Pendragon's Heir (17 page)

“I think you had better take it back. Remember me by it, if you like.”

Simon Corbin took the hourglass from her hand and held it up to the moonlight. A bitter smile curled his lips.

“It has run its course,” he said, and dropped it underfoot and crushed it into the pavement.

Blanche drew a swift breath of shock at the sudden controlled violence of his movement. But she had no time to speak, for Kitty’s voice frothed out of the ballroom followed in a moment by herself.

“Simon! Yoo-hoo, Simon!” When she saw Blanche standing there with Mr Corbin, Kitty put her hands to her mouth with a gasp. “Oh! I am so sorry! It’s nothing, really.”

Behind Kitty stood Perceval, a tall upright figure, mail-shirted, with his sword swinging from his hip. After the last five minutes, the sight of him was as welcome as reinforcements in the heat of battle, and her shoulders dropped in relief. She looked past Mr Corbin, past Kitty, and smiled at him.

“Don’t wait for me, Mr Corbin,” she said in Welsh.

He bowed to her and offered his arm to Kitty. They passed into the ballroom and Perceval came forward to lean against the baluster of the terrace beside her.

“I see you have spoken to him,” he said.

“I have,” she said. “I keep no secrets from you, my deputed guardian. Mr Corbin has made me a proposal of marriage, and I have refused him.”

“This was his attempt to keep you here?”

She smiled sadly. “He said that if I married him, I would be able to defy Sir Ector. I said I chose not to do it. He was angry, I think.”

Perceval laughed. “Let us not mind him.”

His dismissive tone grated on Blanche. She had cherished Simon Corbin’s good opinion. She had even, once or twice, dreamed of accepting him. Did Perceval think it was an easy thing to spurn such a man’s protection? Did he think that the choice was so obvious, between the dangers and hardships of Logres, and the comfort and freedom of her home?

“I am sorry I had to do it,” she said in a sharper voice. “If my fate were any different, I should be glad to have him.”

Perceval looked incredulous. “Be glad your fate is wiser than you, then.”

“Oh!” said Blanche, “just because you lost an argument to him, you must act as though no woman could like him.”

“What?” Perceval yelped. “I deny it. Someone may someday love that dirgeful face, but never you.”

Blanche could not think of a good retort, so she snapped open her fan and turned to re-enter the ballroom. But Perceval called her back, gently. “Lady. Stay a moment.”

He rose from the terrace baluster, and took her hand. “I did not come to quarrel with you, Blanchefleur.”

She did not trust herself to speak, and therefore only raised an eyebrow.

“Forget about Simon Corbin. Look elsewhere for one who would serve you and guard you.”

“To you, of course.” But his earnestness disarmed her, and the words came out with less hiss and spit than she wished.

“Yes, to me.” His thumb traced over the back of her fingers and touched the red-gold ring of Ragnell. “I told you once that I saw a kind of destiny in our acquaintance.”

“Please don’t…”

“It was you and no-one else in the pavilion, in the courtyard, and at Carbonek,” he said. “You are perilous and fair. Is it any wonder you should run in my mind?”

Blanche stared back at him for a long moment, her mind a whirl of conflicting thoughts. “Why, Perceval,” she said at last with a shaky laugh, “are you jealous of him?”

The earnestness slipped away from him, and he laughed. “Jealousy implies doubt,” he said with the boundless arrogance she detested. “I never doubted you for a moment.”

Blanche flushed. “Doubt me? What right could you have had to doubt me? What am I? Your sweetheart?”

The instant the word was out of her mouth, Blanche could have bit her tongue off with mortification. Perceval looked down at her and slowly smiled, a dog’s smile, all teeth.

“Are you?”

“Don’t be odious. Of course not,” she snapped, more vexed with herself than with Perceval. “It was a figure of speech. I mean,” she went on, less angrily, “you and I would
never
suit. We do not share an intellectual level at
all
. And please don’t bring up that scene in the pavilion again. I thought we decided to forget the whole business.”

Perceval stuck his thumbs in his belt and whistled. “Oh, lady, be kind,” he said, and grinned.

He opened the door for her to return to the ballroom, and she passed through with trailing robes of displeasure. But if he felt it, he gave no sign.

13

Therewith the Giant buckled him to fight,

Inflam’d with scornful wrath and high disdain,

And lifting up his dreadful club on hight,

All arm’d with ragged snubs and knotty grain,

Him thought at first encounter to have slain.

Spenser

F
OUR MORE DAYS PASSED
,
AND
P
ERCEVAL
spent less time with the horses and more time pacing around the house, watching the hills.

“Are they late, Perceval?” Blanchefleur asked him one morning as she saw him pass the library windows for the second time.

He opened the French doors and wandered in, frowning. “I cannot tell.”

“I’m sure someone will come eventually,” she said with resolute cheerfulness.

“Yes,” he said, “the Lady—or the Lady’s bane.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, the thing that killed her.” And he prowled out by another door.

The following afternoon Emmeline and her young man visited. Blanche felt the cloud lift. They went with the sun, and so did the brief gaiety they had brought with them. That night was cold and clear, with stars glittering overhead. Dinner was hushed. Perceval ate sparingly, coiled like a spring, Blanche thought.

“If they do not come tomorrow,” Perceval said, “we must forestall them and take a door to Logres.”

“The wardrobe in the hall goes to Carbonek,” said Blanche.

“Only with the right elf-key, I think. The damsel Nerys left it with me. We’ll take it tomorrow.”

Blanche retired early, but found sleep beyond her. She turned up the lamp and settled in with Augustine. For hours there was no sound but the periodic chime of the downstairs clock, which struck nine o’clock, ten o’clock, and a quarter to twelve before she began to feel sleepy.

It was nearly midnight when Blanche heard the wind. It came screaming from the west like a bird of prey and gripped and shook the house. Blanche listened to it for a moment with puzzlement, then rolled over again and went back to reading. She had ceased to hear the storm when there was a tap and the door creaked open. It was Perceval, armed
cap-a-pie
with his sword drawn, moving more quietly in his steel harness that she would have thought possible.

“What’s wrong?” Blanche gasped, rising and snatching the woollen cloak from Carbonek.

“Softly,” he said; but he moved quickly and had pulled her halfway to the door before she could draw breath.

“Don’t—give me a moment,” Blanche whispered, struggling.

She went to turn back, but Perceval caught both her wrists and wrapped his arms around her. There was a noise like thunder and the outside wall of the bedroom exploded inward. Blanche screamed. Huge jagged shards of glass from the window sank into the wall around them. Through the gaping void, Blanche saw stars in the sky. Then the raging wind whipped her hair across her face and blinded her.

Perceval, whose armoured body had shielded her from the blast, was speaking in a murmur. “Listen,” he said. “Get the servants out of the house—out the front. I’ll deal with the giant.”

There was another rending crash and the corner of the room, with some of the floor, crumbled agonisingly away.

“Giant?” Blanche whimpered.

Perceval pushed her out the door, out of the wrecked room. She paused staring as he stepped to her bedside, picked up the heavy lantern, and smashed it against one of the bedposts. Burning oil rained across the coverlet and melted into the carpet, caught and spread by the wind. He had no time to do more. A hand, horrifying merely for its hugeness, came out of the night, gripped the ragged broken wall, and strained. Then a massive figure, blacker than the sky itself, rose against the stars.

Perceval, lifting his shield, sank into a crouch.

Blanche fled. Downstairs, some of the servants had already shuffled into the hall, blinking and yawning. Keats was there with a candle, and Lucy the housemaid, armed with a trembling poker. “Fire,” Blanche gasped, before they could open their mouths. “Where’s Cook? And John? And Daisy? We must all go at once.”

She drove them before her out the front door into the storm.

T
HE GIANT CLAMBERED INTO
B
LANCHE
’
S ROOM
, more than twice man-height, bent like an immense cloud to fit below the tall ceilings. A battle-axe like a short polearm, dagger-pointed at the end of the haft, dangled from one gnarled hand. Perceval, shifting from foot to foot, kept his eyes on it. The giant could not swing his weapon easily in the narrow confines of Blanche’s room: when he saw the knight, he rammed the axe at him point-first.

Perceval slipped aside to avoid the dagger-point, stepped lightly onto the axe-blade as it whistled toward him, and launched himself forward. Behind, another wall splintered as the axe punched through. Perceval landed in a crouch under the giant’s outstretched arm and swung back and lashed at the inside of the massive elbow.
Clank
. His blade, which should have bit deep and drunk, rebounded with a harsh whine; his arms jolted.

The creature was wearing armour.

The giant kicked. Perceval was already moving to the side, but it got him on the shield. The shock travelled up his arm, and Perceval thought he felt an old wound split open. He staggered back, falling to one knee. Then the giant wrenched his axe out of the wall: more plaster, dust, and splinters hummed through the frantic air. The flaming mass which had been Blanche’s bed licked out a tongue of flame and ignited the dust. The whole room flashed with a puff of flame. Through it Perceval heard, rather than saw, the axe-blade come swinging toward him. He scrambled up and flung himself for a corner, the pain in his arm forgotten.

The axe bit into the wall next to him. Again, debris and flame filled the air, and the house groaned and trembled in the wind. Perceval knew he hadn’t much time.

B
LANCHE STOOD ON THE LAWN OUTSIDE
the house, watching the glowing windows.

“Is everyone here?” she yelled over the wind, trembling violently, but whether from cold or from fear she could not tell.

“I think—” said the cook uncertainly, and began counting on her fingers.

“I think the gas pipes behind the house must have blown,” Blanche heard herself say. It was true, too, with half of the back wall smashed in. “It’s dangerous—we must keep clear of the house.”

John, the coachman, unlike the others, was alert and unpanicked. “I’ll ride and fetch the fire brigade, miss.”

“I suppose you had better,” said Blanche, for she could think of nothing else to say. But if the fire brigade came at once, would Perceval have time to deal with the giant? “Wait,” she called after him. “The horses! They are still in the stables! If the fire spreads—”

John and Keats set off for the stables.

“Miss, miss,” gasped the cook, fighting the shawl she’d snatched to wrap around her, “Mr Perceval—he’s not here.”

Blanche looked at her, trying to think of something to say.

“He must be still in the house,” said Daisy.

“I’ll fetch him,” the cook volunteered.

“No! You mustn’t!” Blanche put her hands to her head. She could not tell them to sit back and watch the house burn down with someone still inside. And she certainly could not send anyone in after him.

There was only one thing to do.

“I’ll go in and find him.”

“No, don’t!” sobbed Daisy. “I’ll run for Mr Keats.”

“Don’t move,” said Blanche, and turned the full force of her look on the housemaid; to her surprise, Daisy shrank back, looking almost frightened. But they had to obey her now; it was desperately important, and she had nothing but her voice and her eyes. She stiffened from crown to heel and said: “Listen, all of you.
Stay here
. I will fetch my cousin.”

“But—” the cook protested.

“You can’t. Not with the smoke, and your bronchitis.
Quiet!
You will obey me.”

She had never spoken like this before. They stared at her dazedly, but they neither moved nor objected. She fixed them with one last glare, then turned and ran through the gale to the house. Her thoughts thrummed to the time of her feet:

“I must make a plan. I must make a plan.”

P
ERCEVAL GROANED AND COUGHED
,
FLUNG OFF
the flaming waste which had followed him into the depths, and rose unsteadily to his feet. He looked around. The floor of Blanche’s room, once it collapsed, had dropped them among fiery wreckage into the library, and the bookshelves had blossomed into flame.

He was in poor case. His armour still kept him whole, but his right hand was scorched and the smell of singed hair, as well as improved visibility, told that his helm was gone. There was blood and smoke stinging his eyes; he rubbed and blinked the tears away.

Over in the corner, the colossal enemy reared to his knees and glanced around. Perceval, still shaking, lifted his shield, but the giant ignored him, climbed to his feet, and swung his axe at the wall.

Blanchefleur was the true quarry, and if that wall gave way the giant would be out of the house, free to move, able to snatch her and crush her in a moment. Perceval howled and lunged. The giant waited for him to come in range, then swung an iron fist. Perceval ducked to the floor, came up and jumped. The giant’s armour was crude mail; there would be a chink somewhere. He clung to the massive body for only half a second before being brushed off, but in that half-second he stabbed deep into the giant’s armpit. There was a bellowing roar and a shake that sent him tumbling across the room. The giant lifted his axe again.