Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  In Carbonek, for the first time in her life, Blanche Pendragon felt a dunce.

  Caught in a constant stream of work, struggling to grasp a hundred new names and faces, with hardly a spare minute from morning till night, the past faded out of mind and Blanchefleur almost forgot everything that had gone before: the witch trying to kill her, the giant which had nearly succeeded, the question of her parentage and legacy, Perceval and the Quest…

  Until one night not long before Christmas, when she awoke from troubled dreams to find herself standing in golden light on the peak of a mountain.

  THE ROOM WAS BUILT OF STONE seamed with gold, pointed and spired in unimaginable complexity like a finger reaching up toward heaven. There were window-openings, without glass, opening onto the sky above, but this was like no sky which Blanchefleur had ever seen. It was dull flat gold like the sky in an illuminated manuscript.

  The three Signs, as Naciens had called them, were there on the east wall, but here their numinous glory clung to the sky and the whole land, so that they themselves appeared unremarkable. The old spear had a rusty stain on the blade which might have been blood, and the Grail was uncovered, for here it did not give out light but received it.

  The chapel’s roof rested on window-outlining pillars which twined together like trees above Blanchefleur’s head. The floor, like that of Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire, was covered in a thick living carpet of grass, and in the centre was an opening onto winding stairs. Blanchefleur went to one of the windows, and looked out, and caught her breath.

  She stood in something like the steeple of a cathedral, looking down at a roofless church on the ground. This itself stood on the highest peak of a mountain covered with ancient buildings, so that the whole mass formed one labyrinthine city. Few of the houses and halls had roofs and from this vantage Blanchefleur saw that the same thickset velvet grass carpeted every floor. Instead of tapestries or stained-glass windows, instead of knotted carpets and curtains, the city was furnished with trees, vines, shrubs, flowers, fruits, and bulbs.

  Down in the crossing of the cathedral a clear, bubbling spring welled from underground. It spilled from its basin and flowed through the open doors and across the terrace. It tumbled down the slope, joined by other springs. It threaded like silver ribbons through a thousand canals to water the whole city. Miles off, at the very foot of the mountain, it gathered itself together again into one splendid rush which split into four arms and flowed away through every kind of tree and flower, in each direction, until distance confounded the eye.

  Blanchefleur stood wordlessly staring at the whole earth spread out at her feet. The majestic rivers, the riotous fecundity of the whole countryside, the mazelike intricacy of the city itself, full of arches, spires, courtyards, fountains, walls, windows, waterfalls, and buttresses, the dizzying height of mountain, cathedral, steeple, and spire, struck her immovable, speechless, and all but sightless.

  She did not know whether she had been standing there five minutes or five days when at last she stirred her stiff body and went down the steeple stair. On the ground, wandering beneath the leaping arches of the great cathedral, it was the silence which struck her. The place was not ruined, but tended; roofs and windows had been left off, not because of decay or fire, but because in this country there would never be cold or storm.

  Were there inhabitants? Blanchefleur remembered the silence of Carbonek when she first came there, and went on, out of the church and down the slope, into an endless maze of courtyards, halls, and gardens. All was hushed and still, but she had never seen such beauty either in building or gardening. Robed caryatides stood knee-deep in flowers, bent gravely beneath the weight of walls and balconies. Nothing here was dead or diseased; more than one hall she passed through mingled the grass with herbs that gave off a heady scent when trampled, and she saw pillars supporting twining tomatoes or grape-vines. Further on she wandered through an orchard rich with the scent of apricots, and then a courtyard with a deep pool surrounded by orange-trees and daffodils.

  It seemed to be spring and autumn here all at once.

  At last Blanchefleur came out into an open courtyard decked only with amber-red maples. She stopped and put a hand to her heart when she looked inside. There was a great red winged serpent—a dragon!—lying in loops and folds within the garden, and on the blood-slimed grass beside the dead monster’s severed head a knight was resting. He had thrown his helm and bloody sword aside, as well as his shield the colour of silver, which bore a dragon even brighter red than the one on the lawn. The knight sat with his bearded chin in his hand, but when Blanchefleur paused under the arch leading into the courtyard, he lifted his head and saw her.

  Blanchefleur went toward him, a little timorous, but not fearful. He smiled up at her and she felt faint surprise to see his brown hair and beard now plentifully streaked with grey. Time had beaten, but not bowed, that head.

  Even so, she remembered him well. It was the King from her dream of the meadow. Tears filled her eyes. It was true, after all. It was true, and all good dreams had come true in this land.

  He watched until she stopped in front of him, her head bent before all the might and glory of the name of Arthur. Then he said simply, “You look like your mother.”

  Guinevera, casta vera, she thought, and for once she dared to believe it, and lifted up her eyes. “I do?”

  “Very like.” He wiped his sword clean on the grass and rose, returning it to its sheath. “Well, my dear daughter, is it the Grail that brings you to Sarras?”

  “Sarras?”

  “It is one of the names of the City on the Hill. This City.”

  “Then I suppose it must be the Grail that brought me here,” said Blanchefleur. “I thought I was asleep in my closet at Carbonek…”

  “I know I am asleep in my chamber at Camelot,” returned the King.

  The silence spun out a while, companionably. Blanchefleur marvelled how familiar the King seemed to her in manner and tone of voice, as if she had never left him or forgotten him. She sought for something else to ask, but all words had drained from her. What did one say to the High King of Britain, the august lord of Logres, the rumours of whose glory had blown through the wind between the worlds and become woven into all histories, even the ones in which he had no true part?

  “Tell me what it means, sire,” she said at last. “This city.”

  “It is our compass-point,” said the King. “Every polity is built on a pattern, Blanchefleur. And not just every polity, but every life, every family, the church in every village. Everything imitates something. The only question is, what will it imitate? Something eternal, or something earthly?”

  Blanchefleur turned her face to the peak of the mountain, where far above them the roofless cathedral shot up to touch the heavens.

  “Sarras,” said the High King of Britain, “is the pattern for Logres. Some would say that Logres is Sarras, but that is an error. Sarras is more, immeasurably more than Logres; yet perhaps one day, Logres might hope to become a part, an outflung border, of Sarras.”

  “By imitating it, you mean?”

  The King nodded. “Yes.”

  Blanchefleur tore her eyes from the dizzying peak above her and said: “But I have never seen anything like this in the waking world. How can we hope to achieve this?”

  “Our hope is not in ourselves,” said the King. “And yet we have more hope than we did at the beginning of our labours. Remember what Augustine said about the City.”

  “Et de caelo quidem ab initio sui descendit.”

  “That was the passage I meant.” He fitted his shield onto his arm, and took up his helm. Blanchefleur, watching him, felt desolate.

  “Are you leaving?”

  “Yes.” He gestured to the headless dragon. “I have done what I came to do. But I have not been able to deal with every danger for you. Harden your resolve, dear heart.”

  He passed his free arm around her shoulders and drew her to him.

  “When I see you again
in Logres,” she said, “will you remember this—Sarras?”

  “Not when I am awake, dear heart.” Blanchefleur felt his lips brush the top of her head, and his arm released her.

  She blinked the tears from her eyes. Arthur of Britain had gone. But she was not alone.

  Under the arch leading into the courtyard stood a tall slim black-haired woman, clad in red so sulky-dark it was almost black.

  “Fair niece,” she said, and smiled with all her teeth, “at last we meet in the flesh.”

  16

  I saw pale kings and princes too,

  Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

  They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

  Hath thee in thrall!”

  Keats

  FOR BLANCHEFLEUR, ALL COHERENT THOUGHT STOPPED. Still smiling, the Witch of Gore sauntered into the garden and paused to look at the headless dragon. “Well, well, well,” she breathed.

  With an effort Blanchefleur summoned her thoughts. She wasn’t dead yet, and that was more than she had expected ten seconds ago.

  Suddenly her surroundings jolted into clarity. The luminous dull-gold sky, the molten-red dragon, the violence of splashed blood and splashed maples against emerald-green mossy ground and wall, struck her with an almost tangible blow. She was alive, and life had a terrible splendour.

  All this in the fraction of a second. Then Blanchefleur laughed, and said:

  “Not what you expected? The dragon headless and the maiden entirely unsinged?”

  Morgan lifted her head slowly, and her eyes held wariness. “Not quite,” she said.

  She paced on, roving restlessly as sea-water, to and fro, up and down, and Blanchefleur, without thinking, moved as well to keep distance between them.

  “Tell me what happened here,” said Morgan.

  “I think you know.”

  Morgan shrugged and rolled her eyes. “As you like. You did not deal with it, at any rate. So much is clear. Who was it, your champion? The Yap-Mouth of Wales?”

  Blanchefleur realised that Morgan meant Perceval, and frowned. If Perceval did like to talk, at least he did what he boasted. “Maybe it was. Your dragon gave him no trouble, at any rate.”

  A smile. “Oh, do tell.”

  Her voice, smooth as samite, said nothing plainly but inferred anything at all. Blanche attempted hauteur. “I don’t see why I should tell you a thing.”

  “Dear niece, even if I were interested in your little intrigues, I’m hardly likely to disapprove, eh?”

  “Intrigues—what? What do you mean?”

  Morgan arched a thin brow. “Oh, don’t try to deny it. I saw you in his arms.”

  Blanchefleur flushed scarlet. “What? That was my father.”

  Morgan smiled. Blanchefleur realised she had been outwitted and lifted her chin a little, trying not to care.

  “Ah, my dear. Still so much a child, to be matching wits with me. To be guarding the Holy Grail.” The tip of her tongue flicked out to touch her lips. “So, my dear brother rode to your rescue, like the perfect gentle knight he is.” Her tone had been offensive, but now her eyes narrowed, and her voice dripped malice: “Or did he? Did you see him kill it? Arthur Pendragon, who gathers better men to his banner to do the work he is incapable of himself. Lancelot. Gawain. Bors. There lie the real powers of Logres. And he boasts of it.”

  They stood facing each other, having worn one or two circles in the grass, and at this moment Blanchefleur was nearer to the door in the green garden wall. She had not taken her eyes from Morgan since the first moment she saw her, but now, without a word, she turned on her heel and went to the door.

  It was a reckless thing to do, and her shoulders clenched tight in fear of a blow as she walked away, but it had suddenly occurred to her that she had no reason to stay and hear poisonous words.

  Besides, short of stabbing her in the back, what could Morgan do? Run after her? Shout? But Morgan had far too much pride to run or shout, and had spent too much time talking to intend violence.

  Beyond the mossy courtyard, Blanchefleur found a main road running up to the cathedral at the peak of the mountain. She forced herself not to look over her shoulder, but moved as soundlessly as she could, listening, listening. In the deep living silence of Sarras, only her own footsteps sounded against the street. Then, far away, there were other footsteps like the drip of rain, needling at the edges of her calm… Blanchefleur quickened her pace a little and fixed her eyes on the cathedral spire.

  Where was she going? Was it foolish of her to lead Morgan to the Grail itself? Or could the spire be fortified somehow? She sorted through panic-tangled thoughts, forcing her breath into a slow rhythm. If Morgan killed her it would not take the witch long to find the Grail, in any case. And since there were two things to guard—the Grail, and her own life—it seemed reasonable, with no other plan, to put the two in the same place and stand or fall together.

  Then, too, there was the irrational feeling that the Grail meant safety.

  She looked back, once, when she reached the roofless cathedral. Morgan was not fifty paces away, and when she saw Blanchefleur turn back, she lifted a cheerful hand.

  Once again, Blanchefleur wondered if she was forgetting something. If she was walking into a trap. But she set her jaw and went up the staircase to the Grail, breaking into a run as soon as the stair took her out of sight of the church door. Her feet seemed unharnessed from her heart; what should have stranded her halfway up the stair, doubled and gasping, beat serenely on while the steps flowed away beneath her feet. She mounted to the high chamber as if on wings, swift as thought, exultant.

  Yet all this way she saw nothing that could be used for protection. Here in the spire there was the Spear, to be sure, but she knew the story now. It had been used once before, decades ago, by Sir Balyn. He had snatched the spear down and wounded King Pelles in the Grail Chapel itself, and with the stroke Carbonek had been laid waste and cut off from mortal lands. The same consideration prevented her snatching up the platter and bouncing it off Morgan’s head as she rose through the stairway.

  But the Signs lay on a massive wooden table, with skirt-boards reaching to the ground. Blanchefleur flung her arms around it and pulled, and to her great joy it came grating slowly across the floor. She shoved and strained at it and within a handful of breaths had it across the stair’s opening, leaving only a space of a few inches at each side. Even as she eased the table into place, there was a rush of steps from below, and Blanchefleur, looking down into shadowed darkness, saw the gleam of Morgan’s eyes.

  And Morgan laughed, seating herself on the steps below. “Well,” she said, “your methods are crude, no doubt, but effective.”

  Blanchefleur leaned on the table, just in case, and said, “I’m not moving. What are you waiting for? Are you trying to bore me to death, now your pet dragon is gone?”

  “My dear, what makes you imagine that I had anything to do with the dragon?”

  “But you—”

  “Did I not inquire what happened? It was honest curiosity.”

  “But you sent the giant.”

  “Alas, yes.” A sigh, soft as the wind on a midsummer’s day. “I said it was a waste, but was I heard? No.”

  “A waste? What? What are you saying?”

  “That killing you was never part of my plan. I swear I am the most ill-used woman in Christendom. To think that I taught the creature everything I know.” Suddenly, there was a whip-crack of hatred in her words. “And now he turns my own power against me!”

  Blanchefleur swallowed. Moistened dry lips. “He? Who’s he?”

  Silence fell upon the steeple. At last Morgan’s voice slid out from beneath the table with the calm and sinuous grace of a serpent. “Oh, I would tell you. I am willing to tell you. I am waiting to tell you.”

  Instinctively, Blanchefleur recoiled. “Never mind,” she said. “You would only lie to me, anyway.”

  “Would I? Think! I, the Witch-Queen of Gore! I, the Enemy of Logres! I, Morgan, the s
lave of my own—creation. Fetching and carrying! Morgan, send a giant to another time! Morgan, that paramour of yours is growing fat and lazy in Gore, send him to murder a woman! Bah! Even I would not stoop so low!”

  Her voice rang with genuine injury. “And all of it bungled and botched beyond recall. Do you wonder how I hate him?”

  Blanchefleur clutched the edge of the table. A chill crawled over her scalp. Morgan was speaking again:

  “You, Blanchefleur. You will help me destroy him. You will set me free.”

  “Set you free? Never.”

  “Did you not hear me?” Morgan put her eyes up to the space between stone and wood, gripping the skirt of the wood. “Killing you was no plan of mine. You will die, or he will. That is the only choice you have.”

  The panicked tangle in her mind was getting bigger. Blanchefleur swallowed and whispered, “What are you doing here in Sarras? Another errand?”

  “He sent me to fetch you. Dead or alive, he said. He didn’t tell me about the dragon.”

  She picked up that thread and tried to follow it through the maze. “So you say. Why wouldn’t he tell you?”

  “Why would he? He has never admitted me to his counsels.”

  “Tell me his name.”

  Below, in the shadows, Morgan moved restlessly. “I hardly dare…Lilith!” she swore. “Why am I talking to you? Why do I not finish you now? You would never believe me—and when he learns that I am plotting against him, he will kill me.”

  Blanchefleur remembered to whom she was speaking, and came back on guard. “Let me know when you make up your mind,” she said with a hard edge in her voice.

  “A game,” said Morgan.

  “What?”

  “A game of riddles. If you win, I will show you who my master is. If I win, you will agree to come with me—alive.”

  Blanchefleur said: “Nonsense! I’m not playing any such game.”

  “Then I’ll kill you now.”