The Door to Camelot

  The Door to Camelot

  Pendragon’s Heir, Book One

  Suzannah Rowntree

  Amica mitis, hic liber multos patronos habuit.

  Sed, Schuyler, tu maximum fecisti.

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  Copyright © 2019 Suzannah Rowntree

  Cover design by Wynter Designs

  Map copyright © 2015 Isaac Botkin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses provided by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  1

  Gloucestershire, AD 1900

  Enter these enchanted woods,

  You who dare.

  Meredith

  IT BEGAN ON THE DAY OF her eighteenth birthday. Blanche Pendragon woke that morning with Simon Corbin’s note burning a hole in her awareness from where it lay under her pillow. She burrowed a hand under her head to touch the paper and lay there nibbling her lip in indecision until the clock downstairs struck half-six in a rich and muffled boom that echoed through the whole house. As the backwash of sound faded, Blanche slipped out of bed and began to dress. Half an hour later she stole out of the house by the back door and hurried between garden-beds and under blossom-laden fruit-trees to the gate between the orchard and the hills.

  There was a young man leaning against the other side of the gate, looking out at the hills with folded arms. Blanche stopped walking. After all, shouldn’t she have burned his note and refused to come? There was still time to slip back to the house, now, before he turned—

  He turned and saw her and something that might have been a smile touched his thin secretive lips. All her misgivings faded away and she went up to the gate and put out her hand.

  “Good morning, Mr Corbin. I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.”

  “Good morning, Blanche.” Instead of shaking her hand, he bent over it with an oddly ceremonial gesture, and she felt the shiver of his breath across her skin. “Many happy returns of this happy day.”

  She pulled her hand back, hoping that the sudden pleasurable warmth in her cheeks was not too visible. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes.” He indicated a bag in the grass at his feet. “I am on my way to Lydney to catch the London train, and I could not allow your birthday to pass without some token of my regard.”

  There. See? It was all perfectly proper and respectable. Blanche felt a little contemptuous of herself for the scruples that had haunted her since Kitty Walker passed his note to her yesterday afternoon.

  Mr Corbin reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out a box, which he presented with a flourish. “Miss Pendragon.”

  She slipped off the lid and took out a little hourglass hanging on a silver pivot from a black ribbon, its belly full of twinkling black sand.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful!”

  “You like it.”

  Her guardian, the antiquarian, who invested every colour, gemstone, beast, and planet with arcane and symbolic meaning, would likely give her a lecture on saturnine influences. Blanche decided not to care. “Yes, I do.” She threw a wry smile up at Mr Corbin. “Sir Ector wouldn’t.”

  He reached out and closed her hand over the box. “Then don’t wear it where he will see it.”

  She couldn’t do that; if her guardian didn’t see the pendant, her lady’s-companion Nerys would, and both of them would be hurt by her attempted deceit. Blanche smiled, trying to look daring and devil-may-care. “Oh, I’m not afraid to wear it. And thank you. It was sweet of you to walk so far out of your way.” She backed a few steps, signalling that it was time for him to move on and catch his train.

  “Wait,” he said, and leaned over the gate. “Miss Walker means to take a motor to Tintern Abbey next week. Won’t you come?”

  “Oh! I’d love to. When will it be?”

  “Sunday.”

  Blanche’s face fell. “Oh. Perhaps Sir Ector would let me go. But there will be church, and…”

  The beginnings of a smile pulled at Mr Corbin’s face. “Oh, the Galilean can spare you for a day, surely?”

  She bit her lip to keep from smiling, and failed. He saw, and the amusement deepened in the corners of his mouth.

  “Yet one day I shall convince you to become a Freethinker, too.”

  “Oh, I could never do that.” But she did admire the casual way he carried it off, as if impiety was no great risk to a man of his worth. She backed another step. “Maybe Sir Ector will let me come. I’ll ask. No, I’ll beg.” And with a laugh, she hurried away as quickly as she had come.

  AT DINNER THAT EVENING, SIR ECTOR L’Espée was talking about the relief of Kimberly when he inevitably lost himself in historical minutiae and began lecturing on Roman cavalry. At last he paused between caltrops and stirrups to sip his wine and Nerys, from the other side of the table, said: “Blanche dear, I’ve never seen that before.”

  Blanche put her fingers up to the hourglass around her neck, and her heart sank a little. So there would be trouble. “It was a gift.”

  Sir Ector put down his wineglass, dabbed at his frost-white moustache, and leaned closer to see. “Someone has a morbid taste. Who was it?”

  “It’s from Simon Corbin.”

  “When did he call?” Nerys did not change her expression, or the mild tone of her voice, but Blanche thought she could sense reproof.

  “I was walking this morning and met him going down to the train at Lydney. It wasn’t improper in the least.”

  Nerys’s eyebrow flickered up at Blanche’s defensive tone, but she made no further comment. Only the air around her grew a little cooler. Blanche sensed that, too, and heaved a sigh at her plate, wishing Nerys could forget about being a chaperone, just for a moment.

  Sir Ector said, “Have him come to dinner some day. I should like to meet your friend Simon Corbin.”

  Blanche poked at her food. “All right. I’ll tell him next time.”

  Sir Ector looked at Nerys. Nerys looked at Blanche. “You know that your guardian would prefer to know your friends, Blanche. Especially such a close friend as Mr Corbin.”

  “I know it,” said Blanche. She kept her voice sweet, but spoiled the effect by stabbing a potato. “He isn’t such a close friend, anyway. I’ll give the hourglass back if you don’t like it.”

  Sir Ector blinked and said, “Give it back? Not if you really like it, Blanche.”

  She nodded and took another bite, not looking away from her food. After a moment’s silence, Sir Ector’s fork scraped his plate and she knew the discussion was over. But silence hung on them all, becoming more difficult to lift with every moment. Blanche felt a quiver of melancholy in the air and glanced opposite, to Nerys.

  It was odd that her young companion, who went so quietly clad in grey with never one black hair out of place, who spoke so reluctantly and so rarely changed expression, should be so legible in her moods. It was also odd that nothing seemed bleaker than Nerys’s melancholy, which might only be provoked by a birthday dinner gone sour, but held in itself all the tears shed since the beginning of the world. Blanche felt sorry for her petulance over the hourglass. She gathered all of her strength against the chill in the air and said with cumbersome gaiety:
>
  “Why, Nerys, you look so thoughtful. Come, stop frowning like that. The wind will change, and where will you be then?” She leaned forward and whispered. “Remember what happened to the Queen when Prince Albert died—they say the wind changed at the funeral and she never smiled again.”

  Nerys looked up gravely. “I’d not heard it.” But there was a silver shimmer through the tone of her voice that hinted at laughter deep below the surface, and her shoulders went back a little, and the mood in the room lightened.

  Blanche turned to Sir Ector. “Kitty Walker has asked me to go with some friends to see Tintern Abbey on Sunday, in the new motor-car.”

  “Sunday?” Sir Ector frowned.

  “I know,” Blanche said, “but Kitty’s London friends are visiting, and I’ve never been riding in a motor before. And I haven’t missed a service once this year.”

  “You might miss Evensong on Sunday, then. Perhaps Miss Walker can delay her excursion until after the morning service.”

  “I’ll ask her.” It was, she supposed, the most she could hope for. Still, it would be too bad to miss the jaunt and spoil the day for the sake of a few hours at church.

  They finished dinner and went into the library, where Blanche made tea for Nerys and herself and coffee for Sir Ector. Nerys took a book into a corner, but Blanche stood in front of the fire to warm herself, leaving her saucer on the tray so that she could curl both hands around the teacup. Sir Ector sank into an armchair.

  “Well!” he said in a comfortable murmur.

  She turned and smiled, unsure whether he was about to make a birthday speech or relapse into another comfortable silence.

  “Well,” he repeated, “you’re eighteen, Blanche.”

  The birthday speech it would be. “Yes. Not for another forty-two years will the word ‘sweet’ alliterate with my age.”

  He smiled as though he hadn’t heard the joke, and she realised that a birthday speech was no time for banter. He’d laced his fingers together and was running each thumb in turn over the other.

  “Blanche, I…there’s something I’ve been putting off telling you. About your parents.”

  Her parents.

  She’d never known them. She didn’t even know their names. It was years now since she’d been curious.

  Why had he waited until now?

  Something hot fell onto her hand and Blanche looked down to see the tea in her cup rippling. She took a deep breath, replaced the cup on its saucer, and wiped her fingers before asking, “Is it very bad? The truth, I mean?”

  “No, no.” Sir Ector’s voice died away. At last he looked at her under bushy brows, almost shyly, as if in fear of some rejection. “You may find it difficult to believe.”

  A quick, warm affection rose in her throat for him. “Tell me and see.”

  Sir Ector looked into the fire, fidgeting with something in his pocket.

  “I have something for you,” he said at last. “It was your mother’s.” And he drew out the thing in his pocket and held it up to her.

  The ring Blanche took from him was antique silver, cabochon-set with a glimmering moonstone. Her mother’s ring! Blanche folded it into her hand and held tightly to the only thing her parents had left her. There had never been anything else, not even a faded photograph or some old letters.

  “I don’t even know her name.”

  “Look inside.”

  There was a lamp on the mantelpiece and Blanche held the ring up to its pearly glow. Spidery engraved letters ran all round the inside of the band. “ ‘Guinevera casta vera.’ Guinevera?”

  “Your mother.”

  Blanche twisted the ring onto her finger, thinking what a sentimental old-fashioned couple they must have been, rather like her guardian with his old gallantries and his Old French. She couldn’t resist a chuckle. “What was my father’s name? ‘Arthur, King of the Britons’?”

  Before the words crossed her lips, Blanche knew they were a mistake. Sir Ector dropped his head, and the shadows hid his face. When he rose, that shyly eager air was gone and he thrust his hands into his pockets with feigned briskness. “Well,” he said, “that reminds me. I must work on my address to the Newport Antiquities Society.”

  Over in the corner, Nerys rustled to her feet.

  “No, forgive me,” Blanche begged, feeling inarticulately guilty, as if she had killed something small and helpless by accident. “I shouldn’t have joked like that. Won’t you tell me some more about them?”

  Sir Ector smiled wistfully and kissed her forehead. “Soon, Blanche. When you’re ready to hear. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.” She went to the door and held it open for Nerys, who had the tea-tray. The lady’s-companion passed and went down the hall, but Blanche lingered, looking back from the threshold. “Still—my father. Can’t you tell me his name? Please? Now that I know Mother’s?”

  Sir Ector, riffling through the papers on his desk, stopped at the sound of her voice and leaned his hands on the oil-smooth wood. He didn’t look up; only his shoulders lifted, then sank in a long slow sigh.

  “No,” he said, and to Blanche’s ears, there was a bald honesty in his voice that allowed only one interpretation.

  “Well, goodnight.” Blanche, trying not to let mortification seep into her voice, closed the door, and went slowly down the dark corridor to the stairs. In her unlit room she looked again at the ring clenched in her hand, but now it was only a glint in the starlight. So it was very bad. A sense of revulsion gripped her stomach, contempt both for herself and for her mother. Casta vera!

  She tossed the ring onto her dressing-table and began to undress. She was sitting at the table in her nightgown and peignoir, unpinning her hair, when a knock came on the door and Nerys entered.

  Blanche glanced up and forced a smile. Nerys, without a word, picked up the hairbrush and began to work on Blanche’s hair. It was no part of her duties, but Nerys was as patient with knots as with everything else, and Blanche leaned back with a little sigh. She stared at the two heads in the mirror, her own flame-haired, day-eyed; Nerys’s moon-skinned, night-haired. After a moment she put her hands up to her throat and took off the little black hourglass.

  She wondered why, since they so obviously distrusted Simon Corbin, Sir Ector and Nerys couldn’t state their suspicions plainly. Was it because he was a Freethinker? At least, she thought with a twinge, a Freethinker would think no less of her for being ill-born.

  She put the hourglass on the table next to the moonstone ring and said, “I like Mr Corbin, and I hoped you would like him too.”

  Nerys looked through the mirror at her with a glimmer of surprise, but then dropped her eyes back to Blanche’s tawny-red hair.

  Blanche spoke as patiently as she knew how. “What’s the matter? Why do you not approve of him?”

  Nerys shook her head. “I hardly know him well enough to approve or disapprove. I’ve only spoken to him once.”

  “I know he isn’t conventional,” Blanche said. “But he always speaks his mind and he doesn’t let other people shame him into thinking differently.”

  “I think…” said Nerys.

  She so rarely put the shifting transparency of her moods into words. “Go on,” said Blanche, when the silence threatened to lengthen.

  “I think it will take you a long time to know such a man. I cannot read him at all.” She lifted worried eyes to Blanche.

  “He is so full of news and events,” Blanche said. “I like to hear about such things without getting tangled up in Roman cavalry tactics.”

  Nerys smiled before she could stop herself, and then tried to look disapproving. Blanche laughed at her. Nerys moved further up Blanche’s hair, changing the subject.

  “Are you going on errands with Emmeline tomorrow?”

  “I did all my visiting today.”

  “Really? You went to see Mrs Jones, and the bricklayer’s family?”

  “No.” Blanche picked up her mother’s ring and fidgeted. “We met Kitty when we stopped in the street,
and then we ran out of time to chatter Welsh with the parishioners.”

  It was, of course, unfair to say we, because it was no one’s fault but hers that the time had run away, and no vicar’s daughter could be more conscientious than Emmeline.

  “Oh, Blanche. You know what Sir Ector says.”

  “I know.” Blanche quoted. “ ‘A wise princess will not only feel sorrow when she sees people in affliction, but roll up her sleeves and help them as much as she can.’ It’s from that medieval book he gave me for my last birthday. I had to translate the whole thing from Middle French.”

  “You will be grateful for it one day,” said Nerys, in a gentle tone that robbed the words of any possible sting.

  Blanche grimaced. “I sometimes think that Sir Ector sees himself as some medieval lord, and me as a medieval princess. What will he ask me to do next? Intercede with him for the peasantry, as Christine de Pisan recommends, or learn siege warfare so that I can defend the house while he’s away?”

  “Both a good use of your time,” said Nerys, with no hint of laughter. “When do you mean to visit Mrs Jones?”

  “Christine said to send alms by a servant, and anonymously, ‘by the example of monseigneur Saint Nicholas’.” She shot an impudent grin at Nerys, and then admitted, “Emmeline will be busy tomorrow with the Infants’ Bible Study. We have agreed to go the day after, so you need not worry. In the meantime I shall be as medieval as I know how, and languish about like Burne-Jones’s Briar Rose.”

  THAT NIGHT SHE DREAMED ABOUT THE King again.

  She stood in a riverside meadow between greenwood and castle. Overhead the sun shone gilt in a sky like powdered lapis and struck golden sparks from the King’s blood-red dragon banner.

  For the hundredth time, she half-closed her eyes against the fiery colour of meadow flowers and silken pavilions. For the hundredth time a blinding glint from someone’s mailed shoulder forced her to blink and turn her head to see the King.

  In crown and heraldic red robes, bearded, belted, bear-like, he sat enthroned by an oak tree with two wolf-hounds at his feet. Youthful vigour lay couchant in his gigantic limbs and in his big veined hands, but his level look was grave and wise. There was a sheathed sword lying across his knees, and his fingers moved up and down the scabbard as though it could make music.