The Door to Camelot Read online

  He rode north and west, choosing the loneliest paths, and at sunset he came to a castle on a green lawn beside a lake bathed in golden light. On the lawn an old grey-haired man stood watching a group of boys shooting with arrows at a mark. To him Perceval approached and said, “May I lie here tonight? I am weary, and have travelled far.”

  “Surely you may,” said the old man, “and longer, if you will. What is your errand in this country?”

  “I am a new-made knight,” said Perceval. “But I have never used arms before, and so I am riding out to find some adventure on which to test them.”

  The old man laughed. “You had best stay awhile with me, and learn the use of them first,” he said. “Come! It is long since I trained a knight, but I remember the old art well.”

  4

  I was afeared of her face though she fair were,

  And said, “Mercy, Madame, what is this to mean?”

  Langland

  BLANCHE WAS STILL STARING AT THE red-gold ring when she went downstairs to the dining-room and found Nerys making tea. The girl was wearing quiet grey and her raven hair was pinned up at the nape of her neck: surely, thought Blanche, the unearthly beauty that had been hers in the dream of the pavilion could not have shone from this meek shadow. The contrast was so strong and sudden that Blanche slid the ring back onto her finger, sure now that she had been mistaken and the ring had been red all along. She would say nothing.

  At breakfast Sir Ector said “Good morning” absent-mindedly, and if he had noticed the change in the ring—or that she was wearing a ring at all—he did not say. After the meal, Blanche went upstairs to wrestle with the Aeneid. Sir Ector had insisted she learn Latin when she was small, and still expected her to construe a hundred lines or so every day, although he allowed her to choose her reading.

  It was while fumbling with a particularly difficult line that Blanche’s mind began to wander and she remembered the inscription that had been in the ring Sir Ector had given her last night. Guinevere, chaste and true. She tugged once at the gold ring before the awful truth hit her and she looked down at it again with her stomach quaking.

  She could not have dreamed that talk in the library. She could not have dreamed the inscription, and if it was not on this ring, then this was a different ring and sometime during the night, in who knows what place or time, a ring had been taken from her finger and replaced.

  She touched her mouth. Her breath shivered against cold fingers.

  Slowly, Blanche drew the ring from her finger. She sat there a moment longer, holding the heavy jewel without looking at it. Then she turned it and saw—nothing. No words spidered within the band.

  Blanche sat in her chair a moment longer, thinking. Then, quite calmly, she rose from the desk and went—her feet soundless as the dream of the meadow—downstairs to the library.

  The door stood ajar. She lifted her hand and laid it on the door, but could not for a moment gather the courage to push it open.

  Then she heard Nerys speaking in a soft and urgent staccato: “But the time is growing short. That was Nimue’s message. Again, and more often, I hear a rumour on the night airs—”

  “She isn’t ready, Nerys.”

  Ready for what? Blanche strained her ears over the thump of her own heart and the muffled protests of conscience. Nerys said: “I know. But how long have we already waited?”

  Sir Ector did not reply and for one brief moment Blanche heard the shushing murmur of Nerys’s skirts. When she spoke again, it was in Welsh, and there was an odd cadence in her voice:

  “Sir, I have not the wit nor craft to know what might be coming upon us, or from which quarter. But be sure that either it is coming, or it is already here. And this place will not shield us when it comes.”

  Blanche blinked at the dim-pale shadow of her hand spread out across the massy oak panels of the library door. What was coming?

  Suddenly the door twitched away from under her hand. Light struck her in the face and she looked into Nerys’s eyes with a guilty start.

  Nerys said nothing and Blanche could detect no sign of contempt in her expression. But even a scolding would have been easier to bear than that level unblinking gaze. Blanche flushed painfully and stammered. “I—I—”

  Sir Ector came to her rescue. “Blanche, my dear, come in.”

  Nerys moved aside. With another start Blanche remembered why she had come. She went forward to her guardian’s desk, put the red-gold ring down on the blotter, and looked up at Sir Ector as if hoping that he would explain the change in such a way that she could go on believing that this safe corner of the world so shrouded in comfort was the waking, and that the adventure in the pavilion and the dread in Nerys’s voice was the dream.

  “What does it mean?” she said. “What am I unready for? What is coming?”

  Sir Ector lifted his hand to his beard and tugged on it with an odd gesture of helplessness. He looked at Nerys.

  “You tell her, damsel.”

  “Damsel,” repeated Blanche, and her stomach grew a little colder.

  Nerys took both Blanche’s hands and led her to a chair. “Some wine,” she said over her shoulder to Sir Ector. Then, with a sympathy that shone from every look and word like a lantern on a cold night, she said, “How long have we known each other, Blanche?”

  Blanche swallowed. “Years. Always.”

  “And you know you can trust me.”

  She nodded.

  “How old am I, Blanche?”

  Sir Ector came with a glass of port. Already her mind was beginning to work again, but Blanche took a velvet-sweet sip before replying. “About my age, aren’t you?”

  “Do you remember how, years ago, I taught you to read? How old was I then?”

  Blanche felt another stabbing chill. “You were already grown-up.” She stared into her governess-companion’s face. “Nerys. It’s been fourteen years and you haven’t aged.”

  “No.” Nerys settled back on her footstool, her shoulders falling, her chin lifting. For a moment the veil rose: Blanche sensed a dignity so awful and majestic that she almost expected the footstool to splinter into diamond shards beneath its burden.

  “I am ageless.”

  “I never noticed,” said Blanche in a dry mouth.

  Nerys shimmered in amusement. “No.”

  “How could I never have noticed? Is it magic?”

  “It is natural. For me.”

  Under her eyes, the ageless woman folded back into herself and the glimpse of glory was gone. Blanche was glad, for under its weight she had felt too small for her own comfort. But once seen, the thing was not to be forgotten or brushed from mind. Blanche drank some more port and stared at the carpet. It was no use, she thought. She was in the dreamworld now.

  She looked up tiredly and pointed to the ring on the blotter. “The ring. The boy. The pavilion. It was all real. …My mother, Guinevere.” She turned to Sir Ector. “I said—I said, ‘Who was my father, Arthur, King of the Britons?’ I was joking.”

  Sir Ector and Nerys looked at her, and their solemnity, like a wall of marble, threw her doubt back in her face.

  Blanche gasped for breath.

  “That’s why you’re an antiquary, Sir Ector. You’re not fascinated by the ancients, you are an ancient. L’Espée. The Swordsman.”

  A smile hovered on his lips. “Keep going, Blanche. You’re doing well.”

  She shook her head, drained of words, and covered her face with her hands. Sir Ector laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. Blanche snatched uselessly at her whirling thoughts for a moment before she remembered what she had overheard.

  “Nerys. You said something was coming.”

  “Yes…” Once more, Nerys answered obliquely. “When you were born, eighteen years ago in Logres, the King sent Sir Ector to Broceliande.”

  Sir Ector said: “In that tangled forest, in an enchanted tower by a hawthorn bush, the magician Merlin slumbers until the end of the world. When the Lord Arthur was a boy Merlin counselled and gui
ded him, but when the King became a man, Merlin departed and no mortal man has seen him since—although, perhaps, he is seen by the Lady of the Lake and her people.” And the knight glanced at Nerys.

  “I rode many days before I found the Lady Nimue, and when she heard my quest she agreed to take me to the tower. I saw not a stone of it. But when I asked, a voice came which I knew like my own brother’s. ‘Pendragon’s heir is the life of Logres.’ ”

  Nerys said: “Therefore the Lady my mistress knew that your life would be in danger.”

  Blanche stared at her. “Danger from whom?”

  “From all those who hate Logres.”

  She shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know what that is.”

  Sir Ector gestured. “The Pendragon is your father—it’s the title borne by the High King of Britain. Arthur is the Pendragon by election and conquest and the divine will of the High King of all kings. His realm is Logres, of which Camelot is the capital.”

  “The Pendragon has many enemies,” Nerys went on, “and his sister Morgan le Fay had already tried to destroy him. He is not a man to spend a thought on his own danger, but even he saw that you could not live safely in Logres. By the gates of my people you were carried across the gulf of worlds to another place, a world where the sorceress Morgan could not find you, a world where you—and the life of Logres—would be safe.”

  “But you said time was running out.”

  Sir Ector leaned against his desk, folding his arms. “Blanche, this is what we have been trying to prepare you for all these years. You do not belong in this world. One day you must return to Logres for good and take your rightful place.”

  “And it will be soon, Blanche,” Nerys added.

  It was too much to think about. Blanche got up and took the gold ring from the blotter. “Who was he, Nerys, the boy in the pavilion?”

  “His name is Perceval of Wales. By the account of my mistress, Nimue, he was going to Camelot to be made a knight.”

  “That savage, a knight?”

  “There were prophecies at his birth, too.”

  Blanche frowned at the implied rebuke and looked at the ring. He is still a savage, she thought. “Will I see him again?”

  “It is likely.”

  “Good!” Blanche flashed. “Prophecies or not, I shall box his ears.” She thrust the gold band onto her finger. Then, as quickly as the spark had flared, it died away and suddenly she was exhausted, almost fighting back tears. “Was there anything else I should know?”

  Sir Ector shook his head. “A hundred things. We need not speak of them now.”

  Blanche nodded and went toward the door. On the threshold, she looked back and saw Sir Ector and Nerys still sitting where she had left them, staring into another time. She cleared her throat.

  “Thank you for telling me the truth,” she said very softly, and went away.

  SHE WAS SITTING IN HER WINDOW-SEAT staring out at the rain when a tap sounded at the door and Nerys entered. She moved swiftly over to the window, concern in her voice.

  “Will you weather this, Blanche?”

  Blanche nodded.

  Nerys glanced out the window at the colourless grey sky and sank onto the window-seat. “You will have questions, I imagine.”

  Blanche looked at her clasped hands and tightened her lips. There was a small hard knot of resentment under her breastbone, and it did not want to ask any questions, or learn any more about the place Nerys called Logres.

  “How can you be sure,” she ventured at last, “that Merlin was referring to me?”

  Nerys’s eyelash flickered. She glanced sidelong at Blanche, and Blanche knew that she had hit something, there.

  Nerys said, “He spoke of the Pendragon’s heir.”

  Blanche looked back down at her twined hands. “And I am the Pendragon’s daughter? When I asked Sir Ector last night, he did not seem so sure.” And she held her breath, almost afraid of what Nerys might say to that.

  Her answer came quickly, lightly: “It’s only talk, Blanche.”

  “So there’s talk…It’s about my mother and—that other knight. Lancelot, isn’t it?”

  Nerys sighed. “Gossip a thousand years old and more, in the French romances. Blanche, it’s true that when you were born, every malicious tongue was clacking, but…”

  “Nerys, you don’t seem sure yourself.”

  A pause.

  “And I am unsure, but for no good reason.” Nerys rose to her feet and paced the room, eyebrows stitched together. “The Queen claimed you were true-born—”

  “Claimed?”

  “How should I know if the White Shadow of Cameliard was lying? I only know that no one believed her—save the King, of course—and sometimes, I thought she intended them not to. But only God knows why, for if the Queen had betrayed the King, it would be the ruin of Logres.”

  Blanche was silent for a while. Then she said:

  “If I am not true-born then I need not return to Britain. And I will be safe, for my life will mean nothing to Logres or its enemies.”

  “Not return to Britain?” Nerys turned on her in blank surprise. “But it’s your home.”

  “Is it?” Blanche looked around the cosy room that was her own. “I never saw it.”

  Nerys looked at her, shoulders slumping a little. “It is where your heritage lies. A patrimony for which men have killed and died, suffered exile and sorrow and counted the price little. …I thought you might have been less indifferent to it. Or can it be that you are afraid of these enemies?”

  Blanche coloured under her gaze. “Of course not,” she said. But it was impossible now to keep the resentment out of her voice, for she knew she was lying.

  ON SUNDAY, BLANCHE WENT WITH KITTY Walker’s party to Tintern in a sour mood that was only fretted by the idle and carefree chatter of the others. But it was better than being trapped in the house with Sir Ector and Nerys, she thought to herself, and besides, she wanted to see Mr Corbin.

  She took her chance when they reached Tintern, lagging behind Kitty and the two others as if she took some deep interest in the empty roof and lonely arches of the ruined abbey. Mr Corbin, as a matter of course, remained with her, looming on her left hand like some gigantic but melancholy bird. His silent presence, and the peacefulness of the grass-floored abbey, made it easier to let go some of the tension she had hidden with difficulty in the motor-car.

  “Do you think it is more beautiful ruined than it might have been whole?” Mr Corbin asked presently.

  Blanche tilted back her head to admire the delicate tracery of the great west window. All the glass was gone, of course, but the lingering gracefulness of the blind stone outline made the breath catch in her throat.

  “My guardian would like it whole,” she said at last, with a bitter laugh. “I think he would prefer it if we all lived in castles.”

  “Ah,” said Mr Corbin, “but think how chilly and dark that would be. Can’t you imagine all the monks, like brown mice, shivering in here of a winter morning?” And he sang a bar or two of the Te Deum with an exaggerated vibrato.

  Blanche tried to smile.

  Laughter echoed from the walls as Kitty and her friends came tripping back to them. “Blanche,” Kitty called, “we have seen it all, and we are going into the village to find a tea-shop. Are you coming?”

  “I had rather stay a little longer,” she told them, and they giggled knowingly as they went away.

  She and Mr Corbin walked on, further into the abbey. She felt his eyes on her when they should have been on the ruin; she was not surprised when at last he said:

  “You are quiet today, Miss Pendragon. Is anything troubling you?”

  The mockery that lived in his eyes was gone for the moment, and Blanche let some of her distress show in her face.

  “You would only laugh,” she said helplessly.

  “Try me.”

  Blanche shook her head. “You don’t believe in things like this.”

  “Anything that worries you is real enou
gh to concern me.” He bent head and eyebrows to look into her face. “Look at me, Blanche. Can’t you trust me?”

  She searched his eyes in a wordless hush more intimate than speech. Before long she dropped her gaze to the grass beneath their feet. “My parents,” she began at last.

  His silence encouraged her to go on.

  “All my life I thought they were dead. Now I find that they are alive, but so far away… I don’t know what to do.” She looked up, but he was still silent. “My guardian says I should go to them.”

  “They are a long way away?”

  Blanche nodded, afraid to say anything more.

  “And—you?”

  “I suppose I must go…”

  Mr Corbin smiled. “Miss Pendragon, how can I help you if you speak of musts?”

  She looked up at him with quick hope. “What do you mean?”

  Again the silence bore that odd secrecy, before he replied, “Whoever made a decision because of what must be done? Ask, rather, what you truly desire.”

  She looked into the sky and the sun was smiling. “A decision? You mean—I could say no?”

  “Why not? If it is what you truly desire—on your own account.”

  Blanche gulped. But she was unsurprised by the thought, for it had been lurking at the back of her mind until liberated by Mr Corbin’s words. Sudden tears rose in her throat and she blurted out:

  “I can’t go! I can’t! It would kill me!”

  She stared up at him, blinking back the tears. He took her arm with a swift gesture of comfort. “But this is melodrama, Blanche. How far away can they be? Paris? Milan?”

  The mention of those two kindly cities struck her as a cruel joke. “Oh, if only!”

  “India, then? But that isn’t far. Not today. Haven’t you read that capital book, by Mr Verne, wasn’t it?”

  “It isn’t India,” she said.

  He frowned. “Surely not Australia?”

  In the midst of her tragedy she couldn’t help laughing. “No, indeed!”