“No, they are coming to treat,” said Branwen. “See? They are bearing green branches.”
Blanchefleur felt those clustered behind her stir and draw away, and turned to see her mother.
“Madam,” said one of the damsels, “there is a balcony with a better view.”
“This window is enough,” said the Queen. “I will not appear to array myself against the King.”
So the two of them watched from the window, where Sir Gawain’s words reached them almost as clearly as they reached Sir Lancelot and his men over the gatehouse:
“Come forth, Sir Lancelot, dishonoured knight! Deliver yourself up to justice! For you have slain good knights of the Table Round, noble men and kinsmen, the like of whom shall never come again, and you have taken the Queen by force. Come forth, traitor!”
His voice was wild and cracked, and Blanchefleur felt the hair prickle on her scalp.
Sir Lancelot, near as he stood, spoke more softly, so that they strained to hear him: “My lords, you will not take this castle. And I have good knights with me, and if I choose to leave this castle you shall win me and the Queen harder than you well can bear.”
A knight that rode with Sir Gawain took off his helm. From all that distance away, Blanchefleur could barely see his face. But from the Queen’s indrawn breath, she knew it could only be one man.
“If you dare to come forth,” said the High King, “you will meet me in the midst of the field.”
She had thought Guinevere cold. But suddenly there was heat, high and fierce, pouring out of her.
Sir Lancelot bowed. “God defend! One of us might kill the other.”
Gawain bellowed, “Coward!”
But Sir Lancelot went on, addressing the King directly. “Will you not hear me? I have slain your knights in the rescuing of the lady, Queen Guinevere, in fair fight and self-defence. As touching the lady, your Queen, I have only this to say: that I will prove it upon the body of any man breathing, save yourself and Sir Gawain, that the Queen is a true lady to her lord as any alive. And, my good lord, it seems to me that I should have lost all worship in knighthood had I suffered the lady, your Queen to be burnt for my sake. Have I not done battle for your Queen in other quarrels, and have I not the right to do battle for her in a just cause even against yourself? And therefore, my gracious lord, take your Queen unto your good grace: she is fair, and true, and good.”
At that distance it was impossible to see how the King looked at this. Nor did he speak: Sir Gawain was beforehand. “False recreant knight! Know that my Lord King Arthur shall have his Queen and you, and slay you both if it pleases him.”
“Is that my lord’s answer?” Sir Lancelot asked.
Sir Gawain had only paused for breath. “As for my lady, the Queen, I will never say that she is justly shamed, and let it never be said that I quarrel with her, or gainsay what you say of her. But you, Sir Lancelot—what cause had you to slay my good brother Sir Gareth, that loved you more than all his kin? Alas! You knighted him with your own hands! Why did you slay him that loved you so well, while he was naked and undefended?”
“For that I make no excuse,” Lancelot said. “But Jesu bear me witness, and by my faith to the high order of knighthood, I would as cheerfully have slain my kinsman Bors. Alas! I neither saw Sir Gareth nor Sir Gaheris in the rush.”
“Liar! Do you indeed pretend that this is not of your engineering, that you unpeople the Table, that you make war against Logres, that you drag the very name of knighthood in the dust? Flower of knighthood, they say! Traitor and miscreant, rather! I will make war to you while I live!”
“I hear you,” said Lancelot. “But what does my lord King say?”
The King appeared to stir himself. “This: That your crimes remain. Open your gates and lay down your arms.”
“Sire, I will do so, and submit myself to your justice, when I have your assurance touching the lady, your Queen, that you hold her guiltless and true.”
Gawain cried: “Shall we allow this oathbreaker to dictate terms? Does he think to hide behind the lady Queen, and so escape my hand?”
Another voice, fainter, came from the knot of men clustered with the King. “Moreover, there can be no question of our lord holding the Queen guiltless, when that question is settled by others and not by him.”
In the window, Guinevere was thrumming against the sill. “The true son of his mother.”
Sir Lancelot said, “Those are my terms. My lord, I beg you—”
Gawain cried: “Have you not heard the words of Mordred? The lord King cannot accept your terms, even if he wished to. Coward, slayer of unarmed men! We will bring you to battle, will you, nill you!”
Silence hung over Joyeuse Gard while the King sat wordless. At last, Lancelot bowed his head. “Then we will receive you,” he said, and left the gatehouse.
Blanchefleur turned to the Queen in distress. “What has happened to Sir Gawain?”
Her mother looked out the window with eyes the colour of iron and spoke under her breath. “What has happened to my lord?
“It seems to me,” said Branwen, “that Sir Gawain is looking for an excuse to fight, and cares not what that might be.”
The Queen murmured again. “He takes it so hard, so hard.”
Blanchefleur swallowed. “I wondered if Gawain had something of the sort in him.”
Guinevere turned from the window. By her side, one hand clenched; the knuckles went white, as if she forced all the pain out of her face and voice and into her fingers. “I speak of my lord. It is not like him to stand by while others speak for him.”
Blanchefleur heard the dull crash of a mailed foot in the corridor. “Someone is coming.”
In one fluid motion the Queen reached out a hand, took up Branwen’s needlework, sat, and began to embroider. Branwen made a startled proprietary snatch, then subsided into decorum as the door opened and Sir Lancelot entered.
He stood inside the door. The Queen did not look up; she held the hooped linen like a shield.
“Alas!” he said. “I must fight.”
“Let me go back to him,” said the Queen, head bent over the linen. “He will not have me burned.”
“Your life is no longer the only thing at stake, O Queen. The siege will continue even if you do return to him.”
“If it makes no difference, I will go.”
“It makes a great deal of difference. I have said I will not return you without an undertaking to treat you in all honour, as guiltless. Or I should be required to rescue you again.”
“I give you your service back,” said the Queen. “I forbid you ever to rescue me again.”
Sir Lancelot said: “I am your true servant, lady, but if I must disobey you, I will.”
For the first time, the Queen lifted her head and looked directly at him. “Must I find another protector to rid me of you?”
“Do so! If there is some gentleman rash enough to take up all your quarrels, then I shall hand you to him. Or if I may find some way to give up my care of you honourably, without delivering you into danger, you may be assured I will take it. Until then, you are under my care, and will accept it.”
Guinevere seemed to grow taller in her seat, and her lips thinned and her eyes narrowed, but Lancelot gave her stare for stare. She said, “Well? Am I to consider myself your prisoner?”
She flung the word at him like a dart. A flicker of triumph came into Lancelot’s eyes and was as quickly gone again. “It might be best if you did,” he said smoothly, and bowed, and left.
When the door closed behind him the Queen threw the embroidery aside and bolted to her feet. In the silence she drew a long sharp breath of surprise. For all the world, Blanchefleur thought, as if a favourite dog had turned and bitten her. She was still thinking so when Guinevere flung a look out of the corner of her eye to her, so cold and shuttered that Blanchefleur nearly flinched back, wondering for a moment if the Queen had heard her thought.
Guinevere said no more. For the rest of that afterno
on she sat by the window with her back turned on the rest of them in a complete and forbidding stillness.
BLANCHEFLEUR WAS LYING AWAKE AT DAWN the next morning when the first assault came. She heard a confused clamour, distant trumpets, and then a pounding like thunder, with shudders that ran up from the foundations of the castle and thrummed in her bones.
At first she could not guess what the noise might be. Only when she slipped from the couch where Branwen was sleepily stirring and ran to the window did she see the ram, like a gigantic caterpillar, swung by two lines of men against the gates of Joyeuse Gard.
Branwen woke with a start and nearly fell off the couch. “It’s begun!” She spoke in a whisper, for the Queen still lay motionless in the big canopied bed in the room’s centre.
Blanchefleur was scrambling into her clothes. “I didn’t see Perceval last night. He was captaining the watch on the south wall. Where will he be now, Branwen?”
“God knows, and he’ll be busy.”
“I have to find him.”
She thrust her feet into shoes, yanked a hasty knot in the laces, and rushed downstairs. There was little coherent thought in her mind, only a certainty that she needed to see Perceval, because since everything had gone wrong he had needed her. She should have gone to him yesterday. It might already be too late.
In the great hall, and outside in the courtyard, Joyeuse Gard swarmed like an ant-hill. Lancelot’s men crowded the gatehouse. Two of them, staggering on each side of a cauldron of boiling water, went past as Blanchefleur craned her neck for Perceval. The courtyard seethed with men and horses; knights waited by their steeds testing buckles and straps while squires ran with a shield or vambrace from the armoury.
The gates groaned as the battering-ram shook them again.
Someone stepped into her path, a man-at-arms holding up his hand. “Back into the hall, lady.”
She gave him her mother’s stony glare. “Do you know who I am?”
He didn’t move. “Yes, lady.”
“Then you should know better than to stand in my way.”
She went down the steps as if to walk through him, and he stood aside saying, “Lady, be not overlong. If harm comes to you—”
His voice faded into the bustle and shout of coming war. Blanchefleur knew she had won only a brief space of time. She began to work her way around the courtyard, keeping to the walls where in the dawn twilight she might go unnoticed. Then suddenly, her heart jumped. There he was, slumped on a haycart in a quiet spot near the pig-pens, eating an apple and staring at Glaucus.
“Perceval?”
He slid down to the ground and limped toward her, swallowing a bite of the apple. “Blanchefleur! You ought not to be here. There’s about to be a charge.”
“They’re riding out, then? It’s a sortie?”
“As soon as the gates fall.”
“And you? You’re going with them?”
He stiffened into expressionlessness and spoke as if repeating a lesson. “Yes. The Queen needs defending. Lancelot’s manslaying can be dealt with after.”
“She doesn’t want to be defended. She says that if she had died, the Table would still be whole.”
He slid her a dead stare. “With innocent blood raining down like fire on our heads?”
She knew him well enough by now to be distressed by that wooden look. Perceval never bothered to hide vigour and high spirits; what deep hurt lay behind this stoic front? She gazed at him wordlessly.
Perceval took a last aimless bite of apple and tossed the core to the pigs. They grunted and squabbled for it. In her thoughts, Blanchefleur said, “Must you fight? Come back, come into Joyeuse Gard, and wait for it to end.”
She could not say it. By now she knew him well enough to understand the insult it would be to him. So she said: “Please, Perceval, please. Come back safely.”
“If I can.”
Could he not hear the pleading in her voice? She said: “Don’t do anything rash. Don’t lose everything the Grail Quest achieved. Logres needs you.”
He laughed, a mirthless sound as grey as the air. “This is a battle. Who can tell what may happen?”
“There are greater things than the Queen’s honour to give your life for.”
“Lady, if you are troubled, pray for my soul.”
“I will not! I will pray for your safety…” She swallowed a little more of her pride and reached pleadingly through the cold dawn murk. “You worry me, Perceval. You’re so quiet these days. I know how you feel! I know that you have friends on both sides. And loyalties on both sides too—and that people are going to die. Perceval, don’t you dare die, no matter what happens today.”
He looked at her from behind the wooden mask and said, “I will try. Farewell.”
“Farewell, and God go with you,” she said, and knew that none of her words had lifted him out of his apathy.
He turned, gathered up his reins, and reached for his stirrup. The horse blew a white cloud of warm breath and shifted restlessly at the sound of coming battle. Blanchefleur stood shivering in the frosty air, knowing that in another moment Perceval would be gone, perhaps forever—almost certainly forever, unless she could give him a reason to live.
She said: “I love you.”
The words unloosed blinding pent-up tears. Then Perceval was there in front of her again, and his hand lifted her chin.
Words gushed out as fast as the tears. “Please forgive me. I should never have sent you away. I don’t want to lose you. And I don’t mean to play with you, like the Queen does with Lancelot, only I was afraid…”
He cleared his throat and said raggedly: “Silly maid! I knew it,” and she knew that the mask was down.
He waited for her to wipe her eyes and then said, “You are going to marry me.”
“If you live.”
He snorted. “No more excuses.”
“No, Perceval.”
“We are getting married.”
“Yes, Perceval.”
“Tomorrow, if possible.”
“If you think it best.”
The sound of a trumpet jarred them back to the courtyard of Joyeuse Gard. Lancelot was calling his men to horse and Sir Bors, striding past from the stables, looked at them incredulously, abrupt with haste. “What is she doing here? Get her inside and mount up.”
Perceval threw back his head, snuffed the air like a war-horse, and laughed. Then he whirled Blanchefleur into his arms, carried her to the door of the great hall and swung her down again at the top of the steps.
“Everyone is watching,” she gasped, face red, finding her feet again.
“Good,” said Perceval. “Witnesses. Wait for me after the fighting is done.”
Sudden seriousness fell on him when he mentioned the battle. Blanchefleur said, “Do you still mean to fight?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Then come back to me safely.”
“If I may, I will.”
He laid his hand against her cheek and brushed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. The world seemed to hush; Blanchefleur saw his eyes move to her lips. Then his hand dropped again.
“Kiss in haste, repent at leisure,” he said with a laugh. “I can wait. God be with you, dear love.”
“And with you.”
For a moment, the limp was gone. He ran down the steps, vaulted to his horse’s back, and spurred forward to join the other knights drawn up before the straining gates. From the top of the stair Blanchefleur kept her eyes fixed on his gules and gold.
Crash. The castle shuddered again; the gates cracked; Blanchefleur thought of the night in Gloucestershire when the door of their house was battered open by the champion of Morgan. That knight now lay mouldering in a clearing to the north. At what great cost would Perceval, still bearing the marks of that combat, win through to her at the end of this day?
Crash. Was this the same battering-ram that shook her awake this morning? Were the gates still standing? She was someone else altogether now—five minutes in
the open air and her life had changed. Perceval vanished within the ranks of his fellows. She turned and went up to her mother’s chamber, feeling herself poised uncertainly on the brink of an abyss of joy and terror.
“THE SUN IS RISEN,” SAID GUINEVERE.
She sat half in light, half in shadow, wearing black like night against which her hair shone pale and tangled. There was a silver mirror in her left hand and a white bone comb in her right, but these lay listless and unmoving in her lap.
“Will you watch from the window, madam?” Blanchefleur asked.
Voice, like hands, was listless. “No.”
Blanchefleur bent and took the comb from her fingers. “Then let me comb your hair.”
They did not speak again. The Queen closed her eyes as Blanchefleur teased the knots apart with skilled fingers. Now and then her lips moved. Blanchefleur found her own thoughts turning to the men on the field below. There had been a splintering crash when the gates fell, and then the shouting had started. Crashing steel she could hear, the high whinny of horses, the screams of the dying.
Was it true that she had once thought the fierce cry of swords the bravest sound on the earth? She blinked back more tears and saw her hands again. Soft and graceful, adorned with the great golden ring of Orkney, one twined into her mother’s hair and the other clasping the carven comb. And outside, men were dying.
DOWN BELOW, SIR PERCEVAL HAD MOVED in a trance that was half daydream, half nightmare until the gates burst. Then everything became sharp and clear again. Lancelot’s men were drawn up in the courtyard, ready to charge, and when the gate fell they spurred recklessly forward, cutting through the men outside like a scythe through grass. Then they reached the field, with iron-bladed destruction reigning on every side. Yet, to his horror, Perceval found it like any other battle he had ever fought. There was sweat trickling down his face and down the furrow of his spine between his aching shoulders, there was a roar like falling water in his ears, and his own throat was inexplicably parched and ravaged, although he could not remember having joined in any battle-cry. And the blood ran through him like molten iron with the mad and merciless lust of battle, while men who had been his brothers crumpled beneath his blade. For a while, he gave himself over to the single desperate purpose of death.
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