The Heir of Logres

by Suzannah Rowntree

  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.”

  Blanchefleur said: “I am not trying to save Logres as it is. I am—we are trying to mend it, on the pattern of the City, as it was always intended.”

  “Sarras!” Mordred barked with laughter. “Let me tell you the purpose of Sarras, Blanche. The purpose of Sarras is to persuade people of a better world after they die, to distract them from their pains in this one. Men and women so gulled are easily controlled. And the vision itself, if anyone takes the trouble to examine it, only strengthens the existing order.”

  “I see,” she said. “You have no use for Logres, to save it or to better it. You want to destroy it entirely.”

  “Cleansed by fire,” he breathed. “With a whole new world rising from the ashes.”

  Blanchefleur shivered. “Why, how can you speak of the hypocrisies of Logres? You set Lancelot against the King. You engineered my mother’s trial. If she had burned, it would have been because of you!”

  Mordred’s teeth glinted. “I only did my best to hasten the end. That was surely my office. If Logres was without blame, could it have condemned any lady to such a death? Or gone to war over the question? As it was, Lancelot proved greater than his rivals, and by one act of submission saved the whole crumbling edifice a little longer. I am left to give the final push, but I did not undermine the foundations.”

  “You’re mad.” Blanchefleur cast a despairing glance around the tent. “Agravain, don’t you hear him?”

  Agravain’s face twisted as if in pain. At last he lifted his eyes to her and said, “It’s the only way, lady. God knows it grieves me, but it’s the only way.”

  Blanchefleur stared at him. He flushed red under her eye and after a moment clapped Sir Pertisant on the shoulder. “I need to post sentries.”

  Pertisant glanced at Blanchefleur. “I meant to have my horse shod.”

  They left, followed silently by the other knights of the Table. The tent emptied, leaving Blanchefleur alone with Mordred, with Saunce-Pité, and with Saunce-Pité’s men: scoundrelly-looking fellows, brutish and dull.

  On the grass, Perceval lay motionless.

  Mordred turned back to Blanchefleur with a thin smile. “It shocks you, Blanche. You have listened too long to the voices of priests and dreamers. They’ve brought you to heel. You were not always so easily led.”

  Blanchefleur thought, “I sit here defying you and all the peers of my age, and I am easily led?” But she knew that Mordred did not really object to her being led. After all, he had always tried to lead her down some path or another.

  So she looked back at him in mute scorn, and wait
ed for him to go on.

  “You can be stronger than this,” he urged. “Choose your own path. Join me. It’s not too late.”

  “Why should I? You only wish to destroy everything I love.”

  He shook his head, more serious now, the mockery past. “No. No, Blanche. Burn out the rot, yes. But you believe in justice, don’t you? In freedom? Knowledge? Progress?”

  “Of course I do. All those things.”

  “Then join me. Make them happen,” he pleaded. “You know that Logres can’t go on as it is now. Can it?”

  “No, I know, but—”

  “Listen.” Mordred reached out and took both her hands in his. “Haven’t I been honest with you? I asked you once before to join me. I’m not the monster you think me. I don’t want to kill you or use you; I want to show you the possible. Marry me, Blanche.”

  Blanchefleur shook her head. “My father made a deed. I won’t inherit unless I marry Perceval. Otherwise, the throne of Logres is left vacant pending a decision by the Great Council.”

  He laughed. “Do you really think I would let a piece of parchment stand between us?”

  He could do it, too, she thought, once again awed by his cool temerity. This time the jolt was stronger. She swallowed and whispered, “You mean you want to seize my father’s throne.”

  “The mistakes of his generation resulted in feud and war. How many second chances should we allow men like Gawain?” He laughed, low. “They need you to show them the way. I know you can do it. You’ve seen how high mankind can climb once the shackles of ignorance are broken. You and I have stood on the threshold of a new world. With your help, I can bring that new world to Logres.”

  It was all fraud, of course. But what else was there? Death?

  He pulled her closer and dropped his head to her ear. “The old ideals don’t work. You’ve tried them, haven’t you? And look where they’ve left you.”

  If she married Mordred—her heart skittered like a mayfly—if she married Mordred, then at least he would no longer try to kill her. Might she have some influence over him? Could she temper his rule with mercy to those he conquered?

  He seemed to guess what she was thinking, because he went on, even more softly. “I offer you no cold compact, Blanche. Since I first saw you I meant to have you, and have you I shall, or go mad. Don’t tempt me too far—don’t refuse me. Bend a little. See how far I might be willing to bend in return.”

  She was horribly conscious of his breath against her neck, of his hands gripping her arms above the elbow. Why not drive a bargain, she thought, to distract herself. After all, she would have given him Cornwall. What was that, if not a compromise? And what else could she do for Logres now that the shadow knife had failed them? When Mordred ruled Britain, would every woman and child of Logres who suffered under his hand rise to curse her for rejecting, or bless her for taking, this one last chance to speak for them?

  The counsel of despair.

  “Perceval.” She croaked his name like an invocation.

  “Forget him. I don’t mean to share you, Blanche. Not with him. Not with anyone. Not after waiting this long.”

  “No,” she objected, and her voice was a little stronger. It wasn’t just that she was going to marry Perceval, it was something he had said—long ago, just on the boundary of memory—

  Mordred ignored her. “Make your choice,” he murmured, and bent his head and pressed his lips to her neck below the ear. At that touch, what remained of her willpower came loose and floated away and she watched it go without a great deal of concern.

  For Logres. She did this for Logres. And yes, even for Perceval—that was a comfort, knowing that Mordred would spare him for her sake, even if she never saw him again. Not that he would understand. He would say—he would say—

  He would say that a thing that could not be done without dishonour was not worth doing. That the citizens of heaven never had to choose between two evils.

  But that meant he and she would die, now, in the usurper’s camp, far from any help.

  As Nerys had done.

  She had no words. The thoughts in her mind were too tangled and too unsure of themselves. All that came to her was a sudden certainty that she had to refuse his offer, and at once, before she had the chance to straighten herself out again.

  She lifted her eyes to Mordred’s face. He was watching her with something like a smile on his lips, calm and confident and cruel. She sighed for sheer weariness, tugged a languid hand out of his grasp, and hit him across the face with her open palm.

  The sound in the breathless quiet of the tent was like the crack of a whip, and Mordred flinched back, lifting a hand to his cheek. For a moment he blinked at her in blank amazement. “You refuse?”

  She lifted her hand again and this time he caught her wrist and twisted it savagely. The pain cleared the last fogs from her mind and she cringed away from him. “I’ll die before I join you!”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Like all the sons of Sarras.”

  “I don’t want to kill you.”

  She laughed at him and began to feel the heat of his anger beating on her face again. “You’ll find a way around it.”

  Over on the grass near the door, Perceval stirred and grunted and lay still again. Mordred glanced at him and laughed spitefully. “What a shame he missed that little comedy.”

  The jibe cut deeper still than her own self-reproach. Twice now since she entered the pavilion, Mordred had justly shamed her for breaking faith. Her cheeks flamed.

  “God help me,” she said, very quietly.

  “Well,” he said, watching her face as if enjoying her reaction, “I am a reasonable man. It might be amusing to try force, but I am too busy for such games, and I will be wanting a more tractable wife.” He paused. “It’s getting dark. Light the lamps, one of you.”

  One of Saunce-Pité’s men moved to obey, and there was the grind and spark of steel and flint.

  Mordred said, “I have said I prefer not to kill you. There is another way.” He held up the elf-key from the table. “Take the swain—with my blessing!—and I’ll send you both back to cosy little England in the reign of good Queen Victoria. That should suit your squeamish tastes nicely.” His voice lost its mocking tone. “Only promise to stay there. I’ll have it in writing. Logres is mine. Do you understand? All of Britain is mine. You will renounce every right you have. You will hail me undisputed king and lord. Then you can go, you can live in peace and you can never see Logres again.”

  Blanchefleur blinked at him, distracted for a moment from her resolve. He would let them go, just like that? So easily?

  But—the price. God help her, the price!

  She paused to remember the sweet smells of home, the silver hills slumbering in the moonlight. Perceval would like Gloucestershire. He might miss the trumpets, the clash of arms, the tourneys in sunlit meadows. But he had always spoken so longingly of peace and long life and an escape from the havoc of war and wounds.

  She was sorry, for his sake, to refuse. But having refused Mordred’s last offer, how could she accept this one?

  “It won’t do,” she told Mordred.

  “I’m not sure you understand—”

  “No, I do,” she interrupted gently. “I can’t trade Logres to you in exchange for my life. It isn’t mine to give away.”

  “I’ve—”

  She interrupted him. “That’s the difference between you and me, Mordred. I hold Logres of Heaven. You would hold it of yourself, vice-gerent of no higher authority. Fickle. Capricious. Pitiless. You would crush us all, small and great, on the wheel of your own notions, because you would not yield to the kind laws of Sarras.”

  “And those laws?”

  “Tell us not to burn down a house before a better can be built. Tell us not to despise the day of small beginnings, or consider ourselves less fallible than our fathers.”

  For a moment they looked at each other in the most perfect enmity Blanchefleur had ever known. At last Mordred said
, “I’ve given you two eminently reasonable choices. There are no more. I don’t wish to be known throughout Britain as the man who slew the chosen heirs, but believe me, Blanche, that’s what I will do if I must.”

  She smiled. “My name is Blanchefleur. And if that’s my last poor revenge to you, Mordred, I’ll die gladly.”

  He sat rubbing his chin, looking at her through narrowed and puzzled eyes. By the door, Perceval moved again and pushed himself up to his elbow. At that a smile once again curved Mordred’s lips. He looked up at the fellow who had lit the lamps. “Bring one of those closer,” he said, beckoning. “I want to see her face.”

  The man unhooked a lamp and lowered it to the table between them. Mordred was still smiling. Without taking his eyes from Blanchefleur’s face, he said, “Breunis.”

  Saunce-Pité moved into the little circle of light. “Sire?”

  “Take the Knight of Wales out. And remove his head.”

  “Sire.”

  Saunce-Pité turned away, gesturing to his men. Blanchefleur leapt to her feet with a strangled wail, then clapped her hand over her mouth.

  Mordred lifted a finger. Stillness fell once again upon the pavilion. Mordred cocked his eyebrow at Blanchefleur.

  She knew, as plainly as if he had said the words, that it lay in her power to save Perceval.

  Abandon Logres and go back, into Gloucestershire? Escape Mordred—live at peace—die old, surrounded by children and grandchildren.

  What could resistance profit them now? The kingdom was already lost, wasn’t it? What dishonour lay in retreat?

  But it wasn’t just retreat. It was cession. It was an oath of submission to Mordred, and she had no business in giving him what he wanted without fighting for it.

  Blanchefleur turned to Perceval. He was awake now, he had heard everything. While he was unconscious, someone had lashed his hands behind his back, and now they had pulled him to his feet, keeping a tight grip on his arms. He smiled at her in greeting, and he shook his head.