Pendragon's Heir (32 page)

“Fair sweet father Jesu, let me not be ashamed!”

The Disinherited Damsel screamed again, her face twisting into a mask of hate. “Traitor!” she howled, and came at him with clawed hands. But the winds veered and clashed overhead. The trees threw up their hands and bent their heads; and then the wind turned and blew the pavilion, the damsel, and all out over the sea, the lady screaming and cursing him and the pavilion twisting like a wreath of smoke. And the water of the sea burned after her.

At that moment the sun sank below the world’s rim and suddenly the evening was grey and cold. Perceval lifted his hands to his head. What had he done? What had he done? What had he been
about
to do?

All those days he had toiled in the wilderness, prayed, hoped, swallowed every bitter twinge of impatience and disappointment, fought himself into trusting patience. And now he had thrown it all away. What could cleanse his guilt? He thought of his horror when he had thought evil of Sir Lancelot and the Queen, and his stomach turned in self-disgust. “I am not fit for my calling,” he thought, and ran to his swordbelt, and drew his poniard with some wild idea of paying in blood.

But the gleam of its point sobered him. It was another’s wounds that must clean him. And he was not his own, but was bought by another. Even now, was it his treachery to lady and Lord that he deplored, or the injury to his own honour? He slammed the blade back into its sheath while shame, like a serpent, twisted in his gut.

Where would he go now? What would he do? “Oh,
miserere
,” he breathed, and lost all other words.

Night fell and dragged, and Perceval sat slumped on the grass, staring at the sea. At last, when he thought the sun had perished, a gleam of light shot into the air. Perceval armed himself with stiff fingers and stood on the cliff, watching colour steal into the grey sea. Then the sun rushed up, rose and gold, and in that clear light he saw the white sail of a ship in the south. It skimmed over the waves on a breath of warm wind that smelled of spring flowers. Perceval watched it dully, then stiffened as the sail furled and the ship came to rest, like a white bird, on the water below him. He spied a man moving on the boards of the ship. There was an arm lifted in greeting, and a shout from below, and with numb and at first uncomprehending surprise, Perceval recognised the shield of Sir Bors.

“
BORS
!” P
ERCEVAL WINDMILLED
,
FELL
,
SLID
,
AND
staggered up again at the foot of the cliff while stones rained around him. “Bors!
Bors!
” Sand sucked at his feet, and then he was in the water. A wave slapped his chest, forcing grit into his eyes, but through tears and seawater he saw the white planks of the ship and Sir Bors leaning over the rail, reaching out a hand. He thrashed through the waves, caught his brother-knight’s hand at last, and rose over the side, dripping and weeping, to land on the deck.

Bors seized him in a bear-hug, slapping his back and shouting. When he let go, Perceval collapsed to his knees. Worry checked Bors’s welcome. “Perceval! What is it? What’s amiss?”

“Nothing!” He hoped the water running off his head would disguise how recklessly he was weeping and laughing. “Not a thing! Oh, God, fair Father! Nothing’s amiss!”

Then wind whipped into his face and Perceval, dragging the back of his hand across his eyes, saw for the first time that the ship’s sails and anchor had run up while he greeted Bors, and now the rudder moved without human hands, steering them out to sea.

“The ship,” he said, and let the words hang while he gulped down his tears. It was a morning of marvels. There was no need to ask questions. Nor to rise from his knees. They wanted to be on the deck right now; there they were happily humbled.

Sir Bors’s teeth flashed in his brown beard with a deep and contagious joy. “Sir, I perceive this ship is as great a mystery to you as it is to me. But when I first came on board, I found the hermit Naciens here. And by his counsel, we await but one other.”

Perceval dragged in one cautious breath, and then another, before venturing to ask. “The Grail Knight?”

“The Grail Knight.”

24

But yet, I say,

If imputation and strong circumstances,

Which lead directly to the door of truth,

Will give you satisfaction, you may have’t.

Shakespeare

B
LANCHEFLEUR FEARED THE NIGHTS
. S
OMETIMES SHE
fended off drowsiness and knelt, hour by slow hour, in the chapel. But even here in Carbonek her body had not gone beyond the need of sleep. It came sooner or later, and she wandered through the land of dreams besieged by the spectres of her own imagination.

Morgan plunging a knife into her breast. The searing pain, the sudden hot gush and shudder of a heart losing pressure. Dizziness as life drained away. Jangling nerves telling her to panic, to fight or run even as her knees folded beneath her. That day she had wakened gasping in the infirmary, her physical body uninjured by Morgan’s shadowy steel but with a heart that still believed it was dying. Dame Glynis was there, and forced bitter potions between her teeth to slow the staggering heart. But in the dreams there were no potions, blood sobbed from the gash in her chest, and terror woke her to a cold sweat.

Yet the worst dreams came when Morgan did not stab her. Instead, by one stratagem or another, she broke into the tower of the Grail and snatched that wonderful cup, and Logres became a desert of corpses.

Sometimes she dreamed of Perceval, and sometimes these dreams were like the memory of fire in wintertime. They were children running through a summer countryside, climbing trees and eating apples. Sometimes, though, fear threaded through these dreams as well. She was back in that cold vision of the stake, and looked up from the saddlebow to see her rescuer’s face: it was Perceval’s, grey in the dawn and freckled with blood. Or she saw him as he wandered endlessly in a naked land, stalked by lions and serpents. He was buried under a cairn above a valley of bones by a dragon’s lair, his homeless spirit wandering among the stones. Or he found a new love, a lady willing to return his ardour: in a jewel-coloured pavilion by the sea he sank into her embraces, and forgot Logres, the Grail, Blanchefleur.

She woke after this last dream and gave a groan of disgust. Here was the Grail, in danger from a cunning and deadly foe from whom she had escaped only by heavenly grace and the quick wisdom of Dame Glynis—nor had the danger passed; it was six months now since the last attack, with the muted spring struggling to bloom in the Waste, but she knew in her bones that Morgan would try again, and soon, before the Quest was achieved—and yet, as if all this was not enough, her thoughts must go wandering after Perceval.

Perceval, whom she had treated, she realised, with barely-disguised scorn. In the cold and the dark she was suddenly hot all over, remembering the words she had used more than a year ago on the terrace outside a lighted ballroom, when he had teased that she was his sweetheart:

“We are not on an intellectual level
at all
.”

She pressed her hands to her blazing cheeks, seeing it all unfold before her—the ignorance she had discovered in herself every day of her life in Carbonek, unfolding in kitchen-garden, infirmary, solar, even in Naciens’ study. Then she remembered the evenings she had spent with Perceval in Gloucestershire, companionable hours of reading aloud while he whittled knotwork and interrupted with questions and observations. She remembered his quick understanding, his heedful memory, and how often he had had to pause and explain his comments in simpler words when her mean store of Welsh or Latin left her struggling to grasp his meaning. Another wordless frustration seethed from her throat. “Not on the same level!” she muttered to the darkness. “Indeed!”

Careless jibes she had made at his expense and at the expense of Logres came back to haunt her now. They had felt like teasing fun at the time, but after more than a year in his world, they echoed ignorant and condescending in her memory. And yet he had met each one of her barbs with courtesy.

She could not blame him, she thought, if he found a lady to value him more highly. Even if he had as good as promised that he would earn and claim her regard. She closed her eyes, she saw him kissing that yellow-haired woman, and she realised what it was that had stamped that image as it were on the inside of her eyelids.

Jealousy.

She hissed air like a sluice of cold water through her teeth. How was it possible? That after all this time, he should still haunt her dreams? That within the space of the same breath, she should drown in such despairing self-contempt and then in such furious anger?

She was not good enough to stitch his surcoat or sand his mail. Inconstant wretch that he was.

And Lancelot. And Arthur. Was there no honest man in the world? Was every house founded on sand?

“I shall go mad in here,” she said, and dragged her cloak around her shoulders and went out, into the Grail-light.

Day came dark and cold, and that afternoon, as soon as she could flee solar and infirmary, Blanchefleur took the key Naciens had given her and went up to the hermit’s tower-study. Book-lined, crowded with all the paraphernalia of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, this was the lair she longed for today. She half-expected to see Naciens there, but the room was empty. Blanchefleur reached for the
Republic
, the book she was meant to be studying. But even Plato could not dull her worry for long.

Socrates said:

“To the rulers of the state, then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state.”

Blanchefleur thought of the High King. Did he hide the truth for the good of Logres? Had he lied to her, that day in the gardens of Sarras, exercising some divine prerogative? She slammed the book down. Perhaps, if she herself was not caught in such a tissue of lies, truths, and half-truths, she would be friendlier to the philosopher’s words. As it was—she reached blindly for words to embody her thoughts, and said, “
Veritas liberabit vos
…”

Hurrying footsteps from below broke into her train of thought. She went to the door and opened it as Heilyn, panting, reached the top of the stair. Something had stamped elation into every line of the squire’s face, but for once he had no breath to speak. He gasped at her a moment, then bent double and wheezed.

“Heilyn! What’s happened?”

“It’s—,” he gasped, and then went back to huffing.

“The Grail Knight,” she cried.

“No—”

Blanchefleur threw up irritable hands. “You asked Branwen, and she said yes.”

“
What?
” He gulped another breath and straightened, shocked back into his usual gravity. “No, no, not that. We have guests. Knights.”

“Their devices! A pentacle, gold on gules?”

Heilyn wrinkled a brow. “I believe I saw such a device, yes.”

“Perceval.” Blanchefleur forgot everything else and bolted for the stair.

Heilyn called, “Lady,” before she was two steps down. Blanchefleur wheeled. “The books,” he said apologetically. “You know he likes us to leave the study as we find it.”

“Oh, please, won’t you do it? This once?”

“I don’t know where—”

“I’ll show you.” Blanchefleur dashed back up the steps and into the little tower room, thrust the
Republic
into his hands, cried “There!” pointing to the correct shelf, and rushed back to the landing. “And snuff the candles for me!” A twinge of conscience trailed her dizzy flight down the stair. Heilyn
never
left the astrolabe or the compasses or anything else he used the fraction of an inch out of place.

Evening dusk hid under the rafters of Carbonek’s Great Hall, but the torches had been lit and supper was coming in on platters. Most of the castle folk were assembled, ready for the meal. Branwen caught at Blanchefleur’s arm as she came through the door and said, “Blanchefleur! Did you hear? I sent Heilyn for you!”

“I know, I heard!” she cried, and half-dragged Branwen toward the great press of people at the big doors. There was a glint of gold and gules, but when the crowd shifted Blanchefleur stopped in her tracks. The face she saw was narrow and battered, with deep-etched wrinkles and fair hair streaked with grey. Half a century of war and struggle had passed over that head, so that he was old before his time: the fire in him had consumed his weary flesh. Then she saw his shield, and recalled that Perceval’s had borne a three-pointed label above the pentacle. She was looking at Sir Gawain, who came walking into the hall of Carbonek beside another man whom she did not know, bearing a device of red and white stripes.

Disappointed, Blanchefleur turned and slipped through a side-door. Branwen caught her.

“Where are you going? Supper is ready.”

“I won’t eat. I am going to the Chapel to get ready. You had best come. Where is Nerys?”

“In the kitchens, I think. And I am
famished
.” Branwen threw her a despairing glance.

“Oh, well, eat something, and bring Nerys up.”

Blanchefleur went upstairs and shook out the white samite tunic of her office. She pulled it on over her dress and knelt, but there was a great burden of weariness on her shoulders. She forced herself to pray anyway. Half an hour later, heralded by galloping steps on the stair, the other two arrived. The door opened and Blanchefleur gaped at the sight of Nerys standing there with flushed cheeks, laughing back over her shoulder down the stair.

“You win!” Branwen’s giggles echoed from below. “It’s not
fair!
”

Wordlessly, Blanchefleur stared at Nerys. They were
racing?
The fay pretended not to see her astounded look, but a small and catlike smile tugged her lips as she shrugged into her own tunic. Then Branwen came trudging up the steps, smoothing back limp strands of hair from her face.