The Heir of Logres

by Suzannah Rowntree

  The King tore a piece of venison from the bone, gave it to the hound Cavall, and said: “Ah yes, Mordred! His flight proves his villainy and argues in favour of Lancelot’s story, that he has worked to Guinevere’s undoing in all this strife.” He glanced at the Queen and said, very gently, “That somewhat undoes the case against you, lady wife.”

  Guinevere bent her head in silent acknowledgement of his words. There was a wistful curve in the corner of her mouth, a sweetness of hope in the air. But if she was glad to be in the King’s favour again, why did she duck her head as if to hide her face?

  Perceval took a mouthful of wine and said, “Mordred’s treachery explains much. For one thing, his alliance with that ruffian Saunce-Pité.”

  Blanchefleur nodded. “It also explains why, in Gloucestershire, Mr Corbin was able to guess all my secrets. Although if he wished to kill me, why did he ask me to marry him?”

  Perceval said, “He saw the opportunity. Easy enough to deal with you as he liked once he had you. When you refused him, he sent the giant.” He shook his head. “I never guessed Mordred was the man from Gloucestershire. In Logres he never spoke to me for more than five minutes together, never in clear daylight, never by his act but by mine. I told myself it was my imagination that he avoided me.”

  “You said he was Morgan’s master,” said the King to Blanchefleur. “Not her underling?”

  “No.” She traced the grain of the wooden table. “Morgan told me again and again that she was being used by someone. At first I did not believe her. But she acted so desperately… She gave me a vision to explain who that master was. I did not understand it at first.”

  She swallowed and picked her words carefully. “When I saw that Simon Corbin was Mordred, and that Mordred was Morgan’s son, the vision made sense. The vision showed Morgan with a baby. Her son.”

  She looked at the King appealingly, not willing also to bring up the slander insinuated by Morgan and declared outright by Agravain—but wishing and hoping that he might tell her what to think of it.

  The King either overlooked or did not see the question in her eyes. “Well?” he prompted.

  “If Mordred was Simon Corbin, the man who dogged my tracks and tried to keep me in Gloucestershire,” Blanchefleur argued, “then he must be Morgan’s partner in crime, or more likely, given the purpose of the vision, her master.”

  “Certainly, he did not deny it.”

  The Queen said, “Rather, he fled, declaring himself without a doubt our enemy and sacrificing his strong position. This troubles me. He must have planned for such a possibility—he must have had his horse waiting. What will he do next?”

  Perceval said, “We have men out looking for him. I have sent Caradoc north to watch the road to the land of the Silver Dragon. If Mordred travels that way, Caradoc will send word.”

  The King nodded. “Unless we take him soon, before he reaches safety.” He wiped his moustache and stood up. “The sooner we return to Camelot, the better. I am uneasy away from my citadel, like a naked man in the snow.” But he kissed his wife, called to his hound, and went out of the tent with none of the fatigue that had lain on his shoulders the previous day.

  THAT AFTERNOON BLANCHEFLEUR CAME TO CAMELOT, riding with the King’s vanguard. They took the few hours’ ride from Joyeuse Gard quickly, not delayed by oxcart or siege engines. The ride was a pleasant one; winter sun flooded the floor of the leafless forest with light and warmth, so that beneath that golden eye it was easy to hope that all their troubles were over. And Camelot, which she had dimly sensed looming in the midnight sky a few nights ago, stood brightly unveiled now, its chaotic lines softened by the grey tracery of trees.

  Camelot sprawled. Part of it had been built by the Romans, parts by other kings of other peoples, and now it was a rambling labyrinthine pile crowning the hill, sprouting turrets and stairways, little roads and tucked-away terraces, a haphazard heap of house, garden, city, and castle.

  Blanchefleur and Branwen were given a roomy chamber on the south, where the sun sloped through big arched windows set with glass. From these the wall dropped sheer away into the castle garden, which at this time of the year was dead and bare. But Blanchefleur threw open the casement and called in delight, “Branwen, can you imagine how beautiful this would have been in summer? It must have looked like Sarras. What a shame it’s all dead now!”

  “It will come again.” Branwen’s voice was muffled. “Look what I found behind the tapestry! A whole room for storing clothes!”

  Blanchefleur pulled the casement to and followed the sound of Branwen’s voice to a little shelf-lined room. “For clothes? It looks more like a pantry to me.”

  “Well,” Branwen giggled, “to be sure, let us keep some pork pies in here for when we are hungry in the night.”

  Blanchefleur shook her head. “No, you stick to nuts and plums. I don’t care for pork-pie-scented dreams. I shall just have to get more clothes.” She looked around the store-room. “Many more clothes.”

  Branwen laughed and darted out. When she came back, a saddle-bag hung from each hand. “Here are my things.” She laid one bag on one shelf. “And here are your things.” She opened the other, shook out Blanchefleur’s spare tunic, and folded it neatly onto another shelf. The next thing she took from the bag was the little black knife in its leathern sheath.

  “The obsidian knife,” Branwen said, waving it at Blanchefleur. “You should wear this.”

  Blanchefleur took it gingerly. “Do you think so? For everyday use? Isn’t it too fine?”

  “Of course it is. I don’t mean you should use it. But with that knife you defeated Morgan le Fay. It would be like carrying her head with you.”

  Blanchefleur laughed. “Ugh!”

  “So that no one forgets who you are.”

  “If you say so.” At that moment a knock sounded on the outer door, and Blanchefleur opened the door to Perceval.

  “Come into the garden and talk,” he said, gathering her into his arm. To Branwen he added, “You’ll find Heilyn with Sir Culhwch in the hall. They want to see you when you are ready.”

  Branwen said, “Oo!” and looked at Blanchefleur with wide and eager eyes.

  “Go, go,” Blanchefleur told her, pulling her cloak around her shoulders. As Branwen darted down the corridor ahead of them, she said to Perceval, “She hopes they’ve set a wedding date.”

  Perceval looked wry. “It’s a harder business than you might think. Especially when the marriage is an affair of state.”

  “So it won’t be today for us?”

  “It would be if I had a say in it. But the furthest your father will commit himself is to having his council approve a contract of betrothal by Sunday.”

  He pushed open a door and they went through into the icy garden. Blanchefleur sighed in disappointment and then said, “What a goose I am! Two days ago I was afraid you no longer cared for me. This afternoon it seems hard that I cannot marry you within the hour.”

  She slipped her arm through Perceval’s and leaned her head on his shoulder as they went down a path with frosty leaves crackling underfoot. “I am so glad about the King—about Father and Mother. Will there be a retrial, do you know?”

  “Your mother wants it. When Mordred is found.”

  “You don’t think the new verdict would be in doubt?”

  “I do not. With Mordred a fugitive, things that seemed certain a month ago are like daydreams today.”

  A hawk drifting in the sky to the south, above the forest, screamed. Blanchefleur smiled, lifted her face to the sun, and sniffed fresh cold air. “I am so glad! Yesterday, it seemed like everything had ended.”

  But Perceval shook his head. “Brothers of the Table have killed each other in battle, Blanchefleur. Perhaps you cannot feel it, but I can. A chill in the air. This peace is brittle as glass. One careless knock, and—” he made a scattering gesture. “All the King’s work. All these years. His pride and joy—and it is no more. It has already gone.”

  Blanchefleur
could not help shivering. Her mind went down gloomy paths; at last she said, “What is your father doing?”

  “Sitting in the chapel by his kin.” Perceval’s voice froze. “He would not allow me to set foot over the threshold.”

  “Oh, Perceval.”

  “I went to speak to Lynet instead,” he went on. “She yet barely comprehends what has happened. I have seen it before. There is a kind of elation in the first blow of grief. In three or four months she will begin to understand the meaning of gone. That will be harder.”

  “And you?”

  He smiled wearily. “I continually forget what has happened. Remembering is like waking in the waste from dreams of food and warmth.”

  They walked on in silence for a few steps. Blanchefleur said, “And your father?”

  “I cannot tell what good he thinks it does to be angry.”

  Blanchefleur picked her words carefully. “He was not the only angry man in the King’s pavilion yesterday, dearest.”

  Perceval’s jaw set. “One only has so much patience.”

  “I know, but…Didn’t you hear what he said, about King Lot?”

  “Grandfather has nothing to do with this.”

  Again she felt distance between them. And only the previous morning they had understood each other so perfectly.

  But she had her own secrets, and she could not reproach him for his reserve if she kept hers. Blanchefleur said, “There’s one thing I haven’t told anyone, Perceval. About Sarras.”

  He nodded, but his voice came from far away, as though he was thinking of other things. “Yes?”

  “I knew Mordred was Morgan’s secret master because when I asked who, she showed me into her memories. Showed me that she had had a son.”

  Perceval nodded again. “You said so.”

  “Yes. But there was one other thing.” Blanchefleur took a deep breath. “She told me, more or less, that—that the King was the child’s father.”

  Perceval turned to her with a gesture of disbelief. “Of course she did! …What, exactly, did she show you?”

  “Only the two of them walking together, years ago. And then Morgan leaving Camelot with her baby. And then she said that, if it comforted me at all, they did not know then that they were brother and sister.”

  “I will not believe it,” Perceval said. “A brother and sister may walk together, surely.”

  “Yes, but that wasn’t what she meant.”

  “I do not believe the King would do it.”

  “You didn’t believe your father would be angry with you for fighting for Lancelot.”

  Perceval almost flinched. Blanchefleur said, “Oh, Perceval, forgive me. I just—need someone to tell me what to think about this. If it is true. You heard what Agravain said yesterday. Perceval, it’s been preying on my mind for a whole year, and I haven’t told a soul.”

  Their feet crunched through dead leaves. Blanchefleur shortened her step to match Perceval’s limp. He said at last, “I know what you mean. If the King…if he…”

  “…then it doesn’t matter what Mother did. None of it matters. Logres is a lie.”

  Perceval’s voice was husky. “No. Not a lie.”

  “There are times when I’m convinced she must have been telling the truth. Anything Morgan says is like a nut—you must crack the shell of falsehood to get at the kernel of truth. She has been a liar so long I don’t believe she could give a straight warning to anyone, even when she so desperately wanted to warn me about Mordred. But what if there’s a kernel of truth to what she says about the King?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “And then there are times when I think it all impossible. Does it not seem impossible to you?”

  “Of course.” Perceval squeezed his eyes shut. At last he said, “Yet there is the resemblance.”

  “You saw it too.”

  “I could never tell who Mordred reminded me of,” he said. “The King? Or someone else? It was, in the end, Simon Corbin. But Simon Corbin is the King’s own image.”

  Crunch-crunch. Crunch-crunch.

  Blanchefleur said, “He’s trying to kill me so he can inherit Logres.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why.”

  “But a bastard cannot inherit, and Logres split and weakened is no great patrimony.” Perceval smiled down at her. “Let us hope! When Mordred is caught and questioned, the whole hard truth will come out.”

  Blanchefleur ducked her head and kept her eyes on the path. At last, almost in a whisper, she said: “Do we want it to?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Even if it’s true? That Mordred is the King’s son?” Blanchefleur pressed her lips together. “If it’s true, he’s been lying to us. Everything he’s said or done for the last twenty-five years, a lie…” Her eyes were suddenly hot with tears. “Or even if we knew the truth, what could I do? How could I denounce him? Perceval, it’s my father.”

  He looked at her with a pain that mirrored her own. “God knows, Blanchefleur! If I knew, I would tell you!”

  “But it isn’t just me. He’s been a father to all of Logres. Was it all for nothing? The Table? The Quest?”

  “Never,” he said, but his voice was ragged and weak. He cleared his throat. “Never. Logres is greater than one man. Greater than you or me, and greater than the King. Oh, Blanchefleur, I weep for the Table. There were a hundred of us on the Pentecost before the Quest. Now only sixty-two of the sieges have names on them, and a third of those are exiled to Wales with Lancelot. Even so there are enough of us left to keep Logres alight.” He cast a glance over his shoulder, to the castle. “Or even if all of us perished…”

  “Or even if all of us sinned as badly.”

  Perceval fell silent. “Yes,” he said at last, and the words seemed to cost him some effort. “Even if all of us sinned. If we all turned aside and went astray. If we fell into ruin and the shadow of death together, Logres would go on, even if we were no more.”

  Blanchefleur said, very quietly, “Do you think that will happen?”

  He passed his hand over his eyes. “Who can tell? But I have seen into your world, many years into the future, and I saw Logres there. It was wavering, perhaps even dying. But that is the pattern of the Kingdom. It will always be dying. But it will live forever. It was founded on another and greater King even than the High King of Britain.”

  A breeze picked at Blanchefleur’s hair. She closed her eyes and breathed in. “You make me hope.”

  “That is why, in the end, it makes no difference how our fathers have sinned,” he continued. “We know that the hearts of men are wicked. We have known it since the beginning. But shall Logres be utterly thwarted by the sins of man?”

  Blanchefleur said: “Not forever; not when all is said and done. But in our time, perhaps…”

  “Yes.” Perceval stood stock-still, and Blanchefleur watched his struggle in anxious silence. “In our time…Omnes enim peccaverunt…” He drew his arm from her grasp. “Dear heart, I need to go.”

  “To speak to your father.”

  “Yes.”

  He turned his back on her and went without another word. But Blanchefleur no longer felt the distance lying between them like a wound.

  7

  I will weep for thee;

  For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like

  Another fall of man.

  Shakespeare

  PERCEVAL MET HEILYN IN THE PASSAGE. “I came to find you,” the squire told him. “They are burying Gareth and Gaheris tonight. Did you know of it?”

  “Lynet told me, but at first I thought it best to stay away.” Perceval turned and looked out the door into the garden, where the slanting sunlight had already diminished, leaving the sky cold and leaden. “So late,” he murmured, and strode ahead of Heilyn toward the chapel.

  The little high-ribbed room was already full of people holding off the dark with tapers. On the threshold Perceval turned to Heilyn. “Go in. I’ll wait here.”

  He sank back into
the shadows in the corner of the door. Latecomers passed by, apparently without noticing him. Perceval folded his arms, let his chin sink upon his chest, and listened through the breathing and shuffling of the crowd to the words of the funeral service. He knew the words well; his lips moved with the prayer.

  “Receive, O Lord, the souls of thy servants. Free them from the principalities of darkness so that they be born into eternal blessing of quiet and light, and deserve to be resuscitated among thy saints and elect in the glory of the Resurrection, through our Lord Jesu Christ, thy son, who with thee lives and reigns together with the Holy Spirit, through all ages of ages. Amen.”

  A good prayer for the living, too, thought Perceval. In these days of confusion and strife, in these days of sin and foolishness, his soul longed for some assurance of eternal peace.

  “Do not enter into judgement with thy servants, for before thee, no man is justified, unless all of his sins have been granted forgiveness by thee. Therefore we beseech thee, that they do not bear thy condemnation who are sustained by thy grace. May these be worthy to evade the condemnation of vengeance, who lived marked with the sign of the Trinity, through our Lord Jesu Christ, thy son, who with thee lives and reigns together with the Holy Spirit, through all ages of ages. Amen.”

  Life marked with the sign of the Trinity. What did it look like? How could he know a thing that nothing in the world could fully manifest? But already his lips were answering:

  “Pour forth thy mercy on thy dead servants, O Lord, that they not receive the condemnation unto punishment because of their works. May thy mercy join them to the angelic chorus through our Lord Jesu Christ, thy son, who with thee lives and reigns together with the Holy Spirit, through all ages of ages. Amen.”

  Perceval waited. The coffins went down into the crypt; the flagstones grated within the chapel, covering two of the four brothers of Orkney. At last, one by one, the people began to leave: brothers-at-arms, lords, servants, merchant-men and craftsmen from the town. Only the King, with Sir Kay on his right hand and Sir Bedivere on his left, paused when he saw Perceval standing in the shadows.