Pendragon's Heir (31 page)

23

She show’d me a cup o’ the good red gowd,

Well set wi’ jewels sae fair to see;

Says, “Gin ye will be my lemman sae true,

This gudely gift I will you gie.”

Alison Gross

S
IR
P
ERCEVAL TRUDGED THROUGH UTTERLY DESERTED
lands filled with the silence of stone and gorse. He turned his face to the sun and spoke to the lion to keep his thoughts off the pain of his wounds, which were not serious but galled him as he walked. Its ear twitched companionably as he told it of the Grail, which he sought, of Sir Galahad and his father and the rest of the Table, all out looking for it, and of how soon he hoped the Quest would be achieved. Of Blanchefleur, whom he hoped to meet at Carbonek carrying the Grail. And of all the things he hoped might come from that meeting.

There were dreams. One night, he thought he stood on the cold riverside where he had killed the great serpent, but the creature was alive now, and an old woman, dressed with great splendour in scarlet, sat upon it. The lion was there too, and with her hand buried in its mane stood a young damsel, who came to him and said, “Sir Perceval, my lord greets you. And my lord sends word that you make yourself ready, for you shall fight the strongest champion of the world. And if you are conquered, you shall come to no harm, but be shamed for ever until the world’s end.”

“Damsel, who is your lord?”

“The greatest lord of all the world,” the damsel said, and left him suddenly.

Now the lady that rode on the snake spoke: “Sir Perceval, you have done great wrong to an unoffending lady.”

“Madam,” he said, “surely not.”

“Surely you have,” she returned. “I had in this place for a long time a serpent which served me, and you have slain him. The lion was not yours to defend; tell me why you slew my servant?”

“Only that I thought this lion the gentler beast,” said Perceval. “But how shall I make amends?”

“There is a way,” the old woman said. “I have lost one servant. Now you will be my man.”

“I may not grant it,” Perceval said.

“No, truly!” said the old lady. “For you cannot, since you serve the Lord, Jesu Christ. Be sure that in whatever place I find you off your guard, sir, I shall take you, for you were once my man.”

Perceval woke that morning with an eager sense of impending threat. But the day passed uneventfully, as did the day after. Days became weeks. Spring grew stronger, warmer, and his wounds mended. And yet the land changed, the desolation grew less, and there was still no sign of Carbonek.

One day the lion brought him one last meal, rubbed against his hand, then turned and went back the long way they had come. Perceval sat down on a stone to skin the rabbit it had brought him, and watched it go. Suddenly, he could almost taste the loneliness. Even animals were better company than the trees. After his last hot meal, he climbed to his feet and went on.

He wandered in a wood now, full of spring green and flowers. After a few days the countryside became more hilly, and when he climbed the tallest peak he saw a great expanse of blue sea not far away to the West. But he journeyed mostly in the valleys, feet pounding a dull rhythm. He thought of Sir Galahad, galloping around on a good horse knocking people off right and left. Had the Grail Knight already achieved the Quest months ago, and gone home with Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot and the rest of them, while he, Perceval, wandered on blindly in forsaken hills?

Perceval stopped and sat down. His stomach growled. There was one last rubbery piece of hardtack left, but he felt as if a single bite would choke him. Well, and was he not good enough? Had he not toiled and travailed like the rest of them for the last ten months, and on foot? Was it all some maddening joke? Sir Perceval of Wales, lost in the wild and wandering in circles while the Sir Borses and even the Sir Kays of the world tore past in glad hordes crying, “I have seen the Grail!”

The mood no sooner came creeping in than he pushed it back, and just to prove his resolve, crammed down some of the remaining hardtack and went on. He would find Carbonek, however late, regardless of the distance. But despond came in like the tide, and the weariness of holding back those waves ground him down at last. After two days fasting on water and a few of the edible herbs he found by the way, he reached the sea and sat on the sand watching the waves breaking endlessly on the shore, and the water stretching out to the hazy horizon. And nothing to see but trees, and water, and shore between them as far as the eye could reach. No Carbonek. No food, no shelter, no company. He must climb back to the top of the low sandy bluffs he had slithered down, and he must do it soon, for the water was creeping in and there was nothing for him on the shore.

He toiled back to higher land, hampered by his armour and sweating under the bright morning sun. At the top he straightened wearily, tried to brush off some of the sand, and went north along the cliffs.

He did not look at the sea again. The delight that had once struck him at every glimpse of that limitless silver road had vanished, and the water seemed almost to mock him. He shifted the empty saddlebag and water bottle he wore on his back, keeping his eyes on the hills. Here in the forest, if he found an ash-tree and sat down with his knife, he could make darts and hunt food as he had in the years before he left his mother’s home. But some impulse drove him on, hoping against hope to find some dwellings, some company, something kinder than unseasoned meat and the naked sky.

When he heard it, he knew what it was that he had craved all these lonely weeks. A human voice.

He turned and looked and saw a damsel coming through the trees toward him, all in black with a white veil that blew sideways in the wind and showed a face of perfect beauty beneath hair as yellow as butter. “Sir knight,” she said again, as she came nearer, “be you that Sir Perceval who rides in quest of the Holy Grail?”

Of all the things Perceval had hoped or expected to see in this place, such a lady was the last. He became aware that he stood gaping like a fool, and bowed. “I am, damsel.”

“Then,” she said eagerly, “know that I am a poor disinherited lady wandering alone, cast out by my enemies. And of your quest I know little, save that Sir Galahad passed this way only yesterday, and asked me if I had seen Sir Perceval, greatest of the knights of God. He is resting at a hermitage not far from here, and tomorrow I will take you to him. But come now and rest; you have travelled far with little comfort.”

She spoke quickly, almost breathlessly, and now paused, holding out her hand with a welcoming smile. Almost in a daze, Perceval took her hand and allowed her to lead him through the trees to where, in a green glade by the clifftop that looked out onto the sea, a pavilion had been pitched and richly furnished. A little table with a chair stood in the sun outside. Here she seated him and brought food: fine white bread, fowl, wine, and plums.

“Eat only a little,” she told him, “for you have fasted long.” The food, sweeter than any he had eaten for weeks, woke his great hunger and he ate it all. Meanwhile the lady sat down to embroider at a frame and chat, pleasantly, of small things. Perceval felt that he had slipped into an altogether fantastic world, sitting as he did surrounded by gentle midday sun, the lady’s murmured conversation, and the domestic chatter of birds. Where there had been desolation and emptiness a bare moment ago was nothing now but comfort and ease.

Hunger had kept his eyes open the night before. Now, with his appetite blunted and the warm sun pouring upon him, he yawned.

At this the Disinherited Damsel started up and insisted that he rest. She took him into the pavilion and fussed over him like a dove, worrying that the little couch might be too hard or too small for his lanky frame. Perceval, drowsy and contented, submitted quietly to her ministrations. The pavilion was even warmer within than the sunny glade, and the light, filtered through red and yellow silk, made the place glow like the inside of a jewel. He tried to remember what it put him in mind of, but the lady talked on, saying that she would help him disarm, and that if there was anything, anything she could do for him, he had only to ask “—for,” she said, helping him draw off his mail shirt, “I know that you have helped many poor unfortunate ladies like myself, and if I can show my thanks in any way, I must.”

“Thank you,” Perceval said, for he was a mannerly man.

She dug into a chest and drew out a furred, embroidered robe to wrap him in. She gathered up his armour and weapons into her arms, and told him she would clean them while he slept. Perceval lifted a hand to object as the pavilion’s silken door whispered shut behind her, but then he dropped it and laughed a little. Danger was banished to the hard hills, and in this exquisite light and warmth was no lurking terror.

Perceval sank onto the couch. How long had it been since his body tasted such comfort? For months, every night, he had slept on the cold ground in his mail. Now, lapped in samite and furs, he could almost believe himself far away, in Camelot…It was hours before he woke.

He started up, not recalling his surroundings, all his senses jangling. The heat was oppressive, the red walls felt suffocating, and he leaped to his feet and tore the robe from his body before he remembered the damsel, and the fear bled out of him. He sank to the couch again and sat bathed in rosy light, savouring the rest that still clung to his aching bones.

He pulled on his shirt and leather jerkin, and went outside. The first thing he saw was a table of food the Disinherited Lady had prepared. The second thing was the sun, low down in the West near the world’s rim. It shone gloriously, red and gold; the pavilion’s shadow ran black against the yellow-lit grass and splashed up against the forest’s edge. By the table, the Damsel said, “I have cleaned your armour of mud and rust; it lies over there,” and she pointed to where his arms were heaped by a tree. “Now come and eat.”

“Lady,” Perceval said, “it is not for you to serve me thus.”

“Ah,” she said, throwing up her hands, “I am nameless and landless here; who shall say what is for me anymore? But you have travelled and travailed, and in any place you would make a name for yourself as honourable as the name you have in Logres. It is a small thing I ask, to render you some of the service you have rendered to others.”

“Then if it pleases you, I yield,” said Perceval, and went to sit at the table with her. There was wine, meat, bread, and fruit of all kinds, and the lady to sit by him and talk. She drew his story from him—the tale of hardship in the wilds, the villainy of Saunce-Pité, the black horse that would have borne him to perdition, and the thing he sought, which remained so far beyond his reach. Pity swam in her eyes.

“I have spoken enough,” Perceval said at last. “Tell me your own tale.”

“Let us sit in the pavilion,” she said, and beckoned him to follow her. She seated him cross-legged on cushions inside the door, with the curtains looped back so that they could see out—could see the sunset and the blazing sea, and hear the waves murmuring against the cliff below. The damsel poured out heady muscat wine for both of them and sank onto the rug beside him.

“There is so little to tell,” she said with a bittersweet smile. “I was the richest lady in the world; I wore fine scarlet, not sombre black; in the East was my city and all the kings of the earth brought me their trade and begged for my love.”

Perceval leaned closer. It was hard to hear her and her head was cast down. “What happened?”

“One lord I refused,” she whispered. The scent of her hair was making him dizzy. “So he took his revenge on my lands and my wealth, but I escaped. He could not take his revenge upon
me
.”

“Tell me his name,” Perceval said. “He will be a mighty man indeed to overcome—”

With a quick soft intake of breath, she laid a finger against his lips. “Have a care, Perceval, and speak honestly, or not at all. I have wandered long, but now at last I come to Logres. Perhaps, among the brethren of the Table, I might indeed find a knight to win back my kingdom.”

He caught her hand and pulled it down gently from his lips, although after a moment he could not remember why. Her fingers laced into his, and she lifted drowning eyes to him.

His voice rasped across the silence. “You will surely find one to help you.”

She raised her other hand to his cheek and then gently, hesitantly, she kissed him. Only the lightest touch. Sir Perceval went still as stone; his head was heavy and drowsy and now his heart seemed to have stopped. She kissed him again, more deeply, and his blood began beating again. Her hair tangled between his fingers.

“Lady,” he whispered, “you are passing fair.”

“Sir Perceval…There is no other knight in the world I would rather have to serve me.”

“I…”

“Say you will,” she murmured in his ear. “I know you can help me, Perceval. And if you do, if you’ll swear to serve me, I and mine will be yours forever, as long as the world lasts.”

There was nothing in the world left but her hair twisted into his hand and the red lips that pleaded for his help. “I will,” he said in a dry mouth. She lifted the cup in her hand, with the wild sweet muscat inside. “Drink in my name,” she whispered.

Perceval said, “I pledge—” and then the words faded on his lips.

For through the pavilion door the last rays of the sun as it sank shone upon his armour, lying beneath the tree, and upon his sword, leaning against the trunk. And it caught the sun’s light and reflected it like a blazing cross, lancing his eyes with pain. Then in an instant Sir Perceval remembered the Holy Grail, and the Lady Blanchefleur, and the Lord he served, and was stuck with a thousand different thoughts at once. For how could he drink of any other cup, in any other name, when he had vowed he would not, but seek the Grail? And how could he love any other lady than the one to whom he had sworn service, Blanchefleur? The damsel beside him turned and flung her arms around his neck as he shrank away from her, but then with a keening wail a cold wind rose out of the sea and blasted the last cobwebs from his mind. He wrenched away from the damsel and stumbled outside, onto his knees, and crossed himself. The lady screamed. Suddenly, Perceval was cold and sweating.