Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  “Neither, please, sire,” said Rothulf, the captain of infantry, speaking for them all. “We won’t trouble you long.”

  “You’ll not be troubling me,” Roland said.

  They smiled jerkily, glancing at one another, shuffling feet until he was moved to take mercy on them.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  It took a while, and visible gathering of courage, until Rothulf said, “Sire, we’re thinking it’s time we went home.”

  That was blunt enough.

  “It’s spring in the world, we hear,” Rothulf said. “We have wives, children, kin. They’ll have been mourning us for dead. And now with the planting, they’ll be needing us.”

  “And the spring muster,” Roland said.

  “We think we may be excused from that,” said Rothulf, “if we’ve been fighting the winter long.”

  “That’s what you’ll tell the king’s men?”

  Rothulf shrugged, a slow roll of the shoulders. “You let the enemy’s men go, took their memory away and sent them home. We’ll bow to that, if you’re the one to do it. Though some of us would like to remember a dream, if you’ll leave us that much.”

  Roland searched all their faces. “You are agreed on this?”

  They nodded.

  “I never meant to keep you here,” he said. “There’s the crowning and the festival; then you’d have been mustered out. But if you’d rather go sooner—”

  “No,” Rothulf said. “No, sire, we want to stay for that. But we thought—”

  He stopped in confusion. He was a ruddy man as so many of the Franks were; his face had flushed scarlet.

  “You thought you were prisoners,” Roland said. He shook his head. “My fault. I should have spoken to you long ago. You are free men. Free to keep your memories, too, though I will ask you to take oath that the secret kingdom will remain secret. You’re no more bound here than you ever were to the king’s wars, once those wars were over.”

  “No,” said one of the others—an older man than some, and smaller and darker. “That’s our fault for not trusting you. When the enemy’s men went out, ours started growling. We all forgot what we know of you.”

  “We remember now,” Rothulf said. “Are you angry? That we want to go home?”

  “And you say you know me,” said Roland.

  That abashed them into speechlessness.

  “Go,” he said. “Be comforted. You were the bulwark of this war. When you see your wives again, you may tell them: you defended the Lord’s kingdom, and helped destroy a great evil.”

  “Even if they don’t believe us?” the Breton asked wryly. But before Roland could answer, he said, “No, no, we’ll keep it in our hearts, and maybe tell it as a story to our grandchildren. How we fought a great war outside the world, and saw a king riding on a dragon’s back.”

  After they were gone, Roland sat for a long while. Home, he thought.

  The sun shone through the apple-boughs. Petals drifted down like snow. Somewhere nearby, a bird was singing, achingly sweet. He had but to open the eyes of his heart to see the whole of this kingdom, cupped like a jewel in his hands.

  He had not been thinking at all, only doing. Now it struck him what he had done; what he was, and was not.

  He was dead in Francia. They had buried a stranger’s body in his name, built him a shrine at the summit of Roncesvalles. There would be a new count in the Breton Marches, a new lord over the lands that had been his.

  He could not go back. That door was closed.

  But was it?

  Home. For all his childhood, that had been Broceliande, the old forest of Brittany. For the years of his young manhood, it had been the court and palatium of the Franks, and the living presence of the king. When he thought of that, of Charles whom he had served, whom he had loved, his heart ached till he could not bear it.

  He rose, turning slowly. All this beauty, this power, this magic, suddenly seemed strange; alien. They were not his. They had laid themselves on him, chosen him—but he had not chosen them.

  Even Sarissa . . .

  His heart clenched. She would never turn away from the Grail or from its kingdom. Her life and her spirit were given to it. Even for love of him, she would not turn her back on it.

  Longinus the Roman had somewhat surprised Roland, in that he was the chancellor of the king’s palace. He had not seemed the sort to be a clerk at all, and yet when Roland found him, he looked deeply content. He was reckoning long columns of figures on a frame of wires and beads, reading them off to a much more clerkly-seeming person with a roll of papyrus and a pen.

  Roland sat to watch, perched on a stool. The beads rattled through their computations. Longinus acknowledged him with a glance and a lift of the brow. Roland nodded, settling to wait.

  It was not so long a while. It calmed him, settled the roil in his middle. He slid into a half-dream.

  In the dream he was a child again, not yet a man. He ran through the wood of Broceliande. It was spring: the new leaves were springing, the clearings carpeted with flowers. Sometimes he ran as a deer, a yearling fawn; sometimes he flew as a hawk. He was as free as living creature could be.

  He shrank from fawn into boy, rolled and leaped and tumbled down a long grassy hill, and came up laughing.

  There was a stranger at the foot of the hill. He had almost never met anyone else in the wood. People did not go there for ease or pleasure. Hunters and woodsmen learned quickly that the wood did not welcome them.

  This was a man in worn clothes, much stained with travel. Mail glinted under the leather tunic. He had a helmet on his head, but he carried no weapon: no sword, no spear. He stood with his feet somewhat apart, like a sentry on watch.

  Roland circled him warily. He did not seem dangerous, and he was unarmed, but he was a stranger.

  He took no notice of Roland, though Roland was not trying to be invisible. He was facing west and south. A ray of the setting sun, glancing through a cloud, struck light in his face.

  Roland froze. It was his own face, the face he wore when he was awake. Maybe he had come to find Merlin, to see whether the sorcerer’s destruction had freed him; but Merlin was off to the east, where he did not seem inclined to go.

  “My lord.”

  He blinked. The face under the helmet was not his own after all; it was Longinus’, dark and strong and incontestably Roman.

  Broceliande shimmered and faded. He sat in the chancellor’s workroom, blinking at Longinus. “It was yours,” he said out of nowhere that he could name. “The spear. You—were—”

  “I was,” Longinus said. He was calm about it—after so long, why should he not be? He arched his back and stretched. The clerk was gone, the papyrus rolled and bound and laid away. It was only the two of them in the small lamplit room.

  “Have you ever wanted to leave?” Roland asked him. “To go home again?”

  “After so long, there’s no home left,” Longinus said, but without either grief or bitterness. “When it began . . . yes, I did dream of it, sometimes. But I’d chosen my place. I wouldn’t abandon it.”

  “What if the place had chosen you?”

  “It did that, too,” said Longinus.

  “You never resented the choosing? But then,” said Roland, “you came of your own will. Yes?”

  “I came because I could do no other.” Longinus fixed him with a keen stare. “You want to go back.”

  “I don’t know,” said Roland. “There’s been no time to think. Today the Franks—my Franks—came to me. They asked to be set free. As if this were a prison and they were bound. But they are not. I—I think I am. Or am I also free to go?”

  “You ask me?”

  “I think,” said Roland, “that you know a great deal of what passes in this kingdom.”

  “I think that you were raised to revere Romans overmuch,” Longinus said. “We were not gods, even those of us who claimed to be. We were men. No wiser, no stronger, than any other.”

  “Surely,” said Roland, “and y
ou have lived eight hundred years. I’ve lived two and twenty. I have no wisdom at all. I fought the battle I was brought here to fight. The power wielded itself through me. But now the war is over. The enemy is gone. I’m not the king you need now, the lord of peace. All I know is fighting and guarding.”

  “You’ll learn,” said Longinus.

  “What if I don’t want to? What if I walk away from here?”

  “Then you do,” Longinus said. “You’re not a prisoner, either. You can go. But if you go, you leave the Grail forever, and all that the Grail has wrought. That door, once shut, will not open again. You can never return.”

  Roland’s breath caught. “Then I’m not free, am I?”

  “You’re free to choose,” said Longinus, “but that choice is irrevocable.”

  “And if I choose to stay—am I bound here forever, too?”

  “You know that answer,” Longinus said.

  “Does it matter if I can ride in the world without crumbling to dust? I can’t be alive in Francia again. Not and be king of the hidden kingdom.”

  “That is so,” said Longinus.

  “You won’t advise me,” Roland said.

  “I won’t make your choice for you, no. When the Franks go, you can lead them. No one will stop you.”

  “Someone might,” Roland said, but softly, to himself.

  The recruits were in the field below the castle, beyond the torn and battered remnants of the battle, practicing at archery. A dozen of them were mounted on the white horses of Caer Sidi, instructed by two of Huon’s guardsmen. The horses were patient. The riders had little grace, but great dedication.

  “We reckon,” Kyllan said to Roland, “that the sleepers in the earth are still awake, and someone will have to hunt them out. And now we’ve learned to fight, we shouldn’t forget.”

  “Besides,” said his brother Peredur from the back of a calm-eyed white horse, “I always wanted to be a knight.”

  “First you have to learn to ride like a man instead of a sack of meal,” Kyllan said.

  It was odd to see him without Cait beside him. Her death had reft away a part of him. But he carried on in spite of it. He could still laugh; he could still taunt his brother. He was still Kyllan.

  “You ride!” Peredur challenged him. “See how well you look.”

  They would have come to blows if Roland had not plucked Peredur from the saddle and set him firmly on his feet. He bristled at his brother. Kyllan grinned infuriatingly.

  “Mount,” Roland said, “and ride.”

  “Ah, no,” Kyllan said. “I’m not—”

  “Mount,” said Roland.

  They were all in a circle now, archers and riders. Kyllan’s face was crimson under the crowding freckles.

  He made heavy work of it, but he heaved himself into the saddle. Once he was in it, he had some faint skill—as his brother muttered, from sitting on the plowhorse at planting time. He was no more graceful than Peredur had been.

  As he wobbled down the field on the patient horse, Peredur’s hand flicked. The stone caught the horse on the rump. He started, leaped forward.

  Kyllan left the saddle completely without ceremony. He came down rolling, fetching up at Roland’s feet. The horse stood with reins trailing, visibly embarrassed.

  “Ai,” said Kyllan.

  “Indeed,” Roland said. “Mount again. You’ve much to learn if you’re to be a knight of Montsalvat.”

  “You can’t do that to me,” Kyllan groaned.

  “Can’t I?”

  “I’m happy on foot,” said Kyllan. “I’m good on foot. I don’t want to—”

  “It’s much faster,” Peredur said. He had climbed back on the horse again, not too clumsily. “I’m going to learn to ride. Then while you’re trudging in the mud, I’ll be galloping over the hilltops.”

  “I’ll cheer you on,” Kyllan said. Roland stretched out a hand to pull him to his feet. He creaked as he rose, but the grin was breaking through. “Then again, maybe I’ll be flying over on a dragon.”

  “You can dream,” said Peredur.

  Roland laughed. They were all grinning.

  Here was home, this land, these people. He had never been born to either, but born for them—that, most certainly, he was.

  Maybe they might not understand why he snatched the reins of the nearest horse, deposited Long Meg crisply on her feet, and circled the field in a mad, headlong, wonderful gallop. Though more likely they would understand it, being what they were. He was claiming this earth for good and all, as it had claimed him.

  CHAPTER 66

  They crowned the Grail-king on the field of the battle, near the green mound in which the dead were laid. He had chosen that, the breast of earth and the embrace of the sky, rather than the great hall of Carbonek—and not only for the power that he might gain from it. All his people could come to him there, the Franks who had fought so well for a cause not their own, the villagers and levies of the domains, the lords, knights, princes. They had all come, all who could, human and not.

  On this day he suffered royal panoply. The people expected it—yes, his recruits, too, bright-eyed and grinning from ear to ear in the front ranks of the crowd. It was not the dreadful and useless parade armor; this was a ceremony of peace. They clothed him in cloth of silver, so stiff in its glory that he could barely move, and mantled him in deep blue silk and swansdown white as snow.

  If there was any comfort to be had, it was that all the lords were at least as splendid. The ladies of the Grail were more fortunate: their robes were simple white, as always.

  Sarissa’s was white samite and cloth of silver. He would have helped her to dress in it, but they were kept separate in the castle, she tended by the enchantresses, he by knights of the Grail, and by Marric, who was not to be thrust aside for any rank or pretension.

  They were allowed to meet at the castle’s gate. A milk-white mare waited for her. The snow-white stallion who waited for Roland had been a cat not long before.

  Sarissa’s face was grave as befit a queen going to her crowning, but her eyes were laughing. Roland took her hands in his and raised them to his lips. It was a promise, for later; a promise he well meant to keep.

  They rode side by side across the bridge, hoofbeats echoing down the walls of the chasm. The knights of the Grail rode before them, the lords of Montsalvat behind. The white ladies led them all, bearing the shrine, and in it the Grail.

  Roland’s hand, reaching, met Sarissa’s. Hand in hand they rode to the crowning.

  “No regrets?” Turpin asked. The feast was glorious, and uproarious. The sun was setting on it, and no end of it to be seen.

  Roland had left the crown and the heavy mantle in the high seat. Sarissa was there still, listening to a consort of musicians—she loved music dearly. In a little while, when the music was ended, she would make her escape.

  Turpin was coming from the camp-privies while Roland went to them. When Roland came back, Turpin was still there, sitting on the hill near the gate of Carbonek.

  Roland freed himself of his robes. The tunic and hose beneath were of silk, but sturdy and sensible enough. He sat beside Turpin, drew up his knees and set his chin on them, and watched the sun go down over the army of feasters.

  “No regrets,” he said, somewhat belatedly. “Not any longer.”

  “Good,” said Turpin.

  “And you?” Roland asked. “Are you riding out tomorrow with the rest?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  Roland shot a glance at him. “They’re leaving tomorrow. The Franks. Rothulf will take Pepin to the abbey outside of Toulouse, where he was supposed to have been from the beginning; and where, he will swear, the good Father Ganelon died of a winter rheum. He’ll remember nothing but a long dull retreat and a dark dream. Maybe he’ll be easier in spirit thereafter.”

  “The Grail can heal him after all?”

  “It can free him from the burden of memory,” Roland said, “and bury his magic deep, where he cannot find it
or be tempted by it. He’ll go out from here a mortal man—for both good and ill.”

  “Do you know,” Turpin said after a pause, “you’re rather a terrible personage when you choose to be.”

  Roland blinked. “I? I’m not—”

  “You are,” said Turpin. “And no, I’m not going.”

  “Of course you’re going,” Roland said.

  “No,” Turpin said with visible patience. “This is my place now, as it is yours.”

  Roland’s eyes stung with tears—sudden and not at all expected. “Swear you’re not doing it for me.”

  “I belong to the Grail,” Turpin said. “And to you—I won’t lie about that. I’ve always been yours: friend, servant, father confessor. I only wish—”

  “Olivier knows,” Roland said. “He went ahead of us. When the time comes, he’ll show us the way.”

  “That could be a thousand years,” Turpin said.

  Roland shivered lightly, though the evening was warm. “Do you wish at all that you could undo it? That you could be Charles’ man again, and archbishop in Rheims?”

  “Rather than Roland’s man, and a Christian priest in a decidedly un-Christian realm?” Turpin shrugged, smiled. “Maybe I’ll convert a pagan or two. Maybe I’ll spend a hundred years in the bliss of the Grail. I can do that, brother. I can do whatever God calls me to do.”

  “God or gods,” Roland said, “or the Goddess who, my queen will tell you, was before them all.”

  “Heresy,” said Turpin with a shudder, but he was still smiling. He struck Roland’s shoulder lightly with a fist. “Look, there—is that your queen?”

  It was indeed, tall and white in the twilight. Roland would have hung back, but Turpin pushed him toward her. “Go on. Don’t keep her waiting.”

  “She understands,” Roland said.

  “I’m sure she does,” said Turpin. “And I’m sure she’ll be glad to have you to herself.”

  Roland glanced back once as he descended the hill. Turpin sat like a stone in the gloom, heavy and solid and altogether of earth, but with a fire in the heart of him.