The Heir of Logres Page 2

  Blanchefleur reined Florence to a stop. “But—to Joyeuse Gard?”

  They were out of sight of Carbonek now, a little further down the valley where the road turned south, lifting into the hills. Above, a hawk screamed in the sky.

  Perceval circled back to her. “Only if the Queen is condemned. Come, it’s a long road to Eboracum.”

  Branwen’s chatter and the murmuring counterpoint of Heilyn’s answers came closer; the two of them passed, single file, and went on up the road.

  She let Florence follow them, but she said to Perceval as they moved on, “Do you not see? If I go to Lancelot, everyone will think him my father.”

  Perceval laughed and shook his head. “Be at ease! The Queen will be acquitted. Or so my father thinks.”

  “God grant it.” Blanchefleur shivered in the wind. “But if the Queen is condemned—”

  “If she is condemned, my father said, then until the King can be brought to pardon her she will need all the comfort we can give.”

  “He said that?” Her voice warmed despite her misgivings.

  Perceval grinned at her. “He is a good and kind man, Blanchefleur.”

  “Kinder than I thought.” Kinder than herself. In her concern for the King it had not even occurred to her to think of the Queen’s—of her mother’s—feelings. Even now, she could not stir in herself more than a faint shadow of the pity she felt for the King… He was in so much despair at this betrayal. Could she add another blow to this one? Could she run in need to his rival?

  Perceval said, “In this woe every road is equally dark. But I am content to do my father’s will.”

  “What about my father?” Blanchefleur struggled to keep her voice calm. “What is his will? Surely he would have me with him. In Camelot.” So that he could—

  —Kill her? As he intended to do to her mother? She clenched the reins, blindsided by the thought. If Elaine had guessed rightly, if Morgan’s word could be trusted, if she was ill-born and the King was the enemy, then he would condemn the Queen to death and she, who could not be proven one thing or another, might be murdered to clear the way for a new heir.

  Because there was another heir, wasn’t there? The baby in Morgan’s memory.

  “Blanchefleur? What’s amiss?”

  Perceval’s voice broke into her thoughts. She glanced across at him and saw the big capable hands, one riding the hilt at his left hip and the other loosely clasped on his reins. Saw the bulk of shoulder and depth of chest that had come to him in the years since he first as a boy stood as the only wall between her and danger. And saw streaming like a banner above him the love of the man who had first sent him to protect her.

  Arthur the King.

  “Nothing’s amiss,” she said, and laughed at her fears.

  “I said,” he went on, “that my father thinks the King would liefer have you with the Queen.”

  She bit her lip consideringly and was astonished to find that she agreed. “I suppose he might. But what do you think?”

  “I trust my father’s judgement.”

  “But you think it’s risky. Don’t you?”

  “Because of what people will think?”

  “Yes.”

  Perceval fell silent. “You stand or fall by your mother,” he said at last. “If she is acquitted, you will go to Camelot in all honour. If she is condemned, then there is no worse moment to bring you to court. Far better join your mother in Joyeuse Gard and wait for her restoration.”

  Just ahead of them, Heilyn shifted in the saddle and turned.

  “Why go to either place? Why not take the lady to a nunnery?”

  Perceval wrinkled his brow. “Is there one nearer than Almesbury?”

  Heilyn shook his head. “You know the land better than I. Or find a monastery, one that will take women.”

  “It might do,” said Perceval. Blanchefleur’s heart sank to hear the hesitance in his voice.

  “Please. Of course I don’t want to abandon my mother. But surely it would stir up trouble to go to Joyeuse Gard?”

  Perceval smiled at her. “We must ride to Astolat first. My father will send a man to bring word how the verdict falls. By God’s mercy, we shall have no need of Lancelot.”

  2

  And in herself she moaned “Too late, too late!”

  Till in the cold wind that foreruns the morn,

  A blot in heaven, the Raven, flying high,

  Croaked, and she thought, “He spies a field of death.”

  Tennyson

  PERCEVAL LED THEM SOUTH THROUGHOUT THE day and long into the night. At last they saw a wall rising out of the starlight above them and tumbled from their mounts to sleep a few hours rolled in blankets within the gate of Eboracum. When dawn came, despite King Aglovale’s offers of rich fare and lodging, they mounted fresh horses and took the road.

  “Was he going to send for me, the King?” Blanchefleur asked Perceval when they stopped to divide some waybread. “Before any of this happened?”

  “Yes, when the land was quieter,” Perceval said. “But there was so much trouble with the wild men, and with the men of the Silver Dragon. He meant to march north to sweep them out of the land.”

  “In a body? Could not a single knight of the Table deal with them? When we first heard of Saunce-Pité, three months ago, men spoke of a petty brigand.”

  Perceval nodded. “That he was, two or three years ago, when I fought him. The King gave him mercy, believing him capable of repentance.”

  She thought: Why could he not show the same mercy to his own wife? But the Queen was only accused, not yet condemned, and she would have the chance to face her accusers in the open court, and defend her innocence against the world.

  Perceval went on speaking of Saunce-Pité. “Not until the Quest did I discover his reborn villainy, but I could do nothing against his men. Whence these new tactics? To gather and train a body of footmen to fight as one, under a unified command, is a thing we have not seen since the old wars against Rome or the rebel kings. Sir Breunis has forsaken the rules of battle: he sends ants against lions, but in overwhelming strength.”

  “He is a real danger, then?” Blanchefleur asked.

  Perceval shook his head. “Not an insuperable one. Fighting together, it was easy to win the war with Rome. Breunis can pick off lonely knights, but he will never stand against the full strength of the Table.” He sighed. “If the Table were ever again able to ride north.”

  Day followed day and only the land changed around them. Blanchefleur fretted at their slow pace, but Perceval pushed on steadily and patiently, for he knew exactly how fast their horses could travel and live. Blanchefleur did not complain aloud, but as the miles rolled away behind them and the sun wheeled overhead, her stomach clenched harder and harder, so that with each day it was a little more difficult to choke down her food.

  One morning she awoke and found that Branwen, who usually slept curled into her side, was gone. She, Heilyn, and Perceval stood overlooking the valley below. Hushed snatches of their voices blew back to her on the wind.

  Blanchefleur went to stand beside them. Above, in the colourless sky of a winter dawn, black birds drifted on the chilling wind.

  “If I had a bow—” Heilyn said.

  “There are too many of them,” said Perceval.

  Blanchefleur rubbed sleep from her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “The ravens have been following us since Carbonek,” Heilyn explained. “But this morning there are dozens of them.”

  Perceval pointed. “Look.”

  One of the ravens broke away from the circling mass and flew south down the valley. Blanchefleur remembered a night in Gore in the rain and felt a shiver crawl up her spine. “Morgan.”

  “Maybe,” Perceval said. “And God grant it be none worse. Let us go on and take the adventure that comes.”

  Their path would have lain south, down the valley at their feet. Instead Perceval took them immediately west, across the hills. The raven army did not follow them, but from t
hen on Blanchefleur was always aware of at least one black bird fluttering through the trees behind them.

  It was on the last dingy, foggy day of the journey that they met the two knights. They had stopped in a glade, by a spring that had been walled around with stone, to refill water bottles and eat a scanty meal. None of them spoke until Perceval stretched and said:

  “The Queen’s trial began yesterday, if I count the days right.”

  Blanchefleur leaned over the stone parapet and stared at her reflection in the still pool. She was as pale and thin-worn as the others, she thought. The journey had not been an easy one for any of them: saddle-galled to the limits of their endurance, lashed by sleet in the hills, driven on relentlessly by anxiety for what might be waiting ahead or following behind.

  And Guinevere, the Queen of Logres, stood trial for her life. She stared into her grey, watery reflection and tried to imagine what humiliation might taste like to the cool and proud temper she had felt in her dreams… Far better to sit here, stiff and aching in the cold wild, than wear the name of Guinevere. She stirred and said, “Have we far to travel?”

  “No. Astolat lies a few leagues further, in the next valley. Camelot, four or five beyond.” Perceval swallowed a last mouthful of waybread and rose to his feet, brushing crumbs from his hands. But then through the misting rain came a jingle of harness and plod of hooves. For a moment there was no other sound in the glade but the chirp of sparrows fighting over crumbs in the grass. Then two knights loomed out of the fog, the foremost carrying a blank shield, and Perceval’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword.

  “Get the horses,” he said to Heilyn without turning his head.

  His tone struck fear into all of them. Heilyn moved at once, scrabbling for trailing reins. The taller knight pushed ahead of his companion and the sight of his device—a blue boar on a field of white—carried Blanchefleur back at once two years to a sunset in Gloucestershire, and the agony of terror she had suffered with each savage blow against the splintering door of the old house. It was Sir Odiar of Gore, Morgan le Fay’s champion, who had tried to kill her.

  Branwen could have no such memory, but Perceval’s voice was portent enough, and perhaps she knew what the blue boar signified. She glanced at Blanchefleur in something approaching panic, and seized her by the elbow. Blanchefleur could not have told why that touch put such heart into her, unless it was the need to show courage enough for two. She hardened her face and rose to her feet, pulling Branwen after.

  Sir Odiar was speaking to Perceval. “Sir knight, will you joust?”

  “That I will, and gladly.” Perceval drew on his gauntlets. Blanchefleur went forward in silence to lace on his helm.

  She finished and stepped back. She could not see Perceval’s face, but when he thanked her there was something abrupt and almost shy in his voice. She stared at the featureless iron and felt more keenly than ever the distance between them. Now. Now was the time to say what might be the last words he would ever hear from her.

  “Fight,” she said at last. “Win.”

  The words came out harsh with fear. Perceval swung away from her and said to Heilyn, “If I fall, you are the protector of these ladies, just as I am.”

  The squire nodded and, wasting no time on words, held out Perceval’s stirrup. Blanchefleur looked from one to the other, worry itching in her throat. They were both so young, so very young. In the kindly world of her upbringing, Heilyn would be a schoolboy, and Perceval at Oxford dreaming up undergraduate rags. Today in Logres, both of them faced wounds and death in earnest.

  If only there was a way to repay their sacrifice.

  Perceval said: “Mount and be ready to flee if the battle turns against me. And mark well Odiar’s companion, that silent knight with the blank shield. I think it will be good, if we meet him under some fairer guise, to know him again.”

  He swung into the saddle and gripped his spear with a shout. “Ho! I know you, Knight of Gore! What of the Witch of Gore, your mistress? Does she still send you to do her cutthroat work, as she did on a day I recall, in the castle of Gornemant?”

  “And I know you, Welsh swineherd, well enough to weary of your babble. I have a debt to repay. Come, let me teach you how men speak, with steel, not mockeries.”

  “It is a tongue I love!” Perceval said, laughing and laying spear in fewter, and striking spurs into his horse.

  The knight of Gore reacted swiftly; his horse gathered into a thunderbolt. Blanchefleur felt her fingernails bite into her palms, and waited with wincing-closed eyes for the crash of meeting. But the thunderstrike shocked them open again: fire flooded her veins and she hissed in one exultant breath.

  Perceval’s horse was flung back on its haunches by the shock of meeting: its head and shoulders strained up through air thick with shards of spear. Odiar’s horse staggered back, almost stumbling to the ground, but the knight wrestled it to its feet, casting aside the splintered truncheon of his lance, fumbling for a new weapon. Perceval flashed out his sword, but Odiar caught up the mace at his saddle-bow and spurred his horse forward.

  Morgan’s man dealt the first blow, which Perceval fended with his shield and followed with a shrewd thrust. But Sir Odiar evaded the point with a twitch of hand and heel which sent his horse, exquisitely trained, dancing away.

  “Lady, lady.” Heilyn tugged at Blanchefleur’s elbow. He had her horse’s reins, and Blanchefleur, tearing her gaze from the combat, saw Branwen already mounted. She climbed to the saddle and turned back to watch the deadly two-rider dance.

  Little as she knew of the arts of war, she saw Perceval reel under the hammer-blow of Odiar’s mace when he could not turn his horse aside in time, and knew with a twist of her stomach that he was outmatched. Glaucus, his own horse, was still ahead of them at Astolat, where he had left it in return for a fresh mount on the outward journey. She knew what it looked like when man and horse moved together as one with the lightest shift of balance and weight. She saw Odiar doing it now, while Perceval maneuvered clumsily atop a jaded animal that did not know its master.

  “Oh, kill his horse!” she groaned.

  “That would be ungenerous.” Heilyn sounded shocked.

  “Ungenerous to whom? He’s trying to kill us!”

  She never knew if Perceval heard her words or not. But with his next blow a shard of steel from Odiar’s armour spun through the air and chopped into the ground. Blood glistened on his blade. As Sir Odiar flinched back, Perceval dealt another stroke, lightning-fast, with such a minute backswing that only its effect betrayed what immense power went into it. The blade did no harm to Odiar, but split his shield in two and bit deep into the horse’s neck.

  “Well hit,” gasped Heilyn, and fell silent.

  Perceval backed, his breath loud in the sudden quiet. Sir Odiar raked his horse with the spurs, but the animal fell to its knees with a rush of blood and a crooked, broken neck. Odiar stepped to the ground, hefted his mace, and stalked forward without a backward glance at the thrashing horse.

  “Cowardly struck,” he spat.

  “Empty words, coming from a murderer of women,” Perceval said with a breathless laugh. And despite the blood trickling down his shield arm, he dismounted with a buoyant step, full of grace.

  At last the sun had burned through the morning fog, and the whole forest glittered with water and light. Blanchefleur glanced at Branwen and Heilyn. Branwen had her face hidden, and trembled at every blow. Under level brows, Heilyn’s eyes flicked back and forth between the knight of Gore and his companion, the knight with the blank shield who on the other side of the glade paced his dun horse to and fro like a caged lion.

  Odiar was upon Perceval at once and they trod to and fro upon the grass—a step forward, a step back, a circle; again they moved like dancers, but Perceval was dodging the great mace now, sure and nimble on his feet. His sword flickered and bit like a fly, better at a longer range, and Sir Odiar soon bled from a half-dozen wounds. But then Perceval ventured in too close, and the mace crashed hom
e, catching him in the hip. Perceval tumbled across the grass. With the same smooth movement he came back up to his feet, but with a dragging left leg. Then the mace fell again, and his shield shivered to pieces. Blanchefleur drew a breath like a sob.

  Before she could blink, it was over. Sir Odiar, bleeding and flagging, recovered his blow more slowly and Perceval gathered his strength and was on him at once. His edged weapon, less potent than the mace against plate and mail, found a chink at the knee and slid in. The leg buckled.

  Snatching out his poniard, Sir Perceval strode forward and stamped Odiar to the ground with a foot to his chest. With a flash of the knife he freed the man’s helm and sent it spinning away. In one last titanic effort the Knight of Gore shouldered up, grabbing for the knife, taking an elbow to the face and then crumpling beneath Perceval’s full weight.

  Perceval put the poniard to Odiar’s throat.

  “Yield and cry mercy, sir, and your life is yours until you come before the King’s seat for justice.”

  “I beg you,” the knight of Gore ground out between clenched teeth, “not to mock me.”

  “No mockery, but Christian charity,” said Sir Perceval. “Which, as you neither comprehend nor desire—” and skilfully he cut his enemy’s throat.

  He had not yet straightened when a rush of hooves brought the Silent Knight and a swinging sword upon him. Perceval, taken by surprise and unguarded on the ground, dove aside to save himself. With a shout Heilyn wrestled his horse in front of the ladies and fumbled for his sword. As his hand scrabbled for the hilt, Blanchefleur dug her heels into her mount and danced aside, baiting the attacker away from the unarmed squire, quickening to a canter. The Silent Knight turned his horse as if on a sestertius, and dashed to cut her off. But his path took him past Perceval again, and this time the Knight of Wales was ready. The great blade swung once more, but Perceval ducked to avoid it, reaching up almost at the same moment; hooked fingers around the knight’s belt, and plucked him from saddle to ground. At the effort, rings strained and snapped on the mail hauberk across his back.