Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  He greeted Roland with a flutter of the nostrils and a toss of the head, pawing imperiously for the bit of sweet cake that he knew Roland would have for him. Roland leaned against the high arched neck and for a little while simply breathed. The temptation to put off his human semblance was so strong that he almost could not bear it. He felt the shifting within, the blurring of his edges. It was all too easy in this place of living waters, in the embrace of the ancient wood.

  With an effort of will he stopped it. Now of all times he must not yield to temptation. He must be master of his magic, and of his heart, too.

  “He has come,” he said to Veillantif in the old tongue of the Bretons. “The old one, the evil one—he is here. He is here.”

  Veillantif snorted and nosed at Roland’s tunic, searching for another bit of cake. Ancient evil meant little to him. Sweet cake was here, and it was now, and he wanted it.

  Roland sighed. If he had wanted to wallow in terror, he would not have come to this place. He smoothed a tangle in the stallion’s long pale mane. He had to think, and think quickly. But first he had to know where to begin.

  The guards were talking, out past the line of stallions. Two of the four rode the edges as they should, but the others idled for a while in the shade of a young oak. Roland’s ears caught a name, as if the thought had conjured it: “Ganelon? Yes, he’s here, and Riquier, too. They’re running just ahead of their news. Spain has sent an embassy.”

  “What, the infidels?” drawled his brother. If Roland had not known better, he would have thought the man had drunk too deep of Saxon ale, but few in the king’s army were fool enough to do that while on watch. Charles was merciless toward drunkards.

  This one was lazy by nature, that was all, and disinclined to exert himself for anything so trivial as an embassy from heathen Spain.

  “The infidels,” the elder brother agreed. “It seems they need our king to settle a dispute.”

  “Everyone wants our king to do that,” said the younger. “Now tell me something that matters. Tell me there will be a woman in our bed tonight.”

  “Not much chance of that,” the elder sighed. “The lords have taken what few there are. Me, I’d give gold if I had any, to get me a fine wanton Saxon with long yellow braids.”

  They yearned together, at length and in tedious detail. Roland pondered what they had said. Spain? A quarrel among infidels? Surely that was not enough to have brought two royal envoys so far out of their accustomed round. There must be more. Something had brought the enemy here. Merlin’s enemy, the enemy of the Grail.

  Roland shuddered, clinging to the warm solidity of Veillantif’s neck. He tried to laugh at himself. He was a lord, a prince, a warrior of renown; and he was an enchanter, if a very young and foolish one. And when at last he set eyes on the one against whom he had sworn the mightiest of oaths, he had run in sheer mindless terror.

  He could tell himself that it was more surprise than fear; more astonishment than cowardice. He had not looked to find the enemy here. There were kings enough in the world, and princes, too. The Lombards, the Saxons, the Gascons, the Basques, the infidels in Spain—any or all of them could have fallen under the enemy’s spell. But not Charles. Not Roland’s bright strong king.

  Part of him cried out to rise up, raise all his magics, destroy the sorcerer. But he was not a child any longer. He was a man, and a man knew his limits. He was not strong enough. And if he flung himself into the battle regardless, if he lost his life and his soul in challenging an enemy who, even vastly weakened, was still far stronger than he, then everything was lost, given up to the enemy. Merlin in his prison in Broceliande. Charles the king on his throne. All the bright realm of Francia, and all the realms that Charles might come to rule.

  Wisdom was a bitter thing. His heart called it cowardice. He thrust it down and set his foot on it. He would fulfill his oath. But not now.

  There could not be a battle. Not yet. But neither could Roland run away and hide. He had to protect the king. Charles trusted Ganelon, Turpin had said. So had other, far older kings done, and been seduced, until they had no will but Ganelon’s.

  None of them had had Roland to defend them.

  And how he was to do that, with the face he had, that was the image of Merlin’s in its youth . . .

  He could pray. And hide in plain sight. And be very, very careful not to betray the power that was in him. Even if he should be recognized as one of Merlin’s children, he could seem both ignorant and harmless, a far distant, feeble offshoot of that long-fallen tree.

  It was a poor hope to hang a king’s soul on. But it was the best he had. He would cling to it as he could, and trust that it would be enough.

  CHAPTER 2

  Roland set himself to be the king’s most loyal guardian hound. He doubled the guard—staring down any who questioned it—and stood watch himself in the nights. In the days he did his duties as he was bidden, and those, too often, were to ride out and away from the king.

  He wondered if that was Ganelon’s doing. But the old serpent seemed content to efface himself among his fellow priests and royal counselors. He had, it seemed, a fair talent for the matters of chancery, and a clerk’s love of ink and parchment. Roland never saw or heard him in colloquy with the king, nor was anyone else aware of it.

  The day after Ganelon arrived, Roland passed him near the king’s tent, going toward the clerks’ quarter. Roland was in armor, and armed, ready to ride out hunting bandits. He had his sword and his spear and his great ivory horn, and was, if he reflected on it, rather noticeable.

  Ganelon did not look up or acknowledge his presence. He shivered when the king’s counselor had passed. Perhaps it was only his own foolishness, but the air felt odd near Ganelon, as if the light had gone all grey, and the warmth been leached from the sun. Then Ganelon was past, and Roland was striding on his way. It was true, then, as he had hoped. Ganelon did not take note of him, or know what he was.

  The embassy from Spain rode into Paderborn on a day that shimmered with mist and the soft kiss of rain. They were as exotic as bright birds in that grey light, with their silken banners and their strange marching-music, their beards and their turbans and their dark hawk-faces. They brought falcons in vivid jesses, and hounds of a sort that had never run in this country; and they rode on little light horses out of the east, or on the ram-nosed chargers of Spain.

  Roland had been out hunting bandits for the past handful of days, with the king under guard behind him, and Turpin in charge of that guard. When he came back with the bandit king’s head on his spear, word was running through that city of tents and half-sketched walls: the infidels were coming.

  Roland saw his men settled, the horses taken care of. The grisly object on its spear, he let Ogier keep. Ogier was a Dane, and somewhat bloody-minded. Roland never asked what he did with the trophies he took. It was enough that no one saw them afterward.

  People were running now through the streets and alleys of the camp. Roland let himself be caught up in them, plucked away from Olivier and the others, and carried off to the place where the city gates would be.

  The king was waiting in the cleared space with its boundaries of builders’ twine, dressed in a tunic of crimson silk and wearing the iron crown that he had won from the Lombards. Roland saw Turpin near him, and the complement of guards as Roland had ordered. Ganelon was nowhere in sight.

  Two or three people nearby were muttering among themselves, and none too quietly, either. “This is a Christian army. What are we doing bowing and scraping to a pack of infidels?”

  “I suppose,” someone else said, “we could do as we did with the Saxons. Offer them a choice: the baptismal font or the headsman’s axe.”

  “Douse them in river-water,” said a third with a bark of laughter, “and settle it for once and all.”

  Roland sighed for his father’s people, that they should be so narrow-minded. And what would they think if they knew the truth of what he was? These servants of Allah were safely and simply h
uman. His teacher and much-loved forebear was half a devil.

  He closed ears and mind to his countrymen’s foolishness, and turned the whole of his attention to the embassy. He had seen Saracens before in his handful of years with the king, but never so large or so rich a company.

  Nearly all of them were men. The few women rode in curtained wagons. Near the end of the line, a little apart but seemingly content in it, a figure rode on a white horse. The rider was dressed like any other man in that company, in silken trousers and embroidered coat, but the face was beardless and the hair covered by a cap rather than a turban. A boy? A eunuch slave, perhaps?

  Surely no slave would be mounted on such a horse as this one. It was a stallion of the Spanish breed, white as moon on snow, with flowing mane and a tail that brushed the ground. It did not walk or trot as another horse might. It danced, light as air; yet it was a solid creature, deep of chest, broad of rump, with a strong arched neck. Even Veillantif was not so fine as this.

  All too slowly it dawned on Roland that the rider was neither boy nor eunuch—that the shape in the bright silks was anything but male. It sat light and easy on the broad white back, as one sits who has ridden since childhood. The slender hand was light on the rein, the fair face fixed straight ahead, taking no notice of the Franks who crowded on either side.

  She was as beautiful as the horse she rode, and strikingly foreign. She was no black Moor, but neither was she a fair-skinned Frank. She was a brown woman; warm cream-brown skin, curling brown-gold hair, long gold-brown eyes set slightly aslant in her high-cheeked face. It was a beauty Roland had not seen before. It caught him and held him rapt. Once he had become aware of it, he could not turn away. He wanted to—he would have given much to—

  He brought himself sternly to order. This was an infidel, a Saracen. Very likely she belonged to a man who would take great exception to any Frank’s interest in his woman. Though what he was doing letting her ride unveiled among unbelievers, Roland could not easily imagine.

  Maybe then she did not belong to anyone. Maybe—

  He was babbling in his head, captivated by that blessed glory of a face. And he a man grown, lord and warrior, chosen companion of the king. He had more wits than that, and more sense, too. Was not Merlin his teacher? Had not Merlin taught him to beware the enticements of a woman?

  While Roland was so signally distracted, the embassy met and greeted the king and were welcomed into his city. The speeches were not too long, all things considered, or too crashingly dull. When those were over, they all rode together, king and Saracens, inward from the gate to the heart of the camp.

  The crowd followed, leaving the gate-space behind. Roland stood his ground. When the last of them had passed, he was standing on the trampled earth, alone but for a bit of wind and a sparkle in the bruised grass not far from his foot.

  He bent to take up that sparkle in the grass. It was a silver token on a chain, smooth and round and singing softly in his hand. The singing should have disconcerted him, and yet as he held the token, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It was a song like water on stone, like wind in leaves, like stars in distant heaven; but like a mother singing to her child, too, and lovers murmuring to one another, soft and inexpressibly tender.

  He turned the token in his hand. It was a coin, pierced for a chain, and very old, worn almost smooth. One side portrayed a human shape, a man perhaps, with a spear in his hand. The other was a cup or bowl, a simple curve of silver, unadorned.

  “Roland!”

  He turned quickly. Before he stopped to think, the token had vanished, hidden away in his tunic. He would find its owner later, he promised himself. Surely one of the Saracens had dropped it. It did not have the feel of a Frankish thing. It felt strange, as if it came from another world than this.

  He had no time to ponder it further, not then. Olivier had found him. Olivier his friend, his battle-brother, laid a massive arm about his shoulders, grinned at him with an expression of purest idiot sweetness, and said, “Tell me now and get it over. Who is she?”

  Roland flushed. He had not been thinking of the Saracen woman at all, but under Olivier’s deceptively witless blue stare, he felt as if her portrait were painted on his forehead.

  “I don’t even know her name,” he said—like a fool, or a man too startled to think.

  “That should matter?” Olivier pulled him back toward the tent-city. “Who is she? Is she a Saxon? A royal maid? A—” His eyes sharpened. “A Saracen? You spied one of those?”

  Roland was not about to tell Olivier that the woman had been riding in plain sight, not if Olivier’s eagle eye had failed to find her. He shrugged. “It was just a glimpse.”

  “So tell me! How beautiful was she? Was she dark, like olives? Or was she fair? They have fair women, it’s said—slaves stolen from us.”

  Roland shrugged again, which he knew would madden Olivier, but he was in a strange and reckless mood. This was not a woman to bandy about among guardsmen.

  Olivier astonished him: he shrugged himself, and said, “Very well, keep a secret. I’ll find it out soon enough.”

  “Maybe there is no secret,” said Roland.

  Olivier laughed. “Yes, and it was nothing at all that made you blush like a girl. She must be quite remarkable.”

  “And quite, quite thoroughly owned by a bloodthirsty Saracen,” said Roland.

  “That should stop us?”

  “You will do nothing,” Roland said, “except continue to cut a swath through the women of Saxony. This one is not for us, brother. That, I know in my bones.”

  “Your bones are old before their time,” Olivier muttered.

  Roland jabbed him shrewdly in the ribs, which flattened him; but he came up fighting. They roared and tumbled to a very satisfactory conclusion, up again and arm in arm and hunting down a cook who could be wheedled into feeding them at this odd hour.

  Once the ceremony of welcome was over, Christians and infidels withdrew to their separate encampments. The infidels had been given a corner of the as yet unbuilt walls, a green meadow by the river with ample grass for the horses. They professed themselves delighted with it, though it was full of buzzing insects. In a little while their bright tents were up, fitted with gauzy draperies that did rather well to keep out the stinging hordes.

  Charles the king made his way there without fanfare, not long after the sun had set. He took Roland with him for escort.

  They walked together in silence, a tall lord and his smaller, slighter retainer. The night was bright enough for Roland’s eyes, but to most men it was black dark, starless and damp still with rain. Charles to passersby would be hardly more than a shape looming in the mist, a big broad-shouldered man among hundreds of his like.

  Roland was comfortable in the king’s shadow. It was not the first time Charles had trusted him so. Sometimes the king wanted a quieter meeting than royal custom allowed, and for that he needed a man who knew the uses of silence. Roland had learned all of those from his childhood, cherished them and cultivated them.

  He had been rather startled nonetheless to be sent for at sunset, when he had thought himself forgotten in the excitement of the infidels’ coming. Charles was waiting alone a little distance from the lights and evening clamor of his tent. He smiled when Roland came stepping softly in the gloom, tilted his head in greeting, and walked away without a word.

  They passed a pair of Saracen guards, soft-footed silent men with eyes that glittered in a distant flicker of firelight. The guards knew the king. They bowed in their graceful alien way, and with gestures that made Roland think of a dance, guided them through the circles of tents.

  The tallest and broadest and brightest housed the leader of the embassy. He was stretched at his ease within, in a glow of lamps and a waft of spices. He rose with a cat’s grace and bowed low before the King of the Franks. The others with him, jeweled lords and quiet servants, followed their master’s example. They were like a field of grain stroked by the wind.

  S
uleiman ibn Yaqzan ibn Al-Arabi, governor of Barcelona and Gerona, lord and emir of the Caliph in Baghdad, spoke a quite reasonable Latin. “Welcome,” he said in that tongue, “my lord of Francia. Will you sit? Rest? Take a cup of sherbet?”

  Charles accepted a cup—to refuse it would have been an insult. He sipped from it, too, and seemed suitably appreciative, though Roland had not known him to be fond of fruit or sweetness. Wine he enjoyed in moderation, but even that little was forbidden to a Muslim.

  Roland effaced himself as was fitting, withdrew to a patch of shadow and stood still. The king would not say what he had come to say, not for a while. There were compliments to exchange, trivialities to consider at considerable length. The exigencies of the journey, the dampness of the weather, the pleasant situation of this new royal city, came under minute scrutiny.

  At last and roundabout, they came to it. Charles left off pretending to sip at his third cup of sherbet. Al-Arabi nibbled a bit of confection, set down the rest. Charles said, “Tell me what brings a Muslim of such eminence to the court of the infidel.”

  Al-Arabi answered with brevity startling in a man whose public phrases tended to be both lengthy and convoluted. “Rebellion. Insurrection.”

  “The upstart Caliph in Cordoba?”

  Al-Arabi inclined his head. “Indeed. Just so.”

  “And you want my help.”

  “Baghdad is far away,” said Al-Arabi. “The Caliph, may Allah bless his name, has wars nearer home, and a great realm that needs ruling. Francia is strong and its armies are numerous. And its king, as the Protector of the Faithful has taken care to remind me, has been for some time a friend and royal brother to my lord in Baghdad.”