Blanchefleur put her cool hands to her hot cheeks, resting her elbows on the table. Perceval swished the brush in and out of the water. Suddenly, irrationally, she was cross with him. After everything Mordred had said and done, was Perceval just going to wash his paintbrush and pretend not to care?
“Perceval?”
“Yes?”
“Would you…I mean, what would it be like, if we weren’t able to marry for a very long time? How would you feel?”
Perceval’s brows stitched together. “Very irked. Why do you ask? I intend to marry you as soon as we have a spare day for it.”
“It’s just something Mordred said. He said not to make him wait longer. He said he would go mad unless I said yes.”
Perceval gaped for a moment. Then his shoulders heaved and his voice pealed out into laughter which cleared the air like thunder, until his face was red and tears streamed from his eyes and he was gasping for breath.
“Oh, Blanchefleur. I see it now. Do you not know the kind of thing a man says when he means to deceive?”
“No,” said Blanchefleur, covering her face with her hands and wishing she had not spoken, for nothing could be worse than the lightning-lash of his laughter.
“Ohhh.” Perceval tugged her hands away from her face. “Do understand me, dear love. I am deeply irked by each day that passes with this last barrier between us. Sometimes I do think I’ll go daft. But I have lasted this long without you; what kind of chicken-livered weakling would I be if I couldn’t last a little longer?”
He smiled at her, both amused and coaxing, and she gave in and melted against his shoulder. “Oh, Perceval! What a fool I’ve been.”
He fended her off with an elbow. “Don’t push me too far, woman. You might wake some of those raging passions of mine.”
IN THE HALL THAT NIGHT FOR the evening meal, Blanchefleur recognised, with dreamlike surprise, the doom-laden air of a city under siege. She told herself that she was still in danger, but no answering ripple of fear broke the calm of her mind. After what had passed the previous night in Mordred’s pavilion, it would take more than a siege to worry her.
They had finished the meal and were sitting with Ector at the high table, listening while he told them his arrangements for the defence of the town and fortress, when footsteps came on the pavement outside the hall and Blanchefleur looked up to see two women enter in the company of a man-at-arms.
She leaped to her feet. “Branwen! Mother!”
Even Branwen, huddled shivering under a cloak, seemed exhausted from wandering in the woods. But when she saw Blanchefleur, a smile broke like dawn across her face. She came running up to the table and flung cold, damp arms around her neck.
“Blanchefleur! Alive! And safe! I need to sit down.”
She sagged into a chair and closed her eyes.
The Queen followed with more composure. “Blanchefleur. Now God be thanked. I mourned you as dead.” As she kissed her mother’s cheek, Blanchefleur thought she had never seen her so wet and draggled, even on the first morning in Joyeuse Gard. But if Guinevere felt the shame of her frightful condition, she betrayed it neither by word nor gesture, mistress of Logres still, despite the mud on her hem and the rain in her hair.
“How did you come here? Where is Morgan?” Blanchefleur asked.
Guinevere sank into a chair, smoothed her damp hair back, and said, “Do not ask me where Morgan is; we lost her, or she lost us, in the dark. We crossed the river, circled north, and came here. Did you find the knife?”
“The knife?”
“Branwen tells me you went to steal a knife from Mordred. This is all I know.”
Sir Ector was speaking to the man-at-arms. “You say Mordred is leaving?”
“His camp fires have gone. We sent out a scout, but he came back almost at once with the ladies.”
Blanchefleur said, “Oh, Mother. I got the knife from Mordred, but when I used it, nothing happened.”
“Why, what did you expect?”
Blanchefleur waved her hands. “According to Morgan, Mordred was no natural child. She bore him like her own son, but he was made with a strand of the King’s hair and the aid of hell.”
To her surprise a whole tide of expressions passed across the Queen’s face at this—some mixture of surprise, illumination, and relief followed by fierce triumph and something else that might have been disappointment or guilt. But all Guinevere said, in her soft high voice, was, “Indeed.”
Far away, a trumpet sounded. Sir Perceval and Sir Ector looked at each other, and left the room.
“Morgan said that if we used the knife on his shadow, it would dissolve the unnatural bond that made his body. Victory at one stroke.”
The Queen’s mouth thinned. “Did she so? We were watching from the trees when he captured you. I had a mind to ride down and bring you help, but Morgan said there was nothing the three of us could do.”
Blanchefleur opened her eyes in surprise and said, “It was a bold thought, but I’m sure Morgan was right.”
The Queen cast her a sidelong look and said, “It was bold of you to face Mordred.”
Once the dry tone would almost have injured her. But she knew Guinevere a little better now, and recognised her words as high praise. Blanchefleur flushed with pleasure and said, “And your escape. That was well carried out.”
“I misjudged my guard.” Her fingers touched her collarbone where the silver medallion once hung. “But once I was in the trees, it was child’s play to get clear of the others. The sots!”
“Then Morgan and Branwen found you without trouble?”
“Yes.” A serving-man had brought her food and wine and the Queen reached out, shaking the sleeve back from her wrist with a graceful gesture, to pick up the goblet. “That I never thought I should see: Morgan of Gore coming to my aid.”
Blanchefleur sighed. “I believe she really meant to help us. Unless she was lying about the knife. Or did she really think it would work?”
“Which is more likely?” There was a sceptical twist in the Queen’s mouth.
At the foot of the hall, the door flung open and Perceval came striding back in, grinning all over his face. “All’s well,” he called. “The King is here, and Mordred has fled.”
In her chair, Branwen came back to life with a start. “Heilyn?”
“I’ll find him for you,” Perceval promised.
But Branwen was already on her feet. “Wait! I’m coming!”
She went down the hall to the door, leaving Blanchefleur alone at the table with her mother. Blanchefleur touched the Queen’s elbow and murmured, “Mother? May I ask you something?”
Guinevere sipped her wine. “Surely.”
She had had a whole long speech prepared, but now that the moment came, all the words had flown. So Blanchefleur lifted a palm and said, “Whose daughter am I?”
In the silence, the Queen tapped her fingers once or twice upon her cup, and as suddenly stilled them again. “What, do you not know?”
“I don’t know who to believe. Elaine of Carbonek said I was Lancelot’s daughter. Lancelot said I was the King’s daughter, and his knights laughed behind his back.”
The Queen set her cup down and took a bite of meat and did not speak again until she had swallowed. “We will talk of this another time,” she said at last, and Blanchefleur did not dare to speak again until the King came.
NIGHT, HOURS DEEP, LAY ON TRINOVANT, but in Sir Ector’s solar the candles went on burning. It had taken the King an hour or two to hear all their news, and a little longer to take reports from his rearguard scouts. When the King’s men came upon Mordred’s retreat, there had been fighting in the woods. Both sides escaped lightly, for the King, with a smaller force, had drawn his men off and continued to Trinovant. But in the skirmish they had freed more of the prisoners from Camelot, including Sir Kay.
Perceval crunched down a mouthful of apple and said, “Mordred seems nervous.” The scouts and captains had gone, and only he, Blanchefleur, Sir Ector, Gui
nevere, and Arthur remained in the solar. “First he whips his men through a punishing fifteen-mile march to reach Trinovant, and then he runs at the first rumour of relief. What is frightening him?”
The King stroked his beard. “If we knew, perhaps we could use the knowledge to our advantage.”
“What are we going to do next?” asked Blanchefleur.
The King said, “The scouts said he is going west. We’ll follow and give battle when we can.”
Perceval said, “With no footmen?
Blanchefleur said, “And if we cannot kill him?”
“One man can be overwhelmed. Locked away.”
Sir Ector said, “What about Lancelot?”
“Lancelot told me he would come as soon as he had mustered an army.” Perceval tossed the core of his apple into the fire. “He said it would be a week at most before they set out.”
The King nodded. “The longer Mordred continues to retreat, the closer he takes us to Lancelot. If all goes well, we may catch him between us, or join forces before Mordred stops to press battle upon us.”
Sir Ector said, “Best of all, his men may resent the pace and fall away.” He pulled his spectacles off his nose and folded up the map over which he had been brooding. “Mordred may have fled, but half the country has taken arms and gone with him. In the end it may take more than Lancelot to save us.”
The King bent his head. “This is true.”
There was a little silence. Then the Queen said: “Speaking of Sir Lancelot, you asked me a question a few hours ago, my daughter.”
Startled, Blanchefleur glanced uneasily at the King. “I did.”
“He told you you were no daughter of his. You should have believed him.”
There was a note of blame in her voice, and Blanchefleur reddened. “I wanted to hear it from you. I wondered why you never said anything about the rumours. I wondered if, maybe, the reason was that they were true.”
“No. No, Blanchefleur.” Guinevere looked from daughter to husband. “Arthur is your father. I swear it before both of you. Before every light of heaven.”
The King did not look at her and his voice, when he spoke, was mildness itself. But he said, “You never made it so plain to me.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “No?”
This time he looked her in the eye. “No.”
“You mean you thought I—?”
“Not often. But I knew what you felt for him. It was always there in the back of my mind.”
Guinevere drew back with a hiss of intaken breath as if she had touched hot steel. “You saw that?”
“Not until after the wedding, when it was too late to let him have you.”
“You would have done that?”
“I like to think I could have.”
There was a breathless silence. At last Guinevere said: “It was over within the same year it began, long before Blanchefleur. Hearts mend. You were patient. You taught me to love you in the end.”
With a swift motion the King covered his eyes with his hand. When he spoke, his voice was ragged but no less quiet and gentle. “You never told me.”
“That I love you?” Guinevere’s eyes were bright and hard and her fingers were jumping on the arm of her chair. “You are right, I never did, just as I never told you Blanchefleur’s true parentage. Let me tell you why. It was Morgan. There was a time when she delighted in hinting she had borne your son. I became angry with you then and I have been angry with you ever since. And now that I hear it was a lie, I do not know why I am angry with you still, except that I am the most thankless lady in Christendom.”
The King looked up at her. Though his eyes were damp and his face had gone red, he spoke with as much authority as if he sat in his seat of judgement at Camelot. “It is a lie. And I do not swear it, not even by the lights of heaven, because you have never known me to speak a false word.”
“It is true,” and now the brightness in her eyes was more like tears.
He held out his hand to her. “Come. Forget it all. Twenty years is too long for lovers to live bitterly.”
It was terrible to see the Queen, always so self-possessed, forget herself at last. That pale face had once seemed frozen into hauteur. Now it crumpled like the ice on a spring river. She fell to her knees, wound her arms around the King, and buried her face in his side.
At last she withdrew her head from the King’s jerkin and put up her face to be kissed. Then she looked over her shoulder at the rest of them—her cheeks, for the first time since Blanchefleur had known her, flushed bright red—and laughed shamefacedly.
The King laughed too, heaving in a sobbing breath. He passed his hand across his eyes again and looked at Blanchefleur. “Have you more questions?”
She had once meant to ask about Mordred. But that was answered, and another question rose in its place.
She said: “It seems so dreadful to lose Camelot, and more than half the Table, in just a few months. Do you not wonder why this is happening to us? I thought the Grail Quest was meant to give Logres the grace to last forever.”
“And it might have. But we failed,” said Perceval.
Blanchefleur crooked an eyebrow at him. He said:
“Sire, do you remember what I told you about the Quest?”
“That the work is every man’s.” The King tightened his arm around the Queen. “That was what the Table forgot. Perhaps that is why we lost something stronger than cities. My army is full of old men. All the young knights, all the sons, have gone with Mordred. We never taught them the meaning of Logres. Now we will pass, and the work of our hands will go with us.”
Perceval stiffened. “Sire! Some of us are left.”
The King smiled, and they could feel the weight of his pride on their shoulders like robes. “Yes. There are always some left, some who feed on that heavenly food and drink of that heavenly cup. And therefore Logres will last forever.”
13
Readily those rough men of the Round Table
With rich royal steel reave that mail;
Braided hauberks they burst and burnished helms,
Hew heathen men down, hearts in sunder;
Fight with fine steel, the fated blood runs:
The boldest of brow are feeble before them.
Morte Arthure
BECAUSE THE KING SENT MESSENGERS TO all the lords in the south of Britain to ask for knights and footmen to meet him at the ruined city of Camelot, and camped there two days waiting for them to arrive, Mordred was able to draw off to the other side of the Severn, crossing at Caer Glow and retreating toward the south. His army swelled as he travelled, slowing his progress. The King’s army, because it was smaller, moved faster and crossed the river by boat at Lydaneg. Nine days after the skirmish outside Trinovant, Sir Perceval woke in the soft spring morning and received the report of a scout who told him that Mordred was not eight miles away to the north-west, drawn up on a bare ridge above the Wye, ready to give battle.
Perceval tucked his sword-belt under his arm and went to find Gringolet, whom Heilyn was already brushing and saddling for the day’s business. In Perceval’s race to reach Camelot, he had left the exhausted Glaucus with Lancelot in exchange for a fresh mount, and would not see the horse again until Lancelot came from the north. Meanwhile, his father’s destrier was a beast he understood well, and trusted to carry him in battle.
He rubbed Gringolet’s forehead in greeting. Heilyn glanced up at him and said, “A messenger has come from the King to bid you to council. I told him you were meeting with scouts from the west and would be with him anon.”
“Good man.” Perceval buckled his sword-belt and sniffed the deep warm air. A little of the old spring-fever quickened his blood. Was it really three years since he had left his mother’s cot?
Heilyn asked, “What news from the north?”
“A fight, I hope.”
The rhythm of brush-strokes went on and the squire said, “Sir, I much desire to win knighthood in this encounter.”
Perceva
l hesitated. “I thought I would have you stay behind to guard the ladies.”
Disappointment crowded the eagerness out of Heilyn’s face.
“If the day goes badly they will need a protector,” Perceval explained. “There is no one I trust as well as you, and you are a new-married man. Give your bride time to tire of you.”
Heilyn only half-smiled.
“If we go to the Wye today, perhaps I may not return. Let me knight you now.”
Heilyn slipped the bit into Gringolet’s mouth. “Not if you love me. I had rather deserve it.” He tightened the cheek-strap and looked up at Perceval pleadingly. “Will you not also need trustworthy men in the battle? And if the ladies require a champion, they will want someone stronger than I. Let me ride to war, and do you remain with the ladies.”
Perceval fell back a step in blank astonishment. “What, send you to face battle while I lie snug in camp?”
“Even so.”
Perceval looked into Heilyn’s glum face and then, with a flash of understanding, he saw. “By the light of Logres, Heilyn, you may be no knight, but you have the soul and stomach of one.” He drew his sword. “Kneel.”
The squire still hesitated. “And the battle?”
“Not for anything.” Perceval grasped him by the shoulder. “And not for any lack of love, my brother. But because all things pass away, and I would save you alive, if I could. I would send one thing out of the wrack and ruin of Logres, one soul to whom I might point in the end and say, ‘I left a man to carry our hope,’ that I might not be ashamed when I go to stand in my lot at the end of days …Let me knight you, and if you love me, consent to do this last duty for me.”
Heilyn sighed. “As you will,” he said, and he went to his knees.
THE ABBOT OF THE SETTLEMENT AT Lydaneg was an Irishman of a homely peasant sort, and it was in his low, warm house that Perceval found the King and his council gathered around a table which bore maps and messages and the remains of breakfast.
The Heir of Logres Page 17
