Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  “Where are you, in the waking world? Are you far from Carbonek? Will you be much longer?”

  But the Knight of the Grail shook his head. “I cannot tell.”

  Her questions were all futile, of course. “I’m sorry, of course you can’t.”

  “But I think it will be soon.” Eagerness snapped in his eyes. Before she could dredge up courage to ask the next question, he went on. “And yet I could wish it to be years in the future. So much of my life has been aimed toward this day. What shall I do when it is past?”

  Blanchefleur looked at him with surprise. “Surely you came to do more than achieve the Grail.”

  “Oh, surely,” he returned quickly. “That was never my whole purpose in the Quest.”

  She puzzled over that for a moment as they went up the hill. Blanchefleur, looking at the pavement beneath their feet, once again noticed the absence of any shadow. Neither she nor Galahad, it seemed, could disrupt the serene light of Sarras.

  Sir Galahad did not look at his feet. He walked with his head lifted up, enthralled by all the beauty that surrounded them. Blanchefleur opened her mouth to ask for news of Perceval and then hesitated. Surely it was unlikely that their paths would have crossed?

  Galahad spoke while she was still wavering in her mind. “My mother—is she well?”

  “Oh,” Blanchefleur said, halting. Galahad bent to look into her face.

  “Dead.”

  “Yes.”

  He stood statue-still for a moment, looking at something on the road. Then he lifted his head and went on up the hill, walking more slowly. “Naciens told me she was ill. I had hoped to arrive in time.”

  “I’m sorry.” Blanchefleur tried to remember what she knew of those last days. “Nerys took care of her, toward the end.”

  With eyes narrowed against the light of Sarras, Galahad almost seemed to be searching the streets for something. He said, “I fear I do not know the lady.”

  “No one could have cared for her more tenderly.”

  They mounted higher in silence. Blanchefleur closed her eyes and saw once more the pallid face of the mother of Galahad, with the bitter lines scored into her face. At last the question almost burst out of her:

  “Tell me what it means, Galahad—your birth.”

  There was a question in his glance.

  “Did it have to happen the way it did? How can you know you won’t be shut out of the Grail Chapel, like Sir Lancelot?” She swallowed, trying to dig deeper into the thing that troubled her. “How will such sinful people as your father, and my father, build this?” And she threw out her arms to encompass Sarras.

  Galahad lifted his face to the cathedral. “We cannot.”

  Tears prickled her eyes. “Then why were we put on the earth?”

  “To build Sarras.” He smiled when he saw her blank perplexity. “It is no contradiction. Our inability does not excuse us. But hammer and nails need not be perfect, if they are wielded by a perfect workman.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Can any workman use such crooked, broken things?” But her words fell unheeded in the warm air. The street was empty. The Grail Knight had gone.

  Her first reflex was another jolt of panic. She remembered too well that Morgan’s first appearance had come immediately after the High King’s sudden departure. She dug into her pouch and folded her fingers around the crosspiece of the obsidian knife. The shadowy blade did nothing to comfort her. She was not trained to use this or any weapon, nor could she bring herself to imagine using it.

  A little thread of frustration curled through her thoughts. Once, she had turned up her nose at Christine de Pisan’s recommendation that a lady ought to know the use of weapons. Now she stood in danger of her life, and by her ignorance was more likely to injure herself than her enemy.

  The cathedral still loomed far above her on the mountaintop. Was Morgan already there, in the steeple? Blanchefleur broke into a run. Wing-footed, tireless speed greeted her efforts, but she mounted the hill and flung herself up the stair to the close-cropped green lawn of the cathedral with a breathlessness that came from fear.

  She slid to a stop beneath the great doorway arch. No Morgan. She turned and scanned the terrace again with sudden doubt. Morgan wasn’t here? Had she come to Sarras only to meet Galahad, then?

  Unless Morgan was already ahead of her, in the steeple.

  She started across the lawn to the stair. She had covered only half the ground when the steeple erupted. There was a flash of flame, a belch of smoke, a blast that knocked her down on her face. The whole cathedral hummed like a bell that has been struck. One of the stone saints on the steeple’s spire toppled, tumbled head over foot for an agonising length of time, and then hit the ground with a dull thump that cracked off its serene and smiling head.

  Blanchefleur choked, “Merciful heaven!” and staggered to her feet. Inside, the stair reeked of smoke and fumes and the smell of fireworks. But how did Morgan have gunpowder? She clutched the obsidian knife a little harder and pelted up the stair, coughing in the smoke. She lost count of the steps. Then the gate across the entrance to the place of the Grail suddenly loomed over her, and she fought herself to a stop just too late to avoid knocking her head against the iron.

  She gripped the bars and shook them. Locked. Above, the wind had already blown much of the smoke away, but from the cramped steps below the trap she could not see the Grail. Only the great wooden table, blasted and blackened and swept clear, it seemed, of both Cup and Platter…

  Blanchefleur reached up and groped at the ledge above the gate. The key was there where she’d left it last time, nestled into warm crackling ash that had once been grass. She snatched it and paused.

  No flutter of clothing betrayed a presence above. No pursuing footstep echoed below. A whisper of sound dragged at her hearing, but then it came again and was only the wind. Blanchefleur waited no longer. She unlocked the gate, flung it back, and sprang into the chapel.

  The place was scorched. The grass of the floor had turned to powder, where tiny fragments of bomb-casing still smoked and crunched underfoot. Blanchefleur barely heeded them. The Spear hung on its hooks, the length of its haft now charred and blackened. But the wooden table was empty.

  She flung herself at it with a gasp like a sob, then scrabbled on the floor. Here was the platter, upside-down. The Grail had rolled beneath the table. Neither was even slightly harmed.

  Blanchefleur collapsed to the floor, hugging the Signs, almost faint with relief.

  Then a shadow spilled across the scorched grass, onto her lap. Blanchefleur jerked back with a cry as if she had been burned. Morgan stood not three paces away with her eyes fixed upon the Cup. Her feet were bare. And she had called that whispering motion the wind!

  Blanchefleur put the platter down and rose up, clenching the Grail in her left hand and the sharp-enough-to-bleed-sunlight knife in her right. Morgan was breathing fast, her eyes bright with triumph, teeth showing. But she did not move.

  “Give me the Grail.”

  Blanchefleur lifted her knife. Morgan’s eyes slipped to that tiny blade and something damped the triumph in her eyes. Blanchefleur saw the infinitesimal quiver of the witch’s jaw, and tightened her resolve.

  “You know little of me if you expect me to do that,” she whispered.

  Morgan stood with her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the stone knife. Blanchefleur cleared her throat, backed a step, and said, “I am curious. What happened when you stabbed me in the autumn? You never touched the Grail, or we would know of it at Carbonek.”

  Morgan stirred, and her glare was knife-edged. “Sarras spat me out. I woke.”

  “Ah,” said Blanchefleur. “I am brought to Sarras only when there is an attempt on the Grail. And if you kill me in Sarras, you put the Cup beyond your own reach.”

  Morgan tilted her chin, and her hand drifted to the knife at her own belt. “Tell me of yourself. Are you dead now, or living?”

  “Do the dead guard the Signs of Carbonek?”
r />   “Shall I pass my blade through you and see?”

  Blanchefleur remembered that her mortal body lay in the Grail Chapel at Carbonek, far from the infirmary. Another wound like the last and she could die there, helpless.

  Was death really too high a price to pay for the protection of the Grail?

  She forced a smile. “Please, do that, if there is no easier way to rid Sarras of you.”

  Slowly, Morgan’s hand fell from the knife-hilt.

  Blanchefleur backed another step, away from the Table, toward one of the arrow-shaped openings that looked out on the mountain city of Sarras. The fall to the cathedral floor was far enough to kill her. She could go over clutching the Grail. Perhaps, by heavenly grace, she would not also die in Carbonek.

  But it was a desperate gamble.

  “Stop!” Morgan seemed to guess what was passing through her mind. “Why? Why die for it? It is only a cup.”

  Blanchefleur backed another step. “It is our only hope for Logres,” she said, and remembered what Nerys had said so long ago. “And more than Logres. The kingdom that shall never be destroyed.”

  Morgan bowed her head. The gesture hid the warning spark in her eyes. Then she sprang.

  Blanchefleur reacted faster than she could have imagined possible, dodging to one side. Only let Morgan’s impetus carry her to the window, and a single shove would suffice to kill Morgan and leave Blanchefleur in possession of the Grail. Her heart stood still as Morgan went past. Then the witch flung out a hand and clenched Blanchefleur’s right arm. They staggered another step, to the window’s edge, before steadying on the very brink. Blanchefleur yanked away, back into the room. But Morgan held her grip with fingers that bored into Blanchefleur’s arm and reached for the Grail. Her left hand found the Cup and closed. They strained for a moment, then Morgan twisted the Grail and with it Blanchefleur’s arm. She fell to her knees, whimpering in pain, and then lost her grip with one last jerk that tore the Grail free. It hit the ground too far away for her to reach. Morgan was on it at once.

  Her shadow pooled beneath her as she knelt to retrieve the Cup. Blanchefleur saw it, and within the same heartbeat she saw the purpose of the knife that could cut sunlight.

  Morgan rose to her feet, holding the Grail. Her shadow flowed across the ground. Blanchefleur hurled herself forward and sliced through the air at Morgan’s heels. As the blade skimmed the floor, tiny ashen curls of grass parted and floated into the air, shredding into smoke. Through light and shade the knife flashed, and parted Morgan from her shadow.

  Morgan whipped around, her face suddenly pale as paper. With a puff of wind, the shadow twisted like smoke and drifted away. Her hands, white to the knuckle, clenched on the Grail and trembled.

  “No!” she whispered.

  The Grail fell through her fingers into Blanchefleur’s hands. Another puff of wind caught Morgan as it had her shadow; she floated a few steps, regained her footing, mouthed “No!” again, and was gone on the sweet warm breath of Sarras.

  Blanchefleur rose to watch the wind carry her away. Then, moving very slowly, she set the Grail on the table, straightened the spear, replaced the platter, slid the stone knife into her pouch, and closed and locked the trapdoor.

  The steeple still smelled of smoke, and the black grass was prickly and sooty, but Blanchefleur was too tired to care. She stretched herself out full length and for the first time in months, drifted into dreamless sleep.

  26

  Far in the Town of Sarras,

  Red-rose the gloamings fall,

  For in her heart of wonder

  Flames the Sangreal.

  …

  But where the Grail-Knight entered,

  Ah! me! I enter not.

  Taylor

  ON A WARM EVENING THAT SMELLED of summer, while the sun hovered low in a purple evening sky and the whirr of crickets underlined every other sound, the Grail Knight came to Carbonek. Blanchefleur heard the cry as she carried bread into the hall. The children were the first to race for the door with shouts of excitement; then the squires, with longer legs, outstripped them. One of them paused to hand Branwen a dish of mutton before dashing away. She squeaked in outrage, flung the gigantic platter onto the nearest table, and ran after. As a hush dropped over the emptying hall, Blanchefleur found Nerys standing like a statue with her arms wrapped round a stoup of wine.

  “Nerys,” she said. “What if it’s him? At last?”

  Sight slid back to the fay’s fathomless eyes. She shook her head wordlessly and put the wine on the table.

  Branwen swooped back into the hall in a storm of excitement. “Blanchefleur! Your knight is here!”

  Relief bloomed in her tight chest. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes! Well, it would hardly be Sir Gawain again, would it? And anyway the device is labelled.”

  “And no one else?”

  “Two others—”

  “Is there the device of the red cross?”

  “Argent and gules? Yes.”

  Blanchefleur took another deep breath. “The Grail Knight.”

  Branwen’s eyes widened. Blanchefleur added, “I saw him in Sarras.”

  Nerys stirred. Her wonderment blazed like the light in a long-dead lantern. “You saw him in the City?”

  Blanchefleur nodded.

  “And never told me?”

  “They’re coming!” one of the pages yelped from the doorway.

  Blanchefleur was struck with shyness. If she was going to see Perceval again, after all this time, she wanted at least the bulwark of Grail-light to strengthen her. “Let’s go.” She dumped the bread onto the table. “Stay if you wish, Branwen.”

  Branwen clamped her hands over her stomach. “I have no appetite.”

  Nerys and Blanchefleur looked at her in double concern. Branwen smiled weakly. “Let us see the end of the Quest first, and eat after.”

  “There’s the Branwen we know,” said Blanchefleur with a laugh. But then came the sound of many footsteps from the door, and she ducked into one of the side passages, trailed by the others.

  With every step of the way up the winding stair to the Grail Chapel, the shining purport of what was about to happen weighed more heavily on Blanchefleur’s shoulders like a robe of office. From Branwen’s lip-bitten smile, and from the impression she had, every time she looked at Nerys, of deliriously triumphant music playing just beyond the borders of hearing, she knew that the others felt it too. In the chapel, bathed in light, they drew on their tunics and waited in a silence too glad to break.

  At last Branwen said, “Can you believe it is happening at last?”

  “Anything might happen if you wait for it long enough,” said Nerys, with a smile.

  “Not all of us can wait a thousand years,” Branwen reminded her, “and then see our desires with our own eyes.”

  Nerys said: “The dwellers in the City, on the hill of hallowing, see their desires with their own eyes. And in their presence, all the selfsame threads they have spun in the web of their lives are drawn on, through men and deeds yet unborn and unthought-of, to the service of more mighty ends than even the dreams of the City could prepare them to imagine. It is the second of all joys.”

  Her voice faded to a whisper as she added half to herself: “We fays do not speak of the first; the memory is too grievous.”

  Silence unspooled. Blanchefleur gripped her hands together, thinking of the first time she and Nerys had talked about the Grail. “Fiat voluntas tua,” she said at last. “What threads will run from this day, Nerys? What will happen in Logres because of the Grail Knight?”

  The fay lifted her palms upward. “Have I the eyes of Sarras? Like you, I can only wait and hope.”

  Blanchefleur thought of Elaine on her deathbed, Lancelot in the kitchen garden, Arthur and Morgan in the cloistered walk. That. That, she hoped, was what the Grail Knight would somehow purge away, although she could not think how.

  “We must have stayed long enough,” Branwen said.

  “Then forw
ard, in God’s name.” Blanchefleur stood and picked up the Grail for the last time. She rubbed its ancient ridged surface with her thumb, suddenly flooded with gratitude for its safety. After all her worry, after all the dreadful adventures of Sarras, here it stood at last, inviolate at the achievement of the Quest. Cradling the Cup in both hands, she turned and started down the stair.

  In the hall at table, three knights sat silent and unmoving before untouched food. One of them was strange to her, a bulky man with calm level eyes and a red-barred device that marked him kin to Sir Lancelot. The next she knew: Sir Galahad, full of glad awe, leapt up like a tongue of fire. Beside him, more slowly, Perceval rose to his feet. He had grown broader since she saw him last, and beneath, in the piercing and perceptive light of the Grail, she sensed all Gawain’s passion, but held in tighter check. And what had become of the easy bravado she remembered so well? He stared at her and at the Cup with almost grim reverence, and the whole eighteen months that lay between them and their last meeting seemed to rise up and cast its shadow on his face.

  Then she recalled the burden she bore, and went on into the hall, walking in a light that no shadow would ever dim.

  As they drew close to the three knights, Sir Galahad lifted up the hilts of his sword like a cross and called “In the name of Our Lord, stay a moment.” Blanchefleur halted, and the Grail Knight came forward and bowed and kissed her cheek. For the fraction of a moment she gave him the wordless greeting of her eyes; then Galahad turned and took his place at the head of the procession. From the king’s high dais, Naciens rose and said, “Now shall all true knights be fed. Take up the Maimed King.”

  Bors and Perceval went to the dais and lifted the couch of King Pelles. An extra hand was needed to steady the head, and Naciens called the squire Heilyn. Then Sir Galahad led them all through the hall and up the long stair to the Grail Chapel itself, unhesitant, as if led by long-ago memory or a messenger none of the others could see.

  From below, in the great hall, not a whisper of sound stirred the air. Carbonek, man and beast, sat breathless in expectation.

  The chapel filled with people. Blanchefleur set the Grail on the table and stood aside, near Naciens. Branwen followed with the platter and then tucked herself out of the way by the door. Perceval, Bors, and Heilyn eased the King’s couch through the narrow chapel door, laid it down in the middle of the room, and straightened. Sir Galahad rebuckled his sword and turned to Nerys.