The Heir of Logres

by Suzannah Rowntree

  They stole down back passages and stairways to the kitchen. This too was deserted; only a cauldron of hot water steamed pointlessly over a dying fire, waiting for the oats that would never come.

  “Everyone’s gone,” Blanchefleur said with a swift premonition, hanging back.

  “Good.” Branwen took a firmer grip on her hand and marched her down into the buttery, a room sunk below ground and stocked with barrels, bottles, and wineskins.

  And also with stranger store.

  In the centre of the floor was heaped a great pile of boxes and bundles, but these had a sinister look, for one narrow black thread led from each of them to a thick black rope lying upon the ground, flame-tongued, sputtering and fizzing. All this was visible in the candlelight, for here at last they found another soul.

  A woman in the sable robes of a nun, her shadow huge and gaunt in the flickering light, turned at the sound of their entry and smiled with thin red lips.

  Blanchefleur saw her face, and all hope died.

  “Morgan!”

  The Queen of Gore smiled a little more broadly.

  “So my errand is done before I begin,” she said.

  10

  Though all lances split on you,

  All swords be heaved in vain,

  We have more lust again to lose

  Than you to win again.

  Chesterton

  BEFORE BLANCHEFLEUR COULD MOVE, OR SPEAK, or think what to do next, Morgan glanced down at the sputtering fuse on the floor, and ground it out with her toe.

  Blanchefleur lifted her gaze to Morgan’s absurdly wimpled face, and quelled the urge to pinch herself again. “I warn you,” she whispered. “Whatever it is you want from us, you will perhaps win harder than you can afford.”

  “I am not here to kill you.”

  “Really.”

  “Oh, for St Peter’s sake…” Morgan gestured to the dead fuse. “If I wanted you dead, I would have stayed away and let this blow you to the other side of Sarras.”

  There was something strange in Morgan’s manner, something new, and suddenly the hair rose on the back of Blanchefleur’s neck, for she had the notion that a different soul now walked and spoke in Morgan’s body. She took a wary step back. “True enough. What else do you want?”

  A bitter smile curled half Morgan’s mouth. She said: “I want you to trust me. Now, and without asking questions. I mean to bring you out of Camelot safely, but if we stand here much longer Mordred will come in looking for answers.”

  Blanchefleur stood speechless. Her first impulse was to laugh. Morgan lied the way other people breathed. Yet was this the best she could manage? Why no careful web of falsehood?

  Did she count on them believing such a threadbare story?

  And whether they believed her or not, what hope was there of escape? Not even Sir Kay’s cellar would shield them from an explosion in the next room.

  Blanchefleur looked at the stack of boxes and bundles and said, “What is it?”

  “Dynamite,” Morgan said, “and you saw it before in the spire of Sarras, for Mordred has the secret of its making, and by your leave I’ll light the fuse and finish us all off before he comes in and finds us.”

  She swept the torch down toward the fuse.

  “No!”

  “Wait!”

  Morgan looked up at them, and saw the surrender in their faces.

  “Good,” she said. “Now, here is the way of it: I came here when I knew what Mordred intended. In the north passage above the chapel I met Nerys the Fay. When I asked after you, she said you were safely hidden. Therefore she must have given you a key to the other world.”

  Blanchefleur made no sign of assent or dissent. Morgan shrugged and went on.

  “Mordred suspects you are here. He thinks to destroy the castle and anyone hiding in it, and so he has had Camelot emptied and surrounded so that none can escape. There is only one chance. We must find a door that will weather the blast, and use the key to go through it. Between an apple-tree and a walnut, in the wall between the garden and the town, there is an iron gate. If I light the fuse, there will be time enough to run to the gate and use the elf-key…”

  Morgan spoke almost too fast to be understood, but as the words tumbled out Blanchefleur took a step closer, and then another, studying the witch’s face. Branwen dragged at her arm the whole way, speechless with terror.

  That was it. Merciful heavens, that was it, that was the thing that was new in Morgan’s manner.

  She meant what she was saying, every word. No lies. No mockery.

  Blanchefleur gathered her wits and spoke. “I have a key—Branwen, it’s all right—and I know the gate you mean.”

  Relief flared in Morgan’s eyes. “Then there is still a chance for us.” She shifted her grip on her torch and looked at the fuse. “Run…”

  Blanchefleur and Branwen fled. Branwen took the lead: “I know the quickest way.” But at the door leading into the garden, Blanchefleur pulled her back and broke their stride just long enough to glance into the icy morning. In the drab winter garden, among the smoky blue-grey of naked trees, nothing moved.

  They went out, running under the wall until they reached the place Morgan had spoken of—a beautiful gate, all scrolling iron-work, with a midsummer tree traced in the centre. But when Blanchefleur fumbled the key into the lock and flung it open its inner side was smooth oak and the Vicarage spare room loomed before them again.

  They stepped down into the night and turned to see Morgan running through the trees behind them. Blanchefleur whipped the key from the lock of the gate and brought it inside, fitting it to the lock of the wardrobe. Then a thought struck both of them at once, for she and Branwen glanced from Morgan’s flying figure, first to each other and then to the key.

  She was still the Enemy of Logres. How much blood was on her hands? And all they had to do was lock the wardrobe door.

  For a heartbeat or two they stared at each other, eyes wide, breathing fast. Then Branwen said: “No.”

  “No,” Blanchefleur echoed.

  Then Morgan was with them, gasping for breath, and Blanchefleur whisked the door shut and locked it.

  For a moment there was no sound in the little room but their breathing and the slam of racing hearts in their ears. Then Blanchefleur said:

  “Even if the gate is destroyed in the blast, we can use the key to open another door, can’t we?”

  Morgan settled herself cross-legged on the floor and shook her head. “From this side of the door only the Elves can do that.”

  “But you’ve done it without a key. With Sir Odiar.”

  “That was not Elvish skill,” Morgan said. Her voice bristled, but after a little time she spoke again, more softly.

  “In Sarras, you used the shadow knife to shear all my power away. Do you not remember? I can open no more gates; the rulers of the air come no more to my call.”

  Branwen was wide-eyed in the moonlight. “You have no magic anymore? Blanchefleur did that to you?”

  “Yes.”

  Blanchefleur leaned her head back against the wardrobe door. How bitter a humiliation must that have been for one of Morgan’s self-conceit? “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had done that.”

  Morgan shook her head in the darkness. “Why should you be sorry? The airy ones only desire the destruction of Sarras and the corruption of all mortal flesh. And after they abandoned me I was no more use to Mordred. I looked for a place of refuge, but no one was willing to shield me. Even my lover closed the door in my face, telling me to be grateful he did not turn me over to his new master.”

  “Sir Odiar? That must have been before Perceval killed him, of course.”

  “Odiar is dead? Then am I avenged.” For a moment there was a fierce note of triumph in Morgan’s voice. Then it faded. “No one would give me shelter, not even my true son, Ywain. Only the church gave me sanctuary.”

  Branwen stared. “You truly are a nun now?”

  “I will be.” Morgan paused, and went on a
lmost shyly. “So be not sorry for what you did in Sarras. Nothing else could have woken me from those blasphemous dreams. When the light of day stripped away every illusion, what could I do but kiss the Son?”

  A nun. It was dark in the Vicarage bedroom, for the moon had set. Blanchefleur stared at Morgan’s dim outline and tried to stretch her mind around this notion. Morgan, erstwhile Witch of Gore and Enemy of Logres, now a penitent and an ally? Could it be true? Yet surely if there was a flutter of deceit in Morgan’s voice she would have heard it?

  “You said you met Nerys,” Blanchefleur said.

  “Yes. While I was looking for you. She told me you were safe. I have not seen her since.”

  “Mordred killed her.”

  “Surely not! One does not so easily cut the ties that bind an immortal to life.”

  “He used the same obsidian knife as—you remember.”

  Morgan drew in her breath. “The knife! Where is it?”

  “Mordred has it.”

  In the dark, Blanchefleur heard the whisper of air and fabric as Morgan threw up both her hands. “Then how are we to kill him?”

  “How? In battle, surely? Mordred isn’t immortal, like Nerys.”

  “Not just like Nerys,” Morgan said. She thrummed her fingers gently against the wardrobe. “Hear me: there is something you should know about my second son.”

  Blanchefleur felt her heart sink into her stomach. “He’s my brother.”

  “Not in the way you mean. Mordred is…” Morgan’s thrumming continued, as if collecting scattered or nervous thoughts. “…made, not conceived. I took a hair from the King’s head.”

  In a flash Blanchefleur understood, and recoiled in horror. “The thing you intended to use the Grail for? You already did it?”

  Morgan said, “Yes. Mordred is a simulacrum, an unnatural man made from a strand of hair. I made him to subvert his father’s throne.”

  “And he knows this?”

  “Mordred? Yes. He knows.”

  Blanchefleur’s stomach twisted and she clamped one hand to her middle and another to her mouth, fighting back the angry words that threatened to pour out. Make a son to destroy Logres? How could she? How dare she?

  And then all of the anger went out of her in a rush, and she gasped a breath of hope, scented and warm like the first day of spring. But this meant that Arthur her father was innocent in the matter. And all this time, she had suspected him wrongly.

  She slid to the floor and sat down beside the others, suddenly weak. It occurred to her that this was the first real good news she had tasted in months.

  Morgan went on: “Later, when he was grown, Mordred drove a bargain with certain of the rulers of the air. Under their protection, he cannot be killed. He remains in his body even when the wounds he receives are enough to kill a mortal. With my power gone, I cannot unmake him and steel cannot slay him. Our only hope is the shadow knife.”

  “Why,” Branwen asked, “what will that do?”

  “It shore all my power away,” Morgan said. “It will do the same for Mordred: dissolve his pact with the airy ones and cut the ties that hold his unnatural body together.”

  “Kill him, you mean? But Mordred has the knife.”

  “Yes.”

  Blanchefleur saw it standing in front of her like a stone, just as the others did, but because she was the Pendragon’s Heir and the Heir of Logres, she was the one who needed to say it.

  “Someone is going to have to go and recover the knife and cut away the shadow.”

  “Yes,” said Morgan.

  “Have you any idea how?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Why is he destroying Camelot?” Blanchefleur asked. “Why is he not occupying it?”

  Morgan said: “He is going to Trinovant to have himself crowned King of Logres. He means to move fast, to gather men and the crown before the King returns. So he dare not leave Camelot standing, nor the Heir of Logres for Arthur to regain.”

  “So,” Blanchefleur said, thinking out loud, “he will destroy the castle, and perhaps search the grounds and the town one more time, and then he will ride for Trinovant, and he will take the knife with him. And we cannot know when the King will hear of it. Everyone else is captured, and we have no horses, and no one but us knows that Mordred cannot be killed.”

  “I have a horse, a palfrey, hidden outside,” said Morgan. “And a brother came with me on another.”

  “Then we have a choice,” Blanchefleur said. “We can send one of us north to warn the King. Or the three of us can follow Mordred to Trinovant, and try to get the knife from him to kill him.”

  Morgan said, “Arthur may already know. If Nerys knew of Mordred’s plans, then Nimue also knew, and may have sent word to the King.”

  Blanchefleur nodded. “Then it’s decided. We follow Mordred.”

  PERCEVAL COULD NOT REMEMBER HOW LONG it was since he had slept. Since leaving Lancelot’s domain in Northern Wales he had pressed on with reckless speed; the horse he straddled now was the sixth he had worn out in three days. Sleep, he had told himself, was a luxury he could not afford—but at some point the night had stolen a march on him, for he remembered drifting from visions of danger and threat into waking dreams of trees and shadows.

  Thus, when he rode down the last long hill early on the fourth morning, with pale dawn blushing in the sky, and passed beyond the trees and paused before the ford of Camelot, he thought for a long breathless moment that he must still be dreaming.

  Camelot, the seat of the most blissful court in Christendom, decked in flags and banners, cooled and sweetened by tree and vine, was gone.

  Where towers and walls had sprung toward heaven, and the high rafters of the great banqueting-hall had arched like the necks of war-horses, only a great blasted mass of rubble remained. Blackened stones littered the meadow like marbles hurled from a giant’s hand. What destructive force could have so smashed and scattered the place? Perceval could not begin to imagine.

  Nor had the little town clustered by the castle’s foot escaped. Fire had raged through the whole place, consuming everything perishable to fine ash; here and there a stone wall or chimney stood above the wreck, but not even the massive oak ribs of the great merchant-houses remained.

  For a few long heartbeats Perceval stared at Mordred’s handiwork. He felt nothing: neither shock, nor sorrow, nor anger. Then, like the slow cold prick of a knife, he remembered that this place had been his home. Only then did it occur to him to fear what might have become of Blanchefleur, of Branwen and the others.

  He forded the river and went up to the city gate. Much of the wall still stood, though blasted and blackened, and here, just within the gate, he found what remained of Camelot.

  Makeshift shelters were pitched against the walls. Grey men and women sat hunched over cooking fires. Some sifted through the dust for anything that could be salvaged. Others worked on new shelters. Many lay huddled and hopeless on the ground.

  At the sight of Perceval a shout and murmur went up. One ash-grey figure rose and came toward him, holding a child on her hip, and Perceval looked into a face smeared with soot and pinched with worry, which in blither days he had seen carefree and contented among the high ladies of Logres when they sat clustered in the great hall’s gallery like the blossoms on an apple-tree.

  “Lynet,” he croaked, and a wave of dizzy tiredness washed over him as the plight of Logres settled a little more heavily on his shoulders. “Lynet, is she alive?”

  “Yes, and at her liberty. But she went on ahead, and left you word to follow.”

  “Tell me.”

  ON THE EVENING OF THE SECOND day since Camelot, Perceval found Blanchefleur with Branwen and Morgan on a hill overlooking Mordred’s encampment in a clearing of the trees by the River Tamesis. They had made themselves easy to track; they had ridden in the forest, not in the road, where he was able to pick their trail out of the soft ground of late winter.

  Morgan saw him first, and snatched her knife from the sheath at
her waist before he could lift a hand and say, “It is I. Perceval of Wales.”

  She lifted the knife. “Unhelm.”

  Blanchefleur turned from unbuckling a saddlebag from one of the horses, and when Perceval pulled his helm from his head she came running with a wordless welcome on her face. Perceval made three strides of it and swept her into a hug. “Dear love! All whole?”

  She smiled up at him. “Whole, and something more. Mordred is no brother of mine.”

  Perceval glanced up at the black-haired woman with the knife. She said, “I made him from a strand of hair,” in the blunt voice of one who speaks of detestable things.

  Blanchefleur gestured to her. “Morgan of Gore, my father’s sister. She saved us from the sack of Camelot.”

  “So Lynet told me.” Although the Queen of Gore’s ill name made the hair rise on the back of his neck, Perceval forced himself to bow over her hand with his best court manners. “Madam, I am in your debt.”

  Her eyes and teeth glinted. “For what? For not eating your damsel alive? Sir, it was a daily struggle.”

  “Blanchefleur.” It was Branwen, who lay on a cloak at the crest of the hill, watching the camp through a gorse-bush. Blanchefleur crept to her side and Perceval followed her to squint through the glare of the setting sun.

  “Where is she?” Blanchefleur asked.

  “Walking near the trees.”

  They followed Branwen’s pointing finger and saw the Queen on the edge of the camp near the foot of their hill, walking to and fro and rubbing her arms briskly against the cold.

  “She walks like this every night,” Blanchefleur whispered to Perceval.

  “Is that why you came? To rescue the Queen?” He rubbed hot and sleepless eyes. All the way from Camelot, when he was not worrying about Blanchefleur wandering alone with the Witch of Gore, he had tried to imagine what could have possessed her to flee Camelot on Mordred’s heels.