He could not see a soul.
Perceval dismounted softly. Rufus bent and nosed the floor before discovering a bundle of provender in a corner. Perceval leaned his shield and lance against the wall, pulled off helm and gauntlets, and went warily to warm himself. There must be someone about, but were they friends or enemies?
As he held out his hands to the coals he saw a little table nearby set with red and white chess-pieces, ready for a game. Perceval brushed the dust off a stool and sat down, stretching his feet toward the fire.
Presently he picked up one of the chessmen to look at it. When he had blown and rubbed the dust away, he found that it was an ivory knight with shiny black eyes which seemed to return his scrutiny. He replaced it on its square and sat listening to the darkness and the shadows. After a moment, he rose and went to look out of the hall into the snowy courtyard.
Nothing. Nobody. He went back to the chess-table and sat down. Outside, the wind whispered along the roof-tiles. For a moment he imagined that the whole hall was full of shadowy presences, moving and talking under ghostly torches, but then he blinked, and was back in the desolate ruin. Perceval shook himself and moved the white queen’s pawn forward two squares.
He was still looking at the board when a red knight slid forward in response.
Perceval sat up and stared into the darkness, hands stealing to the hilt of his sword.
Not a breath stirred the air.
Slowly Perceval reached out again and moved another pawn. Instantly the red king’s pawn moved forward.
Perceval moved again, and the red responded almost before his fingers had left his own piece. Six moves later, he was checkmated. Perceval stared in bemused displeasure, and set the board again.
Twice more the red chessmen bested him, so easily that at the third defeat Perceval lost his temper entirely and rose to his feet, drawing his sword. “Come out, wherever you are!” he shouted.
“You are—you are—you are,” the castle mocked.
Perceval passed his hand around the table, hoping to catch some thread used to move the pieces. There was none. He went to sweep the red pieces from the table, but they stuck firm.
Machine, or magic? The firelight had burned very low, and suddenly Perceval thought he heard footsteps far away. The hair prickled on the back of his neck and he swung his sword up meaning to smash the set and then take his chances with whatever was coming. But before he could move the castle broke its silence.
“No! Don’t touch the chessboard,” someone called. He was facing her before she had finished speaking. The first thing he saw was a white glimmer in the shadows behind the great table. Then she came closer and he saw her hair in the dark, a crown of sulky red which, being pinned to the top of her head, gave her the illusion of lofty height. It was the damsel in the pavilion, the damsel in the rain.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, stopping short.
For the fraction of a moment, Perceval felt like a small boy caught in mischief. Then in vexation he rebounded into something more than his usual nerve, shot his sword back into its sheath, and bowed with a flourish. “And still at your service, damsel.”
“Oh, yes,” she said with the same distant civility. “How is your arm, by the way?”
He had been unsure if she had seen his wound, and knowing that she had gave him a petty pleasure. “That? It was nothing, and is nearly mended. Tell me whom I have the honour of serving.”
“My name is Blanchefleur, as they say here.”
“I am Perceval, a knight of the Table,” he told her, and the words alone lifted his chin and pulled his shoulders back. “And I crave your pardon for the wrong I did you in the pavilion.”
Blanchefleur waved a cool and graceful hand, on which his mother’s ring glinted. “You fought the Blue Boar for me. We are acquitted.”
In her place, Perceval thought, he would have been angry, and this indifference perplexed him. “But I took your ring.” He was wearing it on a thong around his neck these days, and pulled it over his head. “I am no robber of women. If it was given unwillingly, take it back.”
She took it from him and stood doubtfully staring at the writing that ran around the inside of the band.
“What do the words say?”
Blanchefleur glanced up. “They speak of my mother.” She held the ring out to him. “It was given willingly. Keep it.”
He lifted his hand. “Not if it is precious to you.”
“It isn’t.” The words were abrupt, and she paused. “I don’t know my mother very well. Please take it.”
Nothing loath, Perceval took the ring and grinned at her. “And serve you also?”
“Serve me?”
He quoted his mother. “When a knight wishes to serve a lady, he will give her a ring from his hand and a—well, never mind that part. But of all ladies in the world, I would most gladly serve you, damsel, and repair the injury I did you.”
“I have said that we are acquitted.”
“No,” he said.
She frowned. “No?”
“No,” he said again. “I fought the Blue Boar for you, but I am a knight. I am bound to do as much for anyone, high or low, old or young, man or woman.”
She tilted her head and looked at him with new respect. “What would you give me in recompense, then?”
“I would do as I offered. I would bear your ring and serve you a year and a day, taking no other lady during that space.”
She gave him an odd look, with a twist like a smile at the corner of her mouth. “That is your request?”
“That? No. That I will do regardless. But if you would grant a request, you will wear my token during that time.”
At that her eyebrow quirked up as if she meant to mock at him, but then the smile broke through and she was blushing and trying not to laugh and shaking her head all at once. Perceval wondered what it was that made her both so delighted, and so ashamed of being delighted. Almost every knight he had ever heard of had some lady to serve. What he suggested was no uncommon thing.
“I am silenced,” she said ruefully, when at last she recovered her poise. “Have your wish, and come and eat.”
The table on the dais was bare of anything but dust. When Perceval had wiped two of the weathered old chairs and a segment of the board, they took their seats at the empty table, facing the unfriendly mirk of the hall.
“Tell me how you come to be here in the wilds alone,” he said, brushing his hands on his armour.
“Alone! Can you not see them? Not even a shadow?”
Perceval remembered the moment in which he had almost seen the hall lighted and full of people. “If they are here, I cannot see them.”
“But you are from this world,” Blanchefleur said, and they looked at each other with twinned confusion before she shook her head and went on. “I cannot see them either. But Naciens says they are all around us.”
Perceval grinned. “One of them is very good at chess, then.”
Blanchefleur laughed, and became serious again before he could return to the question he had first put to her. “Naciens said you have come here for a purpose.”
Perceval thought of the long hushed days in the mountains, and nodded. “I thought so. Tell me what to do.”
“You must take the message back to Camelot of what you have seen.”
“What have I seen?”
“It’s coming. Wait.”
He leaned back into his chair, stretching out his legs. “As long as you want. That is, if there will be food.”
“Naciens said there would be.”
Silence settled back onto the castle. Perceval scanned the hall and finally fixed his eyes, like Blanchefleur, on the doors at the end of the room. The fire on the hearth had revived a little, but now it began to fade into a dull red glow. Even so, it was a lifetime before he knew he had not imagined the light stealing into the blackness beyond the door.
The doorway grew lighter by slow degrees. Then Perceval discerned singing voices, coming like the light
from far away and moving closer. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, even in the old earl’s chapel on Sundays, and he straightened in his chair to listen. The three voices sang simultaneously, but each wove a different melody in and around the others, so that the whole became a bewilderingly complex tapestry of sound. Yet the themes shared perfect clarity and perfect co-inherence. At no point did one voice overwhelm the others; at no point did they become confused.
It was like listening to the universe in motion. Planets spinning on their appointed courses, the lives of men intersecting and parting, the unimaginable harmony of the human body itself in hierarchy and order, were all implied in the song, but something greater as well: the genius of the composer, which must surely approach the miraculous. Perceval closed his eyes and was lost in the weaving music.
He came back to the waking world to find that the music had stopped. The light beyond the door still grew stronger, until he was sure that it would blind him if it shone any brighter. Then at last, with a triumphant blast of wind, its source appeared like the sun on a clear morning.
There were three veiled damsels. The first held a spear that dripped blood (its dark redness as positive and blinding as the white light)—blood that vanished before it could reach the ground. The second held a golden platter, and the third a cup covered with a thin veil. It was from the Cup that the light shone.
They paced up the hall. Perceval knew what he was seeing. His mother had told the story of Joseph of Arimathea, who gave his tomb for our Lord, coming to Britain in his old age with three incomparable treasures: the spear which had pierced Christ’s side, the platter that had borne the bread at the Last Supper, and above all the cup from which he had drunk, with which Joseph had caught his blood running down the Cross. The cup of cups, the Holy Grail.
There was a rustle at his elbow as the Grail drew closer. Blanchefleur had pushed back her chair and sunk to her knees, blinking like an owlet in the light. Perceval moved with her. The damsels were passing them now. He could feel the light wash over them, almost tangible, and smell perfumes and spices for which he had no name, although they smelled like all the good memories of his childhood.
Then the Grail passed out of the hall, the light faded, and they were alone in the dark. Only a little light came from the fire. Perceval stood slowly, stiffly; groped for the dead torches on the wall and, finding them, coaxed them to life at the coals. In their rekindled light he saw Blanchefleur sitting in her chair again, a huddled and somehow smaller figure, staring unseeingly before her.
The table bore food, now—everything he most liked to eat, from fresh plums to milky cheese. But the sight of it could not distract him from what they had seen, and one thought sparked like fire in the dry tinder of his imagination, and leaped through him all at once.
“Now surely,” he said, “the Quest of the Grail is close: the time they speak of, when the Grail Knight comes to Camelot and the knights of the Table ride out in search of the grace it holds.”
Slowly, as if returning across vast distances of thought, Blanchefleur turned to him. “Yes. That was the message.”
“It is close.” Perceval drew a breath through clenched teeth. “It is in my mind to go in search of it now.”
“But the message—”
“They say it dwells in the castle of Carbonek—Carbonek, cut off from mortal lands. If the Grail is here, then Carbonek cannot be far away,” and he was already striding down the hall to where he had left his arms and horse.
Blanchefleur pushed her chair back and came running down after him. “Perceval—” it was the first time she had used his name, and it sounded well, but he had no time to stop and listen to that music—“Perceval, you don’t understand.”
He pulled on his gloves and turned to her with his helm in his hands. “What? Do you know where it is? Is it near?”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, then caught herself, and shook her head. “You must go to Camelot first.”
He pulled on his helm and fitted his shield to his arm. “Not before I have seen it again, just once.”
“No! Wait and listen!” said Blanchefleur. But he swung into the saddle, laughing.
“I am coming back,” he called. “I will bring you the Grail. Wait for me here.”
“No, wait,” she wailed again, but Perceval thrust the doors open and the wind swallowed her words. If she said anything else, it was lost in the clamouring echoes woken by his horse’s hooves.
NOT UNTIL DAWN DID SIR PERCEVAL come fully to his senses. By then the snow had ceased, and the jubilant sun rose shining on dazzling whiteness striped by black trees. He sat looking at it in something close to despair. For the last hour he had believed that that glimmer on the horizon was the light he sought. When it finally broke above the trees he could no longer deceive himself.
Of course that castle was the Grail Castle. He had been in Carbonek herself. He had found the damsel of the pavilion again. He had seen the Grail, and he could have eaten from its provision. What had possessed him?
And what had he thrown away? Carbonek was cut off from the rest of Britain since Sir Balyn the Unlucky struck the Dolorous Stroke and maimed the Fisher King. No one found the road to Carbonek now, no one not watched over and guided by some gracious destiny.
Which he had flouted.
Was there still hope? He turned back to the west, and retraced his steps. For a few miles his trail was clear, but at last it vanished under last night’s snow. The white-and-black of the forest held no clue. He pressed on while the sun rose higher, burning away the mist that lay in the valleys. Afternoon came, clear and bright. Then the day faded to evening and he knew he would not find Carbonek again.
Perceval reined in his horse and sat with bowed head, trying not to think how tired, hungry, and cold he was, or what a fool he had made of himself. Slowly the shadows grew deeper around him. More clouds were coming down from the North, piled up in gigantic purple and gold palaces, so that the sky looked like a window on Heaven.
Far above he heard a bird’s scream, and looked up to see a hawk driving a dove across that sumptuous sky. The dove fluttered for the cover of trees, but the hawk folded its wings and dropped from higher air like a stone.
Perceval heard the soft thud of the two bodies meeting and saw crimson splash across the dove’s breast. Three drops of blood chased each other down through the air and spattered on the snow, dark against dazzling white. Perceval stared at them and remembered Blanchefleur with her red hair and white tunic, the red stone of his mother’s ring on her hand, and above all the drops of blood falling from the Spear at Carbonek.
While he sat musing, four knights came riding through the frosty air with a comfortable jingling of harness and with the breath steaming from their mouths as they talked and laughed. Sir Gawain was there with his cousin Sir Ywain, and Sir Kay, and King Arthur himself.
“Do you see that knight, sitting so listlessly staring at the snow?” said the King. “Do any of you know him?”
“His mount is familiar,” said Sir Gawain, and chuckled. “He must be asleep, or witless, or deeply in love. He has not noticed us.”
“Kay! Go and ask who he is,” the King said.
“I’ll stir him up, sire,” said Sir Kay, and he came jogging up to Perceval and cried, “Sir! Ho, sir! Yonder is the Pendragon of Britain, and he wishes to know your name.”
Perceval was aware of him, as if in a dream, and heard his voice, but not the words or the sense, and he did not lift his head or show any sign that he had understood. Sir Kay looked back to the King. “Hoy!” he suddenly shouted at Perceval.
Perceval, his eyes caught in the red and white and his mind in memory, still did not move, though he began to swim slowly to the surface of thought.
Kay waited a moment longer, and then lost his temper. “Answer me when I speak to you!” he said, and gave Perceval a clout on the head with his iron gauntlet.
Perceval came to himself then, boiling angry, reacting almost before he had a chance
to think: swept up his spear-butt and with a satisfying crack returned the blow and laid Sir Kay senseless on the ground.
Then he looked up and saw the other three knights sitting there, watching. Laying his spear in rest he shouted, “Since it seems that nowadays a man must fight for a little peace and quiet, come on, all of you at once, if you wish!”
Gawain laughed, for he was fond of a bold speaker. “Sire,” he said to the King, “surely that is the boy you sent on the adventure of the Queen’s cup a while ago.”
“Then go and give him my greetings,” said King Arthur, “and perhaps now that he has beaten Sir Kay, he will let us pass in peace.”
So Sir Gawain rode up to Perceval, his spear upright for peace, and said, “Sir knight, over there is the High King of Britain, who wishes to speak with you. As for this knight, this is Sir Kay, and he is not always as mannerly as he should be.”
“I am glad to hear it is he,” said Perceval, unhelming. “I warned him I would repay him the blow he gave to the maiden at Camelot.”
“You charge a high interest,” said Gawain, chuckling. He searched Perceval’s face. “Your shield is blank, I see. What’s your name and lineage, sir?”
“My name is Perceval, as I told you before,” he said. “My mother’s name was Ragnell and I do not know my father.”
A look of delight danced in Gawain’s eyes, and then he laughed, a long peal of pure joy, and turned back to King Arthur and Sir Ywain. “But I do, I think.”
“Tell me!” Perceval urged, trotting his horse after. “Who was he?”
“My lord king,” cried Gawain in the same delighted roar, “Here is my son, Sir Perceval.”
8
The Holy Grail!—
…
What is it?
The phantom of a cup that comes and goes?
Tennyson
WHEN THE ECHOES OF PERCEVAL’S GOING faded away, Blanche went back into the great hall of Carbonek and looked at the feast on the high table. More for something to do than because she felt particularly concerned about it, she divided the food into two parts and put half of it out in the passageway near the entrance, where it would be preserved by the autumn cold. Then she took her seat at the high table, but could not bring herself to eat. She was not hungry, and she did not want to eat in the cold and cavernous hall. She had seen it filled with light and music. She had sat at table with a companion more substantial than any of the whispering presences she half sensed in the shadows. Suddenly, and for the first time since she had come to Carbonek, she felt lonely.
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