Your Humble Servant

One King, One Soldier, my latest Holy Grail book is turning out better than I thought it would. There’s even a coy reference to Mark Twain’s No. 44:

I just, you know, was sitting by myself on the curb and all of a sudden this beautiful girl comes up and we have a drink and now dinner, and... man, it’s kind of like a dream. Something you’d see in a movie. The Mysterious Stranger.

Like all books about the Grail, it dances around the subject and the only time it says straight out what the Grail is, you know its a lie. But a lie that tells the truth... like a Picasso painting. I suppose that’s why Twain named his character Satan... a lier who only tells the truth.

Everything I say is a lie...

In One King, One Soldier, the Satan or Joker character is Jack Spicer, a mysterious and angry homo poet who knows more about the Grail than most. He’s called a “Lonely Faggot”:

You’re just a sad, lonely fairy, Jack. LF, Jack. There’s a million like you. When you’ve crawled into a bottle and died, Carol and I will be living in Marin with three kids and a new Buick. Suck on that, faggot.

God’s lonely man? The “LF”, or Aleph, is the first character in the Jewish alphabet. Jack is also the first character that our modern King Arthur must duel: win, lose or come to terms.

Continuing with the “lonely” theme, The Mysterious Stranger, says:

In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever--for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible.

This is oddly similar to the speech that Grima Wormtongue gives to Éowyn, his “bride”, who is played by Miranda (“I am no man”) Otto:

Oh, but you are alone. Who knows what you’ve spoken to the darkness, in the bitter watches of the night. When all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, a hutch to trammel some wild thing.

The name Gríma derives from the Old English or Icelandic word meaning "mask", "helmet" or "spectre". In the profoundly disturbing Claymation film: The Adventures of Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger is portrayed as ‘no man’, behind a mask.



The rest of No. 44’s speech is saved for King Théoden:

Tolkien: “I have only ever SERVED you.”

Twain: “But I, your poor SERVANT, have revealed you to yourself and set you free.”

We note that directly after the Wormtongue is cut OUT (revealed) by Gandalf (Grand Elf or LF?) the King is indeed set free.

Come out, come out, where ever you are...

Much thanks to Alan Green, Eleleth, and Ishmael for shedding light on some inner demons.