Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  Perceval was already unbuckling the saddle-bags from his borrowed horse. “Will you have my squire’s horse saddled? We ride in haste.”

  THE SUN WAS STILL BURNING LOW in the West and they were scarcely a league from Astolat when Perceval, who had been riding in apparent weariness with his head sunk low, suddenly pulled Glaucus into a circle and then halted athwart the road, looking into the forest.

  “What is it?” Blanchefleur asked him.

  “The road is telling me a tale.” At her look of concern a smile cracked his face. “I saw the scuff of horse-hooves on the road. Someone was riding to Astolat when he turned and galloped back the way he had come. Now he has turned aside into the wood. And a horseman rides after him.”

  Blanchefleur could only blink wearily. “Perceval, please. It’s already so late.”

  But he spurred into the branches before she had finished speaking. Blanchefleur cast a despairing look at Heilyn and Branwen and plunged after him. “What if we miss the messenger?” she called.

  Perceval was nowhere to be seen. Blanchefleur reined in, suddenly disoriented. Then she heard his voice.

  “Too late.”

  She rounded the bole of a tree and looked down into a little hollow by a stream where Perceval sat with his shoulders slumped and his head bowed over the crumpled body of a man in the livery of gules and gold. And fixed in his neck, a gay-fletched arrow like the plume of a cap.

  Blanchefleur’s muscles creaked with pain as she slid off her horse and tottered down the slope to Perceval’s side. He’d told Sir Bernard he could sit a horse, but at the moment that seemed to take all his strength; his eyes stared sightlessly into the distance. She gritted her teeth and knelt by the body. There was no pouch and no belt on the dead man’s trunk, only a little straight slit in his tunic where someone had knifed the leather away.

  Perceval said in a very tired and gentle voice, “Not Bernard.”

  Blanchefleur straightened and brushed her hands on her skirt. “You—you think he—”

  “How should I know?”

  “How long has he been with the Table?”

  “A year.” Perceval sighed. “He has Lamorak’s old siege.”

  The footfall of horses stirred them into action. Perceval kneed his horse around and whipped out his sword. Above, Branwen’s voice came drifting through the bare winter branches.

  “There they are!”

  “Sir?” called Heilyn. “Night is falling.”

  Perceval sheathed his blade and pulled Blanchefleur up behind him for the ride to the top of the slope where her own horse stood. “Then on.”

  AS NIGHT FELL, FROST DESCENDED FROM a clear sky. Blanchefleur shivered in the chill, feeling that she had gone beyond weariness into extreme old age. She turned her head slowly—was there any part of her body that didn’t ache?—and looked at the others. Branwen, huddled wrenlike into her cloak at the rear, met her eyes and managed a wistful smile. Between them, Perceval slumped in the saddle with his eyes closed and his hands slack on the reins. Ahead, Heilyn had taken the lead, his back straight and alert in front of her.

  It was a little while before midnight when the road opened out upon wide rolling hills. A river looped through farmland and moated one low hill where a castle stood heaped up over a little town sleeping by its foot. The dim light of a gibbous moon reflected from ice on the castle roofs and struck silver sparks from the grass at their feet.

  Heilyn halted them here, beneath the eves of the forest. Perceval jolted upright and whispered, “Let us avoid being seen, if we can.”

  Blanchefleur trembled in the cold wind. “Then this is—”

  “Camelot.”

  She had dreamed of coming here. Dreamed of coming sulkily, determined to despise what she found. Dreamed of coming with curiosity to discover the beauty that wooed her even in her oldest memories. Dreamed of coming triumphantly, both servant and mistress, to the garden-city that was Sarras-in-the-flesh.

  She had not dreamed of stealing past in the dead of night. She had not dreamed of shivering cold, numb feet, grey sky, and a tall stark finger pointed heavenwards from the meadow outside the city wall. She touched Perceval’s shoulder and pointed at it wordlessly.

  The stake…

  No need, then, to ask which way the verdict had fallen.

  Its inky shadow stretched across the white grass, fathomless, like the rift that had opened within Logres itself. Had she come so far only to witness the death of what was so strong and fair?

  Perceval stirred and said, “Joyeuse Gard.” He slung a sidelong glance at the rest of them. “There are no monasteries nearby. And I trust no one else.”

  Cold and age. Blanchefleur breathed on her fingers and said, “Well, then.”

  He led them south along the riverside. They forded out of sight of Camelot and reached La Joyeuse Gard a few hours later in the dead of night. Here, as not there, torches blazed and the courtyard swarmed with men preparing arms and horses.

  As they dismounted at the door, Perceval offered Blanchefleur his hand. She took it but put no weight on him; he looked as if a breath would blow him away. But he would not go in until he had called the captain of the guard and given their exhausted horses into his care. Then only did he lead them through the door and up the length of the hall to where, in the glow of a lonely lamp, Sir Lancelot motioned his knights back and rose to greet them.

  “Welcome, Sir Perceval,” said Lancelot. He came around the table and took Blanchefleur’s hand. “And the Grail Maiden. Since the return of the Grail Knights there is no lady in Logres held in higher honour.”

  She glanced sidelong at Perceval. Was that his doing? Apparently so; the corners of his mouth twitched up and she almost heard his silent laughter. Then he turned to Lancelot and the merriment was only a memory. “We saw the stake set up on the meadow at Camelot.”

  Lancelot nodded. “Gawain sent word it will happen at sunrise. We ride in an hour.”

  “Let me ride with you.”

  Sir Lancelot’s eyes flickered in surprise, and he looked at Blanchefleur. She lifted her chin and made no sign. Perceval was as battered and weary as he looked, but he knew his limits better than she did.

  “Your horse will be saddled,” said Lancelot. “But you have travelled and fought hard already. Will you not stay behind and rest?”

  “Where is my father?”

  “With the King.”

  “And my uncles?”

  “Also with the King.”

  “Then I will ride with you. My father would wish it. Let it not be said that no son of Orkney rode to his Queen’s aid when she was falsely accused. Wake me, of your courtesy, before you ride.” And bowing to Blanchefleur, he limped to one of the benches by the wall, stretched himself upon it, and was instantly asleep.

  Blanchefleur went to cover him with her cloak. When she returned to the light, she saw Sir Lancelot looking at her.

  He did not speak easily; the words seemed dragged from the innermost depths of him. “The lady is true. On my sword, which has never been dishonoured, I swear it.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but when she looked at the young knights behind him and saw that one had turned away and was half laughing, half whispering into the ear of another, the words turned sour in her mouth.

  “Either I will bring your mother to you alive,” Lancelot swore to her, “or both of us will lie dead before Camelot.”

  She inclined her head. “I know it.”

  Maidens had come, ready to lead them away, to sleep. But Sir Lancelot did not break his gaze. “The lady is true,” he repeated

  “I hear,” she said lifelessly, and allowed herself to be taken to a room glowing with fire, where the damsels gave her and Branwen clean smocks and put them to bed.

  Toward morning she heard a voice crying Gareth! Gaheris! Gareth!

  She woke and found that it was dawn and the fire had died; not even a coal was left. For a moment all she could do was lie still, listening to Branwen’s even breath beside her. Then she
remembered what she had forgotten.

  The stake. The cold. The murmuring people. The dawn attack. Blood on the ground.

  The stake!

  She was on her feet, reaching for a cloak, running to the window. But she already knew it was too late. Already the light was stronger than it had been in the vision of Sarras. She had misunderstood, she had missed the warning, and now whatever she had dreamed in Sarras had happened on the meadow outside Camelot, not to herself but to her mother, the Queen of Logres.

  Too late.

  Blanchefleur sank to her knees. In the cold, she began to shiver.

  30

  O madly right and madly left

  Sir Launcelot blindly strake,

  And helms and heads in sunder cleft,

  To reach that deadly stake.

  Buchanan

  IT WAS A COLD, DIM MORNING. Outside, the frost had gone from the grass and last night’s clear sky was veiled by thick cloud that drifted along the watery ground. Blanchefleur turned from the window and went to the foot of her bed to pick up her cloak. It was gone and she frowned for a moment before she recalled that she had left it with Perceval.

  Branwen still lay abed; even in sleep there was a happy tilt to the side of her mouth. Blanchefleur dressed quietly, went to the hearth, and kindled a fire, not for the cold but for something to do. It would be hours before Lancelot and his horsemen returned with her mother. She laid the fire clumsily on purpose and kept getting up to coax it as it hovered on the verge of death.

  All the same, she was glad when Branwen stirred, groaned, sat up to squint at her, and said:

  “Good morning. Have you ever in your life been so saddle-sore? I feel as though horses have been riding all over me, instead of the other way around. Why, what is the matter? Is something wrong?”

  Her face must have given her away. Blanchefleur gained time by digging through her bag for her comb. “I do not think any good can have come from last night’s riding-out.”

  Branwen pushed hair out of her eyes and looked at her more closely. “What makes you think so?”

  Blanchefleur frowned down at the comb, puzzling how to reply. Branwen rolled out of bed and said, “Speak to me, Blanchefleur, you frighten me. Tell me what has happened.”

  She replied reluctantly, loath as ever to air her worries. “One day in Sarras, I dreamed of fighting and death around a stake in a meadow. I thought it was something given to me for my own warning, but now I think it was meant for Lancelot. I do not know what is happening at Camelot, but I fear it is something dreadful.”

  Branwen crooked an eyebrow. “What manner of warning is that? Surely Sir Lancelot knew there would be fighting, or he would have gone alone and unarmed.”

  Blanchefleur shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know. How long till Terce, Branwen? They can’t be back before then.”

  “An hour, perhaps. Let me fetch breakfast.”

  THEY WERE WALKING IN THE GREY and dripping castle garden when a trumpet blew and over the grinding of the portcullis they heard a clamour of horse-hooves. The two of them ran inside to the hall, and stood in the shadow of the door watching Sir Lancelot’s fifty knights dismounting and unhelming in the courtyard. Blanchefleur looked for Lancelot or Perceval and saw the Knight of the Lake first, and in his strained mouth and hurried step she read confirmation of all her shadowy fears. He came leading a woman by the hand across the threshold of the Great Hall. Blanchefleur saw a rusty black cloak streaked by long gold-and-silver hair, and eyes like lunar seas, dark sleepless stains in a pale face.

  Neither of them saw Blanchefleur.

  She stared after them until Branwen laid a hand on her arm and gestured toward the courtyard. When she saw Sir Perceval, she thought he had been wounded again, and badly, for his face was gaunt with pain. With limping steps he made his way up to the door where she stood. The eyes he turned upon her were filled with horror.

  “Perceval!” she choked, and reached out, but he did not see her hand.

  “They are dead,” he told her. “Gareth and Gaheris, my kin. And who knows who else.”

  Blanchefleur groped for words. “How?”

  “Unarmed. They were killed in the rush…It was Lancelot.”

  Blanchefleur tried to speak, but words seemed useless, and before she could think of anything he had gone reeling up the hall to where Sir Lancelot stood.

  “They were unarmed!” he shouted into Lancelot’s face. “To slay unarmed men—oh, a deed worthy of the flower of knighthood!”

  Lancelot’s brows knitted, but there was grief in his voice too: “They already had the torches lit, Sir Perceval. I saw nothing else—”

  Perceval seized his surcoat in both hands, shoving the Knight of the Lake back, rage-red. “Saw nothing? Saw nothing? You should have! Do you wield a sword or a broomstick?”

  For a moment all the strength went out of him and he was shaking and slackened. Lancelot never broke his calm, and his hands closed like a vise over Perceval’s wrists and plucked them from his surcoat. “You know me, Perceval. I should have lost my right hand rather than see it slay one of your kindred—and Gareth, Gareth whom I knighted. Whom I loved.”

  But Perceval lunged forward again. “I’ll have it. I’ll have both your hands and your coward head—”

  Sir Lancelot stepped back a pace or two and bowed. “When you are stronger, I am at your service,” he said, and reached out his hand to the silent Queen, who had stood without moving since Sir Perceval’s intrusion. Mechanically, she took his hand and the two of them turned to go.

  Blanchefleur hesitated to follow them, looking back to Perceval, who stood with his head flung back but his hands hanging uselessly at his sides and the hot anger on his face dimmed to a pale foreboding.

  “I spoke rashly,” he grated. “I see the good knights of Logres slaying each other wherever I look. I will not add needlessly to this strife. Until justice is done, let your own dishonoured name reproach you.”

  Lancelot did not answer, but his back became for a moment very still and quiet. Then he continued toward the stair, and the Queen followed. Perceval looked at Blanchefleur.

  “Go to your mother,” he told her.

  SIR LANCELOT LED THEM TO THE best room in the castle, a snug chamber hung with thick new tapestries and heated by a fire of scented wood. Maidens within busied themselves in pouring a hot bath and setting a light breakfast over the flame of a lamp to warm. When Lancelot and the Queen entered, a stillness fell upon them and they sank to the floor.

  “Joyeuse Gard is your realm now,” Sir Lancelot said to the Queen, “and here is your chamber. The servants of your servant serve you. Have them bring whatever you wish.”

  For the first time Guinevere spoke.

  “They may go,” she said, and dropped his hand and moved further into the room. In a silken single file the maidens obeyed.

  Only Sir Lancelot and Blanchefleur, with Branwen in the hallway behind, remained in the doorway. The Queen stood with her back to them, motionless. After a moment, she turned her head only and said in the same firm tone:

  “Blanchefleur? Is that you?”

  Blanchefleur looked up at Lancelot and he understood, stepping back and closing the door. When she saw his face it struck her that the Queen had not thanked him, but then the latch fell between them and he was gone.

  “I’m here, Mother,” she said, coming a few steps further into the room.

  Still Queen Guinevere did not turn to look at her. Instead, with a graceful gesture, she shook the sleeve back from her wrist and took up one corner of her rusty-black cloak to dab at her face. Only then did she turn and look at Blanchefleur. If she had been weeping, every trace of tears was gone, and she was all coolness and distance and lofty carriage.

  She reached out and one pale fingertip lifted Blanchefleur’s chin. “How you’ve grown. I hear brave things of you, my daughter.”

  Not for the Queen of Logres a fond meeting. Blanchefleur swallowed a hard lump of disappointment and steeled herself to this woma
n’s steely gaze. “From Perceval?”

  “Yes.” A tight-drawn smile fleeted across her mouth and the fingertip tapped the side of her jaw and fell away. “A man’s loyalty is the sharpest of all weapons, Blanchefleur, and the hardest to find. Let me not hear that you have dulled it.”

  Blanchefleur blinked. “Did he tell you I refused him?”

  “Yes.” The Queen turned away from her and went to the window, where she stood with her fingers drumming on the sill. “Bear it in mind,” she said in a voice that seemed to come from far away, “that a woman’s shoulders are weak to bear the weight of a kingdom alone.”

  Blanchefleur folded lips and hands and did not reply. The Queen turned from the window and said, “That was why we sent you away, you know. For safety.”

  She lifted her chin and said what she would never have dared say to the King: “I wish you had kept me. In all the danger. I wish I had been there to share it with you.”

  “We could never have risked it. When she heard of the prophecy, Morgan le Fay tried to kill you.”

  Guinevere turned again and her fingers went on tapping the window-sill. Blanchefleur glanced from her stony profile to the nervous motion and back again, and for a moment she glimpsed under the stiff mask which the Queen of Logres wore clamped over her grief, and began to understand.

  “I know,” she said, taking a step forward and holding out her hands. “I know it was done from love for me. I’m only sorry I had to wait so long, so long, to meet you.”

  The tattoo on the window-sill hushed. Blanchefleur stood holding out her hands, willing the Queen to soften, to bend. No answering feeling stirred in that smooth pale face, but at last she came forward, put two cool hands in Blanchefleur’s, and kissed her cheek. Then she drew quickly back and turned aside and went to the steaming bath, shrugging out of the black cloak.

  Underneath, she wore a white shift smudged with soot.

  The Queen looked at the cloak a moment, then folded it with careful deliberation and gave it to Blanchefleur. “This should go to Sir Gawain,” she said, and though there was no discernible emotion in her voice, Blanchefleur felt a dull ache. “He would desire it.”