Pendragon's Heir (24 page)

Breunis? He had no need to prove his valour on mean men.

North he rode, seeking out the loneliest places, and meeting soon enough with adventures. He rescued a countess transformed by an enchanter into a pig, struck the gong of Hafgan, slew two of the Three Brothers of Iscoed and crippled the third; and, meeting Sir Ywain in Gaerlleon, helped drive back a party of Pict raiders that had come down the coast to plunder the monastery at Wigan.

Here he rested a week, weathering out the last icy blasts of February. It was early in March, and beginning to smell like spring at last, when Perceval and Ywain set out together for Carlisle, the capital of Gore and the seat of King Uriens.

“Every two years my father holds a tournament,” Sir Ywain explained. “Most of the Round Table will be there.”

“And your mother?” Perceval asked.

Ywain shook his head. “Carlisle is the last place she would show herself. Many years ago I caught her about to kill my father as he slept. When I snatched the sword from her hand, she said it was not premeditated. Only a moment’s passing impulse.”

“And you believed her?”

Sir Ywain looked at him with shadowed eyes. “I did and do. She was never able to forgo a chance of mischief. But I was able to convince my father that he should keep beyond the reach of her whims for the future. She has her own place and her own servants to the south.”

Carlisle itself was filled to bursting when they arrived, and had he not come in Ywain’s company Perceval would hardly have found lodging. As it was, he was able to sleep in a corner of the great hall, and have Rufus fed and housed in the stables. Knights who had arrived earlier or with more attendants and money stayed in rich houses of the town or pitched pavilions outside the city walls. Nor were these the only visitors. The roofs of Carlisle sheltered men of every estate, from kings and lords to bondmen and beggars, from priests and farmers to smiths and shoemakers.

The tournament itself lasted three days, and Perceval’s cool nerve and steady hand won him victory after victory. On the second day he had a moment of shock when, charging toward him through the melée, he saw a shield with a device that had never completely left his mind since the first moment he saw it. It seemed that he stood again in a courtyard, only half-armed and half-trained, facing Sir Odiar of Gore through sheeting rain. But there was no time for fear: the champion of Morgan was already upon him, all swinging mace and lashing hooves. Perceval admired that killing accord of heavy arm and deft horsemanship even as he wrenched Rufus aside and lashed, out and back, with his sword. Then the melée swept them apart, and there was no more chance to fight that day.

That evening Perceval had to take his bridle to a blacksmith to repair a buckle, and while he was waiting he went out into the street and strolled down toward the city gates, with half a mind to get out into the open and look at the Emperor’s Wall that barred Carlisle from the north. The street was busy, full of mummers and minstrels, torches and braziers, and cries of “Hear” or “Buy”. Anonymous in leather jerkin, without armour or identifying blazon, Perceval grinned to see four players re-enacting one of the day’s high points: the Knight of Wales knocking Sir Persides, Sir Aglovale, and King Colgrevaunce off their horses without drawing rein. Perceval was, as usual, light of purse, but he spared a silver coin for the players.

It was just as he turned away from the circle of cheering watchers that Perceval looked up and saw a man retreating through the evening gloom. He thought he recognised the figure and gait well. It reminded him of some familiar form he had studied closely in the past, and wondering if there was another of his Camelot friends here, perhaps disguised, he called and ran after him.

Others drifted between them in the thickening night. Perceval lost sight of the man, and when he finally caught up with the one he thought he was following and shouted a cheery “Halloo!” the man turned upon him a face he felt sure was unfamiliar.

“Well, good evening,” said the stranger in a stiff and surprised voice, and Perceval saw the pale bearded face of the knight pointed out to him at a distance in Camelot as Sir Mordred.

“I ask your pardon,” Perceval said. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”

“We are strangers, I believe,” said Mordred. He checked in the midst of a motion to leave. “But I remember. You are the son of my good cousin Gawain, are you not?”

And despite the primness of his voice, there was a friendly flash of white teeth from within his black beard.

“Perceval of Wales. You must be Mordred,” said Perceval, and held out his hand. Mordred bowed.

“Even so.” He straightened from the bow and put out his hand to take Perceval’s just as Perceval returned the bow.

“I am glad to meet you,” Mordred said, glancing awkwardly at his hand. “Gawain often speaks of you, always with such pride.” He dropped his hand to his side and looked up with a smile. “It is good to see. Gawain was so unhappy in his own father.”

Perceval opened his mouth to ask about it, but Mordred raised a hand and forestalled him. “Forgive me for bringing up the old family history, cousin. Are you fighting tomorrow, as well?”

“Assuredly,” Perceval said with a grin.

Mordred bowed again. “Then we shall not see each other. I am riding out on quest tomorrow evening, but I will be at Camelot for Pentecost. Farewell!” And he walked on and was lost in the crowd.

Perceval turned and went back to the smithy, thinking that Sir Mordred his cousin was hardly the sinister figure he imagined from Gareth’s warnings. He was collecting his bridle when a boy ran in with the news. Sir Lancelot had arrived with Sir Gawain.

He lengthened his stride on the way back up the hill to the keep, and found his father in the great hall.

Gawain beat Perceval on the back. “They told me you were here! Northern air has done you good, I see. What have you been up to all these months? Hunting and haunting bowers, I’d wager.” But there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Discovered! Alas,” returned Perceval, straight-faced.

Gawain laughed. “And you slew the Brothers of Iscoed on a day that you had nothing better to do, or so I hear.”

A grin stole over Perceval’s face which he could not have reined in if he tried. “Just to keep in training.”

Sir Lancelot strolled over from where he had stood speaking to Sir Ywain. “I hear fair things of you, son of Gawain. One day soon I shall have to break a spear with you.”

Perceval tried not to betray the flush of delight that went through him at Lancelot’s words. The Knight of the Lake never jousted with young or untried knights. Breaking a spear with Sir Lancelot meant a reputation as a seasoned warrior.

Beside him, Gawain, though one of the few knights of Logres capable of matching Lancelot, seemed no less keen. “Tomorrow?”

Lancelot turned to Perceval. “I am captaining the King of Northgales’s side tomorrow, against King Carados and the Scots.”

“Agravain and I have been fighting under the King of Northgales,” Perceval said. “I had rather fight with my kin under you than against you for now, sir. If nothing else I may watch and learn.”

For a moment Perceval wondered if Sir Lancelot was offended, he seemed so surprised. But then he bowed as if to a king. “Your son has bested me in courtesy, Gawain,” he said. “If he is as skilled in arms, my star will set.” He turned back to Perceval with a smile like sunshine. “And the King of Gore tells me you have shown yet unmatched skill these past two days.”

“Well,
yet
,” said Perceval. Then King Colgrevaunce came walking by and called Lancelot over to talk. Perceval turned to his father.

Gawain said: “You are a wiser man than I,” and he did not smile, but the praise in his words was better than anything Lancelot had said. Perceval kicked the rushes underfoot and changed the subject.

“I wondered,” he said—and it was true, in the last ten minutes he had been wondering—“why you never mention my grandfather much. What was he like?”

Gawain was taken aback. “Why do you ask?”

“I should dearly like to know something about him, sir.”

His father looked, not at him, but through him. At length he stirred as if floating to the surface of memory and said, “It is a long story, and not one to be told in this company.”

“You can tell me another time.”

“Yes,” said Gawain. But there was something secretive and shamefaced in his father’s manner, something so ill-suited to his temperament and renown that Perceval found, for the first time in his life, a mystery he did not care to solve.

T
HE NEXT DAY
,
SEEING
S
IR
L
ANCELOT
and Sir Gawain cut through the press, Perceval felt with a bittersweet twinge that the decision not to fight Lancelot today had been the right one, not just for courtesy’s sake but also for pride’s. Then, when the day drew toward the afternoon Perceval saw the blue boar of Odiar again. This time the knight of Gore checked his pace, kicked his horse round, and laid his spear in rest.

Perceval fewtered his own spear, spurred Rufus into a gallop, and met his old enemy with a crash. There was a nauseating blow to his body, and Perceval hit the ground. When he slid to a stop, gasping with pain, he went to push himself out of the mud and instead passed out.

H
E SWAM TOWARD THE MURMUR OF
voices. Light broke above him. Slowly, his father’s worried face came into focus.

“What happened?” Perceval whispered.

“You’ve lost far too much blood,” Gawain said. “But you’ll mend. Odiar was lucky. He ran straight through the mail and grazed the tenth rib.”

“Not lucky,” Perceval gasped, although his head was swimming and he felt sick. “Stronger. Faster.”

Gawain said: “Tell that to the judges.” And he hefted a clattering purse.

Perceval had no strength to speak. He only opened his eyes a little wider.

“When the day was over, the prize was declared for Sir Lancelot. But he had gone, and could not be found. You were judged second-best.”

“Pentecost,” Perceval said. “Give it back. Not mine.”

Gawain shook his head. “Calm yourself. He wouldn’t take it. He conferred an honour upon you last night, but you refused it.” He chuckled. “Old Lancelot had to have the last word.”

There was someone else in the room, who now moved between Perceval and the candlelight. “Drink this,” said the voice that was not Gawain’s, and Perceval gulped down a warm, salty draught.

I
T WAS
A
PRIL BEFORE THE SURGEONS
released him. Frantic to get out of doors and be part of the spring, Perceval scudded up and away, straight north, past the Emperor’s Wall, into the wildest country he had yet seen. Here were adventures to be found in plenty, but he clung to the road north in the unexpressed hope of reaching Orkney, the islands of his fathers. Long before he reached the north seas, however, one evening high up in the hills, he went toward the light of a blazing fire and found there an ancient man with a donkey.

“May I share your fire tonight, good father?” Perceval asked him, sliding off his horse.

“You have far to travel, Sir Perceval of Wales,” said the old man.

“But not tonight, I hope,” he said with a grin, and went to tie Rufus to a tree. The man spoke again.

“Pentecost draws nearer,” he said. “The Grail Knight is at hand. The Quest will begin. Ride back to Camelot.”

Perceval turned back to the old man, the hair rising on the back of his neck. “Who are you to say so?”

“I am Naciens, the Hermit of Carbonek.”

The Quest! Perceval sat by the fire that night, watching for dawn. The spring-fever that had driven him so far north seemed a small thing compared to what came upon him now at the thought of the Grail. It was time. At last, it was time.

He saddled Rufus again before the sun rose, but turned to ask one last question of the Hermit.

“Tell me, did she come to Carbonek safely, the heir of Logres?”

“Yes.”

“I am glad to hear it,” said Perceval, and rose back into the saddle. “Until we meet in Carbonek, fair sir.”

But no smile relieved the harsh gravity of the hermit’s face. “Beware,” he said. “You think that you stand. Beware of falling.”

“Sir, I will,” said Perceval, much struck by the old man’s earnestness.

He reached Camelot on the first day of summer, three days before Pentecost. Perceval found the royal city full and overflowing, much as Carlisle had been, but for a different reason. From all corners of Britain the Knights of the Table were returning to their citadel for the feast, but a steady stream of men of all estates followed them. For rumour had been busy, and it was afoot that the Holy Grail drew close to Logres. Pavilions burst into silken bloom up and down the riverside meadow outside the gates. At every meal Camelot’s great hall was packed with guests, and Perceval and the other knights were kept busy hunting boar, venison, and fowl to feed them.

In the greenwood by day, riding down the black boar with his brother-knights, lightly clad in leather and linen, throwing the slender darts he had not forgotten to make, now and again hearkening as in the distance a sweeter horn blew and other hooves with dim crying of hounds came and rushed away just beyond eyesight, or finding a merry troupe of maidens with hawked wrists to accompany; in the high hall at night, scented with spring flowers and hung with blazing banners, as more people than he had ever seen before in one place supped and laughed and listened to the songs of minstrels—in those brief days, Sir Perceval moved in a hushed awe, and wished that it would never end, that no matter what happened hereafter, in some quiet corner of Britain King Arthur would still hold his court at Camelot, and Logres would reign bright and ageless in strength and beauty.

On the evening of his arrival Perceval went looking for the King, and heard from a page that he was in the garden.

The castle garden occupied the eastern slope of the Camelot-hill. It was not a big one, but its designer had made the most of the space, filling it with trees, hedges, and riotous spring flowers. In the mazelike middle of the garden a fountain gushed water which streamed away to join the river girding the castle. Here, amid the scent of daffodils, under trees hung with tiny lanterns, the King paced with a hound at his heels, speaking to Sir Bedivere.