She awoke hungry in the back of the cave where she had slept most of the cold seasons of the past decades. Her hair matted and short framed a face that didn’t seem rested, in spite of its sleep. No part of the cave was high enough for her to stand, so she crawled to a near wall where her sword leaned. She knelt before it, its haft forming a cross.
Aloud, she spoke, ‘Father in heaven, look after the king’s health, the souls of the knights on our quest, and grant me the patience and strength to see our quest to the end whoever may achieve it.’
She gave her devotions to this saint and that and to ‘Barren Mary made fertile by God, please bless this enterprise and shower this barren land.’ Her devotions had become rote too, as a prisoner’s routine, shake a shackle, drink the dirty water, drift in the snow.
She added a personal prayer for meat to thicken her gruel, thinking of a rat which had snuck several times recently into the cave. She remained, hands clasped in front of her mouth, eyes closed, for several minutes before offering a concluding, ‘Amen’.
Words came from her lips and to the front of her mind as they had every morning for as long as she had searched. She meditated in the same way on the chalice, passed between the disciples, the faces of each one coming clear to her mind in a dusty room over a Jerusalem in springtime flower.
Joe Jots 