Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  Blanchefleur adjusted her face and turned around. “Really? I was just going to my closet.”

  “I think he only wants to speak to you quickly.”

  “Of course. I’ll come.”

  When Branwen led Blanchefleur into the crippled King’s chamber, they found him lying on his couch by the fire whittling a juniper fish-hook. Some of his knights were sitting nearby, and the hum of conversation fled at their entrance. Apparently undaunted by their attention, Branwen called, “Here she is, sire.”

  King Pelles blinked up at her. “Ah, damsel. They tell me that you have spoken to the lady Elaine.”

  Blanchefleur twisted her fingers together behind her back and wondered if she was in trouble. “Sire, yes, I have.”

  “She was ever a headstrong girl,” he said apologetically. “I pray you will not allow any of her wild words to disturb you.”

  “No, sire,” said Blanchefleur, in surprise. “She is very ill.” The moment she said the words, she realised that they might be taken in two ways. She rushed on: “If anything, sire, I fear I was the one to give offence.”

  “I am sure you cannot have done anything of the kind. She always was most…er, ha.” His reedy voice wandered into silence and he changed the subject. “Have you every comfort you desire, Lady Blanchefleur?”

  Gaslight. Hot water. Tea. Blanchefleur said: “Everything I need, thank you, sire.”

  “We look forward to a better time,” said the King. “The Grail, after all, should never have been ours alone. Nor even Logres’s alone. With the Grail Knight will come new hope for all of us.”

  Blanchefleur remembered the odd circumstances of the Grail Knight’s birth, and said, “What if the Quest fails?”

  He blinked at her. “What?”

  She flung out a despairing hand. “What if none of the knights find Carbonek?” Another possibility struck her. “Or what if something happens to the Grail?”

  King Pelles’s jaw sagged. “I have perfect faith in your capacity,” he said at last, somewhat uncertainly. “As I have in the Grail Knight.”

  “I’m sure we’ll both do our best,” said Blanchefleur, and the endless winter grey seemed to sink into her bones.

  It was three weeks later that Nerys told her Elaine of Carbonek was dead.

  21

  We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved.

  Chesterton

  AUTUMN CAME TO CARBONEK WITH THE gracious rigor of a monastic rule, alternating stern, still, frosty nights with the benison of balmy days. Glimpses of the sun, rare throughout summer, now melted away some of the castle’s ingrained chill. On one of those lucid days a foraging-party returned with sacks of apples and pears gleaned from a deserted orchard behind a ruined farmhouse, and Naciens, in addition to the usual bag of conies, brought a parcel of nuts slung over his mule when he reappeared from his latest wandering. These additions to the castle’s stunted fare seemed delicacies even to Blanchefleur’s fastidious taste, and lent festivity to every meal.

  On a sunny afternoon in the solar, Blanchefleur sat by the window spinning. Her fingers were more deft now than they had been when she first came to Carbonek, and although she fumbled with the spindle now and again, it was no longer a living thing struggling to get away but a tool with a rhythm that could be mastered. Blanchefleur plucked a little more wool from the distaff and marvelled at the difference that a short year had made in her.

  “Do you ever think of going back to Gloucestershire?” she asked Nerys, who was sewing on the other side of the room, the only other soul sharing the warm quiet.

  Nerys shook her head. “I sometimes think of going back to the Isle of Apples, Nimue’s country.”

  “Your home?” She had never thought of Nerys having her own country to return to.

  The fay’s pale fingers stilled with an exhalation of breath. She sat quiescent and statue-like for a deathly moment, then breathed in again, and the needle went dipping back toward the cloth.

  “Home is a place I may never see. But in Avalon, for a little while, one might forget, and in a night’s slumber wear out an age of the world.”

  “How is it found? Is it far?”

  “Further than the land’s end; nearer than Hy-Brasil.”

  Blanchefleur paused to wind thread onto the spindle, and her mind returned to Gloucestershire. “I sometimes think of going back, just for the fun of it,” she said. “To see what they would all say if they could see me now—Kitty, and Emmeline, and the rest.” She did not have the courage to mention Mr Corbin, although he was perhaps foremost in her mind. No doubt he would be sickened by her acceptance of Logres ways and Logres fashions. But then, it had been months now since Mr Corbin’s opinions had mattered. And she loved the Logres fashions. She shifted her shoulders, delighting in the free slide of her skin against loose linen and wool.

  “Do you miss them?” Nerys asked gently, keeping her eyes on her work, not pressing for any answer.

  Blanchefleur wrinkled her brows together. “I miss Perceval,” she said at last, surprising herself. “We had such good talks. The others…none of them would understand about Logres. Except Emmeline, maybe.”

  Nerys had no chance to reply, for the door opened very slowly and Branwen came in, brows puckered, juggling three apples. “Look!” she squeaked, and then one fell to the floor with a thud and rolled into a corner.

  “I’ll have that one,” she offered, diving after it, and brushing the dust off against a cat that lay snoozing on a chest near the window. The animal gave Branwen a scowl and began to wash itself. Branwen handed Nerys and Blanche an apple each and bit into her own with a scrunch of relish.

  “Thanks,” Blanchefleur said, laying down her distaff, and—as one of them did every so often—went to the window to peer out. The solar overlooked the castle gate and whatever landscape a visitor would ride across to reach it. Today it showed low hills covered in scrubby gorse and heather. Not a sign of movement betrayed life, and Blanchefleur turned back to the solar with a sigh.

  Branwen did not need to ask what she was looking for, or whether she had seen it. Instead she gave a bright smile and said, “After so long, it almost frightens me to think that the Grail Knight will come soon. Even King Pelles can hardly remember what Carbonek was like, all those years ago, before Sir Balyn and the Dolorous Stroke.”

  She hauled the cat into her lap and plopped down cross-legged on one of the chests. Blanchefleur started across the room to her, swinging her arms, for spinning tired them without frequent rests. But she never made it to Branwen. A sudden dark mist arose before her eyes and she sat down with a bump on the bare stone floor, gasping air. From a long way away, Nerys said, “Blanchefleur? Are you ill?”

  She tried to answer, but her tongue would not fit around the words. Darkness blotted away every sense.

  THE WORLD WOULD NEVER BE WARM again, or glad. Someone was crying little stifled sobs a long way away, and had been doing it since the beginning—a grief as old as the world, that not even the passing of yet unfathomable aeons could wipe away.

  The dawn was still young, and dark human shapes loomed up like ancient ruins in the morning mist. All of them moved together, ranks of men each one in his mail with his sword by his side. Beyond them Blanchefleur sensed a great press of people, on whom silence hung like an interdict. The only sound that bled through the slow tread of many feet was the weeping that would never end.

  She was covered with nothing more than a white smock. She shivered. Two tall shapes, neither of them armed, marched at each elbow, and one of them swung the cloak from his back and settled it around her shoulders. She looked up into a narrow kind face etched with heartbreaking pity.

  She spoke, seemingly without effort of will, and in a voice that was strange to her own ears: “Sir, Christ bless you for standing a friend to me today.”

  He pressed his lips together as if too stricken to speak, turned his head away, and paced on by her side. Blanchefleur wondered if this was a funeral procession, and who
was being mourned. Her feet, numb with cold, dragged a little. Only the jolt of pain as she stubbed her toe through thin shoes proved there was life in them.

  They turned off the hard road, now, and went through the wet cold grass of a meadow. Ahead, three torches spat pale yellow flame into the morning air. Only then did Blanchefleur see it: the stake, piled around with wood.

  The armed escort divided and stood to each side, becoming granite statues but for the white puff of breath from helm and visor. But she and her two guides walked on, and with a slow cold creep of horror Blanchefleur understood what was happening. And still her feet did not falter, and her mouth would not open to cry out, until they stood at the very foot of the stake, and the man at her side lifted the cloak from her shoulders.

  The horsemen hit them like a hurricane. They swept up from behind on steeds with muffled hooves and were among the escort with swinging swords almost before they had been seen. The man with the cloak went still as ice when he heard the commotion; he looked up and stared at the newcomers with a bittersweet welcome in his eyes. Then, like an iron-shod wind, a horseman rushed down on them. There was a flash of steel, and her friend crumpled beneath it.

  Suddenly she was able to scream, staggering back, lifting hands to mouth. The horseman wheeled his steed. Its flailing hooves hung in the air over her head for a breathless moment and then the rider leaned down from the saddle. His steel arm went around her waist, flinging her to the saddlebow. The great sword scattered red as it swung again. Gasping and retching, she looked down and saw only blood on the ground. Then all sound faded away and for the second time, black veils muffled her sight.

  PAIN AND DARK DISSOLVED. THE COLD that had clung to Blanchefleur’s bones for months melted into warmth. She opened her eyes on the dull-gold sky of Sarras and rolled dizzily to her elbow, half-expecting to see signs of the battle she had just left. But there was no fog here in Sarras, no dawn gloom, no blood—only the soaring cathedral walls, and the grassy floor, sweet and pure.

  She fell back to the ground, pressing a hand to her heart, and muttered, “What was it?”

  The living silence of Sarras did not reply. Blanchefleur closed her eyes on the bright glory around her, but behind her eyelids an image of blood and ruin lingered. She shuddered and opened them again. Was the nightmare something of Morgan’s making? But no: Morgan was not yet here and the vision had come between Carbonek and Sarras. What had brought her to Sarras so swiftly and silently last December had chosen this time to drop her, for a moment’s detour, into some other time and place. But for what purpose? Was it a warning of some kind?

  She thought of the fire, of the blood, of the awful screams of pain and anger that she had heard, and shuddered again. Was it a warning? Would she one day live what she had just dreamed?

  She would wait and remember. In the meantime Sarras claimed her attention, and if she had guessed rightly, there would be work to do.

  She rose to her feet and went to the cathedral doorway. Once again the sight of Sarras struck her with staggering sweetness. The dizzying mountain, seamed with silver where the river twined through its streets and gardens, rushed into the sky like a fountain of stone, flinging out tree and flower and flying buttress like flecks of spray. Despite the silence, the ancientry, and the sheer indelible weight of her stone, Sarras seemed a living thing, not merely vigorous but impetuous.

  She turned reluctantly and re-entered the church. Up in the steeple, the three Signs had neither been disturbed nor tended. She blew some dust off the platter, and looked at the bloodstained bowl of the Grail with pursed lips, wondering if it should be covered. But no such cover had been provided.

  One thing had been provided. A trap-door had been fitted to the stairway opening, a gate of wrought iron so wisely crafted in the shape of lilies and leafy vines that she could imagine it to have grown from the earth. A lock and a key lay beside it on the grassy ground. Blanchefleur took them up for a closer look. Both were made of a metal that looked like silver but was both paler and heavier, etched with lilies to match the gate.

  It was as she lifted them from the floor, however, that a puzzling thing caught her attention. In the diffuse golden light of Sarras, both the lock and the key cast a faint shadow on the floor. But her own hand did not. Nor did her hair, gown, pouch, or anything else that had come with her from Carbonek.

  “Curious,” Blanchefleur thought, and the thing slipped from her mind. She went a few steps down the stair, closed and locked the gate, and after a moment’s thought slid her hand between the bars to lay the key on the floor above, where it could be reached but not seen. Then she went down the stair to the terrace before the cathedral.

  Here, murmuring across the grass, flowed the stream which watered the whole country. Blanchefleur bent down to drink from it. The taste was fresh, of course, but that seemed a bare and niggardly word: this was a freshness beside which all the water of the world forever after would taste stale and salt. At the first drop on her tongue she knew she would never drink again without remembering and grieving for Sarras, and so the sharp joy of that wonderful water came twinned from the first with sorrow.

  When she straightened with dripping mouth, she saw Morgan on the other side of the stream on the edge of the terrace, outlined against the sky and distant countryside, which for a moment gave her the appearance of a giantess. At the sight of her aunt’s smile—thin and red, like blood running down the groove in a sword—hair prickled on the back of Blanchefleur’s neck.

  Morgan said: “Well! I am here.” She folded her hands into her wide sleeves. “My master was displeased when I returned without your blood.”

  Blanchefleur recoiled a step. “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth.”

  “What?”

  “That I had driven a bargain with you, and lost.”

  “And?”

  “As I said. He was displeased.” Morgan’s eyes narrowed. “I begin to think I must cease to protect you from him.”

  “No!” Blanchefleur blurted the word out with something like panic. Morgan burst into laughter.

  “Oh, your face! Exquisite! Never fear, you may yet live to see his fall. But what have you done about him?”

  “Done about him!” Blanchefleur gestured despairingly. “What could I do? Even if I had the courage, I would never know where to begin.”

  There were orange-trees on the terrace, heavy with fruit. Morgan strolled to one of them, picked an orange, and dug her thumbnail into the flesh. “What is there to perplex you?” she asked. “Two words whispered in the right ears, and you should only have to sit back and watch the poi—watch the physic work. No one need ever know you had a hand in it.”

  “If it’s so easy, why could you not do it?”

  Morgan shook her head. “He would know at once whom to suspect. Besides, I have tried it once or twice already. No one believes me. Now, if the Grail Maiden said it—!”

  “But I am so frightened of him, and I am trapped in Carbonek,” Blanchefleur said, tears starting to her eyes. “What could I say to harm him there? Would God I were as safe from him!”

  Morgan looked at her incredulously. “You are too frightened to do this simple thing?”

  “You are, too! What chance do I have? I am only a simple girl, and I have no skill in deception.”

  Morgan spat an orange pip onto the grass and said, “If you can be so little use to me, I might as well kill you now.” And she drew a long, glittering knife like a stiletto from the jewelled sheath hanging at her belt.

  Blanchefleur felt she had forgotten how to breathe. “Good aunt,” she whispered at last in a choking voice.

  Morgan laughed. “Where is your Welsh pig-boy now?” She darted forward and caught Blanchefleur by the neck of her gown, lifting the knife to strike. Blanchefleur’s knees gave way; she sank to the ground and cried, “Aunt, please—”

  “You refused to help me.”

  “I’ll do whatever you ask!”

  “I cannot use a chicken-heart
like you.”

  “Anything!”

  The word broke painfully, violently out of her throat and hung on the air, echoing from the cathedral walls. Morgan checked, and a glint of craftiness struck from the depths of her eyes.

  “Anything?”

  Blanchefleur gritted her teeth shut and nodded.

  With swift decision, Morgan dropped into a crouch by her side. “Then listen,” she hissed. “We may not have much time. There is a way for me to destroy this master whom I hate, who sent me to kill you. His downfall is assured, his death is certain. You need do nothing, only give me what I need to accomplish it.”

  Blanchefleur looked at her in fascination. She felt horribly aware of that gleaming knife, so motionless when it had threatened her life, but now forgotten, clutched in a white-nerved hand that shook like a leaf.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Anything.”

  “You want him gone as much as I do.”

  “As God is my witness—”

  Morgan clapped a hand over Blanchefleur’s mouth. “Lilith! Will you utter that name here? Now?”

  They crouched in silence under the golden sky. Morgan shook even harder, staring up, waiting. Not a breath moved in the air. At last she relaxed her strained vigilance and went on. “All will be well, once I have it. You may change your mind, if you like, and try to fight me. No one will say you did less than your duty. And remember that you are afraid of me,” she added, laying the knife’s blade against Blanchefleur’s cheek.

  Blanchefleur felt the steel trembling and breathed: “Yes.”

  Morgan’s voice dropped to the thread of a whisper. “You know the Thing I mean.”

  “Yes.” Blanchefleur shuddered in her own time, a counterpoint against Morgan.

  “Then come.”

  They rose and went into the cathedral. Morgan gripped Blanchefleur by the arm, with the knife dangling from her other hand, but it seemed to Blanchefleur that she clung close more out of fear than an intention to do her injury. They reached the stair to the steeple in safety. Here, Morgan seemed to regain some of her nerve, and they went up the stair almost at a run.