Pendragon's Heir

by Suzannah Rowntree

  “Say on, fellow.”

  “It is winter.” The words came out slowly at first, then rushed to a torrent. “We have no medicines and no food and our houses are falling down. Our children shiver in the snow. Lord, give us a lord to mend our roofs and mill our grain.”

  The King’s brow knitted. “Why do you not mend your own roofs and mill your own grain?”

  The gatekeeper trembled again and his gaze fell to the ground. “Sir, the learned men have gone with our lord, and he has not given us leave to do these things.”

  The King stared at the man for a moment longer, and then turned to Perceval with a laugh. “Quia et latrocinia quid sunt nisi parva regna? But this robber is less a little king than a little god.”

  “A god?” Perceval flexed his hand around his lance, remembering a day that Breunis Saunce-Pité had lain with a poniard to the throat and begged for mercy. “And yet steel spills his blood as eagerly as any mortal’s.”

  IT WAS DARK, AND PERCEVAL COULD hear an owl calling outside when a touch on the shoulder woke him.

  “Sir. My lord.”

  He pushed back his blankets and sat up. Through the windows of Saunce-Pité’s great hall, a little moonlight shone on the cocooned and sleeping forms of all the remaining brethren of the Table.

  It was Heilyn’s voice, Heilyn’s hand on his shoulder. Perceval whispered, “Is it my turn to watch?”

  The squire shook his head. “Someone is asking for you.”

  Perceval got up as softly as possible, buckled on his sword and fitted his shield to his arm. Outside in the courtyard, the cloudless February sky glittered with stars, and the puddles on the ground had the slick black stillness of ice.

  A woman stood there by a horse, huddled into a cloak like a crow puffing its feathers against the cold. White breath drifted from each mouth. Heilyn murmured, “I will get the horses,” and went to the stables.

  At Perceval’s coming, the woman pushed her hood back. “Sir Perceval, do you know me?”

  Familiar words. “Lady Nimue. What brings you here?”

  “Your father is asking for you,” said the immortal Lady of the Lake, and Perceval felt the cold bite deep into his bones.

  THEY RODE NORTH AND WEST UNTIL dawn brought them to a hut by the river called Deva. Inside, in the dark, a smouldering fire was burning. Perceval paused in the doorway and saw Sir Gawain lying on the floor with a cloak thrown over him, his head resting in a woman’s lap. When the early light flooded into the hut, she looked up, and Perceval took a deep slow breath that was not entirely surprise. A little thin blade of pain lanced his chest as the last flicker of hope died. He said, “Mother…”

  Ragnell the fay, wife of Gawain, put her finger to her lips. But Gawain opened his eyes and moved his head. “Perceval?” His voice sounded like stone grating against stone.

  Perceval fell on his knees by his father’s side. “Here, sir.”

  Gawain’s eyes drifted shut. He seemed in little pain, but his breath was long and loud and laboured. At last he opened his eyes again. “Where is your shield?”

  “Here. Close by.”

  Perceval lifted it up. It was still covered, as it had been since the fight on the bridge. Finding another device, or even equipping himself with a good blank shield that did not need a cover, had taken second place to preparing the invasion of the Silver Dragon.

  Gawain lifted a hand, and his fingertips skimmed the black cover. “I cannot see it…” His hand fell, and he lay silent a little longer. At last he looked up at Perceval, and with an uncertain smile said: “You will have to remove the label, son.”

  Perceval softly drew his breath and glanced up at Ragnell. There was a sad curve to her mouth, but she smiled at him.

  “You’ll take it off?” Gawain asked again, and an anxious note was in his voice.

  “I will, Father.”

  His eyes closed again, and his loud slow breathing continued. Perceval put his arm around his mother’s shoulders, and they sat still, watching.

  He said once: “Is there nothing we can do?”

  She shook her head. “I dare not move him.”

  Gawain breathed slowly out. For five seconds there was silence in the hut, and then he breathed in again and Perceval found that he had been holding his own breath. But it was a thing he had heard and seen before, and he knew what was coming.

  They were still sitting side-by-side on the ground when Gawain breathed out for the last time. The unmistakeable change of death crept over his face; what had been inhabited was now abandoned, and the oath sworn on the bridge of Camelot was kept.

  Ragnell leaned her head on Perceval’s shoulder. For a little longer, they sat with their dead.

  OUTSIDE THE HUT, WHERE THE RIVER broadened into a quiet cove, in a little boat that had been pulled up on the sand, Perceval and Heilyn laid Gawain on a cloak and covered his face.

  Ragnell took Perceval’s hands and looked up at him hesitantly, as if loath to speed their parting. “I am going back to the Apple Isle, Perceval. Will you not come with me?”

  “To Avalon?” It had been three years since he last saw her face in the grey of an early spring morning. Since then he had wandered the island of Britain from one end to the other, he had spoken with queens and ladies without peer, and he had escaped the snares of fiends spell-woven for his doom. And yet the ageless beauty of Ragnell the fay outshone all of them—all, he thought, with a little throb of loyalty, save one.

  She said, “To Avalon—yes.”

  “Leave Logres?”

  “Yes.”

  “In her hour of need? How can I?”

  She said: “Logres is dying.”

  “This is no new thing, Mother.”

  “Dear son. Can you not see the signs?”

  “What do the signs matter? There have been bad omens before.”

  Ragnell had not shed tears over Gawain’s death, but pools glimmered in her eyes now. “In Avalon,” she said very quietly, “even mortality may be cured. I will wait for you. Go and fetch your lady.”

  All at once, Perceval understood, and his heart leapt. Avalon, the Apple Isle! The undying realm would give him rest and ease and the thing he coveted above anything else in the world.

  Time.

  A hundred years of peace. A thousand years of peace. Peace until the world ended, with Blanchefleur at his side. They would grow old together, as he never before permitted himself to hope; and it would be age without feebleness, without death.

  Ragnell had already watched a husband die. Why should she, being immortal, see her son follow the same dark path?

  But even as all this passed through his mind, he remembered the city of Sarras, and the burden that had been laid upon him. Also, he remembered Nerys the fay, who desired to die because she prized Sarras even above Avalon.

  “Mother, if I could, I would. But even if Logres does fall, there will be more work to do here. Not less. For he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet. Would you have me a deserter from that service?”

  There was pain in her voice, and something else, the high and haughty ring of steel. “Never, son of Gawain.” She lifted her hand to his cheek. “He is proud of you, if he can see you now.”

  “Then we’ll keep it so,” he told her, and gathered her into his arms for the last time. Then he handed her into the little boat, and he and Heilyn pushed it with a complaint of stones across the shingle and into the current, and stood on the bank watching until it was lost in the distance.

  Thus Perceval of Wales bade farewell to Sir Gawain and Ragnell the fay.

  When the boat was gone out of sight, Perceval turned to where Heilyn and Nimue stood on the bank with their three horses. “Where is Gringolet?”

  “Tethered behind,” said Heilyn.

  “Fetch him and let us be on our way.”

  “A moment,” said Nimue.

  In the pale winter sunlight, Perceval read some dire portent which she now permitted, for the first time, to show in her face. “What is it
? Tell me—”

  “Mordred has taken Camelot.”

  The words took a little while to sink in, while the water of the Deva murmured against her banks and a chill breath of wind stirred the naked winter branches. Perceval’s first impulse was to ask if he had heard correctly. But if she spoke the truth—and Nimue always spoke the truth—there was no time for that. He blinked and shook his head, as if to clear his vision after an enemy’s stroke, and said, “What do you advise?”

  “Ride back to the King. Gather Lancelot and his men. Muster all the help you can. Mordred is in league with Saunce-Pité—”

  “Even so, Camelot is defended—we left a garrison—”

  “Young blades more nigh akin to Mordred than their own fathers.”

  Heilyn broke in. “But what about Branwen, what about Blanchefleur?”

  Perceval turned on the fay. “Are they safe? Do you know?”

  “No.”

  Perceval gathered up his reins and sprang to the saddle. “Lancelot is a few hours’ ride west. I’ll go to him. Heilyn, take word to the King, but linger not for me. I am riding to Camelot.”

  36

  It is something to have wept as we have wept,

  It is something to have done as we have done,

  It is something to have watched when all men slept,

  And seen the stars which never see the sun.

  Chesterton

  “TIME,” BLANCHEFLEUR THOUGHT TO HERSELF IN the bone-aching night cold, “is much too precious to spend like this.”

  Silence had fallen on Camelot long ago. Now the slow passage of hours was marked only by Branwen’s soft breathing from the other side of the bed, where she had come in Heilyn’s absence. In the midnight dark, Blanchefleur’s lips moved over the words of the old enchanter in Broceliande.

  “The Pendragon’s heir…”

  The King. Until he left a week ago, she had spent most of her time at Camelot in his company, receiving what he told her was the greatest gift he could give—knowledge. Statecraft, diplomacy, and the strategies of war. At every opportunity they stole minutes and hours from the King’s day in a scrabbling attempt to fit years of instruction into however much time might remain to them. Every day she had followed him from council chamber to judgement seat, clutching a growing sheaf of parchment that held her notes. And every day he had spoken to her of justice, mercy, truth, and right.

  She was sick of the sound of them.

  What about Mordred? What did he have to do with truth and right? Was the King’s love for mercy no more than the guiltiness of hidden shame, unable to condemn others because unwilling to condemn self? She wanted to trust the King; she knew his wisdom should come like rain on parched earth. But until she knew for certain that he had nothing to do with Mordred’s birth, he could say nothing to her that did not echo in her ears with mockery.

  At times it had occurred to her to ask him outright. But she always shied away from the thought. How did one ask a question like that? Surely there was a law against falsely accusing the High King of Britain of a crime like incest? As subject and as daughter, was it right even to form such doubts, let alone voice them?

  With a twinge of sorrow she remembered their meeting in Sarras, before ever Morgan and her crafty son came between them. One little taste of fresh water, then Morgan had poisoned the spring, and the bitter taste of that draught could not be cleaned from her throat.

  Beside her, Branwen gave a little sigh and moved and went on breathing quietly. Blanchefleur got up on one elbow and turned her pillow over, in search of the feathers that had migrated away from her restless head. And what about Guinevere? With Agravain’s confession signed and sealed in Camelot’s records room, they now had good proof that he had accused the Queen falsely and stolen her ring to send to Lancelot. Though he had refused to admit Mordred’s involvement, his evidence was enough to clear her mother’s name.

  But only of recent ill-doing. Blanchefleur remembered the earnestness in Lancelot’s eyes when he had sworn the Queen was innocent. Thinking back on that night she supposed he must have told the truth, but was it not possible that he had spoken only to the present charges, and not to long-ago guilt?

  Logres was shaking. Logres was sliding. Since the day Perceval came to fetch her from Carbonek there had been nothing but trouble. How much longer did she have—with Perceval, with the King, with the Queen, with any of them? Would the chance to know the truth pass unseized while she wavered and worried?

  Perhaps Mordred would make a better heir of Logres.

  SHE WOKE PERHAPS FIVE HOURS LATER to a soft pressure against mouth and nose, and to an urgent whispering voice that came from far away and long ago.

  “Blanchefleur. Wake up. Wake up. We are already out of time.”

  Blanchefleur opened her eyes on the glow of a lamp. For a moment she wondered if she was back in her closet in Carbonek, with the Grail-light shining in the window. Then she felt the hand covering her mouth, and bolted upright with a kick of adrenaline.

  “Hush!” the voice warned, and in the faint and flickering light Blanchefleur saw who stood by the bed.

  “Nerys? Nerys? But…”

  “Hush!” Nerys said again, reaching over to shake Branwen. “I am already too late. Mordred is here. Agravain has returned. And the men of the Silver Dragon are searching for you.”

  Branwen passed in a moment from sleep to full waking. “Mordred? Here? How?”

  Blanchefleur’s slumber-heavy mind began to work again, slowly and methodically. She pushed up a sleeve and pinched herself. When that did not shock her into a pleasanter waking, she slid out of the bed and fumbled for a tunic to pull over her smock.

  Nerys said: “Save for Sir Kay and a handful of others, the garrison is already in Mordred’s pay. They opened the gate to him. …How did the King leave Camelot so ill defended?”

  Blanchefleur shrugged into her tunic. “I learned from Agravain that Mordred was with Sir Breunis Saunce-Pité. Then the Silver Dragon sent us Sir Caradoc’s body. An insult we were eager to avenge.”

  Nerys only shook her head, rubbing her temples.

  Branwen had not moved since waking; she sat like a tousled owl and said, “What are we going to do? Wait here for them to find us?”

  Down the corridor, someone cried out and was abruptly silenced. The last sleepy cobwebs cleared from Blanchefleur’s mind. This was no dream. This was real.

  “Not if we have a choice,” Nerys told Branwen. She glanced around the room, at the tapestries lining the wall. “Is there no other door?”

  “There’s no way out but the window.” Blanchefleur fought to keep the edge of panic out of her voice.

  “All I need is a door with a keyhole.”

  The elf-keys. Of course. Blanchefleur yanked aside the tapestry concealing the little door to the store-room where she and Branwen kept their clothes. “Here.”

  Nerys snatched a key from the pouch at her waist, thrust it into the lock, and opened the door on dark emptiness. Blanchefleur put her hand through and felt what lay beyond. Neither the rough surface of stone nor the nubby texture of tapestry greeted her fingers, but the silky cool touch of polished wood.

  And the smell! Soap and camphor. Lavender and roses. Tea and roast beef. All the things she had forgotten about in the last two years, breathing benedictions upon her from the shadowed void.

  “We’re going back to Gloucestershire?”

  Nerys said: “If you hide in here Mordred need never find you.”

  Branwen shuffled over and looked into the darkness. “We’ll be safe?”

  Something in the fay’s words tugged on Blanchefleur’s mind. “Nerys, what about you? Aren’t you coming?”

  Nerys looked away and said, “If Mordred takes hostages, he will be able to dictate terms. Most of all he will want the Queen.”

  Blanchefleur’s conscience stabbed her. “Mother! Of course!” She glanced to the door. “I know where to find her.”

  “No. They know you. They will be looking for you.
Go in and leave her to me.” Nerys pushed the key into Blanchefleur’s hand. “Hold the door ajar. Wait for me to return if you can. If not, close the door and lock it from the other side.”

  Blanchefleur nodded.

  At the door, Nerys looked back.

  “One last thing. If the worst happens. Know that if you lock this door and destroy the key, you will never find your way back to Logres. Logres will never find its way back to you.”

  Blanchefleur remembered the evening so long ago, when Sir Odiar first attacked, when she first told Nerys that she did not want to leave Gloucestershire for Logres.

  That girl would have wanted the key, and the permission to destroy it.

  That girl would never have been trusted with either.

  Impulsively, she ran from the wardrobe door and flung her arms around the fay’s neck. “I missed you,” she whispered. “Come back safely.”

  “My darling, I missed you too. Now hide.”

  BLANCHEFLEUR LET FALL THE TAPESTRY BEHIND her, and Branwen swung the wardrobe door nearly shut. For a moment they stood and listened, unmoving in the scented darkness.

  Then Blanchefleur ran her hand over the silk-smooth panel on this side of the door until she found the keyhole, and pushed in the key. “Keep the door,” she whispered to Branwen. “I am going to see where we are.”

  She navigated the room by touch, heart in mouth, envisioning every kind of glass-shattering blunder until her fingers brushed heavy curtains. When she pulled them open, moonlight flooded in and she looked out into a gracious silver world with a rolling skyline like an old familiar friend whose name is for a moment forgotten.

  No gaslight spilled out of the windows on this side of the little house. Most likely the occupants were all asleep. They were safe, at least until the servants rose in the early pre-dawn.

  Blanchefleur turned and saw in the moonlight the shrouded furniture of someone’s best spare room. The door Branwen guarded on this side also belonged to a wardrobe, a tall-standing oak closet and not a tiny stone room. She saw a dressing-table and a basin and ewer, creamy wallpaper with delicate stripes, a big comfortable stuffed chair. How many of these pleasant things she had forgotten, and in so brief a time!