Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  But then came a lull in the tempest. He found himself the only living man in that part of the field. As he glanced around, feeling cold and tired in the sudden quiet, he saw for the first time the shields and livery of men that he had known well—some that he had loved. Some that he must have killed, with as great a joy as he had once killed thieves and murderers…

  Their shields reproached him. There was Sir Persides. There was the young son of Aglovale. There was Bernard of Astolat, who for a short while had been a friend, who now would never have the chance either to prove his innocence or suffer for his guilt in the matter of Gawain’s messenger.

  He looked at the stark forest, naked branches like grey smoke against the bleak blue sky. It flashed into his mind that he could set his spurs to his horse and vanish into their shadow. Instead he reined Glaucus away, back toward the battle. If he fled, it would unmake him; do that, and he might as well die a coward’s death on his own sword.

  There was nothing to do but follow the path he had decided with such painful debate to follow. Gareth and Gaheris, he reminded himself. He knew—had known as soon as he saw them lying there in the trampled mud—that they were only the beginning.

  He was sucked back into the melée, and it was then that the worst came. Suddenly he saw before him the shield he had been dreading, the gules and gold that he mirrored. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He lifted his shield and dropped his sword-arm.

  It seemed like an age that he stared at the cold and terrible front of his father’s helm. But an eddy in the fight bore them past each other, and he thought that Sir Gawain had hesitated too, sword hanging slack in his hand.

  Perhaps, then, his father knew why he had to be here, fighting for the Queen’s name.

  Perceval spurred forward, willing away the ache in his bones and the pain that still throbbed in his shield-arm and his hip where Sir Odiar had struck him. The battle-fire had left him now, and he fought with his mouth pressed into a thin line, more for survival now than for bloodshed.

  In front of him, two knights crashed together. Sir Bors, helm missing, the battle-fire gleaming in his eyes, dismounted and staggered to the knight he had just unhorsed.

  “Lancelot! Lancelot!” he cried hoarsely, drawing his poniard. “They have killed Lionel and Blamor, our kin! Lancelot!”

  Perceval saw the fallen knight’s device. The Pendragon.

  The Knight of the Lake rode out of the melée, blood dripping from the mace in his hand. “I hear you, Bors.”

  Bors had his elbow hooked around the King’s neck, struggling to keep him on his knees. The pale sun gleamed on his blade.

  “Tell me, cousin. Shall I end this war forev—”

  “God forbid!” Lancelot was crying like thunder.

  The dog reached Bors before Lancelot or Perceval could: a grey wolfhound, armoured, blood-streaked. Bors went down under its snapping teeth and the King sprang back to his feet, drawing his sword.

  Lancelot was on the ground facing him; as the King rose, he flung his sword to the ground and went to his knees, throwing up empty hands. “Sire and dear lord, I pray you, cease this destruction! Your Queen is innocent!”

  The King stood motionless and faceless among the bloody ruins of the chivalry of Logres. At last he said, “Will that restore to me my dead knights?” He took a step forward, grip strengthening on the hilt of his sword. “Will that heal the Table and undestroy my kingdom?”

  “Let me be punished. Death. Exile. I’ll take it gladly. Only say you will spare the Queen’s grace. You are the King: you can pardon.”

  “And you say she is innocent.”

  “I call Heaven to witness she is. But sire, you cannot continue this slaughter, even if she is not.”

  The King was silent for a moment, and then lifted his helm. Beneath the iron his face was pale, with deep pouches below the eyes. Perceval, looking at him, then understood some of the despair he must have felt.

  “No,” he admitted. “I cannot.”

  “Then I throw me on your mercy, sire,” said Lancelot, and lifted his sword, and offered the hilts to the King.

  Arthur stretched out his hand and touched it. As he did so, his shoulders straightened, and a little of the strain left his eyes and did not return.

  “I receive your sword, and ask you to keep it for me a while longer. Bedivere, Bleoberis, sound the retreat.”

  32

  This is Modred, the man that I most trusted.

  Morte Arthure

  THEY WENT OUT TO THE KING that afternoon with fifty knights. Sir Lancelot, riding with the Queen at the head of the column, had shed his armour for sombrely magnificent peace-clothes of fine broadcloth and velvet; the other knights followed his example—even Sir Bors, whose face was torn and bleeding from the war dog of Arthur. Only Sir Perceval, who had spent the past two hours on the battlefield directing the work of burial, remained armed. The Queen herself did not change her black robes, but Blanchefleur and the three other damsels with her were given bright silken tunics for the occasion.

  The four damsels each rode pillion behind a knight. Blanchefleur was perfectly satisfied, for she had Perceval. Despite all that had happened that morning, they did not speak on the short ride to the King’s camp: everything they had to say to each other was so important that it could not be wasted on this brief, crowded ride. But from Perceval’s weary smile when he pulled her onto his horse Blanchefleur knew that, terrible as the battle must have been, he had come to some kind of peace with it.

  And so she sat behind him in silence with one hand on his shoulder so that he could look out the corner of his eye and see her there.

  They crossed the battlefield and Blanchefleur made herself look. The ground was ploughed by hooves, stained by blood, heaped with carrion. Women moved among the dead; carts were brought out to collect bodies; squires sat or stood, heads bowed, by fallen lords. Over all, the watery sun shone through leaden clouds.

  A funereal silence hung over the royal camp. All those left alive were out on the battlefield, carrying on the work, and apart from the sentry who admitted them to the camp there were few souls to be seen peering out of tents or hurrying by on business. But then the party from Joyeuse Gard came in sight of the King’s pavilion, hung in silver and scarlet, to find a gathering of men-at-arms assembled.

  Sir Lancelot’s company dismounted and stood holding their horses, facing the King’s men. Blanchefleur felt the silence stretch tight between the two companies; it was as though all the blood spilled on the field between camp and castle lay between them. Lancelot, Perceval, and Bors conducted the Queen and her damsels through this gauntlet of dagger-pointed stares, down the aisle between the two companies to the King’s pavilion.

  Inside, Blanchefleur glanced across the men assembled there, seeking the young king of her earliest memory, or the knightly father she had seen in Sarras. The man who sat by the folding camp-table in a furred robe with his sheathed sword resting across his knees looked old and worn by comparison, with silvered hair and a weariness in the eyes that reminded her of Perceval as he had been this morning in the dawn. The great grey dog that lay under his chair heaved to its feet when they came in, and bared its teeth and growled.

  “Down, Cavall!” The King spoke softly, but the dog heard, and crawled back under the chair to lick the blood-streaks in its fur.

  Behind the King many knights had crowded into the pavilion to witness the peace, but two took precedence. On the King’s left stood a slim pale young man with a silky black beard and a gloomy complexion, and Blanchefleur dimly wondered if this was the Sir Mordred of whom she had heard. On the King’s right stood Sir Gawain, and the change in him was more painful to witness than that in the King, for he stared at Lancelot with hot and ugly bloodshot eyes. He was far more obviously in the last stages of exhaustion, burning with anger, battered and bloodied. There seemed little remaining of the kindliness and humour with which he had glowed in Carbonek, gladdening the Waste Land.

  All this she ob
served in the few short breaths that passed as the party from Joyeuse Gard halted within the pavilion and took silent stock of their reception.

  Then before anything else could be said Sir Lancelot took the Queen by the hand and knelt before the King. “My lord king, I bring you your Queen, and beg you to receive her. For she is true, and that I will prove on the body of any knight that denies it.”

  The King rose and lifted the Queen to her feet. “I take it as proven. Lady Guinevere, I thank the King of Heaven and these good knights for delivering you from the fire. If I have done you wrong, I beg your pardon.”

  “With all my heart I give it to you,” the Queen said. With that the King drew her into his arm and kissed her in the presence of all. But Blanchefleur noted the King’s words carefully, and that if troubled her. Was he receiving her back, with so fair a show, in continued suspicion of her faith?

  But then her own cue was given, for Guinevere turned from him and held out her hand to Blanchefleur. “Your daughter, my lord.”

  Blanchefleur took a breath to calm her suddenly quaking heart. As she went to move forward, Perceval took her hand and she had the same feeling she had had once or twice before, of reinforcements in the thick of battle. She lifted her chin and said, “Here, sire.”

  Perceval said, “Right joyful am I to deliver her up to you after all this time of waiting.”

  The King smiled at her, and it was as though the sun came out.

  “Lady Blanchefleur, I am sorry to have passed all these years without your company.”

  All the foreboding she had felt crossing the battlefield seemed to roll back like storm clouds. This was the father she remembered from their meeting in Sarras—and now, as then, he accepted her. Forgetting that he had no memory of the City, she went on an impulse and hugged him. Surprise crossed his face when he realised her intention, but then his arms went around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

  She broke away and looked to her mother. Guinevere took her by the shoulders and kissed her cheek. Then the Queen went to Perceval, smiling, and gave him her hand with such a show of friendliness that Blanchefleur almost envied him.

  “Sir Perceval. You have served us well.”

  Perceval bowed over the Queen’s hand. “That shall be seen, madam.” And he went down on his knees before the King.

  “My dear lord,” he said, “I have taken up arms against you, and will abide your just wrath.”

  “I do not pardon you,” said the King.

  Blanchefleur turned to him with a sharp breath of protest. But he went on:

  “Rather let me seek pardon. You believed yourself fighting in the cause of true law and justice. The same cause which, in prolonging the strife of this war, I fear I have injured. Let me always have such men about me.”

  Gawain spoke, hoarsely, for the first time. “Heaven forfend. Unnatural whelp! What of your kin?” He transferred his attention to the Knight of the Lake. “Truce or no, I counsel you to make your peace with Heaven, Lancelot.”

  Perceval looked at his father with mute reproach. But Lancelot replied before he could gather words: “Fair brother, for such you have been to me, you slew my cousin Sir Lionel today. There is your revenge, if you will take it.”

  But Gawain’s voice rasped with contempt. “What is Lionel to me?” He turned back to Perceval. “And you! Did you strike a blow in defence of your kin, yon morning before the gates of Camelot? Were you not a son of mine, the word for such an act would be treachery.”

  Perceval stood blankly staring under Gawain’s lashing words. Blanchefleur knew he was distressed, but Sir Gawain misread the look as insolence. “You rode in that charge,” he said. “Did you watch them die? Did you approve the thing?”

  “God knows I did not.”

  “You did by your deeds today!”

  “Then should I have stood there like they did, to bring an innocent lady to death?”

  Gawain flushed red. “How dare you?”

  But Perceval had sparked, and his words poured out. “Of course I brought the Heir of Logres to Joyeuse Gard. In obedience to you. Of course I rode to deliver the Queen from death. You wished it. Since the day I left my mother’s cot to seek you, in everything I have done I have only sought by pleasing you to prove myself a worthy son to you.”

  “So prove it. Will you avenge your kinsmen’s blood?”

  “No!” Perceval shot back. “I will see that the justice of Heaven is served, but not an inch further will I go. From now on I follow my own conscience, and I tell you—”

  “I have heard enough.” The thunder of Gawain’s voice rose above Perceval’s. “From this day you are no son of mine.”

  “Enough,” said the King. Softly, but there was a note of authority in his voice that instantly quenched both father and son. “This is a woeful day, but wrongs have been righted and it is no time to quarrel. Sir Gawain, you sought this day’s battle as revenge for your wrongs. For this I will not punish you, for I too was at fault. But you will accept the death of Sir Lionel—once your friend, alas—as settlement of Sir Lancelot’s guilt.”

  Gawain opened his mouth as if to protest, but the King went on. “There will be no more talk of revenge. Or of casting off sons. Remember, Gawain, why your mother and not yourself rules in Orkney today.”

  Gawain pressed his lips together until they turned white. “I do remember it,” he said, and looked at Perceval with bitter tears. “O, I am well punished for the sins of my youth.”

  Perceval flinched at that. “Punished? What can you mean?”

  Gawain said: “In the days before my father Lot of Orkney yielded his claim on the throne of Uther Pendragon, I fought under the banner of Arthur. My father died refusing to see or speak with me.”

  There was deadly silence for a moment, until Perceval spoke. “Why did you never tell me?”

  “The regrets of youth pass. I looked to the future. To you.”

  “And left me to repeat your mistakes? How was I to learn, unless you taught me?”

  Gawain looked at his son incredulously. “Do you dare to blame me for your own insolence?”

  “Sir, you did say you were punished in this, though it was none of my own doing.”

  The air was full and heavy—layers of grief, suspicion, and now anger. Blanchefleur felt it pressing on her chest, too heavy to breathe. She had always sensed Gawain’s temper, she had always feared it turned against the man she loved. But Perceval was his father’s son, inheriting more sins than even he was aware, she thought. In a way it was worse that he could hold his own so well.

  Before she could think of any way to smooth over the quarrel, the young man in black behind the King’s chair stirred and gave a faint cough, a tiny sound that recalled both the combatants to their surroundings.

  Gawain glanced around. Sir Lancelot stood by in silence and the sight of the man who had been his friend seemed to remind Gawain where his real quarrel lay. He swung back to Perceval and said with harsh briskness, “Then do something now. I am going to Camelot to bury my kin and swear an oath on their graves. Choose! Follow, or stay! And if you stay, do not presume to call them kin again.”

  Perceval looked at the King. “I know the oath you mean, and I think you were just forbidden to make such an oath, sir.”

  But Arthur, looking at them both under level brows, showed no sign of speaking. Gawain looked at him, gave a hard bright laugh, and turned back to Perceval. He pointed at the golden pentacle on Perceval’s surcoat. “Find a new badge to wear, boy.”

  He left defiantly, head thrown back, shoulders straight. Inside the pavilion, Perceval sagged, pale under his tan, more defeated than Blanchefleur had seen him since the night Mr Corbin bested him in debate. The tent was full of men, but in the wake of that quarrel none spoke.

  “Sire,” Perceval said at last, appealingly.

  “He heard what I said about revenge,” said the King. “But I say nothing to your quarrel.”

  Perceval bowed and stood back. In the quiet, Sir Bors stepped forw
ard and threw himself upon his knees before the King. “Gracious lord, I have raised my hand against you. Here are my spurs. Here is my belt and sword. What is your will?”

  His words reminded them all why they had come, and the last five minutes’ storm faded away leaving only a scent of relief. Under the King’s chair Cavall the hound growled again at the sight of the man whose face he had marred in battle. But the King smiled at Bors.

  “My will is to clemency today. I know you, my trusty Bors, loyal to your kin before your lord, and that is right. And in battle wise men may speak foolishness and blasphemy, let alone treason. There is a man of God on the island of Iona. Take your belt and spurs to him and pay their weight in gold as a ransom. Then, if you desire to serve me, come back to Camelot, for if I see rightly we will need you again.”

  “My true and gracious lord,” said Sir Bors; then his voice failed. He rose and bowed and left. Iona was far away.

  The King stirred and looked at his rival.

  “Sir Lancelot.”

  “My lord.”

  “You have land in the north of Wales, I think,” said the King. “For the manslaying of Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris, which was done in confusion and darkness, not lying in wait, you shall go there and stay within your borders until a new Bishop is appointed in Trinovant.”

  “I will obey,” said Sir Lancelot. Blanchefleur thought she felt an ache in his voice. The present bishop was only a young man, likely to live longer than the Knight of the Lake.

  Sir Lancelot went on: “But, sire, a boon. One last matter of counsel, if you will hear me.”

  “Speak.”

  “You did not hear me speak at the trial of the lady Queen,” Lancelot said. “Then I do not think I would have been believed—”

  “Now is not the time to bring evidence.”

  “Sire, I grant it. Yet allow me to speak before I go. You know that I have been the champion and servant of the lady Queen for many years.”