her.
FATIMA I hardly knew mine.
BERENGARIA I almost wish I hadn’t. The heartache since she passed us has been...well, I was almost glad to leave home.
FATIMA I know the feeling.
BERENGARIA Do you dream about your friend?
FATIMA No. It’s like he’s...gone from me.
Pause.
Let me see if I can play a song for you that will put your heart at rest.
FATIMA takes out her lute, and begins to play.
FATIMA (singing) Your beauty, lady fair, None views without delight; But still so cold an air No passion can excited; Yet this I patient see While all are shunn’d like me. No nymph my heart can wound If favour she decide, And smiles all around Unwilling to decide; I’d rather hatred bear Than love with other’s share. 33.
Fierce in me the fever burning Strength and confidence unmanned Eyes, though dark their sight is turning, Yet discerning. Through the gloom Death’s pallid hand Grimly stretched across from out the spectral land; Then came my love so bright and true, And Death and fever quickly withdrew. I know with full assurance The Woman’s gentle care Brings comfort, hope, endurance In time of deep despair.
BERENGARIA Oh, that was beautiful, Sir Kyot. Who did you write it for?
FATIMA Actually, it was written for me.
BERENGARIA For you? But it’s to a woman, isn’t it?
FATIMA Oh. Yes, well, much of...ah, much of the courtly poetry is in performance and...character.
BERENGARIA Oh, I just adore poetry. You know, the Arab poets in my country used to travel to our Courts with their songs of love.
FATIMA Ah?
BERENGARIA Their songs are much older, but they’re really quite similar to your French ones. The meter, the themes. “Love is a Sickness and a medicine, a torment and a delight, we love for love’s sake, we exalt the beloved lady...” They are quite dashing, those poets. It is a beautiful faith.
FATIMA Your...court must have been rather...tolerant, to invite the Muslim within its doors. In my experience, the idea of La Convivencia is something of a myth. Even in Cordoba, where my father came from - 34.
BERENGARIA Your father came from Cordoba? But I thought you were Provencal?
Pause.
FATIMA Oh. Yes. I am. He...moved.
BERENGARIA Have you been to Iberia?
FATIMA Once or twice.
BERENGARIA Oh! I had no idea! Where?
Pause.
FATIMA Toledo.
BERENGARIA Toledo! Well! We just keep finding things in common, don’t we, Sir Kyot? You know, it’s because of my mother that our court was the way it was. Those poets reminded her of her own family.
FATIMA Was she not a Christian?
BERENGARIA She was - actually, it’s...well, it’s not always safe to admit such things about faith outside of our home.
FATIMA Your secret is safe with me.
BERENGARIA It is?
There’s a moment between them.
Sir Kyot? What do you believe in? 35.
FATIMA stands up.
FATIMA The Lady Eleanor, Richard’s mother is...a remarkable woman. I think you will like her a lot.
BERENGARIA Oh, I hope so. They say in her youth, the Lady Eleanor would sit and listen to the quarrels of lovers and act as a jury to the questions of romantic love. She commissioned a book about it. I’m sure you’ve encountered it. There should be more love in the world, don’t you think?
FATIMA In my experience, love can be a dangerous thing.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 8: GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND - JUNE 1190
In the abbey. ROBERT and RICHARD drink ale from a barrel. Candles light the room and there is chanting somewhere nearby.
ROBERT The last time I saw Chretien de Troyes, he had been working on a poem. It was the story of a boy, Percival, his name was...a young knight, who leaves his home and joins King Arthur’s court and then is sent off on a quest where he meets an old, sick king by a river. He sees an object in the old king’s castle, something called the Grail, but he fails the king in some way by failing to ask him what ails him and so he loses it.
RICHARD What’s a Grail?
ROBERT A plate. Or a cup.
RICHARD What’s so great a deal about losing a plate?
ROBERT Quite a lot. It carries the sacramental bread of the Mass. Ladies lose their husbands, lands are laid to waste, girls are left in distress and orphaned, and many knights die and all of these evils occur because of the boy’s failure. 36.
RICHARD Must be quite a plate. Does the boy end up finding it again in the end?
ROBERT Chretien didn’t finish the story.
RICHARD What do you mean he didn’t finish it?
ROBERT He didn’t know how to end it. He traveled the courts of Europe, reading the poem and spreading the story, hoping he might find a way to end it.
RICHARD A strange way to construct a story.
ROBERT Much of it had been taken from far older sources, legends and stories of a Welsh knight called Peredur, who is said to have served King Arthur, for a time.
RICHARD Peredur? I thought you said -
ROBERT In Wales he is called Peredur. He is Percival in France. Parzival in Germany. It’s the same story. A boy goes looking for...something. An object of some significance. He finds it, but fails in some test or another. And then the world suffers.
RICHARD And this object he’s looking for...that’s the Grail?
ROBERT The stories from Wales are rather...vague on that point.
RICHARD Why would a French poet care about old Welsh legends?
ROBERT There are traditions in these lands from before even the Christians arrived, of warriors on quests for cauldrons, magic cups much like the one Chretien described.
RICHARD Well, perhaps the Grail is one of those things, then! 37.
ROBERT Yes. Perhaps. And I suspect Chretien was trying to solve that very matter.
RICHARD You think he came to England because he couldn’t figure out how to finish his poem?
ROBERT I don’t know why he came here, Sire. But I’d like to know why he’s buried under a burnt out abbey. Tell me everything you remember.
RICHARD Nothing. Chretien de Troyes was your mentor, not mine.
ROBERT But he was your family’s court poet.
RICHARD And he entertained us greatly. As children. And then we grew up. He had grown very popular by then. I assumed he had moved on to one of the other courts he was always being invited to. Better pay. No loyalty. Typical, really.
ROBERT That monk said Chretien was with your father on the night of the fire.
RICHARD What are you getting at?
RICHARD stands up suddenly.
Are you implying my father murdered Chretien?
ROBERT No, sire! No.
RICHARD Good.
ROBERT ...wouldn’t be the first time he asked someone else to commit one, though.
RICHARD What was that? 38.
ROBERT Nothing, sire. Would your brother have come along on this trip?
RICHARD No, no. I’m sure it was as routine a journey as any my father ever made. No reason for either of us to come along. The only reason it stands out in my memory is that my father brought me home this sword.
The PRIEST enters.
PRIEST We cleaned the pendant as best as we could, Sire. There seems to be some writing...
RICHARD Give it here.
He looks at it.
What is this? Not English and certainly not French.
He hands it to ROBERT.
ROBERT I believe it’s Welsh, sire. I can almost read it...
RICHARD What? What does it say?
Pause.
ROBERT ‘Myrddin.’
RICHARD What?
ROBERT That’s what it says. Myrddin Wyllt.
He hands it back to RICHARD.
RICHARD Well, what does that mean?
ROBERT is lost in thought. Poet? 39.
ROBERT Hm?
RICHARD I asked you what it means.
ROBERT Father, how extensive is the Abbey’s library?
PRIEST Not very, since the fire. But we are rebuilding and adding more volumes every year.
ROBERT Do you have any volumes by Geoffrey of Monmouth? His Historia regum Brittaniae?
PRIEST Oh, yes, that we certainly do have that. Everyone does.
ROBERT Would you fetch it for us?
PRIEST Yes, of course.
PRIEST goes.
RICHARD The History of the Kings of Britain? This Myrddin fellow was...a king?
ROBERT No, Sire. But Myrddin Wyllt is said to have served at the behest of one. Our old friend King Arthur, in fact.
RICHARD Not in any history I’ve ever heard.
ROBERT That’s true, sire. But you might know him by the name Geoffrey called him.
RICHARD And what name is that?
ROBERT Merlin.
LIGHTS SHIFT. 40.
SCENE 9: ANJOU, ANGEVIN EMPIRE - JUNE, 1190
FATIMA and BERENGARIA are in a castle’s foyer, alongside JOHN.
JOHN Princess! Why, this is a surprise! I wasn’t even aware my brother had become engaged again!
BERENGARIA Again?
JOHN Well, you know how these things go. My brother is... notoriously fickle.
BERENGARIA Oh...
JOHN But I’m certain this time it will work out. The last young lady was...well, I never met her but...goodness, the things I heard. Dear, oh dear. I can’t imagine what he saw in someone of that background. And Sir Kyot, may I say what a treat it is to finally meet you. We’re all very impressed with the guidance you’ve given Richard this year.
FATIMA Where is he?
JOHN I’m afraid he has gone to England on important business.
FATIMA When will he be back?
JOHN Oh. Well, you see, from England he plans to sail for Vezelay, and from there to Sicily...and then...
Pause. He may be gone for years.
BERENGARIA Years! 41.
JOHN I’m afraid there’s little I can do, princess.
BERENGARIA Oh. No, no, no.
JOHN I am sorry. He is a heartbreaker, my brother.
BERENGARIA My family. They were depending on this union...they’ll be so disappointed in me.
JOHN Yes, no doubt. Anyway, I’ve only just walked in the door myself, but I’m sure you can find your way out.
He starts to go.
FATIMA Wait!
JOHN Hmm?
FATIMA There’s more.
BERENGARIA There is?
FATIMA I did serve your brother this year. I was his poet, and I advised him...but there was more to it than that.
BERENGARIA Sir Kyot?
FATIMA I have...certain abilities. As a prophet. Sometimes...visions appear to me. Of the future. And I have seen things...
JOHN What sort of things?
Pause. 42.
FATIMA The King is in danger.
JOHN Oh? From whom?
FATIMA Someone close to him...wishes him ill.
JOHN A blood relation?
FATIMA Unclear. But they used to love him and now...they feel they have been...betrayed. By the King.
JOHN Well, that doesn’t really narrow it down much. Is there more?
FATIMA This... enemy will be in England.
BERENGARIA Sir Kyot! Why didn’t you tell me?
FATIMA I...I didn’t want to worry you.
BERENGARIA No! No, I just - I feel terrible you carried this burden with you when you could have shared it.
JOHN Indeed, I’m quite glad you’ve shared it with me now.
BERENGARIA You see why it’s vital we warn him!
JOHN Yes, yes. I heartily agree. But we don’t know who to trust...
BERENGARIA Oh. Yes, that’s true. 43.
JOHN We will need help if we’re to prevent this catastrophe. Allies who...perhaps, have never loved my brother terribly well, but who would help him, nonetheless. Actually, I know just the man. Then, together, we will go to my brother! And after all, I believe he would greatly appreciate seeing you again, Sir Kyot. Actually, I’m sure of it!
FATIMA The feeling is mutual.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 10: WALES - JUNE, 1190
RICHARD and ROBERT walk through a library with GERALD, a historian.
ROBERT His Highness is interested in a certain manuscript collection once under your father’s care.
GERALD Well, sire, as your fathers’s royal clerk and chaplain, I have access to all the -
RICHARD The one I’m interested in was reported discovered here at Nevin in Caernarvonshire by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
ROBERT His Highness is interested in the visions of Merlin.
GERALD Ah. Yes, well. Those are...intriguing, certainly. Of course, Geoffrey made much more of them than they really warrant. Really, they’re just the ravings of an ancient lunatic and not very interesting. Any parallels with recent history are really -
RICHARD pulls out the pendant.
RICHARD Did this come from your collection?
GERALD looks at it.
GERALD Where did you get that? 44.
RICHARD The poet Chretien de Troyes came here six years ago, didn’t he? He too was searching the visions of Merlin of which Geoffrey later wrote. Why?
GERALD I imagine Chretien would have a better idea of his own intentions than I would -
RICHARD Well, he’s dead, so you are the best I have.
GERALD Dead?
RICHARD Beneath Glastonbury Abbey. What did he come here looking for?
GERALD It is said that this...Merlin predicted things. Some believe that when your father invaded Wales twenty years ago, passages were found among Merlin’s sayings foretelling the event. Allusions to the great Shipwreck of 1120 which brought on the anarchy, the...death of Thomas Beckett, as well as more...arcane predictions -
RICHARD You’re saying this Merlin...actually predicted things that came to pass?
ROBERT But those prophecies are well over seven hundred years old...
GERALD Sire, before we get carried away ourselves, it must be said that the “Merlin prophecies” are notoriously unreliable, the authorship dubious, likely written quite recently, breathing forth, as they do, the most intense hatred of the Norman invader. Certainly, the ones about Thomas Beckett are unlikely to have been -
RICHARD I wish to see them! That should be enough for you.
ROBERT They can’t all be forgeries.
GERALD Oh, some of them are certainly authentic in age. 45.
RICHARD What about the person himself? This Merlin fellow? Made up by fanciful Welshmen as well?
Pause.
GERALD No, Sire. Merlin was as real as you or I.
RICHARD Who was he?
GERALD A madman.
RICHARD A madman sought by kings to tell the future.
GERALD Yes. He was a prophet. Some say he was the son of the Lucifer himself. And his powers came at a great cost. For in battle, he went mad with terror, fleeing into the forest. It is said that his prophecies came from this madness.
GERALD takes the pendant and looks closely at it.
He was the embodiment of the divine rule of nature in us all. When you’ve walked in the woods for many days and ne’er seen another man...the wild, the elemental, the chthonic being of ancient origin takes over. Dark, alien, terrifying, the horned leader of a disembodied troop of spirits whom Christians later came to identify with the Devil himself.
He puts the pendant down. It exists in all of us.
ROBERT and RICHARD look at each other.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 11: THE CEDARS OF GOD, LEBANON - JUNE, 1190
In darkness we hear a voice, distant and far away.
COUNT HERMANN (VOICE) Stand behind me, boy. We’ll find our way out of this. 46.
WOLFRAM (VOICE) What is he - what is he saying?
WOLFRAM appears, dressed again as a Crusader. He sees FATIMA.
WOLFRAM Fatima?
They look at each other...and then she rushes at him with her sword! He parries with his own! Wait!
He strikes back at her! The fighting is fierce, and then...he knocks her sword from her hand and pierces her through the torso. She falls to her knees. No...
FATIMA Wolfram...
WOLFRAM No!
Suddenly, the darkness dissipates.
Abeautiful cedar forest appears.
WOLFRAM enters, with a walking stick and a pack. He’s dressed as a simple traveler. After a bit of silent walking, he’s surprised to discover that he’s been joined at his side by a fellow traveler.
PEREDUR Hello.
WOLFRAM Oh! Hello.
PEREDUR Don’t be afraid. I’m a pilgrim too.
WOLFRAM I didn’t realize this was road was well traveled. 47.
PEREDUR It’s not. You’re not traveling alone, are you?
Pause.
WOLFRAM No.
PEREDUR smiles.
PEREDUR Good. It can be dangerous. Impressive trees, aren’t they? Cedar.
WOLFRAM They’re very tall.
PEREDUR Well, they’re very old. They’ve been telling stories about this forest for a long time. A long, long time.
WOLFRAM They’re beautiful.
PEREDUR You say that now. When it gets dark? Well, I’m just glad I found someone to walk with.
WOLFRAM I’m hoping to reach the coast by then.
PEREDUR Oh, yes? Where are you and companions bound?
Pause.
WOLFRAM Actually, I lied. I’m alone.
PEREDUR Ah. I see. My name is Peredur.
WOLFRAM Mine is...uh. Parzival. 48.
PEREDUR Well! Parzival and Peredur. You know, I find I have a bit more spring in my step when I have a traveling companion.
WOLFRAM I’ve been slowing down. I’ve not been sleeping well lately.
PEREDUR Bad dreams? Or perhaps dreams you don’t yet understand.
Silence.
You know, the great hero Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu came to this very forest once upon a time. Do you know them?
WOLFRAM No.
PEREDUR He was a real king. And after he died, he was worshipped as a god. And then they told stories about him. Most of them are lost now.
WOLFRAM I’ve never heard of him.
PEREDUR Well, he’s been dead for 4,000 years, so it’s no wonder. As they walked, Gilgamesh and his companion talked of life and love. They were great friends. In fact, their meeting was preordained, for Gilgamesh had dreamed of a star that had fallen from heaven, and he later realized the star in his dream was the friend he was fated to meet.
WOLFRAM Why did they come here?
PEREDUR To slay a great evil called Humbaba. ‘His voice is the Deluge/His speech is fire/His breath is death.’
WOLFRAM What happened to them?
PEREDUR Gilgamesh’s friend guided him, built him a House for Dreaming, and each dream showed him how to defeat the monster. When he arrived, he cut down the forest, for he had learned in his dream that it was the key to this great evil’s power. 49.
WOLFRAM He cut down all of it?
PEREDUR And then he used the trees to build his city. The Sumerians called this power of Humbaba’s his ni-te, or ‘self.’ His light. Without his powers, he was helpless. He begged Gilgamesh for mercy. Gilgamesh almost relented, but his friend, Enkidu, whispered in his ear: ‘finish him, slay him, do away with his power.’ Humbaba was crying now. ‘Finish him, slay him, do away with his power.’ And then...Gilgamesh killed the monster. And then the light went out.
Silence.
WOLFRAM And Gilgamesh was... the hero? In this story?
PEREDUR Well, the day was saved. A new city was built, a better one. It was constructed with Humbaba’s light, contained as it was in the trees.
WOLFRAM looks up at the vast forest.
WOLFRAM The forest seems to have recovered...
PEREDUR Yes. Peace and order were reestablished. The monster was slain. The heroes returned triumphant. Or that’s what Gilgamesh and Enkidu seemed to expect when they went to visit Enlil, lord of heaven and king of the gods. They carried with them the head of the monster, and they kissed the earth before the mighty God. Curiously, though, instead of congratulating them, the God was angry: they had killed his own servant, His son! He punished then, and then the high god transferred Humbaba’s remaining “Light” to other forces in the earth: the flooding river, the beasts, the mountain, the air...the world around us. He created a new world from their folly.
Pause.
WOLFRAM What does it mean? Were they in the wrong?
PEREDUR I don’t know! Perhaps! Or perhaps the new world, the one we walk upon exists thanks to their sacrifice. 50.
WOLFRAM Or maybe it’s just a story.
PEREDUR Yes, more than likely. Still, the forest of Humbaba, the great cedars...feel so real. Don’t they? A tragic world where good intentions produce their opposite: a world beyond even good and evil.
WOLFRAM There’s something almost...familiar about the story....
PEREDUR Well, it was a popular tale in its day. A clever hero, defeating a monster but unleashing an unexpected calamity upon himself! From Babylon it spread west to the Hittites who lived here in those days and who embraced it for its... local interest. They brought it further west a thousand years later, to Greece, where it took... other forms. Humbaba became the fierce Cyclops and Gilgamesh became Odysseus.
Pause.
Why, it even informed the Israelites, who in Babylon began to write down their Scriptures, for after Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem and driven them into exile, they began to whisper the name of an Adversary...
WOLFRAM What do you mean?
PEREDUR Well, who is the monster of the Old Testament, but Satan?
WOLFRAM But Satan fell to earth when it was created. He was in Eden. How could a story be older than that?
PEREDUR There are trees here older than those stories, my friend.
After a moment, WOLFRAM looks at PEREDUR.
WOLFRAM I’m headed for the city of Tyre. Would you like to join me?
LIGHTS SHIFT. 51.
SCENE 12: LONDON, ENGLAND - JUNE, 1190
JOHN walks through the streets of London, followed by FATIMA and BERENGARIA. It is a busy and fast- growing city.
BERENGARIA What a remarkable place this London is! Jesters and jugglers! Musicians! And such fascinating...smells!
FATIMA It is rather ripe. Are you sure this...ally of yours is here?
JOHN Of course! And I know The Wolf will be desperate to help!
FATIMA The Wolf?
He knocks on a door. A debonair man with a thin mustache opens it.
JOHN Hello Fulk! Care for a game of chess?
FULK Hello. So good to see you.
The man punches JOHN in the face. He goes down into the mud. FULK laughs.
BERENGARIA and FATIMA help JOHN up.
FULK Oh, hello there.
BERENGARIA Why did you do that, Mr. Wolf? Don’t you know who this is?
FULK reaches down and grabs JOHN’s arm to help him,
FULK Let’s see...Richard And I had all sorts of names for him growing up. Prince Bluntsword, Duke Softblade...Landless John - 52.
JOHN Prince John.
FULK (laughing heartily) That’s the funniest one of all!
JOHN We are not children anymore, Fulk And your annoying laugh still sounds like the howl of a deranged wolf. You know, I could have you hanged for that.
FULK But you won’t!
JOHN You received my message?
FULK Yes, but I’m not sure I understood it. What is Richard doing in Wales? I thought he was leaving on Crusade.
JOHN He is. Which means the time for your... audience is now.
FULK He hasn’t listened to me yet. What makes you think he’ll start now? (to FATIMA and BEREGNARIA) I’m Baron Fulk Fitz Warin.
JOHN This is the Princess Berengaria of Navarre. The King’s betrothed.
FULK The King is engaged?
BERENGARIA We haven’t actually met yet.
JOHN But we’re very eager to see the young lovers do so before Richard departs! And I was thinking...given the location of your family estate in Whittington, we might arrange...a little party to see the King off. What do you say? 53.
FULK That I ought to punch you again. Your family’s the reason I’m not allowed to go there.
JOHN But what if you could.
FULK There are guards.
JOHN I’m the Prince!
FULK thinks for a moment.
FULK I don’t know about this, John. There’s something...off. And who are you?
FATIMA I am Kyot the Provencal.
FULK I thought you looked familiar. I was in attendance when you sang for the barons on Ascension Day. Your powers of prophecy are remarkable, only outshined by your talents with music.
FATIMA Thank you. Actually, it’s why I’m here now. For if what I’ve seen is true, the King is immense danger.
FULK You don’t say.
JOHN So you see why we might want to find him?
FULK Indeed.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 13: WALES - JUNE 1190
RICHARD and ROBERT are in a library, pouring over dusty old manuscripts. GERALD comes in with a scroll. 54.
GERALD A, uh, message for you, Sire.
RICHARD (standing up suddenly) Oh, thank god! I can’t read another word of Latin. My eyes are falling out of my skull.
GERALD You know, sire, I’m pleasantly surprised. I didn’t realize any of our leaders were literate! Have you...discovered what Master Chretien came here to look for?
ROBERT Not yet. But we’re close.
RICHARD Close! I’m supposed to leave on Crusade next week and I’m in a dusty old library solving a murder mystery!
He opens the scroll and reads through it. Then he crumbles it up in his hand.
RICHARD She escaped.
ROBERT What’s that, sire?
GERALD Does his highness have a reply?
RICHARD Tell my brother we will depart shortly.
GERALD goes.
John wants us to go to Whittington. Fulk Fitz Warrin’s old estate. He’s having trouble, he says. He needs my help for everything!
RICHARD puts his head down on the table.
Kyot is there. He says mother released her. That woman has become too soft-hearted in her old age. Kyot is a criminal and an assassin and - 55.
ROBERT And a dreadful poet. Stay here in Wales. We’ll keep digging through this library and put Kyot completely out of your -
RICHARD Fatima.
ROBERT What?
RICHARD That’s her true name.
ROBERT You mustn’t let what happened between you affect your chance at future happiness. Yes, she lied to you. She’s a Saracen. It’s in her nature.
RICHARD It’s not that...
ROBERT What, then? (horrified) Were you in love with her, Sire?
RICHARD Love? No! What? You have been reading too many of your own poems, Robert! Love! I’m - God, look at that, just speaking her name has confused my intentions all over again! I put her in a dungeon for God’s sake! Just like -
Pause.
Just like my father did my mother.
ROBERT Sire?
RICHARD Robert...do you think...do you suppose my father was a bad man?
ROBERT He was a king.
RICHARD That’s not much of an answer. 56.
ROBERT Well...you are a king too.
RICHARD You needn’t fear me.
ROBERT You put your last poet in a dungeon, sire.
RICHARD When I was younger, I wanted so terribly to be different from my father. But am I? So different? I could have been happy with her, poet. Whatever that word means. Instead, I’m pouring over old manuscripts in the dead of night with the likes of you.
ROBERT Oh, I’m not such bad company, am I?
RICHARD She said the world would end if I ever reached Jerusalem. Without her, though... (sighs) ...it feels to me as though it’s ended already.
ROBERT You could be a poet yourself, sire.
RICHARD Do you think so?
ROBERT Oh, certainly. If it’s bothering you so much, you could always seek a reckoning with her.
RICHARD Ridiculous! She’s a traitor and a Saracen. Treachery is all she knows. Always look to the horizon, eh poet. Never look back. I just wish I had a sign! Something to tell me what I should do!
ROBERT’s attention has gone to the manuscript he’s had open.
It’s like my father always said on the eve of a - what? What is it? Pay attention when I’m -
ROBERT That’s interesting. 57.
RICHARD What is?
ROBERT Look here.
RICHARD holds a candle close to the page.
Careful, sire. It’s very old.
RICHARD What’s it say? Read it to me.
ROBERT “In the time of Arthur it was called the White Land and there King Arthur recovered his goodness and his valor, when he had lost all his chivalry and his virtue. Merlin says that in the White Land, a Wolf will come and make his home in the White Tower. And out of the White Land, he shall come and have such great force and virtue. But we know that Merlin said it for the Wolf is...”
ROBERT trails off. He flips a few pages.
RICHARD Well, go on, Poet! Who’s the wolf?
ROBERT Hm. These pages...they’re stuck together with wax. Hand me a dagger.
RICHARD hands him a dagger and ROBERT carefully slices at the wax.
RICHARD Careful!
ROBERT I am being careful!
He gets the pages unstuck. RICHARD lets out a breath.
ROBERT “The Wolf is the rightful keeper of the Graal. Thus does the Graal tell us.”
RICHARD What? It doesn’t tell us anything! The Graal speaks now? Who’s the wolf? 58.
ROBERT No, sire. It tells us everything.
RICHARD What are you talking about?
ROBERT Don’t you see? The Graal. The Grail. It’s the object from Chretien’s poem! It’s what Chretien was looking for before he died! He wasn’t looking for an end for his poem, he was looking for the Graal, I mean the Grail itself! And it’s close!
RICHARD Well, what is this White Land? Not on any maps I’ve seen! I would know - I would have taxed them by now and -
ROBERT starts pulling out some old maps from one of the other books he has open.
ROBERT Yes, I thought so...
RICHARD Where is it?
ROBERT The White Land’s called Whittington now.
RICHARD Whittington!
Pause.
ROBERT I think you have found the sign you were looking for, sire.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 14: TYRE, KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM - JUNE, 1190
A tavern in Tyre. A man sits at a table. Nearby, a group of bawdy soldiers toast each other and are generally rowdy.
PEREDUR A year away! Why, your mother will hardly recognize you! You must be rather excited to get home. 59.
WOLFRAM doesn’t answer. Well, aren’t you?
WOLFRAM She died.
PEREDUR But how would you know? You’ve been gone all this time...
WOLFRAM I...I just know.
PEREDUR You are a remkarable person, Parzival.
WOLFRAM Even if she is alive...I don’t know how I could face her.
Several soldiers enter. WOLFRAM seems to shrink backward into his booth.
PEREDUR Oh. Oh, I see. You left under less than...official circumstances.
Suddenly, a burst of excitement from the table nearby. The SOLDIERS toast and roar with laughter.
SOLDIER 1 To Acre!
SOLDIER 2 To Acre!
They clink their mugs and drink. PEREDUR pours wine into WOLFRAM’s CUP.
PEREDUR You feel guilt. Shame.
WOLFRAM I feel I’ve abandoned them.
PEREDUR But you never really believed in their cause. 60.
WOLFRAM How did you know that?
PEREDUR holds out the cup to WOLFRAM.
There was a time I did...
PEREDUR Yes. But you met someone. She turned your mind, sent you east with a cause in mind. Tried to work against your own army in secret. Your friends. Your emperor. And for what? For whom? Not your mother...
WOLFRAM takes the cup. There’s more cheering from the soldiers.
WOLFRAM They’ll be dead before winter.
PEREDUR And you’ll be ...somewhere. Not home, I don’t think. Where?
WOLFRAM (WOLFRAM stands suddenly) How do you know so much about me? Who are you?!
The bar turns its attention to WOLFRAM.
PEREDUR Calm yourself, friend. You’re drawing unwanted attention.
WOLFRAM sits down.
SOLDIER 3 To King Philip Augustus and King Richard!
PEREDUR You have a friend in this King Richard’s court. She’s the one who talked you into all of this.
WOLFRAM Yes. 61.
PEREDUR Will you go to her? Confess your love to the enemy of what all these doomed men, your allies, stand for? Are you certain she’s waiting for you?
WOLFRAM I...there was a time I could speak to her. Even though we were far apart.
PEREDUR What happened?
WOLFRAM I don’t know. It’s like we’re...blocked, somehow.
PEREDUR You worry for her.
WOLFRAM Yes.
PEREDUR I can only hope she feels the same way.
WOLFRAM What am I to do?
PEREDUR There is a way to save all of them. Your friend the Saracen girl. Your fellow Christians. The earth itself.
WOLFRAM How?
PEREDUR I will help you. But we must join them.
WOLFRAM slowly stands up. He walks over to the table of soldiers.
WOLFRAM You are sailing for Acre?
SOLDIER 1 Yes.
WOLFRAM Do you have room enough in your ship for two more? 62.
The soldiers look toward WOLFRAM’s table.
SOLDIER 2 Of course. But there’s only one of you, isn’t there?
WOLFRAM looks back towards his table. PEREDUR is gone.
WOLFRAM Oh. Yes. I mean just me.
BLACKOUT.
END ACT ONE 63.
ACT TWO
SCENE 1: ELSEWHERE, ELSEWHEN
A subterranean cavern with a large pool of water. Above it, a mural with a figure standing in a cup of stars (looking much like constellation CRATER), holding both a white sphere and a cup. Beneath the figure is a Latin phrase. ‘Tempus fit Tractus.’
A figure enters the room cautiously, holding a sword and a torch. He looks at the mural and then walks over to the pool and dips his hand in it. Then he sees it.
A skeleton is sprawled in the corner, whatever clothing it was wearing long turned to tatters. In its skeletal hands...the white stone, glowing, covering the entire cavern with a ghostly, blue light.
The figure bends down and touches the skeleton’s skull, which comes loose in his hand. He takes it and puts it in his satchel. And then he reaches down to grab hold of the stone. As he touches it, it emits a low hum and the light seems to grow brighter...
And then WOLFRAM shoots awake. We are no longer in the cavern. WOLFRAM is in a cot, inside a tent. He stands up and he walks outside.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 2: ACRE, AYYUBID TERRITORY - JUNE, 1190
Outside are torches and thousands of tents and siege towers. The bright moon shines over the calm harbor. Smoke billows from castle walls. This the Port of Acre. PEREDUR is waiting for WOLFRAM as he leaves his tent.
PEREDUR You dreamt of King Henry.
WOLFRAM He’s the one who found the stone, didn’t he? 64.
PEREDUR Yes. But by the time he was king, he had lost it. He wasn’t worthy of it.
WOLFRAM Why?
PEREDUR He was a small, petty man. Rest assured he never stopped looking for it until the day he died.
WOLFRAM and PEREDUR walk through the camps at Acre.
You almost forget there’s a war on.
WOLFRAM We lose two hundred men a day to starvation and fever.
PEREDUR I said almost.
WOLFRAM The emperor’s son marches here with what remains of his army, but what good will seven hundred men do? There isn’t enough food for the men already here.
PEREDUR They will mutiny before that and attack Saladin, whether their leaders order it or not. The crusaders are trapped between the ocean and the city. It will be a slaughter on both sides.
WOLFRAM Desertion would be better.
PEREDUR With what ships, Parzival? They have no choice but to stay. The sergeants and constables goad them on. Madness has overcome good advice, impulse over reason.
ROGER, a soldier, waves to WOLFRAM.
ROGER Hey! Parzival!
WOLFRAM Good morning, Roger. 65.
ROGER Tell me again about the reinforcements that are coming!
WOLFRAM looks at PEREDUR.
WOLFRAM Seven hundred men. From the Emperor Frederick’s army.
ROGER walks over to a rampart and cups his hands to yell over it.
ROGER You hear that! I told you reinforcements are on their way and you didn’t believe it! Now here it is straight from the horse’s mouth! You’d better tell Saladin and then start running!
WOLFRAM What is he doing?
PEREDUR The enemy is only a hundred yards away.
ROGER returns.
WOLFRAM Why did you tell him that?
ROGER Because he didn’t believe me before. There’s no harm. They’ve learned French, some of them. Practically neighbors, by now.
WOLFRAM They’re so close...
ROGER You stay in Acre long enough, you’ll make some strange acquaintances too. (shouts over the rampart) Hey Grair! How many reinforcements showed up for you yesterday?
WOLFRAM Does he tell you?
ROGER Sometimes. Actually, I owe this one money. Friend of mine lost a wrestling match with one of the Muslims, and became his prisoner. 66.
He said he’d let us have him back if we could pay two dinars. Well, I’d just spent twelve dinars on an egg and didn’t have any money, so he let me ransom him back in an archery contest.
There’s some yelling from the rampart.
Yes, you’ll get your money! Relax!
ROGER goes over to the wall. WOLFRAM and PEREDUR are left alone.
PEREDUR ‘A world in ruins. For right and wrong change places; everywhere So many wars, so many shapes of crime Confront us; no due honor attends the plow. The fields, bereft of tillers, are all unkempt...... throughout the world Impious War is raging.’
WOLFRAM What is that?
PEREDUR Virgil.
WOLFRAM What can I do?
PEREDUR I think you know.
WOLFRAM looks down at his hand. He has the stone in his palm. It glows.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 3: THE ROAD TO JAFFA, AYYUBID TERRITORY - JUNE, 1190
WOLFRAM walks through the desert, the Mediterranean coast on his right. PEREDUR appears before him.
WOLFRAM Are you not frightened of being seen? 67.
PEREDUR Why would I be?
WOLFRAM We are just two, and they are thousands and we are walking towards the most heavily defended place on earth!
PEREDUR But you can affect what they see. And there are other ways of making sure we are not reported.
WOLFRAM Other ways?
PEREDUR You’ve killed before, and with just a sword. There is no stopping you, holding that in your hand.
The lights slowly change. They no longer seem to be walking in a desert.
WOLFRAM I don’t even know what it is.
PEREDUR With the stone, time becomes space.
WOLFRAM But what is it?
Pause. The lights shift and the blackness has transported WOLFRAM and PEREDUR to somewhere else. It’s green, but dark and windswept and cold.
PEREDUR We were sent to find it, my companions and I. Bedwyr, Gwalchmei, Cai, and myself. We warriors of the King’s court rode out of his castle, and turned our horses’ heads towards the west that was yet dark and closed with night. The land went up and down, ran out in bridges over shallow rivers of summer and into the gorges that had been great rivers in the time before man.
They look out and see a figure on a horse. 68.
The hills came, and the woods, and one by one the days and nights fled over us like clouds and were gone. And one by one we separated from each other. What a company we had been. We went away by our differing paths, into the west, and were gone from each other, and from the country of our King.
The seasons change.
I slept by night in ruined chapels, under tall hills, beneath the eaves of forests; or else in byres. And the land flowed by, the hills and high mountains, and sometimes the sea, glimpsed white-blue in the cold, and purple-green in the months of the sun. By night I dreamed of it. I dreamed I came and put my hand upon it. Sometimes it burned and again it might be icy. Or it changed to water and slipped away, or into a snake and wrapped about my arm and stared into my eyes. But I knew I would see it. And in the days I dreamed of it too, more and more, and it seemed to me that the more often it was there before my inner vision, the more certain I should be to come to it. As if...as If I gradually and carefully fashioned it myself, out of the air.
They see a castle in the distance.
My mind was filled with stories of mighty deeds of terror. Of Jason and his Argonauts who sought and found the Golden Fleece. Of Heracles. Of Alexander at the Gates of Paradise. I dreamed I was these men, and men far older, older than Gilgamesh, back and back into distant time, men who had sought a great prize and found it and brought it back into the earth. The earliest stories, the dreams of the first men and women to stand up and wonder about their place in the world.
They stop walking.
I don’t remember how I found it. But I did. Or it found me. Sometimes I dream it was Lucifer himself who handed it over. But I found it. In a cave.
They are in a dead land.
It was a slow, sore journey home, and I had been so long on my road, I had forgotten the way. But I was a traveller now, and it was all one to me. I yearned for home. My family. My wife. My king. But they were dreams, and I had grown used to loss.
He enters a familiar space.
When I reached my King’s country, I noticed a difference. The people were poor. Great houses had tumbled, dogs ran free. I rode to my King in a deepening twilight, but the lamps were extinguished, and the gardens gone to seed. 69.
He sees an empty throne.
I had returned too late. Everything I knew was gone. A waste land. War had come to my home. Disease. The kingdom had collapsed. I don’t know what became of my family. I left the earth, went seeking the place I had found the stone.
WOLFRAM Could you bring them back?
PEREDUR smiles at WOLFRAM.
PEREDUR I tried. Like Ezekiel’s vision, I thought to make the bones come alive again. And I made my wife walk again. I put sinews on her, made flesh grow, and covered her again with skin. But her new eyes looked at me without recognition and beg to return to the dust. I was alone and lost and I could never go home. I didn’t age and I didn’t die and so I thought to go on one final quest.
WOLFRAM Where?
PEREDUR To find God and beg him to explain why he allowed such misery to exist. What meaning there was in such loss! Where had the stone come from? Why had it come to me? I searched and searched and the centuries passed. More and more I retreated to the stone, to the cave where I found it. Sometimes I feel as though I have relived the birth and the death of this world 10,000 times, staring into the stone.
Once again, we see the dead waste land. And the tower that stands over.
WOLFRAM What is this place?
PEREDUR I created it. Shaped it with the stone. Lived here, slept here. Dreamed here. As I searched for God’s kingdom, I created my own, far away. I became a god as I searched for one. I thought He would object. I thought He would strike it down.
WOLFRAM It looks like its dying. 70.
PEREDUR It turns out it takes a lot of will to hold an entire world together. When I awoke from sleep, I would find my mountains had crumbled and oceans had drained. Empires had risen and fallen.
WOLFRAM There are people here? You created them?
PEREDUR There were.
WOLFRAM How did you make all of this? Did God show you how?
The lights go out.
PEREDUR (VOICE) In a way. One night, as I walked through ruins of a place I couldn’t even remember building, I begged for an answer. How had God done it! And then I was rewarded.
For a long moment we sit in the darkness...and then we see a flash of light, very far away.
I traveled forward so far, what was to come became what had been. The end was the beginning. I saw a vision. Of things no man was meant to see, to understand. Perhaps it was framed in a way to help me, as I watched events which took billion of centuries, take place in mere moments.
Something falls to earth...a glowing stone. It lands in perfectly still fluid.
In the sky shines a single star.
It was the beginning. Of everything.
WOLFRAM The stone?
PEREDUR It came here and it was the spark that brought life. Creation. Everything we know.
WOLFRAM Six thousand years ago... 71.
Pause.
PEREDUR A lot longer than that, my friend. Emerging from a bubble of foam in the primal sea, a being born from His spittle, arising from the place where He thew his wand into primordial waters, His shadow in the waters.
WOLFRAM Whose? God’s?
PEREDUR and WOLFRAM walk to the edge of the water.
PEREDUR In his youth, he visited all the regions of the infinite, from the deepest abyss to the throne of invisible eternity. But his privilege sparked rebellious thoughts in him. He saw all of creation and he began to think of it as his. He began to wear a crown, embedded with beautiful jewels. When the archangel Michael struck him, knocking him from the heavens, a stone fell from this crown, landing on earth.
WOLFRAM holds out the glowing stone.
Lapis exilis is the stone’s name. The stone of the exile. The Light Bringer.
WOLFRAM looks at it with horror.
WOLFRAM But you said -
PEREDUR Humbaba. Satan. Lucifer. He has had many names. Many serve him today, even if they don’t admit it. Most of the Holy Church belongs to him. A majority of princes. Scholars serve him. Poets. The commanders of armies and navies serve at his altar. The vaunted soldiers against the infidel? They serve him too. Rarely have so many been in his service.
WOLFRAM We serve God.
PEREDUR When Satan began his exile, he was alone on this world and he shouted in remorse, “Have patience with me, I will return everything to you!” But nobody heard his shouts. He was completely alone on this new world. 72.
WOLFRAM No...
PEREDUR Satan established his residence here and he ordered the rest of the angels who had followed him to shape the Earth. He took what was left of his crown and with half of it formed the sun, and with the other half, the moon.
The sun appears. And the moon.
WOLFRAM This isn’t true...
PEREDUR How do you explain the many tortures man suffers? How can the fires and floods, the wars that cause the death of so many people be ascribed to God? A God who is used by all sides to justify destruction? And how could a perfect God give man a body whose ultimate destiny is death after having been tortured by all types of evil? “All these things I will give you if you fall down and worship me.” The devil said that to Christ in the desert. How could the devil offer it if it did not already belong to him? And how could it belong to him if he wasn’t its creator?
WOLFRAM I don’t know.
PEREDUR I do. We are like that stone because we are not God’s creatures.
WOLFRAM Where is God then?
Pause.
PEREDUR He doesn’t even know we exist.
The lights shift again. PEREDUR and WOLFRAM are seemingly back in our reality. They walk through an ancient city.
WOLFRAM Where are we now? 73.
PEREDUR The Mount of Olives, the Dome of the Rock, the Buraq Wall, Al Aqsa. The Sepulchre.
WOLFRAM Jerusalem! How?
PEREDUR Time becomes space.
There’s some murmuring nearby.
WOLFRAM We’re being noticed.
PEREDUR Yes, you are.
WOLFRAM What do I do?
PEREDUR Go somewhere else.
WOLFRAM Where?
PEREDUR You know why you came here.
The lights shift again. A dark room with a bed in it. Moonlight pours into the room and we can that there is a figure sleeping in the bed.
WOLFRAM Who is that?
PEREDUR Righteous of the Faith, father of the victorious, son of Job. Salah al-Din. The Kurd.
WOLFRAM That’s Saladin?! We have to get out here!
PEREDUR Why? He is sleeping. 74.
WOLFRAM And what if he wakes up?
PEREDUR You can make sure he never does again.
Pause.
WOLFRAM Kill him?! I don’t want to kill him!
PEREDUR You could end this pointless conflict right here! The suffering, the death. You. Alone. Could end it.
WOLFRAM looks at SALADIN.
WOLFRAM Why do you care?
PEREDUR I want to help you.
WOLFRAM looks at the stone. It glows in the room. He pulls his sword from his belt...and accidentally drops the cup! It clatters on the floor!
SALADIN shoots up out of bed! He yells in Arabic and WOLFRAM starts to back up.
WOLFRAM No, no, it’s all right! I’m leaving! Right now! Don’t -
And then someone hits him on the head from behind. WOLFRAM falls to the floor. Over him stands a man. He walks over to the cup on the floor and picks it up.
The man is IBN RUSHD.
LIGHTS SHIFT. 75.
SCENE 4: WHITTINGTON, ENGLAND - JUNE, 1190
An arrow strikes a man shaped target with a crown on its head directly in the heart.
JOHN claps. FULK scowls. FATIMA and BERENGARIA watch it all awkwardly.
JOHN Well done! Well done, indeed.
FULK I was aiming for the crown.
FATIMA Keep many king-shaped targets in your castle, do you?
FULK A few.
BERENGARIA How did you all come to know each other so well? No offense intended, but -
FULK I’m not royalty?
BERENGARIA Well...no!
JOHN He came to live with my family during a time when there was...relative peace amongst us. When we, at least in passing, resembled a family.
FATIMA But why? (to FULK) You’re not a relative.
FULK My father sent me to the King’s court to serve as a squire so that I might someday come home to receive my inheritance with some skills with which to wield it. It’s the matter of that inheritance -
He shoots another arrow. It strikes the crotch. I wish to discuss. 76.
BERENGARIA What is it?
FULK This tower. Among other things.
JOHN Lucky I’m around to get you in.
FULK It’s absurd! It’s been in my family for centuries, older than the village around it, even.
FATIMA Why aren’t you allowed it?
FULK looks at JOHN.
JOHN Well, don’t look at me! I’m sure father had his reasons.
FULK What are your brother’s reasons, then?
JOHN I haven’t the foggiest idea. How much of the Saladin tithe have you paid?
FULK breaks an arrow over his knee.
FULK None of it, because I can’t touch my inheritance!
JOHN Well! There you have it. Unless...
FULK What?
JOHN Just... entertaining the notion that father may have had...other reasons to lock you out.
FATIMA What other reasons?
JOHN (to FULK) Well? 77.
Pause.
FULK There’s an old family legend that there exists...a chamber beneath the crypt. That there’s an object down there that was used to tell the future. Much like you and your abilities, Sir Kyot.
BERENGARIA Well, go on! Tell us! I love a good story.
JOHN Something to kill the time before Richard arrives?
FULK looks at them, puts his bow down and sits.
FULK This castle was built on the foundation of an old Roman fort, but it’s older even than that. Family legend’s long held that the Fitz Warins are directly descended from a disciple of Joseph of Arimathea, who came to this island after the crucifixion with a ...relic.
FATIMA What kind of relic?
FULK I don’t know. But he founded the very first Christian Church in England with it in his hand.
BERENGARIA How extraordinary! What a holy site that must be! Where is this church?
FULK You’re standing in it. Bron was the disciple’s name, but that’s all we know of him. The record has gotten a little murky after a thousand years.
BERENGARIA You have doubts? If I were connected to Christ in such a way, why, I’d shout it to the heavens! Though I suppose if I were connected to Christ, the heavens would already know...
FULK History and legend have become so mixed in my family, it’s impossible to say what’s true or not. Some say King Arthur’s knight Peredur was a Fitz Warrin, though I have my doubts. 78.
BERENGARIA King Arthur!
FULK Bran is also the name of a local demigod who was worshiped in this region centuries before the Christians got here. Guarded a sacred cauldron, or so it’s believed, that granted entry into...
Pause.
FATIMA What?
FULK The Celts called it Avalon. The Other World.
FATIMA Other world?
There’s a sound from nearby, as of a door opening.
FATIMA What was that?
RICHARD (OFF) Fitz Warrin! Show yourself! I know you’re in here!
FULK It’s Richard!
BERENGARIA Richard!
JOHN Oh goodie! Shall we go greet my dear brother?
FULK Yes. Let’s.
FULK picks up his bow.
JOHN Princess? Why don’t you come? We’ll hang back and...surprise him!
BERENGARIA Yes, fine, but...where did Sir Kyot go? 79.
Lights shift.
FATIMA skulks down a staircase with a torch in hand. She reaches the bottom of the stairs and lights another torch before looking to see if anything is hidden in the darkness.
BERENGARIA Sir Kyot?
FATIMA yells! Sorry! Sorry.
FATIMA Don’t do that to me! I’m holding a torch!
BERENGARIA I’m terribly sorry. But I noticed you had gone and...oh! Oh, you’re looking for the cauldron!
FATIMA What are you doing down here? Don’t you want to meet your fiancee?
BERENGARIA No.
FATIMA What?
BERENGARIA Now that he’s here, I’m almost afraid to.
FATIMA Afraid?
BERENGARIA It’s as though all the many paths of my future have come together, and now there’s only one ahead of me. Oh, what a dreadful thought, to find all of life’s possibilities...gone. What if he doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like him? What kind of person throws someone as good, as noble as you into a dungeon?
FATIMA I am sure...I am sure your experience will differ from mine. 80.
BERENGARIA You feel it too, though, don’t you? A sadness that our adventure is over? Will you - will you sing me one of your songs, Sir Kyot? Before we part?
FATIMA M’lady this really isn’t the time for -
BERENGARIA kisses her right on the mouth. They pull away and look at each other.
BERENGARIA Oh. I went and did it, didn’t I?
FATIMA M’Lady!
BERENGARIA Wait. No. I have something to say to you. Kyot, it’s time we ended this charade.
FATIMA Princess...there’s no charade here, I swear it.
BERENGARIA I know you keep a secret in your heart and I’m here now to tell you that I know what it is and you can share it with me!
FATIMA You-you do?
BERENGARIA Why, it’s just like the love stories the old troubadours used to sing about! Declare your love for me and we can take the next stage of our courtly love affair together!
FATIMA Love affair! Princess, I, of course, admire you a great deal but -
BERENGARIA turns away from FATIMA with a dramatic gesture.
BERENGARIA Oh, Sir Kyot! I must reject your declaration of passionate devotion!
FATIMA But I didn’t - 81.
BERENGARIA Virtue demands it!
FATIMA Have you gone mad?
BERENGARIA Now, the next step of courtly love is a renewal of wooing.
FATIMA Wooing?
BERENGARIA Yes! With oaths of virtue and eternal fealty!
FATIMA Oh. Uh...
BERENGARIA puts the back of her hand to her forehead.
BERENGARIA Oh! Oh! Oh!
FATIMA What now?
BERENGARIA I am moaning, Sir Kyot, for death approaches from unsatisfied desire! Oh, I am sick with love!
FATIMA Sick? Hold on, perhaps the King travels with a surgeon in tow -
BERENGARIA No! The only cure is to win my heart with heroic deeds of valor. Only then can we consummate our secret passion!
FATIMA M’Lady, you are engaged to the King and besides that -
BERENGARIA Yes, yes, of course there will be adventures and subterfuge to avoid detection but our love will carry the day. You may kiss me now. 82.
FATIMA This is completely -
BERENGARIA grabs FATIMA and kisses her again and then pushes her away dramatically.
BERENGARIA No! No! I can’t!
FATIMA M’lady!
BERENGARIA Not now! It’s too soon!
FATIMA Princess!
BERENGARIA I can’t -
FATIMA Listen to me!
BERENGARIA Yes?
FATIMA There’s something you should know.
BERENGARIA (crestfallen) Oh. Oh no. You don’t feel the same. Oh. Oh no.
She backs up and leans against a wall. Her elbow hits a stone and suddenly a secret passage opens up.
They look at each other.
Lights shift.
RICHARD and ROBERT have entered the foyer. The tapestry covers the entrance to the crypt. 83.
RICHARD Fitz Warrin! Where are you hiding! I say again, Fulk, come out now!
FULK enters, holding his bow, followed by JOHN.
FULK There’s no need to wake the whole village up, Richard. I am here. You are here. Let us sort out our differences.
JOHN Hello, brother.
RICHARD What’s all this now? John, is he giving you a hard time?
JOHN He claims he can’t pay the Saladin Tithe because father has put a lien on his inheritance.
FULK Oh, don’t act so innocent! You know perfectly well! You wouldn’t even speak to me last month!
RICHARD I was a little tied up. Anyway, I had to speak to my barons. My real barons. The ones with estates.
FULK I have an estate and you are standing in it!
RICHARD Actually, it’s mine.
FULK nocks an arrow into his bow and points it at RICHARD.
FULK Tell me again I’m not a real baron.
RICHARD This castle was seized by my father. It does not belong to you and never has.
FULK I believe the records might disagree with you on that!
RICHARD The records be damned! My father was king and so am I! 84.
JOHN You know, if I were King -
RICHARD Quiet, John. Do you have it or not?
FULK Have what? My estate? Clearly not, as you well know!
RICHARD The Graal!
FULK Graal?
RICHARD Graal! ‘The wolf is the rightful keeper of the Graal!’
FULK Yes, wolves do rightfully keep a growl, though in my experience they generally keep away from civilized man if given -
RICHARD No! Not growl! Graal! Graal!
FULK I have no idea what you’re on about, Richard.
RICHARD You will call me King, or so help me, I’ll -
ROBERT pulls RICHARD away.
ROBERT Sire, perhaps antagonizing him is not the right approach.
RICHARD He’s antagonizing me!
ROBERT Perhaps a change of approach is in order. (to FULK) Sir, do you recall a time about six years past, when a certain poet might have come to this castle? 85.
FULK You mean Chretien de Troyes.
ROBERT You remember?
FULK Yes, of course I remember. I was with him.
RICHARD What do you mean you were with him?
FULK My time as a squire in your home had ended, and your father and the poet had business in England, so I accompanied them here. In particular, it stands in my memory because it was on that night when your father disinherited me.
RICHARD Well, then you must have done something to annoy him!
ROBERT Sire.
FULK If you must know, it had nothing to do with me at all. It was a matter between my father and yours.
RICHARD And what was the matter?
FULK I was hoping you could tell me!
ROBERT Sir Fulk. Think for a moment. Do you know what became of Chretien?
Pause.
FULK I never saw the man again after that night.
ROBERT Sire, do you know what this means? Your father was the last person to see - 86.
RICHARD That’s unproven, poet. And while we’re on the subject of mysteries, brother, what were you hoping to accomplish here?
JOHN Well, the issue of the estate seemed like it warranted attention before your imminent departure...
RICHARD grabs JOHN by the collar.
RICHARD I’m going to be very annoyed if there’s any more plotting while I’m away on Crusade. Do you understand me? Now: where’s Sir Kyot.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 5: JERUSALEM, AYYUBID TERRITORY - JUNE, 1190
WOLFRAM is thrown into a room with a bag over his head. A figure stands in shadow at the other end of the room, not looking at him.
WOLFRAM Hello? Who’s there? Why can’t I see? Listen, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding. I shouldn’t be here. I should be back in Acre with the army. Actually, I should be home and not in Outremer at all and certainly not in Saladin’s bedroom, which quite honestly, I have no idea how I ended up in anyway.
IBN RUSHD comes out of the shadows holding the cup.
IBN RUSHD Where did you get this?
WOLFRAM What? Get what? I can’t see. (blowing) I think there’s a hood on my head. Is there a hood on my head?
IBN RUSHD The cup you were carrying.
WOLFRAM Oh. That. You can have it, if you want. I don’t want it. It’s brought me nothing but trouble. 87.
IBN RUSHD You didn’t answer my question.
WOLFRAM A friend gave it to me.
IBN RUSHD pulls the hood from WOLFRAM’s head.
IBN RUSHD You know, you’re lucky you weren’t killed outright tonight. There are a number of men who’d still like to see that happen.
WOLFRAM You speak -
IBN RUSHD I speak a number of languages. What were you hoping to accomplish tonight?
WOLFRAM I thought...I thought I could end the war.
IBN RUSHD By killing the Sultan?
Silence.
WOLFRAM You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain it.
IBN RUSHD Try me.
WOLFRAM An invisible knight took me here through magic.
IBN RUSHD No, you’re right. I don’t believe it.
WOLFRAM Wait! The stone! Where is -
IBN RUSHD It’s in your bag. 88.
WOLFRAM blows out air. What is it?
WOLFRAM I don’t think you’d believe me about it anymore than you did the invisible knight.
IBN RUSHD Well, then this is a pointless conversation. I suppose I could turn you over to the men who wish to kill you...
WOLFRAM Why didn’t you?
IBN RUSHD looks at the cup.
IBN RUSHD Because this cup looks remarkably like one I used to own. What’s your name?
WOLFRAM Parzival.
IBN RUSHD What’s your real name?
WOLFRAM How do you know that’s not my real name?
IBN RUSHD Are they all idiots on your side of the war?
WOLFRAM Wolfram.
IBN RUSHD Where are you from, Wolfram?
WOLFRAM A village in Bavaria called Eschenbach.
Pause.
IBN RUSHD What did you say? 89.
WOLFRAM Eschenbach. It’s where I’m from. Do you know -
IBN RUSHD Who was your father?
WOLFRAM He - his name is...his name is Ulrich von Eschenbach. But I don’t know him. He left when I was...
IBN RUSHD takes the cup and walks over to a window. What?
IBN RUSHD Do you know Aristotle?
WOLFRAM Personally?
IBN RUSHD He said the past is fixed, it can’t be changed. But the future...well, the future doesn’t exist yet, so who can predict it? Chance, indefinite cause...you didn’t know your father?
WOLFRAM He left us. To come here.
A beat.
IBN RUSHD I will take you to him.
He turns around.
But first you must tell me what has become of Fatima. My daughter.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 6: GEHENNA, SOUTH OF JERUSALEM - JUNE, 1190
IBN RUSHD and WOLFRAM walk through a valley, lit only by the moon.
WOLFRAM She thinks you are dead. 90.
IBN RUSHD We had hoped to meet with the Pope. To keep this war from happening. That’s what got all of this started. We ran into trouble in Marseilles. By the time I’d escaped, I’d lost her. I looked, I waited, but she was gone. I didn’t know what had become of her.
WOLFRAM It’s not what I expected.
IBN RUSHD Gehenna? No, I thought the same thing when I first came here.
WOLFRAM Scripture makes it seem like an evil place. “It is better for you that one of the parts of your body perish, than for your whole body to go into Gehenna.”
IBN RUSHD Memories are long. They sacrificed children here in the days when the Canaanites worshipped Moloch. Even the name given for hell in Islam comes from this place. Jahannam from Gehenna.
Silence. It’s actually kind of soothing.
I’ve always found it rather peaceful.
WOLFRAM It is.
IBN RUSHD Here he is.
A simple cross sticks out of the sand. WOLFRAM goes to it and touches it.
WOLFRAM How did you know him?
IBN RUSHD It was my first visit to Jerusalem. I went to Al-Aqsa, where Muhammad had come on his Night Journey. The Christians had turned it into a stable for their horses. I kneeled down, facing south towards Mecca. “Allahu akbar.” Allahu Akbar. I began my prayer and I thought about history and about the Prophet and about why I had come all this way to pray inside a stable. Allahu Akbar. 91.
WOLFRAM looks at him curiously.
I had barely begun when a man grabbed me and pushed me into the dirt, faced me east and screamed at me, “Thus do we pray.” Some Templar knights rushed forward and pulled the man away. I was shaking as I began my prayer again. I got no further before he returned. He smashed my face into the side of the mosque and threw me across the dirt into some manure and said again, “thus do we pray! Thus do we pray!” I thought he was going to murder me next, but the knights broke it apart again. All they said was, “he is a foreigner, he has just arrived from the land of the Franks, and he has never seen anyone pray without facing east.” I nodded and looked away and abandoned my prayer. I was confused. Frightened. I had never seen such behavior anywhere. Hatred. Anger. Fear. And why? The Christians had won. What need had they to oppress us further? When I left the square, the man found me again. I knew what he had in mind to do, and I did my best to defend myself, but he was armed and I was not. I prepared myself for the worst, gritted my teeth, looked away from his eyes. but... then...then he stopped. The man’s body fell away and someone else stood there. He offered his hand to me and he pulled me up. He had been stationed in the man’s barracks, had joked with him, drank with him. And he followed him. They had been friends. And then he had killed the man, stabbed him. And saved my life. That night, as the stars came up over Jerusalem, I helped him bury the man.
WOLFRAM My father...my father saved your life?
IBN RUSHD looks at him sadly.
IBN RUSHD No.
WOLFRAM pulls his hand away from the gravestone. Silence for a moment. IBN RUSHD puts his hand on WOLFRAM’s shoulder, who cries lightly.
WOLFRAM I thought...I thought maybe someday I’d find out what became of him. That he’d have had some good reason to not come home. I thought maybe...I thought I’d find a reason to be proud of him.
IBN RUSHD Come. I will help you leave this place. You are on your own past the walls, but - 92.
WOLFRAM Wait. Please. She said...your daughter said you had seen...what was coming in the stars. The Last Days. That you were a great astronomer.
IBN RUSHD I’ve served many in that capacity.
WOLFRAM Including Saladin.
IBN RUSHD Yes, child. Be grateful that I do. It’s the sultan’s grace which spared your life, as it is Saladin’s grace which spared so many lives in Jerusalem.
WOLFRAM He conquered the city.
IBN RUSHD Without a life lost on either side. Do your fellow Christians besieging Acre plan to do the same? The streets were ankle deep with blood the last time they ‘liberated’ Jerusalem.
WOLFRAM How did you see what you saw?
IBN RUSHD You wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it.
WOLFRAM Try me.
IBN RUSHD A reference to a certain ‘Graal seen in the stars’ buried in a text by a pagan astronomer named Flegetanis, led me to the discovery of a comet near the constellation Crater.
WOLFRAM What?
IBN RUSHD I told you.
WOLFRAM She said you used this cup.
IBN RUSHD Indeed. 93.
WOLFRAM How?
IBN RUSHD Very well. Look to the sky.
WOLFRAM does so.
IBN RUSHD The constellation Crater. You see it? From the Greek, a type of cup used to water down wine. It’s long been associated with wisdom, though the Babylonians believed it was a death symbol and marked the gate to the underworld, much like this place.
WOLFRAM You are changing the subject. This cup. The one in my hand. How did you use it? What is special about it? Fatima said it was important, she had us risk our lives to get it. She called it something -
IBN RUSHD The Cup of Jamshid.
WOLFRAM Yes! What is it?
IBN RUSHD In ancient Persia it was a cup of divination, filled with an elixir of immortality. It was believed that all seven heavens of the universe could be observed by looking into it. That one would could look inside and see the future.
WOLFRAM The future? But I thought you said -
IBN RUSHD That it doesn’t exist?
WOLFRAM Yes.
IBN RUSHD Indeed.
WOLFRAM Then... But Fatima told me - 94.
IBN RUSHD That cup may be nothing, as you said, or it may be everything. Crater is a constellation - the stars together form a picture. But change your point of view, and they are just lonely lights in the sky, forever alone. It seems to me this cup in your hand has the power to move people to do things they might otherwise be afraid to do. You. My daughter. Perhaps others. When it is lost, they go searching, even if they don’t know exactly what it is they are looking for. Chance, indefinite cause. The future. Maybe it is meant to go missing, to be buried in the dirt and never found, but I suspect that would not stop the seeking of it.
Silence.
WOLFRAM It was all a lie. All of it. The world - the world was never going to end. Was it?
IBN RUSHD The world is always ending for someone.
WOLFRAM I should bury this cup in the dirt with my father!
IBN RUSHD Be careful, Wolfram.
WOLFRAM Why? Everything I’ve done has been for a lie.
WOLFRAM pulls out the stone. It glows angrily. PEREDUR appears behind IBN RUSHD.
I’ve betrayed God. My countrymen...for nothing at all! Nothing!
Everything around WOLFRAM goes dark again. Except PEREDUR.
PEREDUR He is wrong, you know.
WOLFRAM What do you mean?
PEREDUR This world. It can be unmade. You can end it. In fact, it has all been leading to this moment. 95.
The lights shift again. They are on the outskirts of the city of Acre. It is a place of misery. Grey, muddy, and full of the dead and near-dead, a pathetic, moaning Christian army who has been camped and in the process of besieging the city for nearly a year and a half.
WOLFRAM We’re in Acre.
PEREDUR Yes, the remains of your Emperor’s army have arrived.
They look out upon the plains.
WOLFRAM So few left...
PEREDUR A disease runs through it. They believe it is the rains that cause it, as they cough and their legs and faces swell up and their teeth fall from their mouths, for the rains wash the corpses of the dead into their meager water supply. Their food has run out. They eat the flesh of horses with gusto. And look over there.
WOLFRAM I don’t wish to.
PEREDUR There is no shame for a starving army, is there? The things you have done to survive. You know. They feed in sight of everyone on whatever abominable food which they happen to find, no matter how filthy, things which should not be spoken of. Their dire mouths devour what humans are not permitted to eat as if...as if it is delicious. These Christians become cannibals. Look at them.
WOLFRAM No.
PEREDUR You have to see.
WOLFRAM You think this is something I’ve never seen before? In Aksehir and Iconium? You think I don’t know this? 96.
A parade of stricken and starving men stumble through the scene, whipped by priests and knights, the screaming, the moaning almost unbearable.
WOLFRAM Who?
PEREDUR Deserters. They are called faithless by their masters. Faithless! Who would not question their faith in the midst of such horror, anger and despair? This world the creation of a depraved mind. The only solution, the only humane act, is to end it.
WOLFRAM points elsewhere.
WOLFRAM Who is that?
PEREDUR A bishop, I think. The rich and poor do not die in equal measure here in Acre. Perhaps he organizes some charity, and shames the haves into giving a little bread to the have-nots.
WOLFRAM There is good in Acre. I have seen it.
FREDERICK VI comes out. He coughs into his fist and looks sickly. He pulls his fist away and there’s blood on his mouth and his hand.
He made it to Acre.
PEREDUR And he will die here. Do you see now? Spare them this suffering.
WOLFRAM But...
PEREDUR What do you have left? Your father, buried without honor, a hate filled killer, your mother, dead, while you were gone. Your best friend, a liar. Your army, doomed. Your emperor, betrayed.
WOLFRAM I don’t want to look at this. 97.
PEREDUR My friend...please...
WOLFRAM I said I don’t want to see this!
The lights shift.
WOLFRAM and PEREDUR arrive in the cavernous room with the pool from WOLFRAM’s vision of Henry.
PEREDUR I know this place...
Pause, as he looks around.
I was a boy in these lands, when so many served Arthur. This is where I found the stone. Right in this room. Right...there.
FATIMA and BERENGARIA enter the room. They do not see WOLFRAM and PEREDUR..
WOLFRAM Fatima!
PEREDUR You know her?
WOLFRAM tries to go to her.
She can’t see you.
WOLFRAM Why?
PEREDUR Ask yourself that.
WOLFRAM Me?
PEREDUR You said it yourself. The bond you had...is gone. 98.
BERENGARIA looks at the pool.
FATIMA What is it?
BERENGARIA Just some old well water. (pointing at the cave mural) Look: ‘Tempus fit Tractus.’
FATIMA ‘Time becomes space.’
FATIMA goes over to the corner of the room. There’s a headless skeleton there, with a sword through its body. She bends down to dust off some cobwebs.
I wonder how long he’s been down here...
BERENGARIA Oh no, Sir Kyot, I wouldn’t touch that...
WOLFRAM (to PEREDUR) It’s you.
PEREDUR No...
WOLFRAM Yes, it is.
PEREDUR No, that’s not possible...I returned to my kingdom. I...I built a world...
WOLFRAM You were so alone. All you had were your dreams...
PEREDUR (with dawning horror) ‘Never was a man in pain but from that day he gives himself over to it. He cannot die in the years that follow. Nor will his complexion ever decline. His hair will never turn grey. Such power does the stone bestow.’ 99.
BERENGARIA Looks like he became trapped down here.
FATIMA And then he died down here.
BERENGARIA He was holding something.
She looks down at the skeleton’s hands, which look like they’re eternally set to hold something.
WOLFRAM This is where King Henry found the Stone. The Graal was kept here.
PEREDUR Cursed man. He stole it from me...
WOLFRAM And on Henry’s coat of arms...
RICHARD enters. A Plantagenet.
FATIMA Richard!
RICHARD Ah, Sir Kyot. I understand you are here to murder me. Well. Here I am.
He pulls out his sword.
FATIMA I’m not here for anything of the sort.
She pulls out hers as well.
But I’m happy to oblige you, if that’s what it’s come to.
She swings her sword and her hair comes loose.
WOLFRAM What is she doing?! 100.
BERENGARIA Wait! Please! Don’t fight.
RICHARD Who are you?
BERENGARIA My name is Berengaria. I’m your -
She looks at FATIMA, whose hair is loose.
Sir Kyot?
RICHARD Her name is Fatima.
BERENGARIA Fatima?
RICHARD She and I were engaged ourselves not long ago.
BERENGARIA I don’t...I don’t understand...
RICHARD She’s a professional liar. What more is there to understand?
WOLFRAM Engaged?
FATIMA swings her sword at RICHARD. He easily pushes her back.
RICHARD You know, I’ve been doing a lot of reading...
FATIMA There’s a first time for everything.
RICHARD There are men who speak of this as the Last Age, that Saladin is the sixth head of the dragon persecuting the Church. And they speak of another, a false prophet called the Antichrist. I’m starting to wonder if it might be you. 101.
FATIMA Only heartache will follow this path you’re on.
RICHARD Ah, yes. The end of the world. Well. Perhaps the next one will be better.
PEREDUR steps toward RICHARD.
PEREDUR (to WOLFRAM) Oh, I like him. Perhaps he should have the stone...
WOLFRAM No...
WOLFRAM feels the stone pull towards RICHARD.
PEREDUR Yes, I think this Richard will do the task...
WOLFRAM No!
There’s a spark from the Stone. BERENGARIA looks directly at WOLFRAM.
BERENGARIA (screaming) Ghost!
There’s a flash of light! And then PEREDUR and WOLFRAM are gone.
RICHARD What?
BERENGARIA faints. FATIMA runs over to her, cradling her head.
FATIMA She hit her head.
RICHARD Is she...is she all right? 102.
FATIMA I don’t know!
JOHN suddenly pops his head in through the door.
JOHN Ah! There you are! My two favorite people! And making such a terrible ruckus! Why don’t I give you both some time in here to sort your problems out? How’s...oh, a thousand years?
RICHARD No! Wait -
JOHN Good bye!
JOHN shuts the door, locking both FATIMA and RICHARD in the cavern.
RICHARD Well, I’m sure someone will find us. Eventually.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 7: SOMEWHERE ELSE
Light crackles. WOLFRAM and PEREDUR appear in a black space. Light seems to cascade from WOLFRAM as the stone’s light grows in intensity.
PEREDUR Bring us back there!
WOLFRAM I won’t let him have it. I...there’s good in the world...
PEREDUR Where?
Silence.
What possible reason is there to go on? If we vanished tomorrow, nothing in the universe would miss us. Nothing needs us. What do we have to lose? 103.
No evil would come from our leaving, and so many evils would cease to exist along with us! It’s all been leading to this. You know the end is near.
WOLFRAM begins to reach out toward PEREDUR with the stone.
‘Finish him, slay him, do away with his power.’ This world...is over.
PEREDUR reaches out to touch it. And then he stops. He looks at WOLFRAM.
WOLFRAM But...there’s light.
And then there’s a flash of light that bursts upward from WOLFRAM with a piercing noise! And then WOLFRAM is gone and all is blackness.
BLACKNESS LINGERS
SCENE 8: THE UNIVERSE
The dark brightens slightly as we see WOLFRAM, still aglow. He seems at peace as the stars brighten.
FATIMA (VOICE) Wolfram traveled. He had learned that the stone he held had been called the Light- Bringer, Lapis Exilis, the stone of the Exile, and so he left, an exile. He looked once more at the home where everyone he had ever known had lived. A dot in the void. He thought of the endless cruelties and the rivers of blood, spilled by kings and emperors, in the name of gods current and long forgotten, and then he looked out toward the stars.
The constellation CRATER glows brightly.
Was he conscious of what he did? Hardly. He held the stone and the stone held him and both of them were the light. He traveled for a day and thought it was forever. He traveled for forever and thought it was a day. To Wolfram, it was like a dream. A dream of light.
Lights shift.
Was he aware as he became closer and closer to light himself? As he moved faster and faster, and further away from his home, he dreamed his long dream and passed through galaxies. What year was it? He never asked himself that question, for he stopped thinking about years. He was alone. Alone with the light. 104.
Lights shift.
It was good that Wolfram ceased thinking about time, for as he came closer and closer to the light, fifty billion years passed. He rounded the curve of space, though he didn’t know about such things. If he tried to return home now, he would not find anything left. The sun which rose for him every morning had died long ago. It swelled and brightened until it devoured the earth. It guttered like a candle in the wind, sank away to an ember, an ash. Other stars followed. His galaxy was gone. Everything he knew, everything that had made him, was dead. Wolfram grew brighter.
Lights shift.
There. Wolfram has just passed through another galaxy. Another hundred thousand years have passed. To him, a second.
Lights shift.
How far had he traveled? He couldn’t say. He was not aware of such things. All he knew was that he wanted to get as far away from that place as he could. To follow the light. To be the light. But he had come far, in space and time. A hundred billion years. The galaxies began to grow dimmer. Old stars began to fade, new ones stopped being born. Galaxies have long lives...but they do eventually end. The universe was no longer expanding. It had reached its limit. It was collapsing in on itself. It’s light was going out.
Lights shift.
Could he stop? Perhaps, but why? Nothing would be left. Blackness, burnt out suns, death. Nothing. Wolfram was a man and he had outlived his God. What was he now?
Lights shift. Everything is a dull vague redness. There are less stars.
Another hundred billion years, and Wolfram began to wonder at the strange length of this dream he was having. He rounded the curve of the universe again, but it was shorter, for the universe was smaller now. And then again. And then...finally, there was nothing left at all.
The light goes out. It’s total silence. And then a small light, like a candle a mile away, is seen.
Wolfram began to stir. He thought he saw something in the distance. Or did he imagine it? The dimmest and tiniest of sparks, the germ of a new beginning. So far, far away... 105.
The light grows brighter. And suddenly, explodes. It’s blinding in intensity.
A firestorm from the supernal sun, the only sun, which burned brighter and brighter as the galaxies rained down into it. Sheets, banners, spears of radiance, aurora, flame, lightning. Forces unmeasurably vast tore through the void. Shockwaves bursting across creation, tides and currents and cataracts. Stars melted together and were hammered out afresh. Waves crashed whose crests shook loose a foam of supernovae. On the fringes of creation, through billion year cycles which passed as seconds, Wolfram began to wake up from the light.
The light is growing brighter and brighter.
He felt a heaviness greater than planets. Then a lightness, a change in inertia itself, in every constant of nature as space-time-matter-energy underwent its ultimate convulsion—for a moment infinitesimal and infinite.
Things start to calm.
It passed, so swiftly he could not tell if it had been. The storm grew fiercer. But now through it, seen distorted so that they appeared to be blue-white firedrops that broke into sparks as they flew, fountaining off in two huge curving sheets, now came the nascent galaxies. The spark had ignited. Creation had begun. His dream of light went on and on until...Wolfram opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and he didn’t know what he was looking at. And then Wolfram fell. And he had one last dream.
For a long moment we sit in the darkness...and then we see a flash of light, very far away.
Something falls downward across impossible distance...a glowing stone. It lands in perfectly still fluid.
In the sky shines a single star.
The liquid is very still.
And then WOLFRAM pulls himself out of it and lies on a surface. He looks around him, at a dark primordial world.
And then he touches the stone to the surface and light courses through everything, like the very nature of reality contains veins flowing with energy.
Almost a billion years passed as he brought light to this new world he had dreamed. 106.
WOLFRAM looks around him.
And he saw the light, that it was good: and he divided the light from the darkness.
BLACKOUT.
END ACT TWO 107.
ACT THREE
SCENE 1: ARCADIA
A dark horizon. Slowly, a sun begins to rise. The sounds of wind. Some birds. Lonely noises.
A fire blazes. An old man with a red beard looks into it and stokes it. He wears furs. A woman comes over to join him.
FREDERICK They are getting more bold.
CHRISTINA He will be amazed to see how far they have come.
FREDERICK But not surprised. Is he awake?
CHRISTINA Yes. His sleep has grown lighter. He is excited for them.
From the mountain, a young man descends. It’s WOLFRAM, carrying a torch.
WOLFRAM How long has it been?
FREDERICK A night.
WOLFRAM For me. What about for them?
Pause.
FREDERICK Much longer.
WOLFRAM goes over to the fire.
CHRISTINA Where are you going? 108.
WOLFRAM I’d like to bring something to them.
Lights shift. WOLFRAM, FREDERICK and CHRISTINA descend a mountain and approach a cave. Though we do not see what is inside the cave, we can hear noises. Grunts, cries, snarls and whimpers. The beginnings of language.
WOLFRAM holds the torch. He moves ahead of his companions and then he kneels down before the cave. He leaves the torch on the ground, so that it burns brightly before the mouth of the cave. Then he stands up. And he leaves.
After a moment, we see a dark figure crouching, crawling from the cave. It reaches, slowly toward the torch.
Lights shift.
WOLFRAM and his companions watch as the sun rises, bathing them in red light.
FREDERICK Are we not returning to the mountain?
WOLFRAM Not yet. I’d like to see something first.
CHRISTINA and FREDERICK look at each other.
Lights shift brightly, and WOLFRAM, CHRISTINA, and FREDERICK appear somewhere else.
FREDERICK Many of us already keep watch all over your world, precisely so you don’t have to do it yourself.
WOLFRAM And you do a good job of it. And it’s not my world. Arcadia is theirs. I’d just like to see how it has changed.
FREDERICK It is exactly what you created. 109.
WOLFRAM Copied. It’s a recreation of an unfinished poem. But it is not the original.
CHRISTINA How are you certain, if you were not there?
He holds the stone.
WOLFRAM The stone was. It brought light the first time. But tell me, what things have changed while I’ve slept?
FREDERICK They have made great strides...
WOLFRAM How often are you seen?
CHRISTINA From time to time. Mostly they are afraid of us.
WOLFRAM They dream of you just as I dream of them. Someday soon they will paint you on the walls of caves, and sings songs of you. They will think you are gods. Perhaps they already do.
CHRISTINA You sleep less and less.
WOLFRAM Because more and more is happening here. Come.
The lights flash. They appear somewhere else.
You see? The ice is almost gone.
FREDERICK Still cold.
WOLFRAM Not so cold as it was.
FREDERICK Why here? Surely there are places further along than this. 110.
WOLFRAM An experiment.
CHRISTINA What do you mean?
WOLFRAM approaches a vast lake.
WOLFRAM Water is as important as fire, isn’t it?
He looks down at the water and at his reflection. He pulls at a strand of hair that has gone white. Huh.
FREDERICK My lord?
WOLFRAM I wonder when this occurred. Funny. I marvel at how much Arcadia has changed in so short a time, and forget that I do as well! How long do you suppose I have been here? More than a week?
CHRISTINA and FREDERICK look at each other.
CHRISTINA Yes.
WOLFRAM Since I left? Two weeks?
FREDERICK Yes. It has been more than two weeks since you left the world.
WOLFRAM looks again at the water.
WOLFRAM Where does the time go? I wonder...
FREDERICK Yes?
He turns back to them. 111.
WOLFRAM Do you ever grow lonely?
FREDERICK No.
WOLFRAM Oh. Well, that’s good. I wouldn’t want you to have to feel that way.
Pause.
Perhaps I will sit here. And wait. And see how long I can go without another sleep.
FREDERICK Why, my lord?
WOLFRAM Because I didn’t like my last dream. It was of the world I left behind. I wonder...
FREDERICK What?
WOLFRAM I wonder how things would have progressed there...if I hadn’t ended it.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 2: WHITTINGTON, ENGLAND - JUNE, 1190
FATIMA holds BERENGARIA’s head in her lap. RICHARD looks on awkwardly.
FATIMA Are you just going to just stand there or are you going to lend a hand?
RICHARD What should I do?
FATIMA Keep her still. I will try to find a way out of here.
They switch positions, awkwardly. 112.
RICHARD Sorry, sorry -
She glares at him. After a moment of looking at BERENGARIA.
You know, I’d almost forgiven you -
FATIMA Forgiven me?
RICHARD That maybe I had overreacted to your lie. That you had hidden your background for fear I would find out.
FATIMA And I wasn’t wrong to do so.
RICHARD And nor was I wrong to throw you in my dungeon for your actions!
FATIMA My actions?
RICHARD You lied to me about your identity for a year! While I bared my soul to you, while I revealed my deepest secrets, you were laughing behind my back.
FATIMA Never. And you are not the only one who bore their soul, you know.
RICHARD I know plenty enough about your soul, Kyot.
FATIMA Fatima. And I was trying to help you. To save you from making a terrible mistake. I had thought that by showing you who I was, I could show you the humanity you seem so desperate to destroy.
RICHARD Your people should never have taken Jerusalem! If you’re so concerned with saving their humanity, they should -
FATIMA I meant yours. 113.
RICHARD Oh.
Silence.
Did you know I was engaged once before I met you? Her name was Alais. She was promised to me when I was four years old. We were practically raised together. My father took her as his mistress. Then he threw my mother in a dungeon. She loved me best and so he despised me most. And yet. And yet a son never stops trying to impress his father. Perhaps more so when he is not loved. Perhaps one does not recognize love when it is given. And certainly one has difficulty returning it, even when it is felt. You showed me love and tried to share your most personal secrets with me...and I struck you and cast you away. Just as Henry did to my mother.
Pause.
I’ve wronged you terribly. And I am sorry.
Pause.
I’ve never done that before. Is that how apologizing is done?
FATIMA Yes.
He looks at the mural.
RICHARD I suppose this is where my father found the stone all those years ago. I wonder what it means...
BERENGARIA sits up and gasps.
FATIMA Hold her still, hold her still!
FATIMA kneels down before BERENGARIA.
BERENGARIA Water... 114.
FATIMA Yes. (to RICHARD) Do you have a cup?
RICHARD No, do you?
BERENGARIA There’s...there’s one right there.
They all look. There’s a stone cup on the floor. FATIMA stands and walks over to it slowly. She bends down and picks it up.
FATIMA Where did this come from?
RICHARD It was in here, wasn’t it? Princess, are you all right?
BERENGARIA The ghost dropped it.
RICHARD Ghost? (to FATIMA) What is it? You look like you see it too.
FATIMA It’s not that. This cup. I’ve held it before.
RICHARD Oh, surely there are a thousand like -
FATIMA Princess, who did you see?
BERENGARIA looks at FATIMA strangely. Then she points at the mural of the knight holding the cup and white orb.
RICHARD pulls off a bit of his outfit and places it under BERENGARIA’s head. He walks over to FATIMA. 115.
RICHARD Well, do you believe her?
FATIMA studies the mural and holds the cup, ignoring RICHARD.
FATIMA Ghosts are...an unusual occurrence in Islam. But sometimes...in dreams -
RICHARD Well, St. Augustine himself flatly denied them. Dead souls do not communicate with ordinary people in dreams or other -
FATIMA Well, she’s not ordinary. She’s a princess.
RICHARD Well, she hit her head rather hard.
They turn around and see that BERENGARIA has stood up.
BERENGARIA I know what St. Augustine said. But sometimes the living can feel when they are dreamed about. Perhaps the same is true of the dead. It was Wolfram. Wasn’t it?
FATIMA Come on. Let’s find a way out of here.
BERENGARIA Who are you?
This stops FATIMA.
I know you’re not who you said. I don’t mind that. I mean who are you. In your heart. Do you know?
Pause.
FATIMA I used to.
RICHARD Fatima. That’s her name. 116.
BERENGARIA And who is she?
BERENGARIA turns and looks at the mural.
FATIMA What is it?
BERENGARIA ‘Tempus fit Tractus’...
FATIMA Time becomes space.
RICHARD Yes. Wonderful. What does that mean?
BERENGARIA begins walking into the pool.
M’lady, I really don’t think - well, at least allow me to test it, will you?
FATIMA You want to go first?
RICHARD I don’t want to go at all! I’d like to get out of here and strangle my brother!
He looks at the pool.
But I suppose I don’t need my sword to do that.
He looks at his sword and then throws it into the pool. It makes a plop. He rushes over to the pool to look into it. What do you see?
Split stage, as lights come up on WOLFRAM and his companions looking out at the lake.
FREDERICK What did you come here looking for?
Pause.
WOLFRAM Nothing. 117.
FREDERICK I think I know you well enough at this point to tell a lie from a truth.
WOLFRAM There are no lies in this world.
But then WOLFRAM notices something. He looks at the water and then walks over and bends down to retrieve...a sword. He pulls it out and holds it upward, glimmering in the sun.
In the temple, FATIMA and BERENGARIA stand ankle deep in the water, facing each other. FATIMA bends down and fills the cup with water. She holds it out to BERENGARIA who touches it’s base. They look each other in the eyes and then they slowly look down into the cup.
And then when they look up, they are in WOLFRAM’s world, standing ankle deep in the lake.
The three of them look at each other for a long time.
Then FATIMA runs over and hugs WOLFRAM hard.
FATIMA I thought you were...
WOLFRAM What?
She pulls away and just looks at him.
FATIMA Nothing. It’s just good to see you.
BERENGARIA I’m Berengaria and I don’t mean to embarrass anyone, but she was very worried about you.
WOLFRAM Oh. Well, there’s nothing to worry about here.
BERENGARIA and FATIMA come out of the water and look around them. 118.
FATIMA Where are we?
WOLFRAM This is Arcadia.
FATIMA Arcadia?
BERENGARIA and FATIMA walk past CHRISTINA and FREDERICK.
BERENGARIA Hello, I’m Berengaria.
FREDERICK Frederick.
CHRISTINA Christina.
FATIMA stares at FREDERICK and then turns to WOLFRAM.
FATIMA Wolfram, that’s the Emperor Barbarossa!
WOLFRAM Yes.
FATIMA But everyone believes he’s dead!
WOLFRAM Here he isn’t. And neither is my mother.
CHRISTINA Hi.
WOLFRAM I’ll show you.
There’s a flash of light, and he takes them somewhere else. 119.
There are more figures, men and women, dressed as FREDERICK and CHRISTINA were.
You see? Frederick’s son is here. He died in Acre. And Count Hermann, who I served as a squire. He died in Iconium. Sir Luther, who died in Antioch. The whole village of Eschenbach is here too. (turning to BERENGARIA) But you...I don’t recall ever meeting you.
BERENGARIA Oh, we haven’t. Not really! But I saw your ghost in that cave! But I suppose it wasn’t if you’re here. Speaking of which, where is here?
WOLFRAM No, that doesn’t make any sense...
FATIMA It’s not the only thing here that doesn’t make sense.
WOLFRAM There must be some mistake.
BERENGARIA Why?
WOLFRAM Well, I’ve met everyone here. They came from my memories and I made them.
BERENGARIA Oh. Well, you see, we didn’t come here that way.
FATIMA What do you mean ‘you made them?’
WOLFRAM Except you, Fatima. For some reason...I couldn’t make you.
FATIMA Well, you don’t need to because I’m here in front of you. We both are. 120.
WOLFRAM The things I’ve seen. If I’d just made you sooner. I sleep, and the world around me changes. Mountains grow, oceans deepen, even the land beneath my feet moves.The air changes. And the people...
FATIMA People? You mean -
WOLFRAM No, not them. I mean the real people. They had just crossed a river when last I slept, and when I woke again, they had changed! Stood upright, walked across Arcadia. So different from each other, and so similar! They imitate the warbling of birds and the gentle breeze in the reeds and someday they will make music! They speak now. Language! It started with children, as a game. They named things as a secret between them and then they passed it to other groups, and they passed it to others. Language! Music! Everyone tells stories about who we were when time began, but here, I have seen it! The decision! The action...that will lead them to what they will be! And it will be better here!
FATIMA How?
WOLFRAM Fatima, I have created a world without evil!
Pause.
BERENGARIA Wolfram, I think...I think you might be the loneliest person I’ve ever met.
WOLFRAM Lonely? Yes. I suppose I was. (to FATIMA) But now you’re here. I thought I’d lost you.
FATIMA Come back with us.
WOLFRAM I can’t. I tried. Even with this...the old world is gone.
He holds out the stone.
FATIMA No, Wolfram. We won. The Emperor Frederick is dead. Richard isn’t going to go. Acre is un-winnable. We did it. 121.
WOLFRAM Did what?
FATIMA Saved the world.
WOLFRAM (coldly) Did we?
WOLFRAM turns away from her.
How did you say you got here again?
BERENGARIA You brought us here.
WOLFRAM Is that right? I know I tried to...
The stone glows.
BERENGARIA Well, then maybe you needed us to do our part too! You see? Maybe the cup has power too!
WOLFRAM sees that FATIMA is holding the cup. WOLFRAM backs away from it.
WOLFRAM What is that doing here.
FATIMA What?
WOLFRAM The cup! Why is it here!
BERENGARIA You left it. For us to find. Didn’t you?
WOLFRAM No...
FATIMA What’s the matter? Let us help you... 122.
WOLFRAM You don’t understand what you’ve done.
FATIMA Wolfram, you’re frightening me.
He points at the cup.
WOLFRAM You’ve brought evil into this world.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 3: WHITTINGTON, ENGLAND - JUNE, 1190
RICHARD looks at the pool of water.
RICHARD Princess? Fatima? Are you all right down there?
The door suddenly opens. FULK and ROBERT are there.
ROBERT Sire!
RICHARD Oh, thank god.
FULK Where’s the princess?
RICHARD ...I don’t entirely know. What is it?
ROBERT Your brother. He said Sir Kyot murdered you.
RICHARD Not quite.
FULK He has soldiers.
Suddenly, a number of soldiers enter the space. 123.
RICHARD Ah, wonderful. Men, I’m afraid my brother is attempting a coup d'état. You will be well rewarded by your king for your help here today.
The men don’t react. What is it? Are they deaf?
FULK They think you’re the one attempting to seize the crown.
ROBERT It might help if you learned their language, sire.
RICHARD I’m a busy man, Robert. Am I expected the learn the language of every place I’m King of?
The men pull their swords. FULK nocks an arrow onto his bow. RICHARD goes to pull his sword and realizes he doesn’t have it anymore.
ROBERT What?
RICHARD I threw my sword into a lake.
ROBERT Oh.
RICHARD Fulk, ah, consider your inheritance reinstated. If I make it out of this alive.
FULK And the tax?
RICHARD (rolling his sleeves up) Come now, Fulk. Taxes are one of two major certainties in life.
One of the soldiers takes a swing at FULK, who dodges, rolls, and fires an arrow into him. 124.
ROBERT dives out of the way and RICHARD punches one of the soldiers in the face, and gets a hold of his sword.
Personally, I’m more partial to the other one.
He twirls the sword and rushes at the soldiers.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 4: ARCADIA
The weather has gotten ugly on WOLFRAM’s world. Lightning flashes! Hurricane winds blow! Rain falls! He seems to glow with the power of the stone. He brandishes his sword at FATIMA.
FATIMA Wolfram! Stop this right now!
WOLFRAM Why? You’re just the part of me who’s afraid! But once you’re gone, I’ll never need to doubt again!
He swings his sword and she catches it with Excalibur.
FATIMA I’m not your creation, you dummy!
She swings back at him.
And you’re hardly the only one with doubt!
She kicks him and he falls backward.
And for all your time here, you’re useless with a sword!
The ground shudders and they both stumble.
WOLFRAM You were saying?
FREDERICK and CHRISTINA run up to WOLFRAM. 125.
FREDERICK Ah, perhaps you might take it down a bit, my lord?
FATIMA My lord?
CHRISTINA That last shudder seems to have spilled a rather large flood!
FREDERICK Your people are growing frightened!
FATIMA Your people?! You’re not a god, Wolfram!
Their blades clash.
You’re my friend and you’re frightened because the world is a terrible place!
WOLFRAM Not mine!
FATIMA Oh, really?! I know what shame is and this whole world stinks of it!
WOLFRAM You lied to me!
FATIMA I didn’t!
WOLFRAM Your father told me everything.
FATIMA My father? But he’s -
He swings his sword and knocks Excalibur from her hand. She falls backward. He’s about to swing at her.
WOLFRAM The cup is nothing. It’s less than nothing!
FATIMA If my father lied, he lied to me as well! 126.
WOLFRAM I betrayed everything I ever knew because of what you told me! Because I so badly wanted to believe in something! And now...now, I’m going to tear that part of me out.
He’s about to swing the sword down.
BERENGARIA It’s not nothing.
He stops. He looks at BERENGARIA who has come with the cup. It brought us to you.
WOLFRAM It didn’t. I brought you here.
BERENGARIA Well! Maybe that’s ambiguous!
FATIMA I believed in you too. That’s why I told you what I did. Because you were honest, and brave, and caring and you were the first person I’d ever met who was all of those things. I trusted you because I couldn’t believe that anyone could be all of those things!
WOLFRAM looks around at the damage he’s caused. He lowers his sword.
WOLFRAM I knocked the trees down.
FATIMA You certainly did.
He helps her up.
WOLFRAM How do I know you’re real?
FATIMA How do I know you are?
WOLFRAM Because I created all of this. 127.
FATIMA Oh, really? Just you?
WOLFRAM I don’t know. Perhaps I’m sleeping again and dreaming another -
She kisses him.
FATIMA Now do you believe I’m real?
BERENGARIA runs over with FATIMA’s lute!
BERENGARIA Well, that was quite a storm! There are people down in those caves who are certain their gods are angry at them! Also, I think I broke a string.
FATIMA Wolfram. Please take us back.
WOLFRAM I don’t know if I can. The world is gone...
She offers the lute to him.
You still have beautiful things to make there, Wolfram. Don’t give up on it just yet. Or yourself.
He looks at it.
WOLFRAM There’s one thing I want to do first.
Lights shift. WOLFRAM takes them deep into a cave.
There are primitive paintings on the walls. At the end is a small alcove. He and FATIMA slowly place the cup in the alcove.
They turn to BERENGARIA and then...the Lights grow bright.
LIGHTS SHIFT. 128.
SCENE 5: GEHENNA, SOUTH OF JERUSALEM - JUNE, 1190
WOLFRAM is suddenly back in front of IBN RUSHD. He blinks his eyes.
IBN RUSHD You were saying something?
WOLFRAM Fatima?
IBN RUSHD No, I’m Fatima’s father. Remember? You started shaking that glowing orb around and then suddenly went white as a sheet.
WOLFRAM The stone!
He starts patting himself. Where is it?
IBN RUSHD Well, I don’t know! What was it?
WOLFRAM Fatima! She was...she was with me! Berengaria? They were -
He starts looking around. Where is it? Oh, god -
He runs off, in the darkness, looking everywhere for the stone. He’s breathing heavily, panicked. He feels for something and grabs it. It’s Fatima’s lute. He stares at it in wonder. And then he senses that he’s not alone.
SIR HAGAN (OFF STAGE) ‘And ye shall chase your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword.’
SIR HAGAN enters the cemetery with his sword drawn. Leviticus.
WOLFRAM Sir Hagan. 129.
SIR HAGAN Hello Wolfram. Your merry chase is at an end.
WOLFRAM How did you find me?
SIR HAGAN I never stopped looking. You know, I nearly caught you in Acre.
WOLFRAM How is...how is Frederick? The Duke of Swabia?
SIR HAGAN Better than his father. But not by much. I see you’ve found your father.
WOLFRAM You must listen to me. The Duke sent me away! He had something in his possession! It’s dangerous and it’s around here somewhere! If I can just find it...
SIR HAGAN backhands WOLFRAM. He falls into the dirt.
Suddenly, IBN RUSHD appears, also holding a sword.
IBN RUSHD The boy has done nothing wrong. Leave him be.
SIR HAGAN Ah. So, my suspicions were correct. You have taken the enemy’s side.
WOLFRAM We became the enemy, Sir Hagan.
SIR HAGAN kicks WOLFRAM in the ribs and then points his sword at IBN RUSHD.
IBN RUSHD You have one chance to leave here alive.
SIR HAGAN And you don’t even have that.
SIR HAGAN rushes at him and swings his sword. IBN RUSHD parries. 130.
They clash three times and then he slashes upward and HAGAN stops. He coughs and feels himself and then falls.
IBN RUSHD Well? Who do you think my daughter learned it from?
IBN RUSHD puts his sword away. He helps WOLFRAM up.
SIR HAGAN (dying) You-you...must surely have converted to their faith. You have sided with the devil...after everything...you have believed his promises...
SIR HAGAN dies.
WOLFRAM It’s the devil’s world.
WOLFRAM stands up. A breeze picks up.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 6: WHITTINGTON, ENGLAND - JUNE, 1190
FATIMA and BERENGARIA come out of the pool. They seem confused.
BERENGARIA Where is he?
FATIMA I don’t know...
BERENGARIA Wolfram!
There’s a muffled boom above their heads, and dust from the ceiling falls. They both stumble. What’s happening?
FATIMA I’m not sure it’s safe to be down here. 131.
They leave the cavern and enter the hallway and just as they do, the doorway collapses! FATIMA pushes BERENGARIA out of the way. They cough as the dust pours down
BERENGARIA Oh no!
FATIMA gets up but the passage is completely blocked by rubble.
FATIMA It’ll take a hundred years to dig our ways back into there.
She angrily jams RICHARD’s sword into a stone. FATIMA starts to go.
BERENGARIA Wait. Sir Kyot?
FATIMA tuns. BERENGARIA kisses FATIMA on the cheek.
There’s another thunderous explosion. They both duck their heads.
BERENGARIA Perhaps we should go.
FATIMA Yes. Lets.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 7: WHITTINGTON - JUNE, 1190
RICHARD is bloody and dirty and angry. He brandishes a sword over a number of dead bodies. Much of it is on fire.
RICHARD John!!! 132.
FULK Very big of you sire, to promise me this place, and then blow it half to heaven.
RICHARD Well, if you’d just told me what my brother was up to -
FULK Wait. Hold that thought.
FULK nocks an arrow and fire it. It strikes his target. We see that JOHN’s cloak is pinned to a pillar. He struggles to get away.
JOHN No, let me go, I didn’t do anything, I - (seeing RICHARD) Oh, hello, brother.
RICHARD Hello, John. You know, I’ve had some thoughts about your stewardship of this country while I’m away.
JOHN Oh, yes?
RICHARD I’m afraid you won’t be getting the job.
JOHN W-what are you going to do?
RICHARD What would you do in my shoes?
BERENGARIA appears.
JOHN I’d - I’d get to know my lovely new fiancee! Hello Berengaria! Lovely to see you! I’m a little...pinned down at the moment.
RICHARD We’re not done.
JOHN I agree. 133.
RICHARD and BERENGARIA walk outside.
RICHARD She left?
BERENGARIA Yes. What are you going to do? Will you stay here?
He looks at her. And then he looks out into the night. There’s the sound of a horse in the distance.
LIGHTS SHIFT.
SCENE 8: WHITTINGTON - JUNE, 1190
RICHARD approaches the rubble. He sees his sword stuck in the rocks. He goes over to it and tries to pull it free. It’s stuck. But a few rocks get jostled loose. He sees something...glowing in the rubble. He starts to pick apart at the rocks, and he struggles to pull it loose. But he does. And he holds it up in wonder. It’s the stone. It glows in his face.
He once again grips his sword and then he pulls it free.
PEREDUR You must be Richard.
RICHARD turns and sees PEREDUR standing there.
I was hoping we might get to meet. In fact, I served the man who held that very sword.
RICHARD Ah. You must be the ghost everyone’s talking about. You served King Arthur?
PEREDUR He was hardly a king. Not compared to you and the armies you control. Legend has disguised what he really was. Flawed. Self-betraying, brutal, greedy...and yes, noble, at times. Like all humanity. I remember him at the end, a betraying sword fallen from his hand, a sardonic prayer on his lips, his repentant eyes defying oblivion, his bloody fingers grasping for...
RICHARD swings the sword and shoves it into PEREDUR’s belly. 134.
RICHARD I’m afraid you’ve caught me in an interesting moment, spirit. I’m not terribly interested in the past right now.
He pulls the sword out and PEREDUR collapses, dead at last.
The future seems far more interesting.
The stone glows in his face.
LIGHTS FADE.
SCENE 9: ARCADIA
A cave in Arcadia. The same one, in fact, where WOLFRAM and FATIMA placed the cup. We see it sitting peaceably in the alcove. Some cobwebs and dust have rested upon it, and above it, on the cave walls, is an image: it’s the same one we saw in the cavern in Whittington. A knight, standing above a cauldron, holding an orb and a cup, though the style is much more primitive, like a stone age cave drawing.
IBN RUSHD (VOICE) The cup may be nothing, or it may be everything. Crater is a constellation - the stars together form a picture. But if you change your point of view they are just lonely lights in the sky, forever alone. Perhaps this cup has the power to move people to do things they might otherwise be afraid to do. When it is lost, they go searching, even if they don’t know exactly what it is they are looking for. Maybe it is meant to go missing, to be buried in the dirt and never found, but I suspect that would not stop the seeking of it.
LIGHTS DIM ON THE CUP.
END OF PART TWO