Pendragon's Heir (12 page)

The King turned to Sir Gawain. “Now you shall tell the rest of it, Gawain, for it is your story.”

Gawain nodded. “When the King told me of the bargain he had made to save his life, the task did not seem difficult. But at the end of a year and a day, when he and I had ridden the length and breadth of Britain, we had a thousand different answers from a thousand different women. Some wanted wealth, some wanted idleness, some wanted richer homes or nobler husbands. And we both knew that the true answer must be something else entirely. We were within a league of Tarn Watheline when we met
her
.”

“She was foul beyond description,” interjected Sir Kay. “One eye beneath her snout, and the other in the midst of her forehead. All clothed in scarlet, with yellow tusks gleaming in the last light of sunset. I saw her at the wedding.”

Perceval shuddered. “This was Mother?”

“You should have seen
mine
, on the night of the new moon,” said Sir Ywain, eyes gleaming with unwonted laughter. “Go on, cousin.”

“The loathly lady asked us our business, and although we felt that nothing could save Logres now, not even one more answer, we spoke her fair.

“ ‘I know this baron,’ said the lady. ‘And I know this riddle, and will tell you—for a price.’

“ ‘If it is one that may be paid with honour,’ said our good King.

“ ‘That is for you to determine,’ said the loathly lady. ‘I wish to wed one of your knights, lord King.’ Do you remember, sire?”

“I remember it well,” said the King, poking the fire.

“So do I,” Gawain said. “I remember a time of silence, and then I remember how slowly you turned your head and looked at me with a manner that seemed to say, ‘Why, here’s Gawain, a bachelor.’ ”

“And then I told you that if you loved me, you would not burden my conscience with such a sacrifice.”

“I did not do it for you, sire.” Gawain was deadly serious now. “Death comes to us and all mortals. I shall still lose you one day. But Logres! The only perfection under heaven would fall if I could not save you.”

“Not perfection, Gawain. Not Logres. Not yet.”

Perceval’s father smiled. “Well. The loathly lady told us the answer to the riddle. When we came to Tarn Watheline, Sir Gromer Somer Joure was waiting for us. And we read all the answers we had gathered.

“ ‘All so much warm air,’ said the knight. And he heaved up his mace.

“And the King said, ‘Wait! As we came, we met a loathly lady all clad in scarlet, and she told us that the thing women desire above all other things is
their own will
.’ ”

(“It is true,” said Sir Kay. “And not only for women,” said the King.)

“The knight of Tarn Watheline fell into a rage. ‘It was my sister Ragnell who revealed this to you,’ he said, but although he gnashed his teeth and called down curses upon her head, there was nothing he could do.

“So the King repaid his vow and was free, and I gained a wife. We married in the view of all at Carlisle, and there was no dancing and little piping at our wedding. Not even the children in the street had the heart for it. But when the sun went down and we were alone, she returned to her true form. And her beauty after the horror was like all the fires of heaven.”

He spoke slowly, here, as if by drawing out the telling of it he could draw out the memory. “I thought I was dreaming. Or mad.

“But she said to me, ‘You have broken half the curse. But I shall be fair only half the time. Choose whether I shall be fair by day, or fair by night.’

“I said, ‘By day I must travail and fight, from one end of Britain to the other. Be fair by night, when I am there to see you.’

“ ‘But think!’ she said. ‘By day I must sit in bower, and brave the pity and horror of everyone who sees me. At least, at night, the darkness will cover me.’

“Then I yielded my desire to her choice. But she replied: ‘There will be no choice. For those words have broken the spell entirely.’

“And we had seven years.”

C
LEAR NIGHT GAVE WAY TO CLEAR
morning. The water in their bottles had frozen, and not until the sun rose high enough to touch it did the frost vanish from the grass. Sir Perceval, following his four companions in single file down the slope of a hill, closed his eyes, leaned back, and basked in warm sun. Then Rufus stopped and he opened his eyes to see that the others had reined in and were speaking.

“I have passed this way before, sire,” Sir Ywain was saying, pointing to the towers of a castle rising through trees in the valley below. “This is the castle of Sir Breunis.”

“I have heard of him,” Sir Gawain said. “A robber of women and old men. It is his custom to stop travellers and demand ransom.”

“Let us turn aside here, then,” said the King.

The castle of Sir Breunis was a small keep in a green valley amidst unkempt farmland. Some scores of paces from the gate his shield hung from an oak-tree. Sir Gawain spotted it at once.

“Watch this,” he said to Perceval. He trotted up to the shield, and dealt it a ringing blow with the butt-end of his spear.

“Gawain!” Sir Ywain protested over the echoes. “This man rifled my father’s steward three months ago. I had sworn to myself the right of retribution.”

“Wait, gentlemen,” said the King. “We have an untried knight with us. Of your courtesy, let him fight.”

Perceval looked his gratitude. But his spirit cooled when he glanced up at the sound of hooves and saw a gigantic knight emerging from the castle bearing the same sable shield that hung on the oak-tree. His voice boomed inside the helm.

“Well, well—I see the lion of Ywain, the pentacle of Gawain, and the dragon of Uther’s son. Has Camelot emptied to fight me?”

“No,” Perceval shouted back. “They have come to watch.”

He felt rather than saw the four others move to the wayside, off the path, which seemed even lonelier without them at his back. But it was too late to complain. The enemy was already moving. He laid his spear in the fewter, breathed, “Jesu, defend me!” and clapped his spurs to Rufus’s sides. The great horse gathered himself and leaped forward like a thunderbolt. Perceval’s eyes narrowed on his target. He measured out fractions of seconds with crystal clarity and was conscious, despite the speed at which his enemy surged closer, that his own form was perfect and he could not fail to strike true.

With a bone-wrenching shock they met. The spear in Perceval’s hand melted away into wooden shards. Rufus reeled and staggered. The landscape spun wildly and then the road reared up and slammed against him.

The double shock and the taste of dust were familiar enough from his training at the old earl’s castle: he had been unhorsed. Perceval gritted his teeth, rolled, and staggered to his feet, drawing his sword. Through the slit of his helm he saw his four companions standing under the oak tree. Then Rufus, moving off the road in a daze. Perceval whirled, searching for his enemy. As he did so, something blocked the sunlight and he threw up his shield just in time to catch Sir Breunis’s sword. Not until he had evaded the blow and retreated a step or two did he have the time to realise that the other knight, too, must have been unhorsed. Also he was wounded, with the blood already running down his sword-arm.

The sight flooded through Perceval’s veins like new life, and sluiced away the shock, not to mention the embarrassment, of his fall. The combat had hardly begun, but victory was already within his grasp. He yelled, and rushed Sir Breunis with a storm of blows. The enemy guarded himself, but his wound made him sluggish, and he staggered back under Perceval’s assault. Then he rallied, and Perceval felt some of that gigantic strength.

He danced back a few steps, hoping to weary the enemy knight by forcing him to follow. But Sir Breunis knew better than to waste his strength, and took the opportunity to breathe. Perceval rushed in again, lunging for the right shoulder, left unprotected by a drooping shield arm. What came next happened so fast that his eyes could barely follow: Sir Breunis parried his lunge with such a powerful stroke that Perceval spun under the impact, turning his unshielded right flank towards the enemy. At the same moment, Sir Breunis snatched a poniard with his left hand and aimed it for the underarm joint of Perceval’s armour.

All this Perceval saw and understood in a fraction of time. The only question was whether he was too overextended to take the quick step back that would save him…no. He recovered and disengaged. The glittering blade no more than kissed his mail. All the enemy’s attention was on the poniard, leaving his sluggish sword-arm still out of play through that flailing parry; he left himself, for a moment too long, unguarded. …Perceval laughed and lunged, every ounce of bone and muscle flung behind his sword’s point, and thrust with tremendous force clean through his foe.

They stood face to face, panting through the bars of their helms. Sir Breunis lifted the poniard in his left hand and drove it at Perceval’s extended arm. It was a futile gesture: the mail at that point, unlike the clumsy ring-stitched leather the brigand wore, was too fine-woven for the blade to find entrance. Perceval recovered his lunge. Sir Breunis staggered back off the blade and fell to the ground, clutching his wound.

Perceval stood, rasping in great breaths of air. Dimly he was aware of his father and the King coming toward him. Then he remembered what came next, drew his own poniard, and cut the laces of Sir Breunis’s helm.

The bandit’s face twisted with agony underneath his big black beard. Perceval held the poniard to his throat with trembling hands.

“Do you yield?” he asked.

Protests reached Perceval’s humming ears, it seemed, from far away. “No! Kill him!” Sir Kay was saying.

“I yield, I yield,” gasped Sir Breunis.

“If you let him live, more innocent travellers will suffer,” said Sir Ywain.

Perceval looked down at the man’s vice-ravaged face and shuddered. Sir Gawain was saying, “Better put an end to him, boy. Let justice be done.”

The word reminded Perceval of the King. “Sire?” he croaked.

Arthur stepped over the wounded man and knelt on the other side, removing his helm. He glanced up at Perceval and said, too quietly for the others to hear, “Well done.” Then he looked down at Sir Breunis.

“Do you wish to live?”

A nod.

“You know who I am,” said the King. “Say my name.”

Breunis grimaced and groaned and got it out. “Arthur Pendragon. High King.”

“Then you know what charge is upon me. You have robbed and pillaged my people. You have robbed and pillaged
me
. If I do not avenge them, who will?”

The man was silent.

“Answer me. Tell me why I should spare you.”

“They say that no one ever asked your mercy in vain…”

That was bold, perhaps bolder than Perceval himself would have been in such a case, and he half expected the King’s anger to kindle.

But Arthur Pendragon nodded. “It is true. And it does not delight me to kill and maim, but neither do I give my mercy freely. The cost is your freedom. You must become my man. You must swear to abandon your pillage, restore their property to those you have robbed, and put your strength at the service of all oppressed ones, wherever you may meet them, for as long as your life is spared upon the earth. Will you so swear?”

“I swear it.” The brigand began to sob, loud heaving cries. “I swear it. Let me live, O King.”

Perceval, sickened by that abject plea for mercy, suddenly despised him, and the hand holding the poniard went ice-steady. But the King said:

“I give you your life, then, sir, what’s left of it. See that you mend yourself and abandon this habitual thievery, for if I hear otherwise you will surely die.”

He nodded to Perceval, who with a mixture of relief and disappointment shot his poniard back into the sheath and picked up his bloody sword. The King rose and turned to his knights.

“Sire,” said Gawain with a note of reproach in his voice, “your mercy is too sublime for my understanding. This man is worthy of death.”

“So too are we,” said the King. “Have the castle thrown open and thoroughly searched.”

Kay and Ywain went up the road to see to this, but Gawain held his ground. “We? How so? We are your majesty’s instruments of justice. And your majesty’s justice is the justice of Heaven.”

“Fair nephew,” said the King, “all this is true, I hope, especially that I am ruled by the justice of Heaven. And yet, Gawain, we are sinful men.”

Perceval flopped to the ground and watched the King and Sir Gawain with a furrowed brow, wiping his sword on the grass by the wayside.

Gawain was saying, “We are sinful men, sire, but this man is beyond saving.”

The King laughed. “God help me, Gawain, if you were ever to read the sin in my soul.”

“I know you better than to think it might be found there, sire,” said Gawain, with an oddly sweet smile lighting up his harsh face.

But the King’s laughter had faded. He glanced at Sir Breunis, whose men had come from the castle to carry him in.

“Do not deceive yourself, Gawain. There are black places in the heart of every man.”

Perceval thought of the disappointment he had felt when the King gave Sir Breunis his life, and was suddenly ashamed. As Sir Breunis’s men lifted him onto a handcart, Perceval ran to him.

“You have taken as your lord the best man of the world,” he said, gripping the sides of the cart on each side of the wounded knight’s head. “You know it.”

At first Breunis threw back his stare from a blank face. But then he dropped his gaze and grunted: “I know it.”

“That makes us brothers.” Perceval spoke slowly to let each word, with its weight of menace, sink in. “But if I find that you have deceived him, you will die by my hand. I swear it.”

10

Then they showed him the shield, of shining gules

With the pentangle pictured in pure gold hues.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

O
NE WET EVENING IN LATE
O
CTOBER
the five knights-errant rode out of the forest and saw the grey bulk of Camelot rising gently from its little green hill under low dark clouds and plashing rain. Light shone from a hundred windows and glimmered off the deep swift river-water at the hill’s foot. Over the bridge they rode, up into the town, with doors slamming open and voices calling news and welcomes. The King pulled off his helm so that he could be seen, acknowledging the news and returning the greetings.