Following some instinct or long-ago memory, Blanchefleur crossed the bedroom and went out into the passage. A few steps further on, carpeted stairs led down to a little tiled entrance-hall with a front door, a hat-stand, and three spots of red on the white wall where the moon shone through stained glass.
One of the hats on the stand jogged a memory made unreliable by time, dislocation, and moonlight.
The Vicarage. Of course.
She knew, then, exactly where the back door would be, how to find a little gate in the garden wall, and paths through the hills for miles in any direction. That was comforting, and the choice, if Nerys had chosen the house, was a good one. On the other hand she did not know where she and Branwen would go if they had to, or how they would travel far on foot. But that could be considered later. This hiding-place need only shelter them until Mordred left Camelot, or relaxed his vigilance long enough for them to escape.
As Blanchefleur turned to go back upstairs, the cry of a baby drifted down from above.
She froze with one foot on the stair. There were no babies at the Vicarage! Another glance at the clerical black hat on the stand reassured her. This was the house she knew. Had Mr Felton been replaced by a younger man?
Blanchefleur stole back up the stairs. She had just reached the top landing when another door down the passage opened and Emmeline Felton—or Emmeline Pevensie, as she must be now—came out, trailing nightgown and peignoir. The baby had fallen silent and lay snuggled against her shoulder.
Blanchefleur recognised her at once in the moonlight streaming in through the window at the end of the passage, but Emmeline stopped dead and gasped. For a moment both of them stood motionless. Then Blanchefleur whispered, “Emmeline! Don’t be alarmed! It’s me—Blanche Pendragon.”
Emmeline came a step closer. “You’re not…dead?”
“No, Emmeline.”
“I’m glad.” Emmeline sounded rather dazed.
“Is he yours?” Blanchefleur asked.
“Yes. Small Arthur.”
In a little corner of her anxious heart, hope flickered. Did Logres live on, even here? “He’s beautiful.”
“Yes.” Emmeline refocused on Blanchefleur. “Blanche! Where have you been? Where did you come from? Why are you here?”
“I…” The question caught her unawares. “I can’t tell you, Emmeline. Not just now. I’m sorry.”
“But now that you’re here, you’ll stay? Dear, you know you can live with Arthur and me if you have nowhere else…”
There was carpet under Blanchefleur’s feet and the scent of clean and delicate things in her nostrils—perfume, babies, soap and tea. Homesickness hit her like a clenched fist; this was worse than memory.
She smiled at Emmeline. “How I wish I could! But I can’t. I’m engaged. And I have a family.” For as long as it took Mordred to find them.
“You have? Goodness, Blanche, and all this time we thought you were—” Emmeline caught herself. “Let me put Small Arthur down and we’ll get a cup of tea. Wait right there!”
Emmeline vanished into another of the bedrooms. The moment she was gone Blanchefleur opened the spare room door and passed in like a shadow, signalling to Branwen for silence.
She dared not close the door entirely, lest Emmeline hear the knob click. So she heard her come out of the baby’s room and whisper, “Blanche? …Blanche?”
Blanchefleur leaned her forehead against the lintel of the door and told herself that it was better like this. No goodbyes. No questions, either.
Emmeline hesitated, then went down the stairs. Her whisper, as it came floating up, was less sure of itself. “Blanche…?”
With infinite care, Blanchefleur closed the door.
By the wardrobe, Branwen whispered, nervous. “I heard you speaking to someone.”
Blanchefleur crossed to the wardrobe. “An old friend. She will think she’s been dreaming. Has anything happened in Camelot?”
Branwen shook her head. “Not yet.”
But then, on the heels of her words, she stiffened.
The voices inside the wardrobe were muffled by tapestry. Agravain said: “They have already gone.”
Blanchefleur felt Branwen grab her arm.
“Not far,” said another voice after an agonising silence. “The bed is warm. They’re still in the castle.”
She knew the voice, and hairs prickled on her neck. Mordred.
Blanchefleur eased the wardrobe door open another half-inch, reached two fingers through, and pulled on a loose thread at the back of the tapestry. The hanging moved just far enough to give them a slitted view of Blanchefleur’s chamber at Camelot, now blazing with torchlight.
Mordred was saying: “Search the room. Beat the tapestries. Raise the alarm. She must have been warned—there’s no need to tiptoe now.”
Armed men clanked through their field of vision. In the spare room of the Vicarage in Gloucestershire, Blanchefleur eased the wardrobe door shut and turned the key.
For a little while they sat in the darkness while Blanchefleur counted slowly under her breath to keep track of time. She reached three hundred, turned the key in the lock, waited a moment longer with her ear against the crack, and then inched the door open again.
The torches were gone. Darkness and silence lay under the tapestry. When she pulled the thread again, she saw the walls and bed outlined in the first glimmer of dawn. As Blanchefleur’s eyes adjusted, she thought she saw bedclothes tossed onto the floor and chests standing open and rummaged. Now that the room had been searched, maybe it would be safe to venture back in to wait for Nerys.
And maybe one of their enemies would blunder in at any moment, hunting for plunder or captives. Blanchefleur looked at Branwen, raised a finger to her lips, and kept watch in silence. In the Vicarage spare room, the moonlight shifted a little. In the Camelot bedchamber, the dawn imperceptibly strengthened.
At last Blanchefleur saw rather than heard the door to her room in Camelot open. Attended by the soft glow of her oil-lamp, Nerys slipped in and closed the door behind her. She was alone. What had become of the Queen?
Branwen, who had been sitting on the floor, went to rise to her feet. But Blanchefleur saw the look that suddenly froze Nerys’s face, and gripped her shoulder in warning.
Inside the chamber the black-haired fay stood motionless for a moment. Then she said, “Mordred.”
A shadow rose from one of the chairs by the dead fireplace, and moved into the light.
“I,” said Mordred.
All at once Blanchefleur was drenched with sweat. He had been sitting there the whole time. Listening. Waiting for them to give themselves away with one rustling movement, one whispered word—and now he had caught Nerys—
“Why are you helping them? The Elves have little love for Logres, surely?”
“My people say our fate is sundered from the fate of men.”
“Then why you?”
“Avalon will fall at last. Sarras never will.”
“Sarras!” Mordred laughed. “You put your hope in a dream. The people of Logres need more than ideals and what-ifs. They need real solutions to real hardships.”
“What could be more real than the City?”
“This.” Mordred stretched out his hand. “Flesh. Time. And the power to do what needs to be done.”
The warm glow of her lamp stained Nerys’s white skin golden, and no look of fear or anger marred her brow. She said: “Flesh and time? What else is the King of Sarras King of?”
With a speed that made her gasp, Mordred caught her by the throat and snarled in her ear: “You are living in a dream-world. I tell you the Spiritual City has nothing to do with hours or minutes, blood or pain. Shall I teach you the taste of the truth? Will you still believe in the City when your last heartbeats echo in your ears?”
Nerys looked at him out of weary eyes. “You poor fool. I am immortal.”
Mordred slipped his hand into a pouch. What he held, when he drew it out, was black as smoke and shadow.
<
br /> “The Lady of Logres has flown,” he said. “But she left this behind, too dangerous to be used like a plaything and thrown aside. Sharp enough even to part an immortal from life. Tell me where to find her.”
Nerys yanked on his hand at her throat, but the strength seemed to have left her.
“Consider your answer,” said Mordred. “I will not ask a second time.”
Nerys spoke hardly above a whisper. “Go and ask them in Hell.”
In the Vicarage, Blanchefleur’s hand flew to her belt. To her pouch. She looked at Branwen in horror.
The obsidian knife…
Mordred struck. Three jabbing motions with the T-hilted knife. Three choking little coughs as Nerys slid to her knees. First the lamp thumped onto the rush-strewn floor, then Nerys followed.
Blanchefleur stared into her dying eyes. Nerys’s bloody lips moved one last time. “Naciens…”
Nerys the Fay went into Sarras.
Mordred wiped the obsidian blade against his boot and tucked it back into his pouch. Then he reached down where Nerys’s lamp lay licking the floor beside her, threw it onto the bed, and left, slamming the door.
Branwen gave a little high keening cry, put her arms around herself, and began to shake. Blanchefleur could not cry, not yet; she pushed up her tunic sleeve and pinched herself again. Again, the pain promised no waking from this nightmare.
She slumped down onto the floor beside Branwen, put her arm around her, and sat.
Again, the moonlight shifted. Somewhere out in the summer night of Gloucestershire, a blackbird woke and warbled and fell asleep again.
At last, Branwen stirred and sniffed. “Something’s burning.”
“Mordred set my bed on fire. Again.” Well, the last time, it had been Perceval. But it was all Mordred’s fault.
Branwen wiped tears from her eyes and then stared at her wet hands. “What happens if the door burns?” Her voice held little more than idle curiosity.
“I don’t know. We get stranded here, I think.”
There would be time for that cup of tea with Emmeline.
But Branwen turned to her in concern. “We have to go back. What about Heilyn? And Perceval?”
Perceval? “You’re right,” she gasped, scrambling to her feet. Through the wardrobe door, the flames had spread to the dry rushes on the floor. In a little time the room would be impassable. Blanchefleur stared in dismay. “Where will we go? What if Mordred is waiting for us outside, like he was for Nerys?”
Branwen dragged in a sniff and set her jaw defiantly. “I have a plan. If he means to burn Camelot, he won’t stay inside till it falls on his head. He will wait outside until he is sure we’re dead. So we will hide in here until he gets tired of waiting and goes away.”
It sounded like a terrible plan to Blanchefleur. She said: “Where?”
“In one of the cellars.”
“If the castle burns, we’ll be crushed. If it doesn’t burn, Mordred will keep looking until he finds us.”
“Not in Sir Kay’s secret cellar.”
“Sir Kay’s what?”
“The one he keeps the best wine in, in case it gets stolen. Only he and Sir Lucan know where it is. And me. And I told Heilyn, of course.”
“Sir Kay told you about his secret cellar?”
“Well, he likes me! The cellar is quite safe. It lies under the garden, not under the castle. There is a hidden door in the big buttery.”
“Branwen, you’re a marvel. Let’s go.”
Branwen caught her elbow as she went to fling the tapestry back. “Yes, but let me go first. If Mordred is waiting outside, he won’t catch both of us.”
Branwen pulled a sleeve of her smock across her nose and mouth, slipped through into Camelot, and skirted the flames to the door of Blanchefleur’s chamber. She was gone for as long as it took to count twenty before the door swung open again, and God be thanked, it was Branwen, beckoning with a smile. Blanchefleur took one final farewell look at the moonlit hills that had once been her home. Then she stepped into the smoke and heat and locked the wardrobe door behind her.
“Come on,” Branwen was urging. Blanchefleur went gingerly through the smouldering rushes. Here by the bed Nerys lay where she had fallen, with her blood soaking the floor. Near her feet the fire licked the wool of her dress. Blanchefleur reached down, and touched the fading warmth of her cheek, and looked into her eyes.
Empty.
Alive, the fay’s eyes had been bottomless wells of age and knowledge, into which no mortal could gaze for long without terror. Dead, they were like the broken windows of a house than has been plundered. Dead, they were just eyes.
Tears blurred Blanchefleur’s vision. What could she do? What could she say? Nothing came. At last she wiped away her tears, and took the long wooden pin from Nerys’s hair, and whispered, “Godspeed, oldest friend.”
Branwen was standing at the door, and caught Blanchefleur’s hand as she came. Outside, in the passage, no sound of voice or footstep ruffled the silent air. Branwen said, “No one is here. I went up and down the passage and looked.”
They stole down back passages and stairways to the kitchen. This too was deserted; only a cauldron of hot water steamed pointlessly over a dying fire, waiting for the oats that would never come.
“Everyone’s gone,” Blanchefleur said with a swift premonition, hanging back.
“Good.” Branwen took a firmer grip on her hand and marched her down into the buttery, a room sunk below ground and stocked with barrels, bottles, and wineskins.
And also with stranger store.
In the centre of the floor was heaped a great pile of boxes and bundles, but these had a sinister look, for one narrow black thread led from each of them to a thick black rope lying upon the ground, flame-tongued, sputtering and fizzing. All this was visible in the candlelight, for here at last they found another soul.
A woman in the sable robes of a nun, her shadow huge and gaunt in the flickering light, turned at the sound of their entry and smiled with thin red lips.
Blanchefleur saw her face, and all hope died.
“Morgan!”
The Queen of Gore smiled a little more broadly.
“So my errand is done before I begin,” she said.
37
Though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.
Chesterton
BEFORE BLANCHEFLEUR COULD MOVE, OR SPEAK, or think what to do next, Morgan glanced down at the sputtering fuse on the floor, and ground it out with her toe.
Blanchefleur lifted her gaze to Morgan’s absurdly wimpled face, and quelled the urge to pinch herself again. “I warn you,” she whispered. “Whatever it is you want from us, you will perhaps win harder than you can afford.”
“I am not here to kill you.”
“Really.”
“Oh, for St Peter’s sake…” Morgan gestured to the dead fuse. “If I wanted you dead, I would have stayed away and let this blow you to the other side of Sarras.”
There was something strange in Morgan’s manner, something new, and suddenly the hair rose on the back of Blanchefleur’s neck, for she had the notion that a different soul now walked and spoke in Morgan’s body. She took a wary step back. “True enough. What else do you want?”
A bitter smile curled half Morgan’s mouth. She said: “I want you to trust me. Now, and without asking questions. I mean to bring you out of Camelot safely, but if we stand here much longer Mordred will come in looking for answers.”
Blanchefleur stood speechless. Her first impulse was to laugh. Morgan lied the way other people breathed. Yet was this the best she could manage? Why no careful web of falsehood?
Did she count on them believing such a threadbare story?
And whether they believed her or not, what hope was there of escape? Not even Sir Kay’s cellar would shield them from an explosion in the next room.
Blanchefleur loo
ked at the stack of boxes and bundles and said, “What is it?”
“Dynamite,” Morgan said, “and you saw it before in the spire of Sarras, for Mordred has the secret of its making, and by your leave I’ll light the fuse and finish us all off before he comes in and finds us.”
She swept the torch down toward the fuse.
“No!”
“Wait!”
Morgan looked up at them, and saw the surrender in their faces.
“Good,” she said. “Now, here is the way of it: I came here when I knew what Mordred intended. In the north passage above the chapel I met Nerys the Fay. When I asked after you, she said you were safely hidden. Therefore she must have given you a key to the other world.”
Blanchefleur made no sign of assent or dissent. Morgan shrugged and went on.
“Mordred suspects you are here. He thinks to destroy the castle and anyone hiding in it, and so he has had Camelot emptied and surrounded so that none can escape. There is only one chance. We must find a door that will weather the blast, and use the key to go through it. Between an apple-tree and a walnut, in the wall between the garden and the town, there is an iron gate. If I light the fuse, there will be time enough to run to the gate and use the elf-key…”
Morgan spoke almost too fast to be understood, but as the words tumbled out Blanchefleur took a step closer, and then another, studying the witch’s face. Branwen dragged at her arm the whole way, speechless with terror.
That was it. Merciful heavens, that was it, that was the thing that was new in Morgan’s manner.
She meant what she was saying, every word. No lies. No mockery.
Blanchefleur gathered her wits and spoke. “I have a key—Branwen, it’s all right—and I know the gate you mean.”
Relief flared in Morgan’s eyes. “Then there is still a chance for us.” She shifted her grip on her torch and looked at the fuse. “Run…”
Blanchefleur and Branwen fled. Branwen took the lead: “I know the quickest way.” But at the door leading into the garden, Blanchefleur pulled her back and broke their stride just long enough to glance into the icy morning. In the drab winter garden, among the smoky blue-grey of naked trees, nothing moved.
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