Grail Prince

by Nancy McKenzie

  The smith cackled wickedly, rocking back and forth in his chair.

  Percival looked bewildered. “What’s so funny?”

  “He named her Ygraine,” Galahad murmured.

  The smith wiped a tear from his eye as he struggled against his laughter. “I did it a’ purpose, to get at her ma. She’s looked like that from a baby, she has, big as a house and ugly as sin. And I named her after Ygraine of Cornwall, Arthur’s mother. The loveliest woman in Britain. Ha ha ha!”

  They left the smith still laughing. Outside, darkness engulfed them like a cloth across the face, and they stopped to wait for their night sight. The moon had long since set and the thick crowd of stars shed only enough light to discern the general shapes of the outbuildings, shadows darker than the night itself.

  A whisper drifted out of the blackness. “My lords?”

  “Garfalon?” Galahad turned as a hand touched his arm.

  “Follow me, my lords, and I’ll show you the way. Don’t mind Grainne. It’s just her nature. Here, up these steps. She’s left a candle burning. Look, there are your beds, under the eaves. Clean straw and plenty of it, and blankets from her own bed.” He stood in the doorway, his wrist bound in a cloth and held tight against his body. “I’ve seen to your horses. The meadow was cut last week and we’ve plenty of sweet hay.” He lingered as Galahad and Percival stripped off their tunics and washed their faces in the basin of water by the door. “My lords, I know I’ve no right to ask, but would you let me . . . would you let me serve you? I can’t go back to soldiering. The army’s gone. Near everyone I know died at Camlann. And the King of Rheged’s got more men than he can feed. To tell truth, I can’t abide life with Grainne and Da much longer. All they do is pick at each other all day long. If he weren’t old and blind, I’d fear she’d kill him, angry as she gets. Yet it’s on account of him we’re first in the village here, and Grainne’s the mistress of the tavern. He was a smith, once.” He ran a tongue over dry lips. “I’m handy with most things, my lords. I can hunt and cook; I can sharpen swords and mend tack; I’m good with horses. Though,” he added quickly, “not so skilled as yourselves.”

  “I thought you were worried about your children,” Percival countered, glancing uncertainly at Galahad. “I thought that was why you tried to rob us.”

  Garfalon shuffled from foot to foot. “Yes, well, and to clear you from our woods. Grainne’s particular about poachers. But she’ll keep my girls for me if I leave. She’ll be glad to have them—they can do work around the tavern. And although I owe you the service for what I done”—color washed his face—“if you could spare me a coin now and again, it would help us mightily.”

  He cleared his throat and stood awkwardly, his injured hand clamped against his side. Galahad reached in his pouch and tossed Garfalon a silver coin. “I accept your offer. Have the horses ready an hour past dawn. If your hand doesn’t serve you, get Dinias to help.”

  Garfalon stared openly at the coin and bent his knee to the ground. “God bless you, my lord! It will be done. Don’t give a thought to my hand— it will heal. I’ll bring along a mule to carry our gear. Where are we bound?”

  Galahad stared beyond him into the distance. “A place called Lludyn’s Hill. Near Caer Eden.”

  17

  CAER EDEN

  The fortress of Caer Eden stood on the site of an ancient hillfort overlooking a broad turn of the Eden River. The Romans had enlarged the fort, paved the roadways in and out, built villas and barracks, and replaced the wooden palisade with a high, encircling wall of quarried stone. They had also changed its name to Luguvallium. For ten generations bands of northern Picts had sent their warbands south to harass the Romans. Even the Great Wall, running east and west across the breadth of Britain just north of Caer Eden, had not entirely kept them out. Roman commanders had been forced to keep a thousand troops at Luguvallium—foot soldiers, cavalry, and archers—to fortify the wall defenses.

  Now the place was crumbling, half the barracks lay in ruin, many of the stables had been torn down for firewood, the roads had gone weedy, even the battlements were roughly patched. The town itself had shrunk to three hundred souls, including the small contingent of troops left to guard the valley. Thanks to the unity of Arthur’s Britain, the kingdoms of Strathclyde and Lothian now lay as buffers between Rheged and the Picts. As the fortress shed its Roman size and Roman ways, it shed its Roman name as well and became known again as the hill fort of Caer Eden.

  On a hot evening in late summer Galahad, Percival, and Garfalon rode up the hill to the fortress just as the gates were about to close. They found the place full of Rheged’s troops, for Rydor, King of Rheged, had ridden in just the day before on his way north to Dunpeldyr to a meeting of the northern lords. There was neither bed nor pallet to be had in all of Caer Eden and the boys had to be content with such comfort as they could find in the tavern hayloft. Leaving them to see to the bedrolls, Garfalon elbowed his way into the crowded tavern to see what he could find in the way of dinner.

  “He’s a good man,” Percival said as soon as he was out of earshot. “I’m glad we brought him.”

  “He’s honorable at heart. And he has made the journey easier.”

  “Yes,” agreed Percival, thinking of the fat hares and waterfowl Garfalon had snared and cooked, the sweet fish he’d netted, split, and stuffed with pine nuts, acorns, blackberries, and roasted over a hickory fire. “He certainly has.”

  They sat on their bedrolls and shared a skin of water. The thick, heady odor of horse sweat and manure drifted up from the stable and eddied around them, mingling in the warm night with the dry, sweet scent of hay. Distant voices sounded from the tavern, raised in laughter or drink, and all around them, as pervasive as the air itself, the incessant cacophony of locusts filled the night.

  Percival regarded his pensive cousin. “Galahad, there’s been something eating you ever since we left Gwynedd. You can tell me. I’m your kin. I won’t say a word to anybody.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Garf says you’re broody.”

  The vivid blue eyes turned toward Percival. “Perhaps I am.”

  “Is it Dane? I knew something wasn’t right that foggy afternoon when you both rode down out of the hills, one after the other, too furious for words. What did she do to upset you?”

  Galahad scowled. “Forget it, can’t you?”

  “You may think it’s none of my business, but Dane’s more than my sister. She’s my twin. We share everything.”

  “Not everything,” Galahad muttered, thinking of Dane’s hideout in the hills.

  Silence fell between them. Above the din of locusts and the shifting beasts below they heard raucous laughter from the direction of the tavern. The stable door flew open and a man stumbled in, half-supported by a woman. He did not even wait until they reached a bed of straw before he fell with her to the ground and began fumbling under her skirts. The horses shifted and blew and returned to their hay.

  Galahad turned away quickly, his eyes fierce. “Your sister told me lies about my mother. She told me King Arthur banished her from Britain.”

  Percival dropped his eyes. “Oh, that.”

  “You mean . . . you knew?”

  Percival said in a small voice, “I thought everyone knew.”

  Below them the couple began to writhe and grunt. Galahad’s lips set in a thin line. “Your sister called my mother false. If she’d been a man I’d have drawn my sword!”

  Percival looked alarmed. “She was foolish to say so. I’m sure she’ll apologize.”

  “She told me . . . terrible things my mother had done. Things that turned Arthur against her. Have you heard those stories?”

  Percival nodded nervously.

  “She accused her of arranging the Queen’s abduction!”

  Percival nodded again. “You have to remember, Galahad, your mother and the Queen grew up together. In Gwynedd. They were cousins, like you and me. They were friends. But they were rivals, too, for the King’s no
tice.”

  Below them the woman’s cries and the man’s grunts rose in a quick crescendo. Both boys covered their ears until the lovers finished and all they could hear was their heavy, exhausted breathing.

  “Women have no honor,” Galahad said bitterly. “You and I would never stoop to such measures, rivals or no.”

  “Of course we wouldn’t. But it’s not fair to judge all women by the acts of one—”

  The stable door opened again to admit two drunken soldiers and Garfalon with a basket over his arm. The lovers, half-undressed, looked up sleepily.

  “A copper coin!” the woman cried out to the soldiers. “I’ll make it worth your while, I will. Ask Stannic here. Look how tired he is!”

  One of the soldiers fell to his knees beside her and fumbled in his pouch.

  Percival grinned. “Look! Here comes Garf. Saints be praised, he’s got food! Come on, Galahad, make room for him. We’re going to have a feast!”

  Garfalon was full of tavern gossip. As the boys delved into the basket and brought forth half a roast fowl, sausages nestled in bread fresh from the ovens, a handful of peaches, and half a comb of honey, Garfalon settled himself between them and took a long pull at his wineskin.

  “You haven’t heard the half of it, my lords,” he began. “Rydor may be headed north to a meeting that determines Rheged’s future, but he most desperately wants not to go—and wait until I tell you why!” He leaned forward and in a low voice related what he had heard. Within a day of Rydor’s leaving his castle in Glannaventa, his young sister had been abducted on her way to a nunnery, and although he had three-quarters of his troops scouring the countryside to find her, ten days had passed and he had heard nothing of her. He was waiting in Caer Eden, just south of the Strathclyde border, for two more days in the hopes he would hear of her recovery. After that, he would have to press northward with all speed in order to get to Lothian before the meeting began. He had that very day offered a reward of three talents of gold to the man who found her and brought her back.

  Garfalon sat back, eyes shining, and regarded the boys with obvious excitement. “Well, my lords, what do you think? Worth pursuing, no?”

  “Three talents of gold!” Percival exclaimed. “That’s a fortune!”

  “Aye, my lord, ’tis indeed. A man could buy whatever his heart desired with three talents of gold. And I can track anything that leaves a trail.”

  “Does he love the girl so much?” Galahad asked. “Or is it his pride he holds so dear?”

  “Well, my lord, they say he loves the girl, has been fond of her all his life and wanted her to marry well. But that’s not to say his pride is not involved. She’s turned down every suitor he’s proposed, including his neighbor, Kastor of Strathclyde, for all she’s barely past fifteen. Now that would be an alliance of importance. Rydor had words with the Lady Elinor after that rejection—a row, more like—and he swore she’d marry Kastor or he’d send her to a holy house. She refused to yield—as stubborn as a mule, just like her brother—so Rydor promised her to the abbess at the Christian house in Brocavum. The escort got as far as the foothills when she just disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Percival asked. “You mean, there was no fighting?”

  “Not according to those of the escort who had the courage to return. At sundown she was in her tent; at dawn she wasn’t.” Garfalon’s eyes narrowed wickedly. “A pretty little thing she was, too, they say, as fair as Rydor, with hair like spun gold and eyes the color of honey.”

  “And a dose of his pride as well,” Galahad added. “Depend upon it, she’s escaped to her lover and feigned abduction to fool her brother. It’s an old trick among women.”

  Percival shot Galahad a swift look.

  Garfalon hesitated. “Then it’s our duty to restore the naughty child to the king. Believe me, my lords, let us get into those foothills and I’ll wager half my share of the treasure I can track her.”

  Galahad’s cold blue gaze lifted to his. “It’s a waste of time to look for her. Married or not, she belongs to another man now.”

  “But, my lord, there are bandits in those hills! Anything could have happened.”

  “It’s pointless. By now she’s either dead or well protected. Somewhere.” But Garfalon turned to Percival. “Three talents of gold, my lord! This grail and spear you’re after—they’re no more than a pile of rusted metal after all this time, and they’ll still be wherever they are afterward. Whereas this princess—”

  “No.” Galahad’s voice was hard. “If you wish to go alone, I won’t prevent you. Go, then. Seek your fortune. But we—Percival and I—are on a larger quest.”

  Garfalon swallowed audibly. “But, my lord, I have no sword. I only thought . . . you could do this on your way.”

  Galahad rose and dusted off his tunic. “That’s not what you thought. It’s the gold that lures you. We knew already that you’re a greedy man. You attacked us for what we carried.” Garfalon flinched. “But I thought, when I let you come with us, that you might grow to value higher things. I thought it was the beginning of something better in you.” Galahad’s shoulders sank. “But I’m often wrong.” He turned and descended the ladder down to the stable floor, and went out into the night.

  Garfalon looked sourly at Percival. “Who is he to be disappointed in me? He’s not my father. He’s only a boy.”

  “He’s not just any boy. And he’s easy to disappoint. I’m sure I do it every day.”

  “Every soldier in that tavern was bewailing the fact he had to ride north with Rydor and couldn’t go looking for this girl. I was the only one among them who was free. At least, I thought I was free.”

  “You are. You heard him. You’re free to go.”

  Garfalon looked up hopefully. “Will you come with me?”

  Percival shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m with him.”

  “But why? What’s so wonderful about this old grail you keep talking about? It’s nothing but a feasting krater. Every king has a dozen of them.”

  “Not like this. There’s nothing on earth like this. King Arthur himself sent Galahad to bring it to him, that Britain might be unconquered for all time.” Percival paused. “The Grail is the heart of Britain. What are three talents of gold beside that?”

  Garfalon’s eyes narrowed. “Will it keep the Saxons off?”

  “Yes, in the hands of the High King.”

  “But Constantine the Cornish dog is High King!”

  “Even so.” Percival tilted his head and looked at Garfalon. “At what price would you keep the Saxons off?”

  “At any price!” Garfalon replied fervently.

  “Well, then.”

  Garfalon scratched his head and pulled at his beard. “All right,” he said at last. “It sounds like one of my Da’s tall tales, but if you believe it’s true . . .”

  “I do believe it’s true.”

  “That Galahad, now—he’s an odd sort, and no mistake.”

  “He’s different,” Percival insisted, “because he’s the one destined to find the Grail. The Lady of the Lake made a prophecy about him: ‘A son of Lancelot will wield the sword of righteousness in Britain, and save her from the dark!’ ”

  “All right. All right. I’m in with you both. Britain’s future’s worth more than three talents of gold”—he grinned—“even to a rogue like me.”

  Percival smiled. “I knew you were a good man.”

  Mist swirled upon the surface of the Eden River, drifting knee-high along the banks and blanketing the forest noises. Galahad sat alone on his black stallion as the sun set behind him in a red haze and the river mist glowed pink. He stared unmoving at the island in the center of the river, the famous hill now nothing more than a low hump, a ruin of landslide rubble and dirt, empty of wonders. Whatever it had once held—a great cavern, a gate to the Otherworld, a Faerie sword embedded in a stone, an emperor’s treasure—was long gone. The tales lingered; that was all.

  Percival and Garfalon had climbed the low ridge behind him to
make camp and start a fire. He could smell the acrid sting of woodsmoke and hear the faint laughter of their voices. But although he knew that Lludyn’s Hill held nothing for him, had been a waste of time to seek, he made no move to join his companions. He sat and let the still summer evening fall around him, content for the moment to empty himself of hope and disappointment, to sit in the quiet peace and listen to the river glide over its shallow bed. Here was the fork, the watersmeet. Here was the island. Here was the ford. If the old smith was right, this had been a sacred place since time began. If any shreds of awe still clung to it, as the mist clung to the nettles at the water’s edge, he wanted to feel them. He emptied himself of thought and waited.

  Nothing moved in the long dusk but the river mist, which thickened perceptibly and now and then trailed a cold finger across his cheek. The woods darkened; the trees began to blend indistinctly into a single, solid mass, shadowing the river black. The mist, imprisoning the last of the light, glowed white.

  Impatiently, his stallion pawed the ground. Galahad corrected him absently. The horse sighed, stretched his neck, dipped his nose into the blanket of mist, and began to graze. Suddenly the animal’s head whipped up, ears flicking forward. In the same instant Galahad saw a flash in the mist, the wriggle of a silver fish rising from the river. He peered between the stallion’s ears and saw a shadow on the bank below him, shoulder-high in the mist, a small man snagging the fish from a line and thrusting it into a pouch. Galahad slid off the horse’s back. The mist swirled waist-high, so bright against the forest dark it was impossible to see anything that was not itself enveloped in the mist.

  He approached the figure cautiously. Words rang in his memory: Hillmen, they’re small and dark; they slip in and out of shadows. They call themselves the Ancient People, the Forgotten Ones. Hillmen. The elusive descendants of the first Britons who had lived here long before the Romans, even before the Celts. Hillmen, who were rumored to remember a time when Britain was a land of ice and mountains, inhabited by giants. Hillmen, whose forefathers were gods.

  The fisherman eyed Galahad warily. He was small in stature, dressed in ill-cured skins which still stank of goat, and carried no weapon that Galahad could see. He leaned on a stout ash staff as he tossed his line out again, and Galahad was surprised, when the man turned to pull in another fish, to see gray at his temples and in his beard. Such marks of age seemed incongruous in one so small.