“Yes.”
For a little while they simply regarded the astonishing fact.
“Do you think he was telling the truth? About Mordred forcing him to do all those things against his will?”
Perceval stifled a yawn. “Does it matter?”
She laughed.
The road unwound before them, a pale skein in the moonlight. Blanchefleur slid in and out of full awareness; the only thing that kept her even partly awake was the fear of losing her balance and tumbling into the road. But the day’s events had left her drained to the last drop. She let her mind slip into numb silence.
Meanwhile Perceval pushed the horse between canter and trot. She wondered during one brief moment of wakefulness if he was hurrying too much; they could not be left unmounted in this extremity, stranded between safety and danger. But Perceval was the better judge of horseflesh. She resettled herself and closed her eyes.
Sometime in the night they reached the town of Trinovant and went to the great tower-fortress of the place, which at that time was held and governed by Sir Ector. She remembered torches, she remembered coming into warmth and seeing her old guardian blinking at them with the ruffled sleepiness of an owl. And then, for the first time in days—a roof over her head, and the softness of a real bed.
MORDRED’S VANGUARD APPEARED AT MID-AFTERNOON THE next day and began to pitch camp before the gates of the town. Blanchefleur passed the messengers in the passage as she went in to speak to Sir Ector.
“Blanchefleur,” he cried, looking up from a table where he was seated amid parchments and quills, scratching at a ledger. “Come in, come in.”
She hugged him and perched on the desk. “I woke late, and missed the excitement. What’s afoot? Have Mother and Branwen come?”
Sir Ector threw down his quill and began folding parchments. “There’s been no sign of them.”
“Not yet? Could we not send someone to find them?”
“Not with an army on our lawn. Mordred is here with his vanguard. If not for the two of you, he would have caught us by surprise. Perceval tells me he has several thousand men on their way. There’s nothing we can do for the Queen now.”
Blanchefleur nodded, knitting her brows. “They’ll take care of themselves, I’m sure, Mother and Morgan. Has anyone spoken to Mordred?”
“I sent a herald out to ask his business, making camp on our pasture-land like that.”
“What did he say?”
“Polite nothings. He did ask to see the Bishop of Ergyng.”
“He came here to be crowned King of Britain,” Blanchefleur recalled. “Perhaps he thinks the Bishop is more likely to do it if taken prisoner.” And cold shudders went down her spine at the thought of the games Mordred played with his prisoners.
“Most like,” Sir Ector agreed. “The Bishop is neither a traitor nor a fool, but I’ve sent for him to make sure.”
“Does Mordred know Perceval and I are here?”
Laughter shone in Sir Ector’s eye as he began to return books and parchments to their pigeonholes. “Sir Perceval thought it best to go out with the herald.”
Blanchefleur put both hands to her mouth. “Perceval did that? Oh, how I’d have loved to see the look on Mordred’s face.”
“Perceval said it was a beautiful sight.” Sir Ector unfolded a map of Trinovant on the table. Blanchefleur swung a leg and glanced around. The comfortable untidiness of this pigeon-holed room reminded her of the library in the old house in Gloucestershire, and also—for the memory was inextricably bound to the room—the day when Nerys and her guardian had first told her that she was not a child of that world.
Nerys. She took a breath, and then thought better of it, and said, “I can’t call you Guardian anymore. What shall I call you now?”
Sir Ector looked at her with one eyebrow canted up above his spectacles. These were the only remnant of the things he had worn and used in that other world; instead of waistcoats and smoking-jackets he wore a furred gown, and he had grown a full beard to accompany his moustache. He said, “Did I ever tell you that I raised your father?”
“The King? Yes. Yes, you did.”
“Times were dangerous for a baby heir then. I was only a humble young knight with a small son of my own. But for his own unspoken reasons, Merlin brought Arthur to me. Not until years later did I guess his true lineage.” Sir Ector smiled at her. “Uther Pendragon died within two years. He was your grandfather by blood. But you might call me Grandfather, if you like.”
“I’d love to.” Blanchefleur twisted her hands together. “Well, Grandfather, I should tell you—Mordred almost captured us when he took Camelot. If Nerys hadn’t got us to safety, I don’t know what might have happened. But Nerys didn’t make it.” She paused, trying to give him time to prepare himself. “He killed her.”
Sir Ector looked at her in unbelief. “How was that possible?”
“It was partly my fault. I left a knife of mine lying in my room, an obsidian blade. I got it in Sarras.”
“Nerys!” whispered Sir Ector. “I thought she would outlive us all.”
“Yes.” Again, she blamed herself for leaving the shadow knife where Mordred could find it.
Again, she reminded herself that she could not have foreseen Mordred’s crime.
Sir Ector pulled off his spectacles, slumped into his chair, and put a hand over his eyes. At length he said, “Yet it was her dearest wish. ‘Think of it!’ she said to me once. ‘An end to the long war!’ ” He looked at Blanchefleur with a painful smile. “Some days I long for the same rest myself.”
“The long war? Is that what she called it? But surely we can hope for some times of peace, even this side of Sarras?” Blanchefleur rubbed fingers against temples. “Do you remember the day you and she first told me about Logres? Do you remember what you told me then, about a prophecy?”
“About Arthur’s heir being the life of Logres?”
“Yes. That one.” Blanchefleur swallowed. “I’ve been thinking. I know the Ki—I know Father thought what I did in the Grail Quest fulfilled that prophecy, but what about Mordred? He’s a worse enemy than Morgan, and I keep thinking that if Mordred is to be stopped, maybe the responsibility is mine to stop him. And I haven’t stopped him yet.”
Sir Ector looked at her in surprise. “The prophecy said Logres would go on because of the Pendragon’s heir. Nothing about stopping Mordred.”
“And to think that I lived in Gloucestershire and never thought…” She slid from the table and went and ran a finger along the shelves, setting tasseled seals swinging. “Did you know Mordred was going to do this? Did you never find one of those old books—did you never…” she glanced down at him nervously “…read ahead?”
He stuck his thumbs in his belt and tilted his chair back to look at her. “I thought about it,” he admitted. “Every day for sixteen years, there in Gloucestershire, I thought about it. But in the end neither Nerys nor I thought it wise. I let her gather up the books—all the old romances that might hint how things would turn out—and take them away.”
“I wonder if she knew…”
“If she did, she never told me, and it was against our agreement.” He whistled softly between his teeth for a moment. “You see, the danger was that we could never trust the old romances. They were only memories of echoes, across the worlds, of the real thing that we are living. Who knows what might have been changed, or added, or forgotten? So we left them unread.”
Blanchefleur puffed out the ghost of a laugh. “Perhaps it is just as well that I cannot find them and read them now.”
Sir Ector said, so quietly that she almost failed to hear it: “I read the title of one of them as she took it away. It looked me in the face from her hands: I could not help it.”
“And?”
“It said in Middle French, The Death of Arthur.”
A cold hand settled around Blanchefleur’s throat and squeezed. At last she said: “But death comes—”
“To us and all mortals. I know. It may
be years in the future.”
“Oh, Grandfather! There must be something I can do.”
“Why, what are you thinking of?”
“I don’t know. But if I really am the Heir of Logres, I ought to be able to do something to save it, oughtn’t I?”
“And you will, if you’re meant to. But serving Logres is not only about sitting in council with the wise, or outfacing sorcerers, or wandering the streets of Sarras in search of the Grail. There are also those who build houses, and plough the earth, and rear children.”
“I suppose there are.” She thought about that for a while and said, “But I need to know if I’m the Heir of Logres, don’t I? And if I could only look back and say, yes, a thing I did preserved her, then I would know who I am.”
Sir Ector laughed. “Oh, is that the trouble? If it concerns you so much, whether you’re the Heir of Logres, why not ask?”
“Ask!” Blanchefleur stared at him. “Whom?”
“Your mother would know.”
“Why, I couldn’t.”
This time, Sir Ector lifted both his eyebrows above his spectacles in incredulity. “Why not?”
“I…” But she had regretted her silence before, when it was too late, the night Camelot fell. Why, after all, not? “Perhaps I could.” She slid off the edge of the desk. “If I see her again.”
AT THAT, ONE OF SIR ECTOR’S knights came in with the Bishop, and Blanchefleur, knowing she was not needed, slipped out and looked for Perceval. She found him in the armoury with his shield and a pot of red paint.
“Why,” she said, “you’re wearing your surcoat.”
Perceval pulled her in for a brief hug. “Yes.” He let go and picked up the little blunt knife with which he had been scraping flakes of paint off his shield. The three-pointed label across the gules and gold of Gawain was coming off, leaving a soft yellow cloud over the leather beneath. Blanchefleur took a second, closer look at his surcoat. Here, too, a darker red stripe showed where some appliquéd cloth had been torn away.
She understood. It was like swallowing a stone. “Oh, Perceval. When did it happen?”
He glanced back up to her. If there was any pain in him, it was so mixed with other griefs that she could not single it out from among them. “I do not remember how many days ago. The Lady of the Lake took me to him before the end came.”
Again, Blanchefleur understood. “He spoke to you? I’m so glad.”
“He did.” Perceval blew the last of the yellow flakes off his shield and reached for the red paint. With careful strokes he smoothed over the yellow cloud; the label vanished. “In the end, he was given enough grace for that. It is hard to mourn.”
Blanchefleur remembered what he had once said about the elation of first grief. She slid onto the bench next to him and leaned against his left shoulder. When the hard grief, the later grief came, she would be there.
Perceval said, “You have not told me what happened in the pavilion, with Mordred, before I woke.”
Blanchefleur winced and laughed a little. “I hoped you wouldn’t ask.”
Perceval finished with the paint, and returned the lid to the pot. “I am asking.”
“Well, he—he wanted to argue with me at first. He said a lot of nonsense, about Logres not being worth saving and the only purpose of Sarras being to distract people from what they can really do to help. He says Logres must be entirely destroyed.”
“What, right there in front of everyone?”
“Yes! Agravain, Alisander, Pertisant—I thought perhaps one of them would come to his senses when Mordred said that. I begged them to hear what Mordred was saying. But in the end they agreed with him.”
Perceval growled deep in his chest. “The shame of it! Even the Silver Dragon has some sense of honour, but not the brethren of the Table!”
“But they seemed so…” Blanchefleur searched for the right word. “So reluctant. So torn.”
He shook his head. “Have no unease on that account. There is a kind of flinty stubbornness that tricks itself out in the garb of pity. What happened after?”
“Well. Ah. Mordred asked me to marry him again. He said it would give him victory. So I refused. Then he said that he would let you and me go back to the other place, to Gloucestershire, you remember. Only we must sign away our title to Britain and Logres.”
Perceval nodded. “So I heard when I woke. He asked you to marry him again? Why did he do that? He knows what you think of him.”
“I don’t know why.” It was strictly true, but if she left it there, it would be like a lie. “But I nearly said yes. I am sorry.”
Perceval looked confused. “What? Why?”
“Well, he said a lot of things.”
Perceval went on staring at her. Blanchefleur felt herself becoming redder and redder. “It was only for a moment,” she mumbled. “And just for that moment, it seemed like the best way to keep him from killing everyone. Please don’t be vexed.”
“Oh, I’m not vexed.” She didn’t tell him she could feel his displeasure weighing down the air like a storm. “It just surprises me. Mordred!” He shook his head and reached for a pot of water to begin washing the paint-brush.
Blanchefleur put her cool hands to her hot cheeks, resting her elbows on the table. Perceval swished the brush in and out of the water. Suddenly, irrationally, she was cross with him. After everything Mordred had said and done, was Perceval just going to wash his paintbrush and pretend not to care?
“Perceval?”
“Yes?”
“Would you…I mean, what would it be like, if we weren’t able to marry for a very long time? How would you feel?”
Perceval’s brows stitched together. “Very irked. Why do you ask? I intend to marry you as soon as we have a spare day for it.”
“It’s just something Mordred said. He said not to make him wait longer. He said he would go mad unless I said yes.”
Perceval gaped for a moment. Then his shoulders heaved and his voice pealed out into laughter which cleared the air like thunder, until his face was red and tears streamed from his eyes and he was gasping for breath.
“Oh, Blanchefleur. I see it now. Do you not know the kind of thing a man says when he means to deceive?”
“No,” said Blanchefleur, covering her face with her hands and wishing she had not spoken, for nothing could be worse than the lightning-lash of his laughter.
“Ohhh.” Perceval tugged her hands away from her face. “Do understand me, dear love. I am deeply irked by each day that passes with this last barrier between us. Sometimes I do think I’ll go daft. But I have lasted this long without you; what kind of chicken-livered weakling would I be if I couldn’t last a little longer?”
He smiled at her, both amused and coaxing, and she gave in and melted against his shoulder. “Oh, Perceval! What a fool I’ve been.”
He fended her off with an elbow. “Don’t push me too far, woman. You might wake some of those raging passions of mine.”
IN THE HALL THAT NIGHT FOR the evening meal, Blanchefleur recognised, with dreamlike surprise, the doom-laden air of a city under siege. She told herself that she was still in danger, but no answering ripple of fear broke the calm of her mind. After what had passed the previous night in Mordred’s pavilion, it would take more than a siege to worry her.
They had finished the meal and were sitting with Ector at the high table, listening while he told them his arrangements for the defence of the town and fortress, when footsteps came on the pavement outside the hall and Blanchefleur looked up to see two women enter in the company of a man-at-arms.
She leaped to her feet. “Branwen! Mother!”
Even Branwen, huddled shivering under a cloak, seemed exhausted from wandering in the woods. But when she saw Blanchefleur, a smile broke like dawn across her face. She came running up to the table and flung cold, damp arms around her neck.
“Blanchefleur! Alive! And safe! I need to sit down.”
She sagged into a chair and closed her eyes.
&nb
sp; The Queen followed with more composure. “Blanchefleur. Now God be thanked. I mourned you as dead.” As she kissed her mother’s cheek, Blanchefleur thought she had never seen her so wet and draggled, even on the first morning in Joyeuse Gard. But if Guinevere felt the shame of her frightful condition, she betrayed it neither by word nor gesture, mistress of Logres still, despite the mud on her hem and the rain in her hair.
“How did you come here? Where is Morgan?” Blanchefleur asked.
Guinevere sank into a chair, smoothed her damp hair back, and said, “Do not ask me where Morgan is; we lost her, or she lost us, in the dark. We crossed the river, circled north, and came here. Did you find the knife?”
“The knife?”
“Branwen tells me you went to steal a knife from Mordred. This is all I know.”
Sir Ector was speaking to the man-at-arms. “You say Mordred is leaving?”
“His camp fires have gone. We sent out a scout, but he came back almost at once with the ladies.”
Blanchefleur said, “Oh, Mother. I got the knife from Mordred, but when I used it, nothing happened.”
“Why, what did you expect?”
Blanchefleur waved her hands. “According to Morgan, Mordred was no natural child. She bore him like her own son, but he was made with a strand of the King’s hair and the aid of hell.”
To her surprise a whole tide of expressions passed across the Queen’s face at this—some mixture of surprise, illumination, and relief followed by fierce triumph and something else that might have been disappointment or guilt. But all Guinevere said, in her soft high voice, was, “Indeed.”
Far away, a trumpet sounded. Sir Perceval and Sir Ector looked at each other, and left the room.
“Morgan said that if we used the knife on his shadow, it would dissolve the unnatural bond that made his body. Victory at one stroke.”
The Queen’s mouth thinned. “Did she so? We were watching from the trees when he captured you. I had a mind to ride down and bring you help, but Morgan said there was nothing the three of us could do.”
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