She carried the rest of the food into her own little room, one of the few intact chambers in the castle. The room was dry and could be kept clean, but it was never completely warm or light even with the fire burning and her candle lit. Naciens had given her few necessities and no comforts: plain food, a change of clothes, sleeping-furs, and a book. Then he had gone off with his mule on some urgent errand, and Nerys had returned to the house in Gloucestershire to meet Sir Ector and arrange their departure, and Blanche was left alone.
She had hardly noticed the solitude. She had been busy keeping house, or making camp, or whatever her life in this little room could be called. She had cooking, cleaning, and washing to do, and reading for when the time dragged. Above anything else, she had a firm and anchoring certainty that she was safe.
It had come to her on the night they had been hunted by Morgan, when Nerys sang on the hillside above Carbonek. It could not, of course, be compared to what she had felt a month or two back in her guardian’s house, before she learned of Logres or Guinevere or the Queen of Gore, before she had known any cause of dread. Now she had escaped dogs and the sword, she might with justice have feared a whole host of shapeless threats, and yet the battlements of Carbonek surrounded her like the walls of a warm house in a winter storm. Perhaps that was what fended off the loneliness.
She was reading by the fire in her room one dark afternoon a week after she and Perceval had seen the Holy Grail when she heard the sound of hooves in the hall. Was it Naciens, wandering back from another pilgrimage, or some other stranger? Blanche wrapped herself in a cloak, went very softly down echoing black corridors to the hall, and peeked through the doorway. There was Naciens, sure enough. As he pushed back his hood, drops of water in his long white beard twinkled as though it really was made of snow. Beside him, speaking quietly, there was a smaller, slighter figure holding a bay horse.
“Nerys!” Blanche called, and ran into the hall.
Nerys left off speaking to Naciens and turned with a smile to greet her.
“Are we leaving?” Blanche asked, as soon as courtesy allowed.
To her surprise, Nerys hesitated. She glanced at Naciens and said, “You understand that I can make no decisions on my own.”
He bowed his head. Blanche looked from one to the other with curiosity.
“I thought you had come to take me to Camelot.”
“I had,” she said with a reassuring smile, and changed the subject.
They dined well from fresh store Naciens had brought in his saddlebags—a pair of moorhens and new brown flour which Blanche baked into cakes on the hearthstones in her room.
Nerys watched her with silent surprise. Blanche, glancing up, saw the look on her face and thought it better than any praise.
“Naciens showed me how to do this,” she said.
“A month ago you couldn’t even build a fire,” Nerys said. “Now, you’re cooking on one.”
Blanche laughed. “It was rather dreary at first,” she said. “But I learned to manage!”
She meant to ask what Nerys had been speaking to Naciens about, but was forestalled again. Dropping her voice almost to a whisper, Nerys said:
“Have you seen it?”
A week ago, Blanche might have been tempted to respond, “Seen what?” simply to assert herself as a free-thinker slow to believe extraordinary claims.
But she had seen it.
“Yes.”
Nerys laughed, a little self-consciously, and tapped Blanche’s cheek with her forefinger. “Yet you look no different.”
“I am no different,” the free-thinker wanted to say. Instead Blanche smiled and shook her head and gave the fowls another turn. Even if she had wanted to, she could not have put her experience into words, not yet.
Nerys’s voice held years of longing. “Think of it, Blanche. The Holy Grail, here for the finding. Here for Logres. Naciens says the time is near.”
“Yes.”
“With the Grail,”—she was whispering now—“with the Grail, perhaps it can be done. A kingdom that shall never be destroyed…”
“Why, what are you talking about?”
Nerys quoted: “Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.”
“But how?”
“How?” Nerys looked at her. “Didn’t you feel it?”
“How can I know what I felt?”
“That I cannot tell you.”
“But what did you expect?”
Nerys said: “They say that those who see the Grail are changed in will, so that they will in communion with the Divine will. Do you see now what it might mean for the Grail to come to Logres?”
Blanche stood up slowly from the fire, wiping her hands against the woollen skirt of her riding-habit. “No,” she said at last. “I felt nothing of that kind.”
Some of the light faded out of Nerys’s eyes. Blanche, seeing it die, felt a twinge of conscience. What had Nerys suffered in the last eighteen years of exile? She had given up home and friends and loyalties, fled across the worlds, served as guard and governess. …And now the time came to return home to all those things she loved, and Blanche, the only reason for her exile, neither understood nor cared for them. No wonder that when Nerys fell prey to melancholy, the very stars seemed to weep.
Blanche spoke bitterly. “It should have been you, not me.”
At that moment Naciens, having seen to the comfort of their beasts, came back into the room. Supper, although more satisfying than anything Blanche had eaten since the night of the Grail, could not overcome the sour taste left in her mouth from her conversation with Nerys. Yet what else could she have said? She had felt none of what Nerys described. And from the way Perceval had left Carbonek, it seemed plain that neither had he.
After supper, Naciens and Nerys left; no doubt, Blanche thought, to finish the conversation she had interrupted earlier. She was left to clean away the dinner things and brood. Nerys had returned to Britain. What would happen now? Would there be a chance to go back to the house in Gloucestershire, or was she trapped in Logres forever?
Blanche put another log on the fire and huddled into her furs, planning the best way to tackle Nerys. But when the elfin woman returned to the little warm room, her first words swept away every difficulty.
“We are going back to Gloucestershire in the morning,” Nerys said.
Blanche blinked at her, then lit up in a smile. “You really mean it, Nerys?”
“Yes, of course.” Nerys laughed.
A reprieve. Another chance. “Oh, thank you!”
“Only briefly, mind you. The rift between the worlds is mended, but Logres is still the best place for you now. But you certainly cannot stay here in Carbonek—not like this.” And she looked around the room with a shiver.
Blanche wondered what had happened to revive her spirits. As Nerys paced the room rubbing her hands and stamping her feet to work up some warmth, she seemed to shine like a lamp with happiness. But if there was a cause, she did not explain it, and at last she picked up the book Blanche had been reading that afternoon. “What’s this?”
Blanche felt a little embarrassed to reply. After all, she was only reading it because Naciens had left her with nothing else. “The City of God.”
“Oh, yes. I read it eighty years ago. What do you think?”
“It’s a good late example of Ciceronian rhetoric.”
Nerys paused a moment, and again the light dimmed. “Yes, I suppose it is,” she said, and after that, neither of them spoke until bedtime.
They left Carbonek early the next morning. Naciens rode his mule, and Blanchefleur perched on Florence’s hindquarters behind Nerys. The snow which had fallen on the night Perceval came had long since melted and the starkness of the dead trees and shattered stones in the valley was unrelieved by snow or bud. Blanche, looking at the barren rocks from the castle gates, had felt that it was the most horrible place she had ever seen. But now she was struck not so much by the desolation as by the fact that the Grail dwelt here: so much ligh
t and richness in the unrelieved desert.
The sublime light and music came into her mind again. She understood, she thought, why Naciens should choose to live in this wilderness with the lost people of Carbonek—a people so very lost that they, and the relic they guarded, could not even be seen by visitors to the castle without a special grace. But then, she wondered, why the desolation, if the Grail was as marvellous as they said?
Naciens led them out of the trees, up a narrow path climbing the steep wall of the valley. In a little over an hour they dismounted in the place where they had first met him under the overhanging rock.
Whether it had been there all along, or whether the side of the hill had opened since last time, Blanche could not tell. But now there was a narrow cleft leading into darkness among the rocks.
Naciens said, “We are out of the Waste of Carbonek now. But I think, if you come this way again, you will find us.”
Nerys held out her hand to Naciens. “Thanks, friend,” she said. Then, to Blanche’s discomfiture, she added, “Bless us before we go.”
When this had been done, Nerys walked ahead of Blanche and Florence into the cleft in the hill. It became darker and darker as they went, until at last the blue thread of sky above vanished completely. The next moment they had all stepped out of the wardrobe in the hall of the house in Gloucestershire.
Nerys took Florence’s reins and led her to the back door, now mended and replaced. When she opened it, Blanche saw that it was late evening, and the moon was shining.
She followed Nerys out onto the lawn. Here the air was mild, almost warm. The scent of roses and good rich earth rose around her. Somewhere in the orchard, a nightingale was singing.
Home, she thought, and drank in the air. But what brought them here? What had changed Nerys’s mind?
Nerys was speaking to her, almost in a whisper. “Blanche, find Sir Ector and tell him we’ve returned. Don’t let the servants see you.”
Blanche turned back to the house. The curtains in Sir Ector’s study were drawn, but warm yellow gaslight streamed through the crack down the centre. Moving slowly, soaking in the mild air and delicious scents of autumn, she went to the French windows of the study and scratched on the door.
The curtain twitched aside. A moment later she had been caught into her guardian’s bear-hug.
IN THE END IT TOOK SOME finessing before Blanche could call herself really at home. A charade had to be performed for the servants’ sake: Nerys rang the front-door bell so that Sir Ector could pretend to have received a telegram, and the next morning he drove out in the barouche on time to meet the train and returned with Blanche and Nerys both dressed crisply and correctly, as though they had been on holiday at the seaside instead of roughing it in Britain.
But Blanche had slept in her own bed again, and woken late in the morning in warm and blissful content. She might soon be compelled to return to Logres, but at least they would never take her back to Carbonek!
Or would she return to Logres? Again, Blanche remembered Mr Corbin’s words—“How can I help you if you speak of musts?” She had followed Nerys to Logres last time unthinkingly, reluctantly, frightened into submission by the Blue Boar’s attack. She promised herself it would not happen again. Before she condemned herself to Logres for good, she would try, if she might, to find a way out. Perhaps Mr Corbin would be able to suggest something. She would go to the village to find him as soon as possible; this afternoon, maybe, or tomorrow.
Yet the thought of going to Logres did not seem so unbearable as it had before. Even Carbonek might have been worse. And there was the twinge of conscience she had felt when, for a moment, she had seen through Nerys’s eyes. For a moment she had sensed what the fay had had to give up, and it had occurred to her for the first time that it was possible to love Logres, even to feel homesick for it…
And not only Nerys, but Sir Ector had made that sacrifice. For her. The least she could do was make an effort to understand their love, if she could.
Thus, when Sir Ector had fetched her home in state, and Blanche had looked over her correspondence and enjoyed an unhurried lunch, she went down to the library to find a book.
Her guardian was there, apparently dealing with some correspondence of his own. Blanche’s heart sank at the sight of blue legal paper. So he was still preparing to close up the house and return to Logres. She had hoped that, whatever Naciens had told Nerys, it had postponed that at least for the next few months.
Sir Ector looked up at her with a smile. “Hullo, Blanche. Looking for anything?”
It occurred to her to look for something about Logres—wasn’t there a famous book, Le Morte D’Arthur or something? But all her pride rose up in arms at the suggestion. She had given away her mother’s ring, not once but twice, and she had quenched every spark of curiosity about her parents, and if she was bending now it was only for the sake of Nerys and Sir Ector, no one else.
Her conscience jabbed her. She pacified it with a moment’s quick bargaining, and said to her guardian, “When I was at Carbonek I began reading The City of God. I’d like to finish it.”
Sir Ector twiddled his pen. “In the English translation, or original Latin?”
“Latin, please,” she said. Latin would undoubtedly make Nerys happier. And it left her conscience with no right to complain.
Sir Ector pointed. “Third shelf from the floor.” But when Blanche found what she was after, she lingered.
“Are we going back to Logres soon?” she asked.
“Yes.” Sir Ector laid down his pen. “But not right away. Nerys and I have much to arrange.”
“Then is there time for me to see my friends before we leave?”
“Of course, Blanche. See them whenever you like.”
“I was thinking of having a dinner party. I’d invite Kitty Walker, and Emmeline Felton. And Mr Corbin.”
Sir Ector pushed his spectacles further up his nose and nodded. “I don’t see why not. Arrange it whenever you like.”
“Thanks,” Blanche said. Still she didn’t move. “And thanks for everything else, sir.”
“Pardon?” He was already shuffling through the blue paper again.
“I know you must have been sorry to leave it all behind—Logres, I mean. Your home. You must have missed it dreadfully.”
He looked up at her, blinked quickly two or three times and cleared his throat, and she knew he was deeply touched. “Yes. I do miss it.”
“I don’t love it like you do,” she said, apologetically. “It seemed so cold and ugly.”
“But you’ve only seen Carbonek!” said Sir Ector, with uncommon vehemence. “Nerys told me what a grim ruin it is now. But you should have seen it in the days before the Dolorous Stroke! The vale of Carbonek was full of song then! All the apples in Logres went down that river to the sea. And you’ve never seen Camelot in summer. Camelot, the garden-city of Logres, full of towers and trees. You’ve never seen the sun on the windows of Carlisle, or walked in the river-side meadows of Trinovant in the spring.”
“I suppose I haven’t,” Blanche said. It was hard not to get carried away on the tide of his enthusiasm. She said mournfully, “But you have friends there, too.”
“The best brothers-at-arms a man could wish for. The most gracious King—” and something seemed to go wrong with Sir Ector’s voice.
“Would I belong to anyone there?” Blanche asked.
Sir Ector blinked.
“Nerys told me there’s some doubt. About me being the true heir of Logres. What about that? What will I have to face, there in Logres?”
Sir Ector looked out the window, playing with the coins in his pockets. At last he stood and walked around his desk to Blanche. “Prepare yourself,” he said simply. “It’s not going to be easy, Blanche. If you want your father’s legacy, you’ll have to fight for it.”
Blanche kept her eyes on the carpet. “What if he isn’t my father?”
“If he doesn’t doubt it, why should you?” Sir Ector raised her chin with
one finger and kissed her on the forehead. “I raised him, Blanche, and I can tell you this as surely as if it came from his own lips: he won’t desert you.”
That was exactly what she was afraid of. She didn’t say it out loud. “How much time do I have left at home?”
“It depends,” he said, becoming more vague and more businesslike, all at once. “As a matter of fact, Nerys and I will need to go to Camelot to speak to the King before we know.”
“To make sure that he really does want me?” she asked, just to be contrary.
“No, no, no, Blanche!” Sir Ector sighed. “When Nerys went to Carbonek to fetch you, Naciens the Hermit told her something which upset all our plans. He says they need you at Carbonek.”
Carbonek. Ugly, funereal, holy Carbonek. “What?”
“Do you know what the Grail Maiden is?”
“I don’t.”
“The maiden guardian of the Holy Grail. She watches, and prays, and contends. Since the fall of Elaine, eighteen years ago, there has been no Grail Maiden. Naciens says that you have been chosen for the next.”
9
And when he came to the Tearne Wadling,
The baron there co’ld he finde,
With a great weapon on his backe,
Standing stiffe and stronge.
The Marriage of Sir Gawain
“I SAW THE LADY OF THE Lake last night, riding north,” said the King.
They were camping on the hills of Powys, roasting venison and their faces over a campfire built high and blazing to fend off the nip of frost at their backs. For once the clouds had withdrawn, unveiling the bitter stars and ice-haloed moon.
The Door to Camelot Page 8
