The Door to Camelot Page 13

Mr Corbin looked at the pendant and smiled his secretive smile. “I shall ask her for a good deal more than that tonight.”

  Blanche glanced at Perceval, a little guiltily. But of course he had not heard: the thing was said in English.

  “To begin with,” Mr Corbin went on, “this waltz.”

  Blanche said, “Excuse me,” to Perceval and allowed Mr Corbin to lead her onto the floor.

  “I am not a good dancer,” he said, a smile crossing his melancholy face—Blanche murmured a polite disagreement—“But I know that when one has an assignation at a ball, one puts pleasure before business.”

  They moved into the flow of couples. Mr Corbin had been quite correct. The pleasure would be all his: of the two of them, he had the better partner. Blanche relaxed and let him guide her where he wished. There would be more opportunities for dancing later.

  “We make a pretty picture, I’m sure,” she said. “The last of the ancien regime and the first of the new.”

  “Thesis and antithesis,” Mr Corbin said. “What comes next is synthesis.”

  They threaded a narrow passage between two other couples and drifted on up the room. Blanche said: “I have heard of this before. The thesis is received doctrine. The antithesis is some new and revolutionary idea. And the synthesis—”

  “Is what happens when thesis and antithesis marry.”

  “And I thought philosophy was unromantic,” said Blanche, smiling.

  The music ended. Mr Corbin snatched a pair of champagne coupes and offered his arm to Blanche. “Now for the business. Shall we step outside, onto the terrace?”

  It was a clear, cold night, and Blanche, folding her arms, hoped the discussion would not take long. “How cold it is!” she said, glancing at the moon.

  “Winter is trying her teeth,” Mr Corbin said. “But tonight she is only a pup: when she is old, ware her bite.”

  Blanche turned to him with an inquiring shiver. “I promised not to go away without seeing you.”

  “And I promised to find you a way to stay in this world, if you chose to take it.”

  “Tell me.”

  He said with more than his usual solemnity, “I hope you do choose to take it, Blanche. I don’t wish to lose you.”

  He should not have been using her Christian name, Blanche thought. But another shiver of excitement and cold danced down her spine, and she thought she knew what was coming.

  “Blanche Pendragon, will you join me in my life’s work? Will you forsake your guardians and homeland, and join your purpose with mine? In a word, will you marry me, and free yourself to claim a new heritage, a new world bright with the hope of reason and brotherhood?”

  He spoke with gleaming eyes, and lips that curved in a smile as the words rolled from them. It was what Blanche had expected—but not quite what she had expected, and a faint cloud of disappointment fell over her. She had dreamed of being addressed in an enraptured whisper, not in measured apostrophes like the lines in a play.

  Still, perhaps the tender passion struck some men differently.

  “I hardly know what to say,” she said. “Dare I?”

  “As my wife, you would be answerable only to me—and that only if you wished,” said Mr Corbin. “You would be protected not only from the will of your guardians but also from the diplomatic marriage they no doubt intend for you.”

  Blanche paled. “That hadn’t occurred to me.”

  “Blanche,” he was saying, “do you hear me? I am offering you a sure way to defy your fate. And my entire regard and affection into the bargain.”

  Blanche stood motionless, speechless, as though suddenly deprived of will. Did she want to marry Simon Corbin? Three months ago, she would have thought she did; she would not have cared that it would break Sir Ector’s heart. Did she want to escape the burden of Logres? A week ago, she had—before Perceval had come, and unmasked her for a selfish coward.

  The consent was trembling on her lips. But when she spoke, in a suddenly choked voice, she surprised herself as well as Mr Corbin.

  “I can’t.”

  “Can’t what?” he cried. “Cannot defy the selfishly-imposed will of a family you’ve never seen? Cannot free yourself from the superstitions of barbarism?”

  Blanche put her hands to her head. “I despise myself, but not for that. When I thought I had no choice, I bemoaned my lot with the satisfaction that I would be forced to do the right thing in the end. Now you present me with an alternative, and I say…I say that I thank you, Simon, and beg your forgiveness. I have trifled with you. I have allowed you to make this declaration, when I should have known that I could never accept it.”

  She fidgeted with the hourglass around her neck and looked at him timidly, sure that he would be hurt and offended. But his face had not changed. Only his voice became challenging. “Why not?”

  She would have had to fight to abandon Logres. Now her indecision had guaranteed that she would have to fight to go there, and she knew she had only herself to thank. “I should have known that I could never grieve my guardian so,” she said, lifting her chin. “Then…we are not suited to each other. Our difference of outlook would keep us from agreeing, and besides, there is the question of my duty to Logres.”

  “None of these things need bind you,” he said. “If you will not marry me, let me spirit you away to some place where they will not find you.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” she said with a strained smile. “You have put a choice before me, my friend. And I am grateful. But I choose to be bound. I will go to Logres, and do what is asked of me.”

  “So be it,” he said gloomily. “We shall lose you, and Blanche Pendragon will be known no more among her friends and cavaliers.”

  Blanche remembered the pendant around her neck. She tugged the ribbon loose and held it out to him.

  “I think you had better take it back. Remember me by it, if you like.”

  Simon Corbin took the hourglass from her hand and held it up to the moonlight. A bitter smile curled his lips.

  “It has run its course,” he said, and dropped it underfoot and crushed it into the pavement.

  Blanche drew a swift breath of shock at the sudden controlled violence of his movement. But she had no time to speak, for Kitty’s voice frothed out of the ballroom followed in a moment by herself.

  “Simon! Yoo-hoo, Simon!” When she saw Blanche standing there with Mr Corbin, Kitty put her hands to her mouth with a gasp. “Oh! I am so sorry! It’s nothing, really.”

  Behind Kitty stood Perceval, a tall upright figure, mail-shirted, with his sword swinging from his hip. After the last five minutes, the sight of him was as welcome as reinforcements in the heat of battle, and her shoulders dropped in relief. She looked past Mr Corbin, past Kitty, and smiled at him.

  “Don’t wait for me, Mr Corbin,” she said in Welsh.

  He bowed to her and offered his arm to Kitty. They passed into the ballroom and Perceval came forward to lean against the baluster of the terrace beside her.

  “I see you have spoken to him,” he said.

  “I have,” she said. “I keep no secrets from you, my deputed guardian. Mr Corbin has made me a proposal of marriage, and I have refused him.”

  “This was his attempt to keep you here?”

  She smiled sadly. “He said that if I married him, I would be able to defy Sir Ector. I said I chose not to do it. He was angry, I think.”

  Perceval laughed. “Let us not mind him.”

  His dismissive tone grated on Blanche. She had cherished Simon Corbin’s good opinion. She had even, once or twice, dreamed of accepting him. Did Perceval think it was an easy thing to spurn such a man’s protection? Did he think that the choice was so obvious, between the dangers and hardships of Logres, and the comfort and freedom of her home?

  “I am sorry I had to do it,” she said in a sharper voice. “If my fate were any different, I should be glad to have him.”

  Perceval looked incredulous. “Be glad your fate is wiser than you, then.�
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  “Oh!” said Blanche, “just because you lost an argument to him, you must act as though no woman could like him.”

  “What?” Perceval yelped. “I deny it. Someone may someday love that dirgeful face, but never you.”

  Blanche could not think of a good retort, so she snapped open her fan and turned to re-enter the ballroom. But Perceval called her back, gently. “Lady. Stay a moment.”

  He rose from the terrace baluster, and took her hand. “I did not come to quarrel with you, Blanchefleur.”

  She did not trust herself to speak, and therefore only raised an eyebrow.

  “Forget about Simon Corbin. Look elsewhere for one who would serve you and guard you.”

  “To you, of course.” But his earnestness disarmed her, and the words came out with less hiss and spit than she wished.

  “Yes, to me.” His thumb traced over the back of her fingers and touched the red-gold ring of Ragnell. “I told you once that I saw a kind of destiny in our acquaintance.”

  “Please don’t…”

  “It was you and no-one else in the pavilion, in the courtyard, and at Carbonek,” he said. “You are perilous and fair. Is it any wonder you should run in my mind?”

  Blanche stared back at him for a long moment, her mind a whirl of conflicting thoughts. “Why, Perceval,” she said at last with a shaky laugh, “are you jealous of him?”

  The earnestness slipped away from him, and he laughed. “Jealousy implies doubt,” he said with the boundless arrogance she detested. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

  Blanche flushed. “Doubt me? What right could you have had to doubt me? What am I? Your sweetheart?”

  The instant the word was out of her mouth, Blanche could have bit her tongue off with mortification. Perceval looked down at her and slowly smiled, a dog’s smile, all teeth.

  “Are you?”

  “Don’t be odious. Of course not,” she snapped, more vexed with herself than with Perceval. “It was a figure of speech. I mean,” she went on, less angrily, “you and I would never suit. We do not share an intellectual level at all. And please don’t bring up that scene in the pavilion again. I thought we decided to forget the whole business.”

  Perceval stuck his thumbs in his belt and whistled. “Oh, lady, be kind,” he said, and grinned.

  He opened the door for her to return to the ballroom, and she passed through with trailing robes of displeasure. But if he felt it, he gave no sign.

  13

  Therewith the Giant buckled him to fight,

  Inflam’d with scornful wrath and high disdain,

  And lifting up his dreadful club on hight,

  All arm’d with ragged snubs and knotty grain,

  Him thought at first encounter to have slain.

  Spenser

  FOUR MORE DAYS PASSED, AND PERCEVAL spent less time with the horses and more time pacing around the house, watching the hills.

  “Are they late, Perceval?” Blanchefleur asked him one morning as she saw him pass the library windows for the second time.

  He opened the French doors and wandered in, frowning. “I cannot tell.”

  “I’m sure someone will come eventually,” she said with resolute cheerfulness.

  “Yes,” he said, “the Lady—or the Lady’s bane.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, the thing that killed her.” And he prowled out by another door.

  The following afternoon Emmeline and her young man visited. Blanche felt the cloud lift. They went with the sun, and so did the brief gaiety they had brought with them. That night was cold and clear, with stars glittering overhead. Dinner was hushed. Perceval ate sparingly, coiled like a spring, Blanche thought.

  “If they do not come tomorrow,” Perceval said, “we must forestall them and take a door to Logres.”

  “The wardrobe in the hall goes to Carbonek,” said Blanche.

  “Only with the right elf-key, I think. The damsel Nerys left it with me. We’ll take it tomorrow.”

  Blanche retired early, but found sleep beyond her. She turned up the lamp and settled in with Augustine. For hours there was no sound but the periodic chime of the downstairs clock, which struck nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and a quarter to twelve before she began to feel sleepy.

  It was nearly midnight when Blanche heard the wind. It came screaming from the west like a bird of prey and gripped and shook the house. Blanche listened to it for a moment with puzzlement, then rolled over again and went back to reading. She had ceased to hear the storm when there was a tap and the door creaked open. It was Perceval, armed cap-a-pie with his sword drawn, moving more quietly in his steel harness that she would have thought possible.

  “What’s wrong?” Blanche gasped, rising and snatching the woollen cloak from Carbonek.

  “Softly,” he said; but he moved quickly and had pulled her halfway to the door before she could draw breath.

  “Don’t—give me a moment,” Blanche whispered, struggling.

  She went to turn back, but Perceval caught both her wrists and wrapped his arms around her. There was a noise like thunder and the outside wall of the bedroom exploded inward. Blanche screamed. Huge jagged shards of glass from the window sank into the wall around them. Through the gaping void, Blanche saw stars in the sky. Then the raging wind whipped her hair across her face and blinded her.

  Perceval, whose armoured body had shielded her from the blast, was speaking in a murmur. “Listen,” he said. “Get the servants out of the house—out the front. I’ll deal with the giant.”

  There was another rending crash and the corner of the room, with some of the floor, crumbled agonisingly away.

  “Giant?” Blanche whimpered.

  Perceval pushed her out the door, out of the wrecked room. She paused staring as he stepped to her bedside, picked up the heavy lantern, and smashed it against one of the bedposts. Burning oil rained across the coverlet and melted into the carpet, caught and spread by the wind. He had no time to do more. A hand, horrifying merely for its hugeness, came out of the night, gripped the ragged broken wall, and strained. Then a massive figure, blacker than the sky itself, rose against the stars.

  Perceval, lifting his shield, sank into a crouch.

  Blanche fled. Downstairs, some of the servants had already shuffled into the hall, blinking and yawning. Keats was there with a candle, and Lucy the housemaid, armed with a trembling poker. “Fire,” Blanche gasped, before they could open their mouths. “Where’s Cook? And John? And Daisy? We must all go at once.”

  She drove them before her out the front door into the storm.

  THE GIANT CLAMBERED INTO BLANCHE’S ROOM, more than twice man-height, bent like an immense cloud to fit below the tall ceilings. A battle-axe like a short polearm, dagger-pointed at the end of the haft, dangled from one gnarled hand. Perceval, shifting from foot to foot, kept his eyes on it. The giant could not swing his weapon easily in the narrow confines of Blanche’s room: when he saw the knight, he rammed the axe at him point-first.

  Perceval slipped aside to avoid the dagger-point, stepped lightly onto the axe-blade as it whistled toward him, and launched himself forward. Behind, another wall splintered as the axe punched through. Perceval landed in a crouch under the giant’s outstretched arm and swung back and lashed at the inside of the massive elbow. Clank. His blade, which should have bit deep and drunk, rebounded with a harsh whine; his arms jolted.

  The creature was wearing armour.

  The giant kicked. Perceval was already moving to the side, but it got him on the shield. The shock travelled up his arm, and Perceval thought he felt an old wound split open. He staggered back, falling to one knee. Then the giant wrenched his axe out of the wall: more plaster, dust, and splinters hummed through the frantic air. The flaming mass which had been Blanche’s bed licked out a tongue of flame and ignited the dust. The whole room flashed with a puff of flame. Through it Perceval heard, rather than saw, the axe-blade come swinging toward him. He scrambled up and flung
himself for a corner, the pain in his arm forgotten.

  The axe bit into the wall next to him. Again, debris and flame filled the air, and the house groaned and trembled in the wind. Perceval knew he hadn’t much time.

  BLANCHE STOOD ON THE LAWN OUTSIDE the house, watching the glowing windows.

  “Is everyone here?” she yelled over the wind, trembling violently, but whether from cold or from fear she could not tell.

  “I think—” said the cook uncertainly, and began counting on her fingers.

  “I think the gas pipes behind the house must have blown,” Blanche heard herself say. It was true, too, with half of the back wall smashed in. “It’s dangerous—we must keep clear of the house.”

  John, the coachman, unlike the others, was alert and unpanicked. “I’ll ride and fetch the fire brigade, miss.”

  “I suppose you had better,” said Blanche, for she could think of nothing else to say. But if the fire brigade came at once, would Perceval have time to deal with the giant? “Wait,” she called after him. “The horses! They are still in the stables! If the fire spreads—”

  John and Keats set off for the stables.

  “Miss, miss,” gasped the cook, fighting the shawl she’d snatched to wrap around her, “Mr Perceval—he’s not here.”

  Blanche looked at her, trying to think of something to say.

  “He must be still in the house,” said Daisy.

  “I’ll fetch him,” the cook volunteered.

  “No! You mustn’t!” Blanche put her hands to her head. She could not tell them to sit back and watch the house burn down with someone still inside. And she certainly could not send anyone in after him.

  There was only one thing to do.

  “I’ll go in and find him.”

  “No, don’t!” sobbed Daisy. “I’ll run for Mr Keats.”

  “Don’t move,” said Blanche, and turned the full force of her look on the housemaid; to her surprise, Daisy shrank back, looking almost frightened. But they had to obey her now; it was desperately important, and she had nothing but her voice and her eyes. She stiffened from crown to heel and said: “Listen, all of you. Stay here. I will fetch my cousin.”