They stopped at the trap-door. Morgan yanked at the lock and said, “The key! Quickly, now!”
“I have it,” said Blanchefleur, and her hand went to the little pouch that hung from her belt. Then she stopped.
“Oh, Morgan, and I am its keeper!”
“Yes, but hurry!”
“Tell me what you mean to do with it.”
“Not now!” Morgan’s whisper was almost a scream.
“Only tell me, and you shall have it!”
Morgan lifted her hands to her head in despair. “Listen, then! It is possible, with the right learning, to use the hair, or bone, or blood of a man to make another man—a, a simulacrum, a double.”
“Blood.” Blanchefleur felt her stomach turn over. “The blood in the Grail? That blood? A double?”
“Yes!” Morgan returned, and the smile that passed across her face struck ice into Blanchefleur’s veins. “But—not heavenly. Something so powerful that even my master could not resist it. And now I have the art of bringing a child to manhood within days. I cannot fail in this.”
Morgan’s words faded into the dusk of the stairwell. “The key,” she said, remembering.
Blanchefleur, who had been stooping close to Morgan, flung herself to her full height and laughed. The sound rolled up and down the tower and rang, to her tight-wound nerves, like thunder. But like thunder, it cleared the air.
Morgan remembered her knife, and lofted it. “Hush, hush,” she cried, but some premonition of defeat clouded her eyes.
Blanchefleur did not flinch. “Why, I don’t believe you have a master at all.”
“Give me the key!”
“Search me if you like. You won’t find it,” Blanchefleur said, holding out her hands with a smile. “Dear aunt, I have tricked you abominably, I fear.”
In the dim air of the steeple, amid a black halo of rioting hair, the whites of Morgan’s eyes shone ghastly-pale.
“It was foolish of me not to guess the truth at once,” Blanchefleur went on. “I only come to Sarras when I am brought, and I am only brought when the Grail is in danger. You never intended to kill me; you must have wanted the Grail. Had you come here for some other reason, you could have strolled through these garden-palaces until Doomsday without laying eye upon the Grail Maiden. No! In the end I saw it all. I only wanted to know why you needed the Grail.”
“Give me the key,” Morgan said again, but her voice was scratched and chipped like an ancient blade.
“Now that I know your plans?” she cried. “Dear aunt, be reasonable. You profess to have a master you hate already—yet you mean to create some sort of infernal prince, ten times worse?”
“I am desperate,” said Morgan, and she had gone beyond rage into calm.
“You are a liar,” said Blanchefleur contemptuously.
Morgan did not speak. Only, with viperish speed, she lifted her knife and drove it into Blanchefleur’s heart.
22
O they rade on, and farther on,
The steed gaed swifter than the wind;
Until they reach’d a desert wide,
And living land was left behind.
Thomas the Rhymer
SIR PERCEVAL HUNCHED DOWN UNDER HIS spaulders and stared into the desolate valley through a drifting mist of rain. Summer and autumn had passed. Winter, although sometimes he had almost despaired of it, now seemed about to do the same. And in those months he had travelled up Wales and down again, and having crossed the Severn Sea near Caerleon now passed through Dumnonia in a mood of despondent stubbornness. At first, all those months ago, that wet summer morning when he had left Camelot, he had felt sure of finding the Grail within a month or two. Now Carbonek seemed so far away that he had ceased to be able to imagine arriving there at all. And yet time slipped by, and soon the year and a day set for the Quest would be over.
Perceval suppressed the quiver of urgency that crept into his mind at this, and thought: All the better. With fewer than four months left, if he was to find Carbonek at all, it must be soon.
Rufus, head down, plodded down the slope into the shrouded valley. Perceval shifted back in the saddle, shook water out of his right gauntlet, and hunched again into thought. It was more than a year since he had last seen the Heir of Logres. More than a year since his promise in Carbonek before the Grail’s coming, to serve her a year and a day—
How stupid his behaviour had been on that night of miracles! To turn his back on the Grail and run! Could that foolishness have anything to do with his difficulty in finding Carbonek now? God knew he had repented of it often enough.
—There was no way of knowing, and Perceval turned his thoughts back to Blanchefleur. The term of service had expired in the autumn, and when he next saw her he would return her silver moonstone ring, which even now he wore on a thin leather thong around his neck. But no matter, he would continue to serve her as long as he had it. And he could not help grinning as he remembered all the ruffians and brigands whom he had vanquished and, by way of penalty, sent to kiss the hands of the lady Blanchefleur and undergo the reparation she commanded of them. That was common enough; there was always a steady stream of knights coming to Camelot to kneel before one lady or another and declare that her champion had sent him to greet and wait on her. But the men he fought would not find Blanchefleur at Camelot. They must go on quest, in search of the Grail, and the benefit to their souls and to the peace of Logres, Perceval thought, must be tremendous.
He came back to the present to sniff the air. Some faint stench rose out of the valley to greet him. Perceval loosened his sword in the scabbard, gripped his lance, and went on more watchfully. Then he began to see them: bones, stripped bare and gnawed by gigantic teeth. Down here the fog lay thicker, threaded through the rocks and concentrated above the scummed stream at the valley’s nadir.
Perceval drew his sword. The stink grew: sulphur and rotting flesh and putrid eggs. Then there was a grey glint of scales through the mist, and Perceval came to a bend in the valley and saw the dragon. The massive coils of its body filled the gorge; its wings rose beyond sight into the sky, like iron towers.
Its fire was dead. The ravens were already at work on its eyes and tongue. They also clustered on the body of the knight that lay by its gaping maw, but their beaks rapped against mail and plate in vain.
Perceval shot his sword back into the scabbard and dismounted. From the festering smell, the knight must have been dead for weeks. Surcoat and plume had been scorched away; only the steel harness was left. His shield was split and blackened, but Perceval could trace the outline of the passant lion and crosslets of a man he knew.
“Sir Lamorak.”
The words hung heavily, like the foetid fog, on the air. Perceval went to the dragon and found Sir Lamorak’s sword thrust through the roof of the monster’s mouth, into its brain.
He dared not stay long in the valley, but lifting up the body bore it to higher ground and found a place to raise a cairn. When the stone mound was tall enough, he planted the knight’s sword at the top and hung the shield on its hilts. He paused and prayed awhile and then, throat dry and head aching, rode on looking for a place to rest.
Sir Lamorak at least would never find the Grail, he thought. Had he failed the Quest? Or had he found a better reward?
The rain drifted to a stop and the last light of day shone out beneath the clouds. Perceval rode down into the next valley, a place of gentle grassy slopes, budding apple-trees, and ruined stonework glimpsed through the undergrowth. He wondered who had lived there, before the dragon came.
Then he heard the clink of harness ahead, and looked up to see a horse and rider coming down the green path to meet him. The knight, too far away in the gloom to be seen clearly, reined in and settled his helm on his head. Perceval closed his hand on his lance, and for a moment the two knights sat facing each other.
“Will you joust?” asked the knight. Perceval did not recognise his shield: snowy argent, bearing a cross in blood-red gules.
“Glad
ly,” Perceval said, and they backed their horses and laid their spears in rest.
It never occurred to him that he might lose. A year ago he had matched Sir Lancelot, and now in the full tide of his strength, he thought he could stand against any knight of the world. As he laid his lance in rest and spurred Rufus into a gallop—the war-horse, weary with constant travel, nevertheless scented battle and charged eagerly—Perceval moved with practised precision, with the accustomed confidence of a strong arm and a true point.
Yet the buffet he received plucked him from the saddle and flung him to the ground with a wrenching force he had not thought possible. He lay stunned and sick, with hot blood running from his nose, while the stranger’s hoofbeats dwindled into distance.
Perceval clawed himself off the ground, surprised to discover that he was still whole. He staggered to his feet and called Rufus. Night was upon them now, and there was no chance of following the stranger knight to demand another match. So Perceval limped to the ruined manor, drank from its well and found a sheltered corner in which to spend the night.
The morning dawned bright and balmy, fresh with the scent of coming spring. Perceval woke, breathed it in, and felt suddenly young again, as young as he had felt two years ago when he left his mother’s house. He rolled to his knees, throwing off the cloak he used as a blanket, caught his breath and laughed a little at the bruises that ached when he moved, and found a strip of dried meat in his saddlebag to chew on.
Where had the stranger knight gone? Perceval buckled saddle, bridle, and bags onto Rufus and went back to the path. The knight’s hoofprints were clearly visible here, and he followed the trail all day, finally losing it in the tumbled stones by a river. That was a disappointment; but he thought the last of the trail pointed upstream, and he went up the riverside looking for a place to cross.
That night he came to a little cave in the side of the river-valley, where a spark of light suggested some inhabitant. He found there an anchoress who offered him a meal and a place to rest for the night. The food was better than anything he had eaten for days and the old lady was good company. At length he told her everything that had happened on the Quest, how long he had wandered without finding anything, and how he had finished by being unhorsed by a stranger. Then he saw that she was laughing, and his tale died away.
“Oh, my poor boy,” she said, “that was Sir Galahad. Did he have no shield of his own at the Feast of Pentecost? Yet now he rides with the shield of Joseph of Arimathea. He crossed the river at noon.”
“Oh,” said Perceval.
“Do not seek your chance to even the score,” said the old lady. “It was your injured pride that sent you after him to me. But your Quest is not to seek your own glory.”
“Then I will follow him still,” said Perceval, feeling himself flush red, “and ask for his fellowship upon this Quest.”
The anchoress said: “Follow as you will, for we must all follow someone. But take care, for temptations and evil enchantments await you, Sir Perceval. Only be humble, and pure of heart, and who shall say? You may yet come to the Grail Castle and find your heart’s desire.”
Perceval sighed and nodded, and choked his impatience down again. But in the early foggy morning as he departed, he felt the first glimmerings of a hope that had been missing the other day as he sweated above the dragon’s valley building a cairn for Sir Lamorak. It had maddened him to miss not only the Grail, but also the dragon. Yet he did not really wish to lie in Sir Lamorak’s place beneath the stone cairn, and the knowledge that there was a man in the world who could best him was oddly cheering. There was a just order of things into which he could fit; there were men above him, and men below. He was not alone, and if he was not the first to find the Grail, then perhaps by almighty grace he would be fifth, or tenth, or last—and it did not matter which.
So cheered and uplifted, Perceval rode on in a haze of contemplation through which ran like a scarlet thread the hope of his lady and the Grail. But then he rounded a bend in the road and almost walked his horse into the midst of a troupe of footmen who had formed a solid barrier across the road, and sat eating and drinking there as if they owned it.
“Oi! Sir knight!” shouted one. “What’s your name and errand?”
Perceval, in his surprise, did not answer. The man wore a sign he recognised, the badge of the argent dragon. But how could these be Sir Breunis’s men?
The mass of men before him moved like restless sea-water, hands clenched on bills and bows, bowls set aside, chinking spoils dropped back into bags and pouches. Perceval, suddenly alive to his danger, reined Rufus back a pace or two.
“Whom do you serve?” he challenged them.
“Saunce-Pité!” yelled one man. But their captain raised his hand.
“We ask the questions here,” he said. “What’s your name and errand?”
Perceval stripped sword from sheath. “If you do not know my bearings,” he told them, “then all you need know of me and my errand is that I serve the High King Arthur, and where I find his enemies unlawfully in his land, there do I slay them.”
He was answered with a shout and an onrush, and spurred Rufus upon them, striking left and right, each stroke biting home and biting deep. They pressed close against him, but fell like mown grass beneath his scything blade—and despite the bloody swath he carved, he fought smiling. There were little farms and villages that would dream on, undisturbed, beneath the winter moon because he struck true today. Thinking this, he had laid six men in the dust already when they slew his horse beneath him.
He felt Rufus shudder as the cold steel went in. The noble beast, his since the quest of the Queen’s cup, went down with a scream. But the churl who had stabbed him fell also, head split by lashing hooves.
Perceval flung himself away from the wreck—fell, saw the rabble come running, and surged to his feet, gripping his sword. He had no time to lament the horse. In a moment he was surrounded, with nothing but his armour to protect his back, and he knew it was like to go hard with him now that he had lost his mount. But the son of Gawain was young, and strong, with the blood of mighty Orkney in his veins, tempered by the subtle and strange blood of Avalon. Taller than his father’s brothers, more terrible in battle was he, and though now a score of men came against him and pressed him on every side, still he fought, until the blood ran down his sword and splashed his arm to the elbow.
For all that, he was wounded and flagging when help came like iron-hooved thunder. A knight, all in white and red, sliced through the mob, scattering them right and left; then cut back again, his sword hissing in the teeth of the wind, until those he left alive broke and ran for the trees. Perceval saw his rescuer’s shield as the knight checked and turned and wheeled back to chase the survivors, and he knew it was Sir Galahad. Perceval followed at a stumbling run, calling Galahad’s name, but the Knight of the Red Cross vanished into the forest driving the rabble before him, and Perceval felt the ground heave and buck beneath him. He fell dizzily to his knees.
For a few minutes he rested there, gasping through clouds of pain, until his head cleared a little and he could climb back to his feet and cast up accounts. The sums came out discouragingly. He had his life, but little more.
He salvaged food and water from Rufus’s saddlebags, rested a while, bound up his wounds, and then walked away. Later, there would be wild beasts, wolves or lions, among the dead, and in the aftermath of battle, he was too feeble to fend them off.
At first, Perceval hoped to find a castle where he could beg a night’s lodging for charity’s sake, and perhaps bargain for a horse. But this was a deserted place, and the path soon gave out among stones and scrub. Night came dark and cloudy, howling with wind. Perceval wrapped himself in his cloak, wedged himself into the roots of a great oak, and swallowed cold food and water.
He intended to watch. The pain of his wounds, the cold and the rain, and the fear of wild things, whether beasts or men, should have kept him waking.
But suddenly, a crack of thunde
r made him start, and he opened his eyes on blackest night. A moment later there was a flash of lightning and he saw quite close to him a lady of towering height, muffled in dark robes, with eyes that glinted in the fitful moonlight. She led a black horse, richly furnished. The blaze of lightning stamped its image across his mind. Sir Perceval had seen horses worth a king’s ransom, great war-horses of the dying Roman breed, eager for battle, swifter than wind. But he knew that he had never seen one to match this horse.
“Sir Perceval,” the lady said to him, her voice lashing through the storm, “why do you lie here?”
He rose stiffly to his feet, trembling with cold as the wind caught him. “Be well, damsel. If I am in your way, I am sorry, but my horse is dead and I cannot travel fast.”
“You are wounded,” she said.
He lifted a palm in a gesture of resignation. “That also.”
“Then I take pity on you,” said the lady. “Only promise to do what I shall ask of you, and I will give you this horse. He will carry you to the ends of the earth.”
“Damsel, if it is a thing I may do with honour, you have only to ask and it is yours.”
Her voice in the darkness was oddly mocking. “Only care for him, and return him to me in my home.”
He would have given far more for the chance to sit such a beast, if only for an hour. “Gladly. Where is that?”
“He knows,” she said, rubbing the proud black arch of the neck. “He will bring you to me. There! He is yours.”
“My thanks,” Perceval said, and took the reins from her. She remained with a hand on its nose as he mounted with difficulty—it was a tall beast, and his wounds caught him as he moved. The horse stood still as graven stone until the lady took her hand from its head, and Perceval touched his spurs lightly to its sides. With a deafening scream, it reared into the air, so that Perceval loosed his feet in the stirrups to jump. But it came back to the earth safely, shied at a shadow, neighed again, and leaped forward.
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