Grail Prince

by Nancy McKenzie

  “I cannot!”

  “Ah, I understand. First you must forgive yourself.”

  Galahad’s broad shoulders shuddered. “How can I when I have shamed her, and all my kin? Her brother is Percival, a man whose friendship I betrayed. He is within his rights to have my head. Oh, God, I have made such an unholy mess of everything!”

  “Anet’s daughter?” Guinevere smiled. “How the wheel turns. Is she an honest girl?”

  “I would trust her with my life.”

  “Then go back to her. If she loved you then, she loves you now.”

  “How could she?” he mumbled miserably. “She must hate the very sound of my name.”

  “You know very little of women’s hearts. They are not so changeable. Has she married?”

  “I don’t know. I hear rumors from time to time. You know, the common gossip of the marketplace and tavern. But I have heard nothing at all about Dane. Percival has married Niniane’s daughter. She is queen now in Gwynedd. That is all that I have heard. And that my cousin wants my blood.”

  “Anet’s daughter will take you back if it is in her power. Trust me for that. I know more about women than you do.” Guinevere raised a hand to lower the veil over her face.

  He reached out and stopped her. “No one will see you here but me, and I . . . I would rather look at you. To remind myself that the woman I have always dreaded so can be—is—also the Good Sister. And it is, after all, a very lovely face.” She paused, then acquiesced, but the dark blue eyes flickered in displeasure. “Is it true, what Abbott Martin said, that you wear the veil because you still mourn your husband?”

  “Not entirely. I put it on when I first heard of Arthur’s death, but I keep it on for anonymity, and for vanity.”

  “For vanity?”

  “Look at my hands. When they were all you could see of me, you thought me the age I am. But my face looks as it did when I was twenty. Merlin the Enchanter laid a curse upon me in the guise of a blessing: He said I should be Arthur’s child queen and never show my age. He has turned me into a freak, may he rest in his pagan peace. What a hideous old man he was!”

  He heard amusement in her voice and was relieved to know her irritation was not deep. “Vanity is part of a woman’s nature. And you are certainly a woman.”

  Her eyes surveyed him in as bold an appraisal as he had ever yet received. “And you a man.” He colored under her gaze and wished he had let her lower the veil. “What is a man of your strength, beauty, and daring doing here in this backwater? Britain needs you, Galahad. Your father needs you. Anet’s daughter needs you.”

  He looked swiftly away. “Britain has been at peace since the battle at the Giants’ Dance. My father has never needed me. As for . . . Dandrane . . . I cannot go back. I am too ashamed. And I cannot continue my quest for the Grail and Spear. That is a quest for a man with an unsullied soul, a virtuous man, a virgin. ”

  Guinevere watched him thoughtfully. “You attach too much importance to abstinence, I think. Loving a woman does not detract from virtue. Neither does lying with a woman sully your soul. It was your denial of that love, your abandonment, that was a lie and a sin. And that, like all sins, may be repented, forgiven, and made right. All it takes is courage.”

  “Only the Stainless One may find the Grail.”

  “No man is stainless,” she said gently. “But let me hear a little more of this grail you seek.”

  He told her haltingly about the dream Niniane had sent him, first at Avalon, and then again in Gwynedd and at Dinas Brenin. He told her about his visit to Corbenic, everything he could remember.

  When at last she spoke, Guinevere’s voice was cold. “Niniane told you that the finding of Maximus’s treasure would bring Arthur back to life?”

  “Back to Britain. She said they would restore him. I guess that means back to life. She called him the Once and Future King.”

  “Mother of God!” Guinevere snapped. “The wicked woman!” She shook in anger. “That’s Merlin’s appellation. All it means is that his legend will live on among our children’s children. She can’t possibly believe . . . No, I see what she is doing. Oh, Galahad, it is another long story. Niniane has spun you a tale with a purpose, and entangled you in her ambition. Listen, and I will free you of it.”

  She began, not with the tale of Maximus, which he expected, but with the story of Merlin the Enchanter. In his dotage this great man, Arthur’s closest friend and advisor, who all his life had avoided commerce with women, became enamored of a young acolyte in the Lady’s service on the Isle of Avalon. Niniane had been adept at magic from girlhood and when she saw Merlin’s looks of longing, she saw her chance for power and took it. By slow degrees she wove a spell of powerful enchantment around the old man. To everyone else, including Arthur, it appeared that Merlin had fallen in love at last and had taken his lover into his house. But every day she spent with him she grew stronger and more powerful, and Merlin grew older and more frail. Merlin himself was fooled. He assured the young King that all was well; he was teaching his apprentice the magic arts that would enable her to serve him as the High King’s enchanter when Merlin was gone to his final rest.

  “She sucked him dry,” Guinevere whispered, her gaze far away. “She robbed him not only of his power, but of all his secret thoughts and all his precious memories. She left him empty of all that made him human and he fell into a living death.”

  “Did this murder go unpunished?” Galahad cried. “All those years in Camelot she served Arthur and he honored her! How could he, if she killed Merlin?”

  Slowly, Guinevere’s eyes slid to his face, and a smile touched her lips. “Oh, nothing could be proved against her, of course. And Merlin did not die, exactly. What was left of him lived on for a decade. I do not deny she used her power well. She served Arthur honestly and faithfully, and was obedient to his command. She healed Lancelot of a grievous wound; she saved me from mortal sickness more than once. She single-handedly rescued Morgaine from a nightmare life and brought her into the Lady’s service. And Morgaine is one of the sweetest people ever to walk the earth. Niniane is a woman of courage and high ambition. She got what she wanted. For fifteen years she was the High King’s enchantress, complete with Merlin’s powers, privy to every secret in the kingdom.” Her lovely face hardened suddenly, and the dark blue eyes went cold. “The one thing Niniane could not abide was a challenge to her power. Arthur she obeyed. Me she tolerated for his sake. I can imagine that she abhorred the day Arthur died and she had to pass on her power to Morgaine.”

  Galahad remembered her frozen face the night he had appeared at Avalon. The Harbinger of Doom, she had called him.

  “You will never convince me that she gave up to Morgaine all the powers she stole from Merlin. I am as certain that she kept back some for herself as I am that Arthur walks my dreams at night. No doubt she gave Morgaine what she herself no longer needed—healing, the Sacred Seeing, the power over the moon and stars, the wind and sea, the cold fire that summons spirits.”

  “You speak like a pagan!” Galahad gasped, unable to help himself. “How can a Christian believe these things?”

  “I have seen them,” she said simply. “God’s is not the only power on this earth. Not yet. I will wager any amount you like, Niniane kept to herself the power to bend the wills of others to her ends. She was always adept at sending dreams, the kind of dreams that stirred men to action in the belief it was the will of God. I know of many who have gone to their deaths for Niniane’s ambition and did not know it.”

  “You think she sent me such a dream?”

  Guinevere sighed. “I believe it is more than likely. If, as you tell me, she is restricted to life at Corbenic—a tiny place, after what she has been accustomed to—with a husband who was crippled at Camlann, why, she must be near her wits’ end! Constantine will not even have speech with her— I know that old blackguard well. How can she get back to the center of things?” She tilted her head and glanced at him in amusement. Suddenly she looked for all the
world like a girl of twenty flirting with her courtier. He began to appreciate his father’s predicament. “She is no warrior. If she is to regain her place of power she will have to use her magics. She will appear with wonderful symbols of power and a wonderful tale to go with them. It seems she has devised this tale already. Vanquisher and Restorer, indeed! She would dredge up Arthur’s very sword!” She drew a deep breath and calmed herself. “Since she cannot herself be king, she needs a warrior she can control who, with these treasures, can be acclaimed the next High King. I wonder just whom she sees in that role: Pelleas, Percival, or you?”

  “Me?” Galahad gaped. “I do not want to be High King!”

  “It is probably either you or Percival. He has married her daughter, you see.”

  “Do you mean she planned that?”

  The dark blue eyes grew suddenly sad. “It would seem likely, wouldn’t it? What better way to bind a likely young warrior to her side?”

  “But Percival loves Guinblodwyn!”

  “I hope he does. I hope he came by it naturally and not through dreams.” Galahad’s breath caught in his throat. “She may also, through dreams or more directly, be fanning his ambition. When you go back to Gwynedd, you may judge for yourself.”

  “But . . . but Percival has sense. And he still serves Constantine.”

  “So do many others who want his crown. But perhaps it isn’t Percival. Perhaps you are the one she has in mind.”

  Galahad colored under her steady gaze. What devil had possessed him not to allow her to lower her veil!

  “She would know you are a young man with high ideals—everyone has known that from your youth. She would hold out to you the conquest of something truly glorious: an achievement that could be won only by a stainless soul, a perfect virtue, a pure heart. She would no doubt connect these things with the treasure of Maximus, since she knows where it lies and could guide you to it.”

  “She knows where it lies!” He could not breathe. “But . . . but Arthur connected them also. He . . . he once told me they were things of power, that if he held them, no one could ever take Britain from him.”

  She closed her eyes on that and a look of both pain and tenderness crossed her face. “When did he say this to you? When he was trying to send you out of harm’s way, before Camlann? No matter, he might even have believed it. Niniane was with him night and day before he left for Less Britain. She might have told him anything. Because she carried Merlin’s power within her, he respected her advice. Who knows? But I tell you, Galahad, it is a thin tissue of lies, fragile as a spider’s web at dawning. Arthur cannot come back. It is his power she wants, not the man himself.”

  Galahad sat silent and slowly Guinevere lowered her veil.

  “I pray night and day God will bless his immortal soul. There never was a man like him before his coming, and I doubt there will be again. To speak as Niniane does about him is blaspheming.”

  They sat still for a long time. Anna appeared at the garden gate, watching worriedly, but with a wave of her hand Guinevere bade her wait. Galahad did not know what to say. His thoughts were in a jumble. He did not know whom to believe. Who knew what those two women, both powerful, both beautiful, had been to each other? But he did not think the woman he knew as the Good Sister would lie to him deliberately.

  “I will ask God to send me a true dream,” he said at last. “Here in this holy Christian place Niniane’s power cannot reach me.”

  The white veil nodded. “When you have your answer, Galahad, go back to Gwynedd. Don’t let your pride keep you from it. Of course she will be angry, but you can change that. What can she do but call you names? Be proof against them. Percival’s anger will abate when you have done his sister honor. Go back and make right the harm that you have done. You will regret it all your life if you do not.” She gasped suddenly, and swayed, her hand to her head, and Anna came running down the walk.

  “My lady!”

  Swiftly, Galahad lifted her in his arms. “Lead the way, Anna, and I will follow.”

  “She is exhausted!” Anna wept openly, trotting before him. “Oh, I knew it! I knew it! I told her again and again to let you be!”

  He looked down at the limp body he held. “For her own sake, she should have listened to you. But for my sake, how glad I am that she did not.”

  In his sleep that night he dreamed of Benoic, a bright green jewel embedded deep in the Wild Forest of Broceliande. He dreamed he knocked at the stone gate and was welcomed home as the new king. Where is the old king? he asked the people. In the chapel with his fathers, they replied. He went to the chapel to say a prayer before Lancelot’s tomb, but when he got there he saw Lancelot himself kneeling at the altar. He was much changed. Old and bent with a face like a death’s-head, he turned around and spoke with a ghostly voice: “Galahad, take me to Britain.”

  It was three days before the Good Sister was well enough to see him again. Abbott Martin was very worried. His eyes searched Galahad’s face. “This is the last visit, Joseph. She asked specifically to see you one more time, or I would not allow it. You have five minutes.”

  A lump rose in his throat when he saw her at last. She was shrunk almost to nothingness, wrapped in thick blankets although it was midsummer. Her voice was gone. He had to kneel at her head to hear her whisper, and the sound of her labored breathing filled his ears. He took her hand. It was blue with cold.

  “My lady, I bless you for all you have done for me.”

  “Have you had your dream?” she asked softly. He nodded. She struggled to draw breath. “Galahad, I am dying. I must ask you . . .”

  “Ask!” he urged, squeezing her hand. “I will do anything—you have only to command me.”

  “Will you . . . go home and send Lancelot to me? I have asked God to let me see him once again, but . . . even if . . . there are things he must do . . . he promised Arthur . . . it is time.”

  Gently, Galahad lifted her hand to his lips. “I shall go. I will go as fast as I can.”

  Her fingers moved in his. It was all the strength she could command.

  “You are worthy of him, Galahad. . . . Go with God.”

  He left Amesbury before noon, galloping south across the Great Plain toward the sea with tears on his face.

  53

  LANCELOT

  He rode out of the Wild Forest on a cool day in late summer. Banks of clouds scudded across the sky, grumbling ominously, lending Black Lake a greenish cast and sending the swallows darting madly.

  The sentries at the gate were young men who did not know him. They must, he realized with surprise, have come of age since Camlann. How sad to think King Arthur and his doings were the stuff of legend to them, no more real than ancient King Cunedda had been to him at their age.

  “Halt, stranger! Declare yourself!” He pulled up, and looked them over. There were three of them, just growing in their beards. The tallest was a heavy youth with the look of a bully about him.

  “My name is Galahad. I am Lancelot’s son. This is my home.”

  The guards stared and exchanged glances. “Where is your pass, my lord? Where is your badge?”

  Time was, he thought, when he would have answered such insolence with a show of swordsmanship. But the guard did no more than his duty. How was he to know Galahad had left the badge of Lanascol in a Welsh cave, and the badge of the Grail Seeker at the bottom of the Amesbury well?

  “Send for my father. Or my brother. Sound the alarm. I will wait.”

  A page went scampering off. Thunder rolled in the distance. The big guard stepped forward. “You cannot be Prince Galahad. All the world knows he is in Britain. You must be an impostor. Get off your horse.” He reached for his sword, but Galahad held up his hand.

  “Don’t.” He glanced at the other guards, who shuffled nervously. “Do you treat all strangers with such disrespect? What has been happening here? Has there been trouble from the Franks?” The youngest and most frightened opened his mouth to answer but the bully cut him off.

 
“It’s no business of yours.” He drew the sword and leveled the point at Galahad’s throat. “I’ll find out who you are. Get down.”

  Galahad regarded him steadily. He felt no anger. The insult glanced off him like a spent arrow. Such armor the Good Sister had given him! Calmly, he slid off the horse. The sword point touched his throat.

  “Am I prisoner, then?”

  “You are. Until Prince Galahodyn comes.”

  He smiled slowly. “You are a brave man. If I were the Galahad you think me, you might be dead now. Had you thought of that?”

  “But I am living. So you are not he.” The sword point pressed, and he felt a trickle of blood at his throat. He drew an angry breath; the nervous guard trembled visibly.

  “Merron! The horse is unsaddled! He might be the king’s son, after all!”

  “He’s a lily-livered coward!” snarled the bully. “I’ve blooded him and he won’t even draw his sword.”

  “Is that your measure of courage?” Galahad’s voice fell steady and cool into the tense silence between them. “Tell me, Merron, how old are you?”

  “Nineteen. What is it to you?”

  “Nineteen. Then you were eight when Galahad last set foot in Benoic. How can you know I am not he?”

  “That is easy. I have insulted you and you’ve done nothing to repay me. Everyone knows Galahad would never stand for that. He’s the proudest man in both the Britains.”

  Galahad bowed his head to hide his blush of shame. “But pride goes before a fall, and men may change.” He looked up slowly. “I suppose he is generally despised in Lanascol?”

  “Oh, no, my lord!” the youngest soldier quavered. “He is revered by many, although . . . although some among the soldiers hold him in contempt.”

  “Indeed? Why is that?”

  “Because he does not fight for Constantine any longer, or any worthy king, but, well, I know this is hard to credit, but they say he spends his days with poor folk, seeking for holiness, and sleeps on the forest floor with only branches for a roof!”