“In strength or in loyalty?” Caradoc’s voice had been thoughtful.
“Both. Either.”
And so Caradoc had gone. As Perceval went down the length of the hall, looking for the tawny gleam of Blanchefleur’s head, he wondered if he should have gone himself. The bruised thigh he got from Sir Odiar had become swollen and inflamed after the hard fighting and riding he had done on the day of the battle of Joyeuse Gard, but the pain and the limp had faded within the last few days to an irking stiffness.
Maybe he could have gone. Caradoc was a married man and a father. With the Grail Quest toll and the battle of Joyeuse Gard, there were more than enough widows and orphans in Logres these days.
He found Blanchefleur standing against a wall, almost as if at bay, circled by a group of the younger knights and damsels whom Perceval still, as yet, hardly knew. None of them saw his approach, and the first words he heard, in Agravain’s petulant voice, stopped him in his tracks.
“He appointed Sir Perceval as his successor? Why did I not hear of this?”
“It’s no secret,” Blanchefleur said, and Perceval could tell with what an effort she kept her voice so light and amiable. “There were three copies made of the contract; you might ask Father for the chance to read it any time.”
“I don’t see what better right Perceval has to Logres than anyone else,” Agravain said.
“Well,” said Blanchefleur, “he only inherits because he is marrying me. And the King thought it better to pass the inheritance to us jointly at our marriage. You see, if he passed it to me alone, if anything happened to Father, I might be at the mercy of anyone who chose to marry me for the sake of getting Logres.”
“If it comes to that,” Agravain said, “do you not think it rash of the King to accept you as his heir, so soon, without proof?”
Blanchefleur was silent a moment. Then she said, “Surely it lies within the King’s discretion to so accept me. In any case, he has asked us not to marry until after the Queen’s retrial.”
Agravain looked triumphant. “So you admit that the King might be within his rights to disown you.”
Perceval had listened long enough, and shouldered his way into the circle, which fell back with a nervous shuffle at his coming. Even Agravain recoiled a step or two. Blanchefleur looked up at him with relief and slipped her arm into his, and at that confiding touch his annoyance melted away and he spoke with the laughing insouciance that came so easily to him at awkward moments.
“By heaven, Agravain, are you jealous?”
“Only for the honour of Logres.”
Perceval blinked. “A jealousy, then, that we all share. But one that is ill-served by such speech, in such a place, to such a lady.”
Agravain glanced around to find that his silent ring of supporters had melted away. But his mouth set in a stubborn line. “When lofty kings and nobles show so little concern for truth and right, a simple gentleman must do what he can.”
Blanchefleur stiffened at Perceval’s side. “My father is not so great that he will not hear you out, if you go to him,” she said. “If we take possession of this kingdom, it is from obedience to him, not our own ambition.”
For the first time since Perceval came on the scene, Agravain looked both of them in the eye.
“Even so! I wish you showed less obedience and more ambition—more willingness to think your own thoughts and speak for the just rights of others.”
Perceval grunted with disgust, and would have turned away if Blanchefleur had followed him. But her stiff arm tugged at his elbow while she stood looking at Agravain in puzzlement.
“Others?” Her voice was very low. “What others do you mean, cousin?”
Agravain looked at the floor.
“Sons have the prior right of inheritance. Not daughters.”
“You mean Mordred.”
Slowly, Agravain nodded.
Perceval said, “But Mordred is a traitor!”
“Why? Because he sought to defend his own? Because he fled, being wrongly accused?” Some of the old defensiveness crept into Agravain’s voice. “Judge him when you know him.”
Blanchefleur said, “I do know him,” and Agravain stopped mid-breath and stared. She said, “Remember, he professed to be my friend. All the while plotting my death. I know how he spins fantasies with his words, Agravain. What has he been telling you? Why do you believe him?”
Agravain was silent for a long moment. “You’re trying to turn me against him. Like you turned the King against him—on no proof but hearsay.” There was a glassy sheen, like tears, in his eyes. “With your talk of honour, I almost imagined you might be willing to hear me—to go to the King and plead on his behalf—”
Blanchefleur caught a breath of surprise. “Plead on his behalf?”
“He would listen to the lady of the Grail.” Agravain’s mouth twisted. “But that is the trouble. He already has.”
Blanchefleur opened her mouth, but Perceval interrupted.
“Come away, love.”
She resisted him a moment longer. “Beware, Agravain. Mordred will make you into ten times the child of hell he is.”
Perceval twitched her away, through the crowd, toward the music. Blanchefleur said, “I only wanted to warn him.”
Perceval shook his head. “Margaritas ante porcos. After what we have heard tonight, crown me with cap and bells if I trust my fair uncle as far as I can spit.”
He did not take her to join the dancers. Instead, he led a weaving path toward the door. A moment later they were hurrying across the courtyard.
“Where are we going?”
“Sir Odiar’s companion,” Perceval said. “What if that silent knight came from Camelot? I should have thought to look into it before. He carried an unmarked shield. Perhaps the blacksmith can tell us…”
“You think it was Agravain? Really?”
Perceval stopped. “Unless it was one of us, why should he disguise himself? And if one of us, who else would it be?”
“But he wasn’t dissembling just now. He really believes Mordred is innocent—and how could he ride with Odiar to kill us if something like that still mattered to him?”
Perceval’s forehead wrinkled. If Blanchefleur said that Agravain had faith in Mordred’s innocence, then it had to be true; she was never wrong about such things.
“There is something sincere about him, Perceval, and I can’t help but remember how plausible Mordred is.”
“Or maybe Mordred has already twisted his mind into such a maze that he can no longer tell faith from treachery. In any case we should see the smith. Every trail has gone cold; perhaps the secret of Mordred’s hiding-place is kept here, in Camelot.”
Slow hoofbeats interrupted him. The horse that came in at the gate walked with drooping head and dull eyes beneath a shapeless burden, its sides streaked with a crusty darkness. Blanchefleur caught her breath.
Perceval said, “Gringolet?”
The beast came wearily to him and nuzzled his shoulder. The bundle on its back stirred and groaned and was Sir Gawain, lashed to his saddle with a thong that passed around his waist.
Moving through air that had suddenly become thick and heavy like molten glass, Perceval drew his knife and cut the strap. Gawain fell into his arms and Perceval clawed in vain for a handhold on mail grimed with blood and horse-sweat.
He was grateful that Blanchefleur said nothing. He was grateful that she only turned on her heel and left.
He sank down onto the courtyard stones with the dead weight of his father’s head and shoulders in his arms. “You’re bleeding, Father. Where? Where are you hurt?”
Gawain groaned and opened his eyes, focusing on him with drowsy labour.
“Not deep.” He strained, trying to sit. “Help me stand.”
“No, no, lie still.” Perceval pulled him closer. “Help is coming—lie still.”
Gawain sighed and slackened. Perceval felt his pulse—slow and sluggish.
He whispered, “Who did this?”
<
br /> Gawain’s eyes flickered open again. His lips moved, but no sound fell from them. Only his eyes and teeth gleamed, for a moment, with hatred. Then his eyelids fell and he breathed more softly and steadily.
Feet whispered on the stones around them. A hand fell on Perceval’s shoulder, and he smelled Blanchefleur. “Is he—?”
“Swooned,” Perceval said, and surrendered his burden to bearers and surgeons.
UNDER THE COVER OF MUSIC, BLANCHEFLEUR went back into the Great Hall to find the King. He was sitting with Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere at the top of the Table, and stood when he saw her coming with the vanguard of her news in her face.
“Sir Gawain is returned,” she told him. “You’ll find him with Perceval in the infirmary.”
He understood at once; moreover there was a rattle of chairs as the other two knights found their feet. “I feared it would be so,” the King said as they went down the hall to the door. “Is he much hurt?”
She shook her head. “I cannot tell. The surgeons are with him now.”
“Blanchefleur.” As they went past the side-door which led up to the ladies’ gallery, the Queen stepped out of the shadows and called after her. Blanchefleur returned reluctantly.
“What’s yon commotion?” the Queen asked.
“Gawain is back, and he’s wounded.”
“Dying?”
“I don’t know. I think he has lost blood, but he said he is not deeply hurt.”
“You can trust his word,” said the Queen gently. “Gawain has seen more wounds than a college of surgeons. Come with me a moment.”
She turned with a beckoning gesture toward the stair up to the women’s gallery. Blanchefleur only hesitated a moment. The surgeons in Camelot were more skilled than she; in the infirmary, she would only be in the way. And the Queen wanted her. She went up the wooden steps wondering what Guinevere might have to say. She knew her mother well enough by now to know that she always kept some part of herself hidden, even with those she set most store upon.
Or perhaps especially with those she set most store upon.
The gallery, divided by intricate wooden screens, with its oak balusters and its eagle’s-eye view of the hall—this was the citadel where the Queen of Logres ruled unchallenged. Blanchefleur followed her to a lonely corner above the feast, where the Queen paused and fingered the baluster like the frets of a lute and looked down on the merry-makers below. Branwen and Heilyn were dancing, crowned with ivy and winter roses. Agravain was dancing with the sister of Sir Pertisant, the young knight who had laughed in Joyeuse Gard when Lancelot swore the Queen innocent. Lines of people parted and met, swung and loosed hands—
One day, all this would be on her shoulders—hers and Perceval’s.
The thought struck Blanchefleur, as it had once or twice in the last fortnight, with something akin to panic. If the Pendragon of Britain and the Table Round could so hardly defend this fleeting peace, what hope had she?
The Queen said, “I saw you speaking with Agravain, down there, before the dancing began. Tell me what he said.”
Blanchefleur hesitated. The Queen cast her a sidelong glance. “Let me help you, my daughter.”
Underneath her everlasting reserve there was a note of kindness in the Queen’s voice that warmed Blanchefleur to the core. She said: “It was nothing serious. Agravain was chiding me for letting the King make Perceval and me his heirs.”
“What did he want you to do?”
She laughed. “He wanted me to plead with the King on Mordred’s behalf.”
The Queen looked out on the festivity. “And?”
“I refused, of course.”
“So would not I.”
“You think something might be gained by it?”
“His trust. Perhaps, even, his loyalty.”
“By helping him defend Mordred?”
The Queen’s voice remained patient. “By appearing to help him defend Mordred. Thus you will persuade him that you are his friend, or at the least, his tool.” She looked at Blanchefleur and smiled. “Bear it in mind, daughter. Others will come to you with petitions before long. Know how to turn such an occasion to advantage.”
GAWAIN SPOKE TRULY—HIS WOUNDS WERE not deep. Lancelot had dealt with him as kindly as he might, and if Gawain had gone to have them tended, rather than leaving them to fester all the long way from Wales to Camelot, he would not have lain abed for the best part of a month.
“He means to ride again,” Perceval told the King one afternoon in the solar where his father’s friends had gathered.
“To Wales?”
“Yes.” Perceval slumped forward and rubbed his forehead, straining after a solution. “Almost I could wish Lancelot had disabled him.”
It was a terrible thought. He glanced at Blanchefleur, who met his eyes and shook her head. “He would only fret himself to death.”
“He is going to die sooner or later.” Perceval groaned, passing his hand through his hair. “He is no match for Lancelot! Not wounded as he is, and blind with rage!”
Sir Kay was using a knife to clean his fingernails. “Put him under lock and key. He is disobeying your express word, sire.”
“Blanchefleur is right,” Perceval said. “He would die more surely in confinement.”
“Or perhaps he would come to his senses.” Agravain, the last of Gawain’s living brothers, lounged against the wall with his arms crossed.
The King said, “Have each of you pleaded with him?”
“Sir, all of us.” It was Sir Bedivere who spoke, the King’s marshal. “He refuses to hear.”
“There must be something we can do,” Perceval said.
The King looked at him with infinite pity. “Not always, fair son.”
Perceval looked at his hands, clasped loosely before him. His had been Prince Alexander’s key to all mortal woes: cut the knot of troubles with a blow of steel. But this knot was of adamant, and no steel would break it.
The King said: “I commanded him not to seek his revenge. I gave my word, and must enforce it.”
Perceval shook his head. “What can you do? Fine him? He would laugh.”
There was a knock on the door. Heilyn entered at the King’s call and one look at the squire’s face brought Perceval to his feet. Had Caradoc returned? He excused himself with a murmur and went out into the passage.
Heilyn waited for Perceval to pull the door closed and said: “Sir, be well.”
“Out with it, man.”
“We went to Lady Lynet to buy a horse.”
Perceval saw Branwen also standing in the hallway, knotting her fingers together with an eager nervousness. Since her marriage, she had ceased to attend Blanchefleur, and Perceval had seen little of her. “Salve, mistress. Yes, I recall. I told you to go to Lynet first. She has Gareth’s horses to dispose of.”
Heilyn nodded. “Since the fight with Odiar, near Astolat, I have looked at every dun horse I see.”
“And?”
“The Unknown was riding one of Gareth’s horses.”
“Are you—”
“It’s the same horse,” Branwen assured him eagerly. “We both agree. A rouncey, maybe six years old, with one white sock and leg bars. The mane has been cut, but it is the same beast.”
“Are you saying that Gareth—”
Two heads shook in unison. Heilyn said, “Branwen thought to ask when the mane was cut.”
“Lynet said it was after the King returned from Joyeuse Gard.”
Heilyn cut in again. “Sir Agravain had it done. He told Lynet the mane was damaged and the horse would be more likely to sell without it.”
“Agravain,” Perceval whispered. The idea had occurred to him, but the fact struck him like a boot to the stomach. “Had Gareth loaned him the horse?”
“No one has ridden it for months, to Lynet’s knowledge. But I asked in the stable, and one of the hands said it was missing just about the time of the Queen’s trial. When the weather turned colder, the horses were brought in from pasture. The dun
could not be found. It strayed in three or four days later.”
Perceval pulled at his chin. “Agravain must have taken it, with the idea of throwing suspicion on Gareth if it was recognised. When Gareth died, the risk was of the horse being sold and identified. Therefore, the attempted disguise.” Another thought struck him. “But this means that Agravain is more than Mordred’s tool…”
He slapped Heilyn on the shoulder. “Well done,” he gasped, and slipped back into the solar in time to catch the tail-end of Bedivere’s words:
“—uphold the King’s word of judgement in the matter.”
Perceval wasted no time on speech. Drawing his poniard, he took Agravain by the elbow and set the blade at his throat.
“Agravain of Orkney, you are arrested for treason…”
Agravain said nothing. Only a dull flush spread across his face, and he looked at Perceval with something like reproach. Then he covered his eyes.
Others in the room rose to their feet. Blanchefleur lifted shocked hands to her mouth. But the Queen only smiled with thinly-pressed lips.
“Surely not,” said Sir Bedivere.
Perceval said to Agravain, “Confess it, sir. We have the horse.” He lowered his poniard and pressed it wearily into Bedivere’s hand. “You are the King’s marshal. I pass this man to you for examination. I have had my fill of hunting down my kin. I beg you’ll let me leave, sire.”
The King stopped him by a gesture. “Sir, we have determined to imprison your father if he tries to leave Camelot again.”
Perceval stared at him for the space of five heartbeats before his unwilling mind made sense of the words.
“Any of us are prepared to meet him,” Sir Kay said, and the jeering note was altogether gone from his voice. “But you have the right of refusal.”
Perceval looked from one sombre face to another. “Meet him. You mean—fight him.”
The King’s head dropped in assent. “I doubt he will come willingly.”
Even in the misery of that moment he knew why they asked him. Gawain would outmatch any of the other men here. It would be done by him, or not at all.
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