Pendragon's Heir (44 page)

She flung the word at him like a dart. A flicker of triumph came into Lancelot’s eyes and was as quickly gone again. “It might be best if you did,” he said smoothly, and bowed, and left.

When the door closed behind him the Queen threw the embroidery aside and bolted to her feet. In the silence she drew a long sharp breath of surprise. For all the world, Blanchefleur thought, as if a favourite dog had turned and bitten her. She was still thinking so when Guinevere flung a look out of the corner of her eye to her, so cold and shuttered that Blanchefleur nearly flinched back, wondering for a moment if the Queen had heard her thought.

Guinevere said no more. For the rest of that afternoon she sat by the window with her back turned on the rest of them in a complete and forbidding stillness.

B
LANCHEFLEUR WAS LYING AWAKE AT DAWN
the next morning when the first assault came. She heard a confused clamour, distant trumpets, and then a pounding like thunder, with shudders that ran up from the foundations of the castle and thrummed in her bones.

At first she could not guess what the noise might be. Only when she slipped from the couch where Branwen was sleepily stirring and ran to the window did she see the ram, like a gigantic caterpillar, swung by two lines of men against the gates of Joyeuse Gard.

Branwen woke with a start and nearly fell off the couch. “It’s begun!” She spoke in a whisper, for the Queen still lay motionless in the big canopied bed in the room’s centre.

Blanchefleur was scrambling into her clothes. “I didn’t see Perceval last night. He was captaining the watch on the south wall. Where will he be now, Branwen?”

“God knows, and he’ll be busy.”

“I have to find him.”

She thrust her feet into shoes, yanked a hasty knot in the laces, and rushed downstairs. There was little coherent thought in her mind, only a certainty that she needed to see Perceval, because since everything had gone wrong he had needed her. She should have gone to him yesterday. It might already be too late.

In the great hall, and outside in the courtyard, Joyeuse Gard swarmed like an ant-hill. Lancelot’s men crowded the gatehouse. Two of them, staggering on each side of a cauldron of boiling water, went past as Blanchefleur craned her neck for Perceval. The courtyard seethed with men and horses; knights waited by their steeds testing buckles and straps while squires ran with a shield or vambrace from the armoury.

The gates groaned as the battering-ram shook them again.

Someone stepped into her path, a man-at-arms holding up his hand. “Back into the hall, lady.”

She gave him her mother’s stony glare. “Do you know who I am?”

He didn’t move. “Yes, lady.”

“Then you should know better than to stand in my way.”

She went down the steps as if to walk through him, and he stood aside saying, “Lady, be not overlong. If harm comes to you—”

His voice faded into the bustle and shout of coming war. Blanchefleur knew she had won only a brief space of time. She began to work her way around the courtyard, keeping to the walls where in the dawn twilight she might go unnoticed. Then suddenly, her heart jumped. There he was, slumped on a haycart in a quiet spot near the pig-pens, eating an apple and staring at Glaucus.

“Perceval?”

He slid down to the ground and limped toward her, swallowing a bite of the apple. “Blanchefleur! You ought not to be here. There’s about to be a charge.”

“They’re riding out, then? It’s a sortie?”

“As soon as the gates fall.”

“And you? You’re going with them?”

He stiffened into expressionlessness and spoke as if repeating a lesson. “Yes. The Queen needs defending. Lancelot’s manslaying can be dealt with after.”

“She doesn’t want to be defended. She says that if she had died, the Table would still be whole.”

He slid her a dead stare. “With innocent blood raining down like fire on our heads?”

She knew him well enough by now to be distressed by that wooden look. Perceval never bothered to hide vigour and high spirits; what deep hurt lay behind this stoic front? She gazed at him wordlessly.

Perceval took a last aimless bite of apple and tossed the core to the pigs. They grunted and squabbled for it. In her thoughts, Blanchefleur said, “Must you fight? Come back, come into Joyeuse Gard, and wait for it to end.”

She could not say it. By now she knew him well enough to understand the insult it would be to him. So she said: “Please, Perceval, please. Come back safely.”

“If I can.”

Could he not hear the pleading in her voice? She said: “Don’t do anything rash. Don’t lose everything the Grail Quest achieved. Logres needs you.”

He laughed, a mirthless sound as grey as the air. “This is a battle. Who can tell what may happen?”

“There are greater things than the Queen’s honour to give your life for.”

“Lady, if you are troubled, pray for my soul.”

“I will not! I will pray for your safety…” She swallowed a little more of her pride and reached pleadingly through the cold dawn murk. “You worry me, Perceval. You’re so quiet these days. I know how you feel! I know that you have friends on both sides. And loyalties on both sides too—and that people are going to die. Perceval, don’t you dare die, no matter what happens today.”

He looked at her from behind the wooden mask and said, “I will try. Farewell.”

“Farewell, and God go with you,” she said, and knew that none of her words had lifted him out of his apathy.

He turned, gathered up his reins, and reached for his stirrup. The horse blew a white cloud of warm breath and shifted restlessly at the sound of coming battle. Blanchefleur stood shivering in the frosty air, knowing that in another moment Perceval would be gone, perhaps forever—almost certainly forever, unless she could give him a reason to live.

She said: “I love you.”

The words unloosed blinding pent-up tears. Then Perceval was there in front of her again, and his hand lifted her chin.

Words gushed out as fast as the tears. “Please forgive me. I should never have sent you away. I don’t want to lose you. And I don’t mean to play with you, like the Queen does with Lancelot, only I was afraid…”

He cleared his throat and said raggedly: “Silly maid! I
knew
it,” and she knew that the mask was down.

He waited for her to wipe her eyes and then said, “You are going to marry me.”

“If you live.”

He snorted. “No more excuses.”

“No, Perceval.”

“We are getting married.”

“Yes, Perceval.”

“Tomorrow, if possible.”

“If you think it best.”

The sound of a trumpet jarred them back to the courtyard of Joyeuse Gard. Lancelot was calling his men to horse and Sir Bors, striding past from the stables, looked at them incredulously, abrupt with haste. “What is she doing here? Get her inside and mount up.”

Perceval threw back his head, snuffed the air like a war-horse, and laughed. Then he whirled Blanchefleur into his arms, carried her to the door of the great hall and swung her down again at the top of the steps.

“Everyone is watching,” she gasped, face red, finding her feet again.

“Good,” said Perceval. “Witnesses. Wait for me after the fighting is done.”

Sudden seriousness fell on him when he mentioned the battle. Blanchefleur said, “Do you still mean to fight?”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then come back to me safely.”

“If I may, I will.”

He laid his hand against her cheek and brushed the corner of her mouth with his thumb. The world seemed to hush; Blanchefleur saw his eyes move to her lips. Then his hand dropped again.

“Kiss in haste, repent at leisure,” he said with a laugh. “I can wait. God be with you, dear love.”

“And with you.”

For a moment, the limp was gone. He ran down the steps, vaulted to his horse’s back, and spurred forward to join the other knights drawn up before the straining gates. From the top of the stair Blanchefleur kept her eyes fixed on his gules and gold.

Crash
. The castle shuddered again; the gates cracked; Blanchefleur thought of the night in Gloucestershire when the door of their house was battered open by the champion of Morgan. That knight now lay mouldering in a clearing to the north. At what great cost would Perceval, still bearing the marks of that combat, win through to her at the end of this day?

Crash
. Was this the same battering-ram that shook her awake this morning? Were the gates still standing? She was someone else altogether now—five minutes in the open air and her life had changed. Perceval vanished within the ranks of his fellows. She turned and went up to her mother’s chamber, feeling herself poised uncertainly on the brink of an abyss of joy and terror.

“T
HE SUN IS RISEN
,”
SAID
G
UINEVERE
.

She sat half in light, half in shadow, wearing black like night against which her hair shone pale and tangled. There was a silver mirror in her left hand and a white bone comb in her right, but these lay listless and unmoving in her lap.

“Will you watch from the window, madam?” Blanchefleur asked.

Voice, like hands, was listless. “No.”

Blanchefleur bent and took the comb from her fingers. “Then let me comb your hair.”

They did not speak again. The Queen closed her eyes as Blanchefleur teased the knots apart with skilled fingers. Now and then her lips moved. Blanchefleur found her own thoughts turning to the men on the field below. There had been a splintering crash when the gates fell, and then the shouting had started. Crashing steel she could hear, the high whinny of horses, the screams of the dying.

Was it true that she had once thought the fierce cry of swords the bravest sound on the earth? She blinked back more tears and saw her hands again. Soft and graceful, adorned with the great golden ring of Orkney, one twined into her mother’s hair and the other clasping the carven comb. And outside, men were dying.

D
OWN BELOW
, S
IR
P
ERCEVAL HAD MOVED
in a trance that was half daydream, half nightmare until the gates burst. Then everything became sharp and clear again. Lancelot’s men were drawn up in the courtyard, ready to charge, and when the gate fell they spurred recklessly forward, cutting through the men outside like a scythe through grass. Then they reached the field, with iron-bladed destruction reigning on every side. Yet, to his horror, Perceval found it like any other battle he had ever fought. There was sweat trickling down his face and down the furrow of his spine between his aching shoulders, there was a roar like falling water in his ears, and his own throat was inexplicably parched and ravaged, although he could not remember having joined in any battle-cry. And the blood ran through him like molten iron with the mad and merciless lust of battle, while men who had been his brothers crumpled beneath his blade. For a while, he gave himself over to the single desperate purpose of death.

But then came a lull in the tempest. He found himself the only living man in that part of the field. As he glanced around, feeling cold and tired in the sudden quiet, he saw for the first time the shields and livery of men that he had known well—some that he had loved. Some that he must have killed, with as great a joy as he had once killed thieves and murderers…

Their shields reproached him. There was Sir Persides. There was the young son of Aglovale. There was Bernard of Astolat, who for a short while had been a friend, who now would never have the chance either to prove his innocence or suffer for his guilt in the matter of Gawain’s messenger.

He looked at the stark forest, naked branches like grey smoke against the bleak blue sky. It flashed into his mind that he could set his spurs to his horse and vanish into their shadow. Instead he reined Glaucus away, back toward the battle. If he fled, it would unmake him; do that, and he might as well die a coward’s death on his own sword.

There was nothing to do but follow the path he had decided with such painful debate to follow. Gareth and Gaheris, he reminded himself. He knew—had known as soon as he saw them lying there in the trampled mud—that they were only the beginning.

He was sucked back into the melée, and it was then that the worst came. Suddenly he saw before him the shield he had been dreading, the gules and gold that he mirrored. There was nowhere else to go, nothing else to do. He lifted his shield and dropped his sword-arm.

It seemed like an age that he stared at the cold and terrible front of his father’s helm. But an eddy in the fight bore them past each other, and he thought that Sir Gawain had hesitated too, sword hanging slack in his hand.

Perhaps, then, his father knew why he had to be here, fighting for the Queen’s name.

Perceval spurred forward, willing away the ache in his bones and the pain that still throbbed in his shield-arm and his hip where Sir Odiar had struck him. The battle-fire had left him now, and he fought with his mouth pressed into a thin line, more for survival now than for bloodshed.

In front of him, two knights crashed together. Sir Bors, helm missing, the battle-fire gleaming in his eyes, dismounted and staggered to the knight he had just unhorsed.

“Lancelot! Lancelot!” he cried hoarsely, drawing his poniard. “They have killed Lionel and Blamor, our kin! Lancelot!”

Perceval saw the fallen knight’s device. The Pendragon.

The Knight of the Lake rode out of the melée, blood dripping from the mace in his hand. “I hear you, Bors.”

Bors had his elbow hooked around the King’s neck, struggling to keep him on his knees. The pale sun gleamed on his blade.

“Tell me, cousin. Shall I end this war forev—”

“God forbid!” Lancelot was crying like thunder.

The dog reached Bors before Lancelot or Perceval could: a grey wolfhound, armoured, blood-streaked. Bors went down under its snapping teeth and the King sprang back to his feet, drawing his sword.

Lancelot was on the ground facing him; as the King rose, he flung his sword to the ground and went to his knees, throwing up empty hands. “Sire and dear lord, I pray you, cease this destruction! Your Queen is innocent!”