“I wish to treat,” Blanchefleur called. “Do you grant me heraldic protection?”
“You wear no heraldic colours. What authority have you to treat, Blanchefleur the Ill-Born?”
“Don’t be a fool, Mordred!” It must be difficult to wring cold scorn from a shouting voice, but Blanchefleur achieved it. “I am the Pendragon’s heir, chosen in council! And I tell you that a storm is coming from the North, you son of Hell! You have pulled the dragon’s tail, and the dragon is awake! Your mother has told the secret of your birth, Mordred! Your hostage is gone, Mordred! You’re a naked man in the storm, Mordred!”
Down below, the men around Mordred wavered like a field of wheat in the wind. Agravain stepped forward impulsively and Mordred thrust him back with a hand to his chest. There was a moment’s sharp debate among them, which Perceval did not hear, and then Mordred turned again. “You have your wish,” he called. “I’ll speak with you, and on my oath you shall go free and unharmed from me.”
Blanchefleur lifted her hand and pointed to the riverside meadow, where the sun streamed through withered brown grass. “Meet me by the river, and come alone.”
BLANCHEFLEUR SAW THAT PERCEVAL KEPT A weather eye out for ambush as they skirted the camp, riding for the meadow. Her own heart jolted with each pheasant that rocketed skyward at their approach, but they saw nothing to suggest that Mordred had yet broken his word.
He was already waiting for her by the river, fifty paces from the edge of the camp. They approached from the east and at about the same distance Perceval reined in. She slid down from the saddle and smiled at him and said, “I won’t be long.”
He had taken her hand to help her down from the saddle, and he did not release it at once. “Beware,” he told her. “Mordred wields many weapons.”
“I will.”
“Christ be with you, Christ within you,” he muttered, and let go of her hand and left her to face the final few paces alone.
She stopped when Mordred’s shadow ran across the grass and pooled at her feet. He stood with his arms folded and his chin tucked down, and she read no particular mood in him beyond a tightly-wound hostility. She smiled at him blithely and prayed that he could not hear her heart hammering in her ribs, for the sight of his pale and melancholy face had yanked her back into the Vicarage spare room where she had knelt and watched Nerys die.
“Are you surprised to see me?” she asked, and arched a brow.
“Exceedingly,” he said, and bowed a little.
She folded her own arms. “You heard what I said before. You haven’t a chance, Mordred. Your only hope was to use the Queen to drive a bargain, and by this time she’s miles away.” Please God it was true. “Arthur will cut you to pieces.”
He smiled thinly. “Pray excuse me if I cherish higher hopes.”
“There doesn’t need to be another war. My father will be more than happy to drive a bargain, I’m sure.”
“Is this like the bargain you made with Agravain?”
“It can be. Agravain got what he wanted. We got what we wanted. No one lost anything.”
He cast a glance at the sun. “I have no pressing appointments. Make your offer.”
“King Mark died childless a year ago. Cornwall has no lord. Perhaps the King would recommend you for the position.”
His eyebrows flared up into laughter. “Cornwall.”
“Why not? It’s a richer land than Gore. Not bad for a second son.”
“But I am no second son.”
“Ah, I was forgetting. You’re also a traitor and deserving of death.”
“Oh, Blanche.” A flicker of amusement crossed his face. “It’s been too long. How far you’ve come.”
She unclenched her teeth. “The offer. What do you say?”
“It is a good offer. Tell the King I will take it, on one further condition.”
“What’s that?”
“I want Britain after his death.”
She knew what he wanted, of course. But when he said it to her face like that, with all that cool impudence, she felt her stomach twist.
“A plea to spare your life would be a wiser message to send, and one more likely to meet with favour.”
He bowed. “Then you had best counsel the King for war.”
“On your own head be it.” She half-turned away, and then paused. “One more thing.”
He waited.
“I believe you have a knife of mine.”
“Victori spolia.”
“I’d like it back.”
“Make me an offer.”
She looked at him levelly and said, “An elf-key.”
His eyebrows climbed and he made a soft exhalation of understanding. “Ah-h-h-h. You hid in a different world.”
She knew she had him. She waited, half turned away from him.
“Done,” he said, and took her obsidian knife out of his pouch.
“Lay it on the ground and step back,” she told him. When he obeyed, she took the elf-key from her own pouch and went forward.
She kept her eyes on his face, willing herself not to show how suddenly dry her mouth was, or how badly her hands wanted to shake. He watched her calmly; no impulsive movement, no coiled and spitting treachery lurked in his eyes. She knelt down in his streaming shadow and closed her hand around the carven bone hilt. Then she laid the elf-key in its place.
And she flung herself forward and scored the shadow knife between flesh and shadow, deep into the ground at Mordred’s feet.
With a sharp crack the blade broke. In the same moment Mordred’s boot caught her in the chest and she toppled backward with a wail of pain. He was on her at once, dragging her to her feet by a double handful of her tunic.
“What is this?” He hissed through clenched teeth and shook her a little. Far away, through the sound of her gasping pain and the shock of failure, she thought she heard a rumble like thunder. He broke off and shouted toward the camp, “To me! Treachery! To me!” and then turned on her again with another shake. “Who told you to use the knife on me! Tell me! Who?”
“No one,” she muttered through aching teeth. Morgan. Morgan had betrayed them again. What a fool she had been—
The rumble was louder now, resolving into the pounding tattoo of a horse’s hooves. Perceval! Mordred drew his own poniard and dragged her against his chest with an arm like a bar across her throat, so that the blade of his knife dinted the skin of her ribs. She blinked and saw the knight coming down out of the Sun, out of the West, to run rapidly closing rings around them.
“Mordred! Coward! Let her go and fight me!”
He pulled her tighter.
Thwack.
Perceval’s horse squealed and stumbled. An arrow sprouted from its flank. Even as it struggled to rise, another barb rooted in its neck.
Shouts. Footsteps. Reinforcements had reached them.
“Another time, perhaps,” said Mordred, and from his voice Blanchefleur knew he was smiling.
Perceval yanked his horse around to face the oncoming tide and hefted his sword. “One last blow, love.” She never knew if the murmur she heard was for the animal or for her. He spurred into the enemy with great crashing strokes. Blanchefleur twisted in Mordred’s arms, and the knife nicked through the wool of her tunic and the linen of her shift, into her skin. She gasped and stilled.
Perceval’s horse stumbled and went down, bearing him with it. The men-at-arms struggled over him, their blades flashing in the light of the setting sun. Blanchefleur moved again, and the knife tore through her a little further, but she whispered, “Mordred, please—”
“Enough!” Mordred rapped out, and they stood back and pulled Perceval to his feet. Mordred lowered his poniard, keeping a firm grip on Blanchefleur’s arm, wiped the bloody point against her hip, and shot it into the sheath. “Bring them to my pavilion.” He handed Blanchefleur to a man-at-arms, turned on his heel, and stalked back to the camp.
Blanchefleur glanced at Perceval. One of the men-at-arms had pulled off his helm and blac
ked his eye. He spat blood and grinned at her. Then suddenly, almost too fast to see, he tripped one of his captors into the others, drew a poniard from his boot, and strode after Mordred.
“ ’Ware, traitor!” His voice rose over the warning shouts of Mordred’s men. Mordred flinched around, almost comical in his surprise, but Perceval never had the chance to strike. He was too generous to his foe; he had waited too long and the men-at-arms were already on him. Perceval lashed out with elbows and blade, but then Mordred kicked him in the stomach and he doubled, gasping. Arms grappled his neck and he went down with the weight of five men on his back. Someone drew a fist back, there was a little muffled crack of bone against bone, and Perceval went limp.
38
Die rather, than do aught, that might dishonour yield.
Spenser
IT TOOK TWO MEN-AT-ARMS TO CARRY Perceval to Mordred’s pavilion. When they dropped him onto the grass, Blanchefleur twisted from Mordred’s grip by a trick of leverage Heilyn had once shown her and fell to her knees at Perceval’s side. He lay bleeding from a split lip, and underneath the cuts and bruises on his face he looked more weary than she had ever seen him, but his pulse under her trembling fingers beat steadily.
Mordred slammed the elf-key onto the table, dragged a chair away from the board, and sat down. He motioned to the big black-bearded man who had come striding into the tent after Perceval. Ungentle hands gripped Blanchefleur’s arms and plucked her from the grass. She looked up at the man and saw with another dull rush of fear that he wore the device of the Silver Dragon. Sir Breunis Saunce-Pité.
Others filed into the tent after him: men-at-arms and knights of the Table. Agravain came to her and wrenched the bone hilt of the shadow knife from her hand and gave it to Mordred. He would not look her in the eye.
Blanchefleur shook the hair back out of her face with all the dignity she could muster, ignoring the bitter taste of failure. “Listen to me, you servants of the traitor Mordred of Gore. You have violated the laws of Logres and taken up arms against your sovereign, Arthur, King of Britain. Do you yield yourselves to his justice?”
A hush fell on the tent. Mordred looked up at her, and the venom in his eyes beat on her like a hot wind. “Cease your bluster, damsel. How dare you take the high ground with my followers? You requested heraldic protection and I granted it, and you used it to attack me.”
Blanchefleur opened her mouth and closed it again. God have mercy, he was right. She felt the colour climb in her face. Perceval would have known better. Perceval would have warned her.
“So much for the righteousness of your cause. I might hang you and no law of war would condemn me for it.” He shook the bone hilt at her. “This knife. Used on flesh, it will part an immortal from life. Used on shadow, it will part the airy alliances. That’s what this is, isn’t it?”
Blanchefleur grasped for one thread of hope. “Then whatever your sorceries once were, they are lost to you now.”
“Is that why you cut my shadow?” He barked a laugh. “You flatter my skill. It was my mother who leagued with the airy ones, and you have already rendered her useless to me. Long have I sought her since that day.”
That last sentence agreed with Morgan’s story. And yet Mordred sat laughing at her, for the knife had failed and she was betrayed into his hand.
By her own plan, which Morgan had warned against, and by a compact which she had broken and Mordred, apparently, had kept.
Blanchefleur lifted her chin. “She may yet do you some mischief. She gave me a strange account of your birth.”
“My mother is full of strange accounts. You will not repeat them here.” His voice was cool and contemptuous, but she felt his tension pulled as tight as a lute-string.
“Why not? Are you afraid of what I might say?”
Mordred pursed his lips and she saw that he was trapped, that he had to let her speak, or lose face before his men. “No,” he said at last, and flung himself back in his chair with a half-smile.
Blanchefleur glanced around the pavilion. Agravain was still avoiding her eyes. By him stood Pertisant, Sadok, Alisander le Orphelin, and others whose faces she knew better than their names. She spoke directly to them:
“Did Mordred tell you he was a son of Arthur? He lied. Morgan says he was made by sorcery from a strand of the King’s hair. A simulacrum. No son of his—or hers. Do you hear me, Agravain? Pertisant?”
Mordred did not speak, but his hand tightened on the broken hilt of the knife a little, and she was conscious again of those glaring eyes.
She pointed at him and laughed. “Look at him! He knows that it’s true!”
“Silence her,” Mordred grated.
“No one lay a hand on me!” Blanchefleur cried, and for one moment was obeyed. So they doubted him. In a flash she sensed her chance; the right words to the right man, and she would master them all, turn the tables, take Mordred prisoner. She cried out, “Agravain, this man has no right to Logres, and you know it. The true king is coming. Choose now whose side you will take.”
All eyes in the pavilion fell upon Agravain, who paled and sweated under their pressure. Then he looked to Mordred.
“What do you say, cousin?”
“It is a lie. Naturally.” Mordred wrenched his gaze away from Blanchefleur, and tossed the knife-hilt onto the maps and parchments littering the table. “Do you not know my mother?”
Agravain shuffled. “You hear,” he said, presumably to Blanchefleur, but he went on staring at Mordred.
The air cleared. The knights of the Table moved like sleepers. Pertisant wiped a sleeve across his brow. Mordred looked at Blanchefleur and shrugged with false sympathy.
Blanchefleur raked the gathered knights with a look of scorn. “No doubt you mean to murder me among you all. How do you plan to justify that?”
Agravain still would not meet her eyes. “The just penalty for imposture—” he muttered.
“Enough, Agravain.” Mordred turned to Blanchefleur, and gestured to a chair. In the aftermath of her failure, his voice was almost genial. “There need be no talk of penalties. Will you be seated? It is time for me to make an offer now.”
Someone pulled the chair out for her and Blanchefleur sat, ramrod straight on the seat’s edge. If Mordred was willing to talk, she was willing to listen. She had not expected to live so many minutes; she must be careful, and make the most of each breath, for each one might be her last. Again she remembered Nerys, and her stomach clenched a little tighter.
Mordred said, “I don’t wish to kill you, Blanche. I had much rather arrive at an understanding.”
Blanchefleur folded her hands in her lap with a little disbelieving laugh. “You have been trying to kill me for years.”
Mordred shook his head. “Not always. Think back. I tried to win you to my side, not kill you. If you recall, I asked you to marry me.”
“So that you could kill me at your leisure?” Perhaps, if she kept him talking, there would be time—but no, the King was still far away, and if Morgan was still on their side, she should have taken Branwen and the Queen far away from here.
No human aid could reach them now.
Mordred was talking. “Quite the contrary. As my rival for Logres, you stood in my way. To yield to you, out of the question. To destroy you, a waste. But to subvert you…” A predatory smile crept across his face. “Irresistible! You are, for some, the legacy of Logres and Arthur. All the influence and authority you wield could be thrown into the balance—on my side. Imagine if you had accepted my offer of marriage?”
Blanchefleur shuddered.
“Your guardians would have found you only when it was already too late. You would have been mine, and my claim on Logres, unassailable. Ah, and the satisfaction of wielding you as the instrument of my conquests!”
Blanchefleur felt the gooseflesh rising on her arms. For the first time she felt the force that compelled the loyalty of men like Agravain. There was a tremendous and titanic audacity in Mordred. For a moment she saw him as he saw
himself, the masterly man whose contempt for petty rules unleashed him to ordain the fates of nations.
Something like a lightning-bolt shot through her and to her horror, she recognised it as a perverse kind of attraction. If he had spoken to her like this two years ago on the balcony at Kitty Walker’s dance, might all things have happened differently?
“How you must hate Logres,” she said in a dry mouth.
“Hate Logres?” He leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “There is an anger that is deserved, Blanche. Tell me. Look me in the eye, if you can, and tell me—to my face—that Logres is without sin.”
Blanchefleur looked up, timid of his commanding gaze, keenly aware now of how completely she was in his power. Her voice seemed to have shrunk. “Of course I can’t. That would be foolish. Nothing on this earth is without sin.”
“That’s your excuse.” Mordred’s voice dripped contempt. “Let me show you a picture. Britain under Logres. Filled with injustice from one end to another. Ruled by a King without even the power to guarantee that his subjects will be free from oppression, invasion, or famine. Policed by a roaming, irresponsible gang of elite warriors whose whims and exactions are a harder burden upon the people than the monsters they claim to slay. Haunted by superstition. Enslaved by ignorance. Racked by disease.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
Mordred fixed his eyes on the pavilion roof. “You are shivering, in part because it is a winter day and this tent, the best Britain has to offer, is a poor shelter even for a prince of the blood. Behind the arras in your own chamber in Camelot, my men found a dead rat, which argues the presence of live creatures. Three of the ladies of Camelot died in childbed within the last six months I was there. What must the number be among the poor? While half the Table recently disappeared on the quest for a magical relic, leaving these isles yet more defenceless.”
“The Grail was real, and you know it!”
“Ask yourself,” Mordred went on inexorably, “if Logres truly is the kingdom of light. This is a place, I remind you, where the king’s steward strikes a perfectly harmless girl in the face for complimenting a young man, and goes unpunished. Where the penalty for adultery among the nobles is death by burning. Where the king and his champion go to war on a whim, and feuds follow manslaughter. Logres is rotten, root and branch. Riddled with hypocrisy upon hypocrisy—canting on about holiness, justice, truth, and brotherhood. Corrupt. Beyond saving.”
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