The Heir of Logres Page 6

  He turned, gathered up his reins, and reached for his stirrup. The horse blew a white cloud of warm breath and shifted restlessly at the sound of coming battle. Blanchefleur stood shivering in the frosty air, knowing that in another moment Perceval would be gone, perhaps forever—almost certainly forever, unless she could give him a reason to live.

  She said: “I love you.”

  The words unloosed blinding pent-up tears. Then Perceval was there in front of her again, and his hand lifted her chin.

  Words gushed out as fast as the tears. “Please forgive me. I should never have sent you away. I don’t want to lose you. And I don’t mean to play with you, like the Queen does with Lancelot, only I was afraid…”

  He cleared his throat and said raggedly: “Silly maid! I knew it,” and she knew that the mask was down.

  He waited for her to wipe her eyes and then said, “You are going to marry me.”

  “If you live.”

  He snorted. “No more excuses.”

  “No, Perceval.”

  “We are getting married.”

  “Yes, Perceval.”

  “Tomorrow, if possible.”

  “If you think it best.”

  The sound of a trumpet jarred them back to the courtyard of Joyeuse Gard. Lancelot was calling his men to horse and Sir Bors, striding past from the stables, looked at them incredulously, abrupt with haste. “What is she doing here? Get her inside and mount up.”

  Perceval threw back his head, snuffed the air like a war-horse, and laughed. Then he whirled Blanchefleur into his arms, carried her to the door of the great hall and swung her down again at the top of the steps.

  “Everyone is watching,” she gasped, face red, finding her feet again.

  “Good,” said Perceval. “Witnesses. Wait for me after the fighting is done.”

  Sudden seriousness fell on him when he mentioned the battle. Blanchefleur said, “Do you still mean to fight?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Then come back to me safely.”

  “If I may, I will.”

  He laid his hand against her cheek and brushed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. The world seemed to hush; Blanchefleur saw his eyes move to her lips. Then his hand dropped again.

  “Kiss in haste, repent at leisure,” he said with a laugh. “I can wait. God be with you, dear love.”

  “And with you.”

  For a moment, the limp was gone. He ran down the steps, vaulted to his horse’s back, and spurred forward to join the other knights drawn up before the straining gates. From the top of the stair Blanchefleur kept her eyes fixed on his gules and gold.

  Crash. The castle shuddered again; the gates cracked; Blanchefleur thought of the night in Gloucestershire when the door of their house was battered open by the champion of Morgan. That knight now lay mouldering in a clearing to the north. At what great cost would Perceval, still bearing the marks of that combat, win through to her at the end of this day?

  Crash. Was this the same battering-ram that shook her awake this morning? Were the gates still standing? She was someone else altogether now—five minutes in the open air and her life had changed. Perceval vanished within the ranks of his fellows. She turned and went up to her mother’s chamber, feeling herself poised uncertainly on the brink of an abyss of joy and terror.

  “THE SUN IS RISEN,” SAID GUINEVERE.

  She sat half in light, half in shadow, wearing black like night against which her hair shone pale and tangled. There was a silver mirror in her left hand and a white bone comb in her right, but these lay listless and unmoving in her lap.

  “Will you watch from the window, madam?” Blanchefleur asked.

  Voice, like hands, was listless. “No.”

  Blanchefleur bent and took the comb from her fingers. “Then let me comb your hair.”

  They did not speak again. The Queen closed her eyes as Blanchefleur teased the knots apart with skilled fingers. Now and then her lips moved. Blanchefleur found her own thoughts turning to the men on the field below. There had been a splintering crash when the gates fell, and then the shouting had started. Crashing steel she could hear, the high whinny of horses, the screams of the dying.

  Was it true that she had once thought the fierce cry of swords the bravest sound on the earth? She blinked back more tears and saw her hands again. Soft and graceful, adorned with the great golden ring of Orkney, one twined into her mother’s hair and the other clasping the carven comb. And outside, men were dying.

  DOWN BELOW, SIR PERCEVAL HAD MOVED in a trance that was half daydream, half nightmare until the gates burst. Then everything became sharp and clear again. Lancelot’s men were drawn up in the courtyard, ready to charge, and when the gate fell they spurred recklessly forward, cutting through the men outside like a scythe through grass. Then they reached the field, with iron-bladed destruction reigning on every side. Yet, to his horror, Perceval found it like any other battle he had ever fought. There was sweat trickling down his face and down the furrow of his spine between his aching shoulders, there was a roar like falling water in his ears, and his own throat was inexplicably parched and ravaged, although he could not remember having joined in any battle-cry. And the blood ran through him like molten iron with the mad and merciless lust of battle, while men who had been his brothers crumpled beneath his blade. For a while, he gave himself over to the single desperate purpose of death.

  But then came a lull in the tempest. He found himself the only living man in that part of the field. As he glanced around, feeling cold and tired in the sudden quiet, he saw for the first time the shields and livery of men that he had known well—some that he had loved. Some that he must have killed, with as great a joy as he had once killed thieves and murderers…

  Their shields reproached him. There was Sir Persides. There was the young son of Aglovale. There was Bernard of Astolat, who for a short while had been a friend, who now would never have the chance either to prove his innocence or suffer for his guilt in the matter of Gawain’s messenger.

  He looked at the stark forest, naked branches like grey smoke against the bleak blue sky. It flashed into his mind that he could set his spurs to his horse and vanish into their shadow. Instead he reined Glaucus away, back toward the battle. If he fled, it would unmake him; do that, and he might as well die a coward’s death on his own sword.

  There was nothing to do but follow the path he had decided with such painful debate to follow. Gareth and Gaheris, he reminded himself. He knew—had known as soon as he saw them lying there in the trampled mud—that they were only the beginning.

  He was sucked back into the melée, and it was then that the worst came. Suddenly he saw before him the shield he had been dreading, the gules and gold that he mirrored. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He lifted his shield and dropped his sword-arm.

  It seemed like an age that he stared at the cold and terrible front of his father’s helm. But an eddy in the fight bore them past each other, and he thought that Sir Gawain had hesitated too, sword hanging slack in his hand.

  Perhaps, then, his father knew why he had to be here, fighting for the Queen’s name.

  Perceval spurred forward, willing away the ache in his bones and the pain that still throbbed in his shield-arm and his hip where Sir Odiar had struck him. The battle-fire had left him now, and he fought with his mouth pressed into a thin line, more for survival now than for bloodshed.

  In front of him, two knights crashed together. Sir Bors, helm missing, the battle-fire gleaming in his eyes, dismounted and staggered to the knight he had just unhorsed.

  “Lancelot! Lancelot!” he cried hoarsely, drawing his poniard. “They have killed Lionel and Blamor, our kin! Lancelot!”

  Perceval saw the fallen knight’s device. The Pendragon.

  The Knight of the Lake rode out of the melée, blood dripping from the mace in his hand. “I hear you, Bors.”

  Bors had his elbow hooked around the King’s neck, struggling to keep him on h
is knees. The pale sun gleamed on his blade.

  “Tell me, cousin. Shall I end this war forev—”

  “God forbid!” Lancelot was crying like thunder.

  The dog reached Bors before Lancelot or Perceval could: a grey wolfhound, armoured, blood-streaked. Bors went down under its snapping teeth and the King sprang back to his feet, drawing his sword.

  Lancelot was on the ground facing him; as the King rose, he flung his sword to the ground and went to his knees, throwing up empty hands. “Sire and dear lord, I pray you, cease this destruction! Your Queen is innocent!”

  The King stood motionless and faceless among the bloody ruins of the chivalry of Logres. At last he said, “Will that restore to me my dead knights?” He took a step forward, grip strengthening on the hilt of his sword. “Will that heal the Table and undestroy my kingdom?”

  “Let me be punished. Death. Exile. I’ll take it gladly. Only say you will spare the Queen’s grace. You are the King: you can pardon.”

  “And you say she is innocent.”

  “I call Heaven to witness she is. But sire, you cannot continue this slaughter, even if she is not.”

  The King was silent for a moment, and then lifted his helm. Beneath the iron his face was pale, with deep pouches below the eyes. Perceval, looking at him, then understood some of the despair he must have felt.

  “No,” he admitted. “I cannot.”

  “Then I throw me on your mercy, sire,” said Lancelot, and lifted his sword, and offered the hilts to the King.

  Arthur stretched out his hand and touched it. As he did so, his shoulders straightened, and a little of the strain left his eyes and did not return.

  “I receive your sword, and ask you to keep it for me a while longer. Bedivere, Bleoberis, sound the retreat.”

  5

  This is Modred, the man that I most trusted.

  Morte Arthure

  THEY WENT OUT TO THE KING that afternoon with fifty knights. Sir Lancelot, riding with the Queen at the head of the column, had shed his armour for sombrely magnificent peace-clothes of fine broadcloth and velvet; the other knights followed his example—even Sir Bors, whose face was torn and bleeding from the war dog of Arthur. Only Sir Perceval, who had spent the past two hours on the battlefield directing the work of burial, remained armed. The Queen herself did not change her black robes, but Blanchefleur and the three other damsels with her were given bright silken tunics for the occasion.

  The four damsels each rode pillion behind a knight. Blanchefleur was perfectly satisfied, for she had Perceval. Despite all that had happened that morning, they did not speak on the short ride to the King’s camp: everything they had to say to each other was so important that it could not be wasted on this brief, crowded ride. But from Perceval’s weary smile when he pulled her onto his horse Blanchefleur knew that, terrible as the battle must have been, he had come to some kind of peace with it.

  And so she sat behind him in silence with one hand on his shoulder so that he could look out the corner of his eye and see her there.

  They crossed the battlefield and Blanchefleur made herself look. The ground was ploughed by hooves, stained by blood, heaped with carrion. Women moved among the dead; carts were brought out to collect bodies; squires sat or stood, heads bowed, by fallen lords. Over all, the watery sun shone through leaden clouds.

  A funereal silence hung over the royal camp. All those left alive were out on the battlefield, carrying on the work, and apart from the sentry who admitted them to the camp there were few souls to be seen peering out of tents or hurrying by on business. But then the party from Joyeuse Gard came in sight of the King’s pavilion, hung in silver and scarlet, to find a gathering of men-at-arms assembled.

  Sir Lancelot’s company dismounted and stood holding their horses, facing the King’s men. Blanchefleur felt the silence stretch tight between the two companies; it was as though all the blood spilled on the field between camp and castle lay between them. Lancelot, Perceval, and Bors conducted the Queen and her damsels through this gauntlet of dagger-pointed stares, down the aisle between the two companies to the King’s pavilion.

  Inside, Blanchefleur glanced across the men assembled there, seeking the young king of her earliest memory, or the knightly father she had seen in Sarras. The man who sat by the folding camp-table in a furred robe with his sheathed sword resting across his knees looked old and worn by comparison, with silvered hair and a weariness in the eyes that reminded her of Perceval as he had been this morning in the dawn. The great grey dog that lay under his chair heaved to its feet when they came in, and bared its teeth and growled.

  “Down, Cavall!” The King spoke softly, but the dog heard, and crawled back under the chair to lick the blood-streaks in its fur.

  Behind the King many knights had crowded into the pavilion to witness the peace, but two took precedence. On the King’s left stood a slim pale young man with a silky black beard and a gloomy complexion, and Blanchefleur dimly wondered if this was the Sir Mordred of whom she had heard. On the King’s right stood Sir Gawain, and the change in him was more painful to witness than that in the King, for he stared at Lancelot with hot and ugly bloodshot eyes. He was far more obviously in the last stages of exhaustion, burning with anger, battered and bloodied. There seemed little remaining of the kindliness and humour with which he had glowed in Carbonek, gladdening the Waste Land.

  All this she observed in the few short breaths that passed as the party from Joyeuse Gard halted within the pavilion and took silent stock of their reception.

  Then before anything else could be said Sir Lancelot took the Queen by the hand and knelt before the King. “My lord king, I bring you your Queen, and beg you to receive her. For she is true, and that I will prove on the body of any knight that denies it.”

  The King rose and lifted the Queen to her feet. “I take it as proven. Lady Guinevere, I thank the King of Heaven and these good knights for delivering you from the fire. If I have done you wrong, I beg your pardon.”

  “With all my heart I give it to you,” the Queen said. With that the King drew her into his arm and kissed her in the presence of all. But Blanchefleur noted the King’s words carefully, and that if troubled her. Was he receiving her back, with so fair a show, in continued suspicion of her faith?

  But then her own cue was given, for Guinevere turned from him and held out her hand to Blanchefleur. “Your daughter, my lord.”

  Blanchefleur took a breath to calm her suddenly quaking heart. As she went to move forward, Perceval took her hand and she had the same feeling she had had once or twice before, of reinforcements in the thick of battle. She lifted her chin and said, “Here, sire.”

  Perceval said, “Right joyful am I to deliver her up to you after all this time of waiting.”

  The King smiled at her, and it was as though the sun came out.

  “Lady Blanchefleur, I am sorry to have passed all these years without your company.”

  All the foreboding she had felt crossing the battlefield seemed to roll back like storm clouds. This was the father she remembered from their meeting in Sarras—and now, as then, he accepted her. Forgetting that he had no memory of the City, she went on an impulse and hugged him. Surprise crossed his face when he realised her intention, but then his arms went around her shoulders and pulled her closer.

  She broke away and looked to her mother. Guinevere took her by the shoulders and kissed her cheek. Then the Queen went to Perceval, smiling, and gave him her hand with such a show of friendliness that Blanchefleur almost envied him.

  “Sir Perceval. You have served us well.”

  Perceval bowed over the Queen’s hand. “That shall be seen, madam.” And he went down on his knees before the King.

  “My dear lord,” he said, “I have taken up arms against you, and will abide your just wrath.”

  “I do not pardon you,” said the King.

  Blanchefleur turned to him with a sharp breath of protest. But he went on:

  “Rather let me see
k pardon. You believed yourself fighting in the cause of true law and justice. The same cause which, in prolonging the strife of this war, I fear I have injured. Let me always have such men about me.”

  Gawain spoke, hoarsely, for the first time. “Heaven forfend. Unnatural whelp! What of your kin?” He transferred his attention to the Knight of the Lake. “Truce or no, I counsel you to make your peace with Heaven, Lancelot.”

  Perceval looked at his father with mute reproach. But Lancelot replied before he could gather words: “Fair brother, for such you have been to me, you slew my cousin Sir Lionel today. There is your revenge, if you will take it.”

  But Gawain’s voice rasped with contempt. “What is Lionel to me?” He turned back to Perceval. “And you! Did you strike a blow in defence of your kin, yon morning before the gates of Camelot? Were you not a son of mine, the word for such an act would be treachery.”

  Perceval stood blankly staring under Gawain’s lashing words. Blanchefleur knew he was distressed, but Sir Gawain misread the look as insolence. “You rode in that charge,” he said. “Did you watch them die? Did you approve the thing?”

  “God knows I did not.”

  “You did by your deeds today!”

  “Then should I have stood there like they did, to bring an innocent lady to death?”

  Gawain flushed red. “How dare you?”

  But Perceval had sparked, and his words poured out. “Of course I brought the Heir of Logres to Joyeuse Gard. In obedience to you. Of course I rode to deliver the Queen from death. You wished it. Since the day I left my mother’s cot to seek you, in everything I have done I have only sought by pleasing you to prove myself a worthy son to you.”

  “So prove it. Will you avenge your kinsmen’s blood?”

  “No!” Perceval shot back. “I will see that the justice of Heaven is served, but not an inch further will I go. From now on I follow my own conscience, and I tell you—”

  “I have heard enough.” The thunder of Gawain’s voice rose above Perceval’s. “From this day you are no son of mine.”