Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  Nine ladies stood round a table of stone, nine enchantresses clad in white. Light poured down upon them through the high dome of a roof. The air was full of singing: a song as pure and high and unearthly as the stars’ own music.

  The chief of the enchantresses approached the table, an altar of dawn-grey stone unadorned. One thing only lay upon it: a silver shrine. Four fierce winged creatures upheld it, that seemed wrought of silver and gold and gems, until the light caught one wild golden eye. Then it seemed that they lived, but stilled to stone.

  The lady in white bowed low before the shrine. The light streamed over her, seeming tangible as water. With great reverence she opened the silver doors.

  Light flooded from them, and music so piercing sweet that the nine ladies gasped in unison. All their senses were overwhelmed, inundated, drowned in supernal sweetness. It was beyond mortal bearing; but they were somewhat more than mortal.

  She who had opened the shrine lifted from it the source of all that splendor. It was an utterly simple, utterly earthly thing: a wooden cup without elegance or adornment. Its shape was pleasing to the hand, but there was little about it to delight the eye. All its beauty, all its glory, was in what it was, not in what it seemed to be.

  She sang the Mass in that shrine of light, but the deity to whom she sang it was Mother and Goddess. The faith she professed, the words with which she professed it, were older far than the cult of Rome.

  This, like Rome’s rite, was blood-rite: blood of a god, caught in the cup that was called the Grail. The sun bowed before it. The moon paused in its sphere. The earth lay still, drinking in its blessing.

  Sarissa woke slowly. The dream of the Grail slipped away. The last of it was the body’s memory: the smooth roundness of the cup in her hands, the light weight, the substance of it, plain olivewood, carved by a poor man for a poor man’s supper. Yet it was imbued with the power of heaven.

  She sighed and stretched and lay blinking in the dimness of her tent. If she closed her eyes, she could see another place altogether: a high and airy chamber with a window on the sky. That room was empty now, waiting for her to come back.

  The edge of homesickness was not as sharp as it had been. Crossing the mountains, she had thought herself likely to die of it; but here on the threshold of the plain, she knew that she would live. And every day that she endured brought her closer to her return.

  As she rose and dressed, combed and plaited her hair, she felt out the wards on the camp as if they had been limbs of her body. Small things had come and gone in the night, but nothing strong enough to rouse her. The darkness was still within, nested like a worm in an apple. In the handful of days since she came here it had been quiescent, but this morning it seemed to be stirring. Responding at last to the presence of her wards? Or was it waking for reasons of its own?

  She would watch and wait, and attend the king as he had requested, between his morning toilet and his daily swim in the river.

  Priests were singing Mass in the camp, if she had been minded to attend. This morning she was not. That other rite, even in dream, had nourished her soul as nothing else could. The strength it brought her, the deep joy even in her yearning to be home again, went with her into the king’s presence.

  He was seated outside his tent, taking the morning air. The usual flock of attendants surrounded him, though not as many as there would be later in the day. He greeted Sarissa with a vivid blue glance and the sudden brightness of a smile. “Lady!” he cried. “You look splendid this morning. Glorious—beautiful! Is it good news? Fine weather? A friend?”

  Sarissa matched his smile with a smile. “A dream,” she said, “no more. But a very pleasant one.”

  “Ah,” said Charles. “You’re blessed then. Will it come true?”

  “I do hope so, my lord,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “Splendid! Come, sit beside me, and indulge me with patience while I settle a matter or two.”

  Sarissa could hardly mistake the several meanings of that. Charles had a famous eye for women. In his queen’s presence he kept it in check, confining himself to his mistresses and the occasional willing maid, and of course her majesty if she was not with child. On the march, when the queen was left behind, he indulged himself freely. But never without consent. That, every tale agreed. The king would have only a willing woman—and women nearly always were, with Charles.

  Maybe Sarissa would accept the tacit invitation. Maybe she would not. That was not why he had summoned her this morning, though tonight, or another night, might be a different matter. She sat by him in the place of honor while he settled a dispute between a pair of freemen, and sent one of his Companions out with an armed company to replenish the stores of meat and grain, and read over a capitulary that he had had a clerk copy to be sent to Francia. Not even the smallest detail escaped him: a man ill with coughing fever, a need for new privies, an inequity in the distribution of arrows between one wing of the army and another.

  Somewhere between the capitulary and the privies, the king’s guard changed. The new captain slipped smoothly into the place of the old, just behind the king’s chair on his right hand. That happened to be almost directly in back of Sarissa.

  She could feel him like a fire on her skin. Perhaps it was the dream of the Grail. Perhaps that reminder of who she was had made her more intensely aware of the power that was in him. Maybe he was stronger himself. He had had a year to hone his strength; and he had Durandal. The sword was wrought of magic, was magic. It could only have heightened what was in him already.

  She had done a very dangerous thing in bringing that sword to this man. How dangerous, she had not allowed herself to think. Now she had to think it. She had to consider what it meant, and what would come of it. She had to try—

  “Lady,” Charles said, startling her out of her reverie. “I beg your pardon for keeping you about so long. Can you forgive me?”

  “Easily, my lord,” Sarissa said, recovering her wits quickly, wrenching her thoughts away from the man behind her. Where, she could not help but reflect, he could with utter ease slip a dagger between her ribs.

  Not that one. He would destroy her with magic or cut her down in fair fight. Roland was not a man for the knife in the back.

  “My lady,” said Charles, “I have a favor to ask of you. You may refuse it freely. But if you will, I have an offer of alliance. The man who offers it is an infidel emir who professes loyalty to Baghdad. One of his wives is Christian, and comes from Saragossa. I’m sending a man to him with suitably noble escort. It would please me greatly if you rode with them. You speak the languages of this country—none better, I’m told—and better yet, you can speak with the emir’s wife as lady to wellborn lady. She has considerable influence with the emir, it’s said.”

  Sarissa inclined her head. “I’ll be honored, sire.”

  “Excellent!” said Charles. “It’s not much more than half a day’s ride to the estate where he’s promised to meet my envoy. You’ll leave before noon, and be there with the sunset. My chamberlain will fetch whatever you need for the journey.”

  Sarissa glanced at the sun. There was precious little time to prepare. But if anyone was hoping that she would refuse on that account, he was disappointed. She bowed, smiled, was dismissed with a blessing on her head.

  CHAPTER 15

  “You have all the luck,” Olivier said.

  Roland looked up from the last of his packing. “Luck? What? You could come, too.”

  “Not likely,” said Olivier. “Turpin’s going to speak for the king, you’re going to look fierce and wave your pretty sword about. Someone has to stay here and look after the king.

  “Besides,” he added, flinging himself on Roland’s cot and propping his chin on his fist, “I’m not talking about playing ambassador. I’m talking about her.”

  “I wouldn’t call that luck,” Roland said dryly.

  “Have you looked at her? She’s extraordinary. That skin, those eyes . . .” Olivier sighed. His mood, Rol
and noticed, had improved remarkably since Sarissa had come to Saragossa.

  “So go in my place,” said Roland.

  Olivier looked ready to leap at the chance, but after an instant his face fell. “You know I can’t do that. The king wants you to brandish your sword. Mine is a good blade, but it’s not the famous Durandal.”

  He spoke without rancor. Olivier did not bear grudges. Roland shook his head. “My dear friend, I would happily trade places with you. But I can’t trade swords.”

  “No.” Olivier sighed. “Honestly, you don’t think she’s beautiful? She’s like honey and cream.”

  “I’d have said pepper and nettles myself,” Roland muttered. “She seems to dislike me intensely.”

  “Don’t believe it,” said Olivier from his vast fund of experience—considerably vaster and more varied than Roland’s. “Women act like that when they can’t take their eyes off you—and they can’t forgive themselves for it. She’s captivated. I’d wager gold on it.”

  “One of those gold armlets you won in Pamplona?”

  “Done!” said Olivier. “If you’ll put up the ruby you snatched before I could get my hands on it.”

  “I did not—” Roland caught sight of Olivier’s grin. He broke off. “I’ll have the ruby set in the armlet after I’ve won it.”

  “What a marvelous idea!” Olivier declared. “And what a perfectly suitable wedding gift for the two of you.”

  “That will never happen,” Roland said.

  “Why not? Nobody quite talks about it, but she’s noble born. Maybe royal. It’s in everything she does. That’s no common woman, nor ever was.”

  “She doesn’t want me,” said Roland.

  Olivier snorted. “Get on with you. They’ll be waiting.”

  So they were, though not quite ready yet to leave without him. The company he was to lead was drawn up, armed and mounted. Archbishop Turpin was just bidding farewell to the king. Roland received an embrace of his own, a kiss of farewell, and a murmur in his ear: “Take care of the lady. Bring her back safe.”

  Aha, thought Roland with an odd twisting in the stomach. It was that way with the king. And with her?

  There was no telling. She was as aloof as ever, sitting astride her splendid stallion. Roland had to pass by them to reach his own Veillantif. As he did it, his eye caught the white stallion’s. His step caught for the fraction of a breath. He knew those eyes. He knew that bright wickedness. The last time he had seen it, it had gleamed out of a cat’s face.

  One shapeshifter knew another. He saluted Tarik with a tilt of the head. Tarik snorted softly in response.

  Veillantif was safely, peaceably unmagical, a simple mortal horse. Roland paused for a moment to rub his shoulder before springing into the saddle.

  He was the last to mount. They rode out with a flourish of banners and trumpets, perhaps a little too glad to be free of the siege, but they made a handsome show.

  Once they were away from the army, they settled to a more reasonable pace. Roland’s men were a picked company, Franks of the king’s own guard, who had served together since before Roland came to court. They never seemed to mind taking orders from the Breton Count; they had taught him most of what he knew of guardroom songs, willing maids, and the fine art of profanity.

  Turpin’s presence would not have deterred them in the slightest from running through every scurrilous ditty they knew, but before Sarissa they were remarkably circumspect. Roland could have sworn that even Benno Scarface was abashed, as smitten with that odd beauty as any other man in the king’s army. For her sake they chose only the most decorous songs, and curbed their tongues, too.

  Roland wondered if she even began to appreciate the effort. She was riding with Turpin, conversing quietly. He was telling her of the man they were riding to visit. “His grandfather was among the conquerors of Spain. They were princes before that, in the court at Baghdad, and they’ve always been loyal to the Caliph there. His name is Musa. They call him Nur al-Din, Light of the Faith.”

  “And his wife?” Sarissa asked.

  “He has three,” Turpin answered, “and, it’s rumored, three dozen concubines. But the ruler of them all, though but the third wife in age and rank, is the lady Leila. She was given that name when Musa took her to wife. Her baptismal name is Julia. She comes from an old family in Saragossa, that goes back to the Romans. Saint James himself is said to have preached the Gospel to her ancestors, and converted them to the true faith.”

  “They seem to have made the best of this conquest,” Sarissa observed.

  “It’s said she’s won her husband’s consent to teach her children the faith of Rome.”

  “Indeed,” said Sarissa.

  Roland could not tell what she meant by that. For that matter, who or what was she? No one had ever made that quite clear. People assumed that she must be from Barcelona or Gerona, since she had first come to the king with the emir Al-Arabi. Or maybe she was from Saragossa, though she had made no effort to enter that city.

  What rank she had, who her kin were—Roland could not recall that anyone had ever said. She had come riding into Paderborn on that day of late spring, dressed as a young man of the Saracens, and allowing people to think what they liked of who she was, where she had come from, and why she was there. Whatever they thought or said of her, she went on apparently untroubled.

  She was not a Muslim. He was sure of that. She appeared to be a Christian. She was possessed of magic. Even without the rest of it, Tarik proved that. In Britain, Merlin had taught him long ago, they called such a creature a puca, a spirit of mischief that ran now in the likeness of a horse, now in that of a cat; and sometimes too a black dog or a wolf or a raven, or whatever other shape suited its fancy. And how had a Spanish woman—if she was of Spain at all—come by a puca? And not only come by it, but bound it to her as a servant?

  He regretted that he had not found a way after all to return to Brittany before he rode to Spain, to ask Merlin’s counsel. Once in a great while the enchanter came to him in dreams, but Roland could not seek him out, nor call on him through the walls of his prison. And that, just now, drove him nigh to distraction. Merlin would know what this woman was.

  Roland had only such knowledge as Merlin had already taught him, and what scraps and fragments he had learned for himself. He was a very young enchanter, as he knew too well; but he’d not felt quite so young in a long while.

  He watched her as she rode, aware in his skin of the road as it passed underfoot, and the sky overhead, and the country they rode through, barren to his forest-bred eye, burned brown by the heat of summer. No travelers met them. Armed Franks were a thing to walk well shy of here; even pilgrims making their way to this shrine or that had chosen another road rather than cross paths with Archbishop Turpin’s embassy.

  The birds of the air did not care what banner men rode under. The beasts of the field fled anything human, for it might be hunting them. The wind sang impartially, whether it plucked at Frankish mantle or Spanish cape or Saracen robes.

  Sarissa, who was none of those things, had fallen silent, composed, complete in herself. Turpin was immersed in his prayers as he liked to do on the march, knee hooked over saddlebow, book in hand, brown beard nodding on his breast as he murmured the holy words. Roland slid easily into the quiet watchfulness of the guard. It was like wearing the world on his skin, aware of everything that passed on or over it. But his eyes kept wandering to Sarissa and fixing there. The straightness of her back, the lift of her chin, the delicate arch of her profile against the rise of brown hills . . .

  He turned Veillantif abruptly and rode down to the end of the line, where the ranks of broad mailed backs and steel helmets hid her from sight. No one snickered. Maybe he had not been obvious about it, after all. He preferred to take the rear; it was most vulnerable to attack, and most vital to defend. It had been more remarkable that he kept to the front for so long, mooning like a raw boy after a woman who hardly cared that he existed.

  Musa’s holdin
g was an old Roman villa set on a hill, ringed in vineyards. It had an olive grove and a water mill, and a village round a squat little church. The cross had been struck off the dome, and a minaret put up, converting it to the infidel.

  The muezzin was calling the faithful to prayer as they rode up in the evening, the high rhythmic wail that was the daily music of this country. Franks professed to hate it. Roland would never confess that he found in it a sort of beauty. He had asked once what it meant—if there were words in it. Indeed, he was told: words of power and holiness.

  God is great! God is great! There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God!

  Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to prosperity! Come to prosperity!

  God is great! God is great!

  Allahu akhbar! the muezzin sang. One or two of the men signed the Cross, as if to assure themselves that they were still Christian.

  Men were praying in the villages and in the fields, white-clad figures kneeling and standing and bowing toward the east. They ignored the Franks riding past in a clatter of hooves and a jingle of mail.

  The gate to the villa was open, turbaned guards on either side of it, their prayer just finished and their eyes glittering in the dusk, by the still-wan light of torches. They bowed Turpin and his escort through.

  Servants in the courtyard took charge of the horses and baggage. As the riders stood in the growing darkness, the master of the house emerged from the colonnade. He was robed in white, a cap on his shaven head, and a white smile gleaming in his dark face. That blood had come up from Africa, that skin as black as the night sky, those features cut blunt and broad and strong. His voice was soft, a cultured gentleman’s voice, his bow and his words graceful, welcoming them, inviting them into his house.

  Sarissa was taken away by soft-footed womenservants. That was as they had expected, but Roland was oddly moved to object.