Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  Naciens saw the pity in her eyes. “Do as you will.”

  Blanchefleur went and opened the door. Lancelot knelt there on the threshold. Was he awake, now, or still asleep? Certainly he never saw her, but stared past her to the Grail. She looked down at him, with his sharp-drawn face and the eyes that seemed a little too weary even for sleep to cure. She had been ready to resent this man, she realised, for the question-mark on her lineage. But now all she thought of was the piteous story of Elaine.

  He shouldered suddenly up and forward, his eyes fixed on the Grail, as if to enter. Without thinking she darted out a hand to grip his arm. “No! Remain where you are, Sir Lancelot, for it was not given to you to enter here.”

  He sank back to his knees, looking up, seeing her for the first time. Like Gawain, he was battered more with war than age, and though he must have been handsome once his face was now marred by weather and scars. They looked at each other, and something in Lancelot’s eyes recoiled, wounded; his lips framed one word: “Guinevere?”

  She pressed her lips together. “No,” she said, and turned her back on him, leaving the door open for him to see. Further in, under the wash of Grail-light, the fire in him burning yet more brightly, Gawain was kneeling. While the Knight of the Lake saw only the Queen of Logres, what did Gawain see, beyond human sight and knowledge?

  She remembered the question asked in the great hall, and said: “Sir, this is the blood of Christ, and the grace of God, given for you. Ask, and you shall receive.”

  Gawain stirred and stood like a sleepwalker himself, reaching out a trembling hand to the Cup. Some of the light passed from his face. Then, as if afraid, he drew back and went again to his knees.

  “Let one who is worthy drink. The Grail Knight cannot be far.”

  Was it motion that caught her attention, or only the wing-beat of a bitter mood? Blanchefleur glanced at Nerys and saw that she had bowed her head; disappointment lay in the bend of her neck. Naciens sighed and said: “Because you have asked to know what these things mean, the waste lands shall be healed of their blight. Long have we waited for this deliverance.”

  “It is well. When I am dead, let that be the deed for which I am known.” Gawain rose to his feet, and stood a moment longer before the Grail. A look of longing passed across his face; then he turned resolutely away, and went out of the chapel. Outside the door Sir Lancelot had sunk down on the steps in a deathly faint. Without a word Sir Gawain bent, lifted him, and carried him down the stair.

  FOR TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS SIR LANCELOT LAY in a stupor and could not be roused. Meanwhile, Sir Gawain stayed at Carbonek, and meanwhile, for the first time in Blanchefleur’s experience of the place, summer descended with blue skies, flowers, and warmth. The castle’s kitchen garden erupted into plenty. And one day a herd of wild sheep with overgrown coats wandered into the valley where Carbonek for the present stood. In a hum of activity they were shorn, butchered, and smoked, while the women busied themselves with the fleeces, washing, carding, spinning, and weaving. The curse had lifted at last.

  One soft and golden afternoon a week after the knights had come, Blanchefleur took her distaff and went to relieve the damsel who was watching Sir Lancelot. With all of Carbonek quickening into renewed life, Blanchefleur felt an odd kinship with the ill knight. Of all the castle-dwellers, they two alone faced an uncertain future.

  She wedged herself into one of the chamber’s windows, sun and breeze at her back, tucked her distaff under her left elbow, and began to spin. The motion quickened her dull mood and with a quiver of anticipation she wondered what would come next, whether it would be Morgan or the Grail Knight, and whether she would see Perceval again.

  The door opened and she slid down from the window as Sir Gawain entered. Although Blanchefleur had seen him in passing at mealtimes and in passageways, she had not spoken above five words to him since the Grail Chapel. Out of the light, did he recognise the Grail’s keeper?

  He bowed to her now and went over to where his friend lay on the bed. “No change?” he asked.

  “None, sir.”

  He turned away with a sigh and stood looking at Blanchefleur. A smile softened his harsh features. “So you are Arthur’s daughter.”

  “I believe so,” Blanchefleur said, but her eyes went involuntarily to the man on the bed.

  If Gawain saw her confusion, he made no sign. Instead, he took her hand and touched the gem she wore. “Well, well. The old ring.”

  Blanchefleur looked at the red stone on her finger and said, “That was Perceval. He gave it to me.”

  “As I gave it to his mother,” said Gawain.

  “He told me the story,” Blanchefleur said. Sir Gawain beamed at her paternally for a space. She blushed. It was not as though Perceval was actually paying court to her, she thought. And would Sir Gawain think so kindly of her if he knew how she had treated his only son?

  She smiled awkwardly and said, “I thought I would come and watch Sir Lancelot for a while. One hears so much about him.”

  Gawain laughed and glanced at the bed. “If he could hear you, he would crave your pardon for lying like a felled log in the presence of such a lady.” He turned to Blanchefleur again more seriously. “You do not know him, lady, the best man in Logres, saving only our lord King. Have you seen him in tourney? I, I press on wherever battle is thickest, but he will stay back, if there is a young or untried knight, and let him triumph. And so he gains the more glory by his courtesy than I do by my arm.”

  “A woman might love him for that,” she said, greatly daring.

  “Many have.”

  “I spoke to Elaine of Carbonek before she died. She told me the story, some of it.”

  When Gawain spoke again, his voice growled in his chest. “Elaine of Carbonek! Did she tell you that she bewitched him? Did she tell you that she almost destroyed him? Only by a miracle did he regain his wits.”

  “She said something like that,” said Blanchefleur, a little wary of his passion.

  “I know Lancelot. He could not have been in his right mind. He is incapable of dishonour.”

  “I—I beg your pardon, but I wish I could be as sure as you are.” She looked at him pleadingly. “But I’ve heard it said that perhaps I am not Arthur’s daughter.”

  “Who says so?”

  The answer came back sharp and stinging, like a whip. Merciful heaven, there was a quick rage and an awful strength kept in hand there. She picked her words carefully. “People who hope it is false. Nerys, and the Lady Nimue, and others. They say Sir Lancelot loves the—my mother.”

  “That would be high treason.” A dark flush spread across his face. “The Lady Nimue should know better than to spread such slanders, and if she were a man I would defend my Queen’s spotless honour against her without fear.”

  She could not help smiling at that. Gawain softened and laughed with her, and the quick rage was only a memory that left the air cleaner and fresher for its passing. He said, “I know Lancelot better than to think him capable of such a thing. His love for the lady Queen lends him strength and spurs him on to the great deeds he does for the good of Logres, but he knows his place. I love him like a brother, but I would kill him without hesitation if I thought that he had touched her.”

  He turned to the bed and stretched out his hand above the sleeper. “Even now, where he lies! Not just for the sin. Do you not see what is at stake here, O maiden of the Grail? Lancelot’s treason would utterly destroy us. Logres would rip in half between her king and her champion. And all the works of our hands would perish.”

  He turned back to her with the fire in his eyes gone, leaving them bleak and grey. Blanchefleur said, “Sir, you fill me with dread.”

  Gawain shook his head. “It is only a nightmare. This is the waking day.”

  “God grant you are right. But I cannot tell for sure, and I am afraid.” Much as she feared his anger, much as she sensed the deep differences that lay like a gulf between them, Blanchefleur looked into his eyes and knew that he of all people
would understand her doubts. She said: “I have learned to love Logres, or what I have seen of it here in Carbonek. And I have seen the holy city. I have shed my blood on its stones defending the Grail. I will go back there, and I will face the enemy of Logres, and I will die if I must to save her. It is unbearable to think that after this, by proving myself false-born, I might cause the downfall of Logres and all our hopes.”

  She took a deep and uncertain breath.

  “But even if it does destroy us, shouldn’t I know the truth?”

  He looked down at her for a long moment. “Yes,” he said at last.

  “I dread passing myself off as something I’m not,” she said with a faltering smile. “Nerys says I worry too much, but how in good conscience can I take such an exalted position without being sure?”

  “You cannot.” Sir Gawain frowned, but then his brows smoothed into a smile. “I say, seek the truth, lady. But I agree with the damsel: you worry overmuch. The truth is that you are true-born. That truth cannot hurt us.”

  25

  Sunder me from my soul, that I may see

  The sins like streaming wounds, the life’s brave beat

  Till I shall save myself as I would save

  A stranger in the street.

  Chesterton

  SIR LANCELOT WOKE FROM HIS STUPOR on a sunny morning in late spring, and the day after, he and Sir Gawain left Carbonek. Before they went, Lancelot asked to see Blanchefleur. She went down to him in the courtyard where Gawain was buckling straps and making stentorian farewells, and led him into the kitchen garden, where they walked between rows of cabbages like big blooming roses that reminded Blanchefleur of Sarras.

  Lancelot walked with bent head and downcast eyes, hands clasped behind his back. “You are very like her,” he said at last. “I would have mistaken you for her, if not for your colouring.”

  “Yes,” Blanchefleur said. “Elaine—” and she caught herself.

  There was a moment’s silence before Lancelot spoke in a voice that seemed to come from very far away. “You saw her before she died?”

  Blanchefleur looked at the cabbages, unable to subject him to her direct gaze. It was a strange world, she thought. Not only was this the most well-loved man in Logres, but he could have been—he could still be—her father. And yet he stood in the sun between cabbages and turnips, his eyes fastened upon the ground, looking like a whipped dog.

  “Yes,” she said. Then: “She told me the story. I know it wasn’t your fault.”

  He looked up and said with desperate finality, “Yes, it was.”

  His flat voice warned her not to dig deeper, even if she had wanted to. Blanchefleur said:

  “Take heart, sir. You came so very close to achieving the Quest.”

  But that was a double-edged comfort. When his eyes dropped back to the ground she wondered if it had cut too deep, and hurried on. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be shut out at the end of it all. But you were there. You saw it. That is more than has been granted to any other man save Sir Gawain. And time is growing short. In a few weeks the Quest will be over.”

  “Yet I could have achieved it indeed,” Lancelot said, “and mine is the greatest punishment that a man might suffer. I have followed too much the devices and desires of my own heart. And I shut myself out by my fault, by my own grievous fault.”

  Blanchefleur sighed, and scratched for words. “Have you no part at all in heavenly mercies?”

  The silence stretched out. “I may hope,” said Lancelot. But there was nothing hopeful in his voice.

  After that, there was no more to say. They went back to the courtyard, where Gawain took his leave of her with the familiar fatherly gleam, while Lancelot bowed to her with the faultless courtesy that marked his every action. With her alone he seemed stiff and uneasy.

  The knights dwindled to a tiny fleck on the road. Blanchefleur went back into the hall. With Gawain gone, the whole place seemed a little bigger, a little shabbier, a little emptier. She turned and went up the stair to the Grail Chapel, remembering some small tasks, some dusting and tidying, that had fallen due. But when she went into the blazing light of the lantern tower of Carbonek, she sat awhile on the floor, soaking up the light and the silence.

  For the first time, she looked beyond the Grail Quest. Would the High King send for her? She thought again of her conversation with Gawain. At least he had believed her the true heir of Logres, she thought with a rush of gratitude, remembering the venom of Elaine. But if the opposite was proven? Would she meet with the same affection then?

  What would it take to unleash the anger of Gawain?

  Blanchefleur remembered the words she had said to Lancelot not half an hour ago—“Have you no part in heavenly mercies?”—and bit her lip and rose from the floor. There was work to do, she thought.

  Dizziness hit her.

  Now that it had come, she was surprised how little fear she felt. She clung to Carbonek just long enough to go to her knees. It was a bright, bright day; outside the chapel’s stained-glass windows, sunlight reached in to mingle with Grail-light. If she failed this time, the dark would come; perhaps this was her last chance to see the light. She looked on the Cup for three heartbeats, just to fix it in her mind, and then she let go and slipped away.

  BLANCHEFLEUR OPENED HER EYES ON GREEN beech-leaves and piecemeal glimpses of the golden sky of Sarras. She picked herself up out of the grass and brushed off her dress, searching through the leaves for a landmark she recognised. Then high above and far off, through weaving branches, she saw the cathedral and its spire. It would be a long walk up the mountain.

  Meanwhile, she stood beneath a beech tree in a sloping corner of Sarras. A stream full of bright watercress chattered through deep banks to her left. Gigantic trees surrounded her, their bark flecked with tiny shelf-fungi, and uphill a short way she glimpsed a moss-covered wall. She swished through white and green snowflake-flowers and followed the wall to an arched gate of wrought-iron. Laying her hand on the latch, she glanced back into the shadowed loveliness of the beech forest and saw a gleam of white.

  After the first jolt of shock, she dropped her hand from the latch and waited calmly for the stranger to move a little closer through the trees, revealing a breadth and height distinctively masculine. Not Morgan, then. She took a breath and unclenched her jaw. Then he stood before her, and Blanchefleur looked up into the boyish young face of a knight, black-haired, earnest-eyed, bearing upon his white surcoat the device of a red cross.

  She had never seen him before in her life, but she knew at once, not only that he was no threat to her, but also that in the long-ago spark of goodwill which had first imaged their lives, they had been friends as strong as brother and sister. It was fitting, now, to slip into that predestined love. She put out her hand with a smile and said, “Good morning.”

  “Is it morning?” he asked, and took her hand and kissed it with an unselfconscious grace that reminded her of Lancelot.

  “Doesn’t it smell like it?” She lifted the latch and they went through the gate into the garden beyond. “I’m Blanchefleur,” she prompted. “The Grail Maiden of Carbonek.”

  Here there were no trees to block the view. Sarras rose terraced and riotous above them, more sublime in glory than even she could remember. At last the knight tore his slackjawed gaze away from the cathedral at the mountain’s dizzying peak and said to Blanchefleur: “I am Galahad, the Knight of the Grail.”

  “I knew it!”

  He laughed. “Tell me the meaning of this place.”

  She remembered the words of the High King. “This is Sarras. The city on the hill. The pattern for Logres.”

  Delight shone from his face. “The City! Oh, to leave Logres and walk these streets forever!”

  “But Logres needs Sarras too. Doesn’t she?”

  “Yes,” and Galahad gave a laughing sigh. “Time enough to quit the mortal life when I am called. But however many years lie before me, I will remember this,” and he turned his face aga
in to the heights.

  Blanchefleur felt a sudden flash of hope, “Why are you here in Sarras now? Have you come to help me?”

  The way he wheeled toward her again, as if scenting danger, reminded her of Perceval. “Help you? Damsel, are you in danger?”

  “Danger.” She bit a lip. “She almost killed me, in the autumn, and yet danger seems somehow the wrong word to use of anything in Sarras.”

  “I understand,” Galahad said gravely. “Nothing happens here that is not meant.”

  “And if she had killed me?”

  “Then it would have been meant. But it was not.”

  “And therefore no danger.” Blanchefleur tried for a moment to fit her mind around this, but there were corners and loose ends trailing out, and she had not the time to make them fit.

  Galahad said, “This she?”

  She gestured helplessly. “A witch. Trying to steal the Grail, and do—oh, horrible things! And I must prevent it…”

  “Then this is for you,” Galahad said, and drew a knife from the pouch at his belt. It was an odd little thing, T-hilted and small enough to fit into a woman’s hand. Its translucent blade, only an inch and a half long, was bound with scrolling bronze wire to the bone hilt. “Have a care. Obsidian is sharper than anything else in the world, sharp enough to make sunlight bleed.”

  Blanchefleur weighed the shadowy blade in a doubtful palm. “What’s it for? Not killing her, surely? I’d rather have your sword, if it came to that.”

  Galahad laughed and linked his fingers protectively over his hilt. “The knife was given to me by an anchoress dwelling by a river in Dumnonia. She said nothing of killing.”

  She wrinkled her brow at the knife. “Well, I’m glad of that. After last time, I have no wish to come within striking distance of that woman. I’m sure Morgan le Fay finds it much easier than I do to stab people.”

  She sheathed the knife, tucked it into her pouch, and led the way through the garden into the streets. Questions itched on her tongue.