Kingdom of the Grail (11 page)

Pepin sat as he was told. The basin lay on the table between them. The light of lamps gleamed on its polished sides.

Ganelon breathed on the water. It quivered and went still. “Tell me what you see,” he said.

Pepin bent over the basin. “I see water,” he said. “I see silver. I see—” His breath caught.

“Tell me,” Ganelon said.

Pepin's heart was hammering. He could see. God help him, he could see. “I see a woman. I see
her
.”

“What is she doing? Tell me. Tell me everything.”

Pepin did not dare take his eyes from the water that had turned as it were to a glass, reflecting things that were never in this tent at all. But he could ask, “You can't see?”

“The Grail and its works are hidden from me. But you they do not know. You can see what I am forbidden.”

“Yes,” Pepin said. “Oh, yes.”

“Tell me.”

It was splendid to have such power, and now of all times, too, when his heart most needed it. He thought for a moment of concealing some of what he saw, but there was no profit in that. Later, when he knew more, understood more, he could keep a portion for himself.

Today he told the master everything. “I see her standing on a pavement of stone. There is a tower above her. The walls fall far and far away below. A grey cat sits at her feet. There is a man beside her. He sits in an ivory chair. He is wrapped in a mantle, round and round about. He seems cold. He looks . . . old. Not in the face. Not really. His beard is still black. His cheeks are smooth, like a young man's. But his eyes have seen everything there is to see. I think he may be dying.”

“Yes,” breathed Ganelon. “Yes.”

Pepin smiled to himself. His eyes were riveted on the water. “She has a cup in her hands. The cup is full of blood. She holds it to the man's lips, but he turns his face away. She seems sad, and angry. But he refuses to drink. She walks away from him, very fast. So fast, she spins the world away. And when it stops, she stands . . . here. In this place. With a sword in her hands.”

“We knew that,” Ganelon said. “Look again. Keep in your mind the man's image, and the tower beside him.”

Pepin tried, but all he saw was the woman and the sword. She was holding it out. If he stretched out his hand, he would have it. He would have won the sword.

At his touch the image shattered. The water was colder than ice, colder even than Ganelon's heart. He recoiled. It was only water again, quivering in a silver basin.

“No matter,” Ganelon said with remarkable equanimity. “I only wished to be certain. Now I know.”

“Was that it?” Pepin asked. “Was that what it is? Blood of the Grail?”

Ganelon did not answer. But Pepin did not need to hear the word to know it was true. The cup of blood, the dying man, the woman—he had seen them. He, and not Ganelon. He knew them now. In time he would come to understand them.

CHAPTER 11

I
n the handful of days that followed the death of Ganelon's servant, it almost seemed as if Roland was prevented from approaching the king. He could swear that it was chance, that the preparations for war were engrossing them all, and that the king had little enough time for idle chatter. But whatever the cause of it, Charles continued to see Ganelon as they all saw him, all but Roland: a holy priest, a loyal servant of God and of the king, and tutor to the king's eldest son.

The day after Roland and Olivier found Pepin wandering lost in the forest an hour outside of Paderborn, Roland caught the king at last. Charles was just out of bed, washing before he dressed. As Roland had hoped, Charles was all but alone. There was a soft and scented presence behind the curtain that concealed the king's bed, but Roland sensed no danger there. The servants were of long standing and famously discreet.

Charles grinned at Roland as he stepped through the tentflap, and said, “Good! I was missing some company this morning.”

Roland helped the servants dress the king. There was not overmuch to do but hold this garment or that till he was ready to put it on, and be companionable. As Roland helped him into his silk-bordered tunic, Charles said, “Tell me. Are you pleased with your new sword?”

Roland flushed and looked down. “I know, sire, it was meant for you. If—”

“Stop that,” said Charles. “You won it fairly. God meant it for you. You'll do great things with it in Spain, in God's name.”

“I do intend to,” Roland said, “but if it belongs to you—”

“It is yours. Shall I belt it on you, as a king may? Will that convince you?”

“Your word is enough,” Roland said faintly.

“Good,” Charles said. “Good, indeed. The assembly will disperse tomorrow, and all the lords and the fighting men go home to prepare for the war in Spain. We'll travel across Francia ourselves, and secure the kingdom. Then early in the new year, we'll stand at the gates of the Pyrenees.”

“Yes,” Roland said. His mind's eye could see it. The great army; the bright banners. The mountains like a wall rising to the sky.

Charles smiled as if he understood. “Will you forgive me if I don't release you to return to Brittany? I'll send good men to administer your domain there. I've a mind to keep you near me: you and your sword.”

Roland's heart swelled. Of course it was the sword, but it was a great honor. And more than that, it was what he had been praying for. He did not want to leave Charles alone, unprotected, within Ganelon's reach. Even to fly free in the wood for a little while. Even—even to see Merlin.

Aloud he said, “I'm honored, sire. I'll gladly stay and serve you.”

“What, you don't mind? I know how you love your country. And . . . your kin there.”

Charles' eyes met Roland's. He knew, but like the Companions, he never spoke of it. “My kin will understand, sire,” Roland said. “Now more than ever.”

Charles looked hard at him, caught perhaps by a change in his tone, or by a nuance of expression that he had not even been aware of. “Why, sir, you're afraid for me. Why?”

There, thought Roland. Now. He drew a breath. “Sire, I hear your son has a new tutor.”

Charles' brows rose. “You fear
him
? The man is elderly. He asked leave to rest from his travels. He is old, he said; he grows weary.”

“Then he will stay behind, safe in a monastery, when we travel through Francia?”

“Of course not,” said Charles. “He'll travel in comfort with the priests and instruct my son. He's a wise man, and holy.”

Roland bit his tongue on what he might have said to that. Ganelon left behind could work great evil in Charles' absence. Ganelon in the court . . .

Ganelon in the court was under Roland's eye. The king himself had made sure of that. “Sire,” Roland said. “Do you truly trust him? Do you know who he is, or where he was born?”

“He was born in Apulia,” said Charles, “of an old family there. He was ordained by Pope Gregory and sent into Francia in the train of the papal legate. He's been here since; he loves this country, he tells me, as if he had been born in it.”

It was a very plausible story. More plausible than Roland's own, if he paused to consider. And yet he had to try to warn the king. “My lord,” he said, “I know that he lies. He was never born in Apulia. Where he was born, I think even he may not remember. He's old, sire, as old as mountains. The Devil is his master. He's been corrupting kings since before the Flood.”

Charles was not an easy man to astonish. He knew who Roland was, and what. He had known since Roland came to him, because Roland could not serve a king who did not know the truth. Still, his eyes, wide and round by nature, had grown wider yet. “You . . . have proof of this?”

Roland shook his head. “I know, my lord. I know because—he wrought Merlin. In his way he's my grandfather.”

“And he knows you?”

“God willing, no,” Roland said, crossing himself. “Merlin turned against him, and was bound forever for it. I'm Merlin's child. Do you think he'll wish me well at all?”

Charles frowned. “And yet, sir, you have no proof. I have what I see, which is a man of impeccable loyalty and great sanctity. I would believe that the old enemy still lives, if Merlin himself is alive; but that it is this man? Not without proof. You could be deceived. Your enemy could
be anyone, anywhere. He could be mocking you with this delusion.”

“No delusion,” Roland said. “I know. In my very bones I know. This is the ancient serpent.”

But Charles did not believe the evidence of Roland's bones. It was nothing a man could see or understand—that much Roland had learned long since. Men born without magic had no comprehension of it.

“Roland,” said his king, “I believe that you believe this. But until there is proof, I can do nothing.”

“Trial,” Roland said at once. “By combat. I'll challenge him. He won't fight; he never in his life has. But one of his servants may. These servants are nothing human. If you can see—if I defeat him—”

“On what grounds? What has he done to you? Has he murdered your kin? Seized your lands? Done one perceptible thing to betray his king?”

“He will,” said Roland.

“I can't know that,” Charles said. “No trial, sir. No challenge. If it will comfort you, I'll keep Archbishop Turpin near me when you can't be hovering and fretting and fondling your sword. Unless he too is some ancient demon?”

“Turpin is as mortal as the grass of the field,” Roland said, “and as pure in spirit.”

“There, you see? He'll look after me as well as you could ever wish.” Charles clapped Roland on the shoulder. “Here, boy. Stop fretting. We've a war to win.”

“And if that one won't let you win it?”

“If he makes a hostile move,” Charles said, “or threatens me in any way at all, I'll give you leave to question him. But until then, nothing changes. Do you understand?”

“When he moves will be too late,” said Roland.

“Do you understand?”

The king's voice was mild, his expression calm, but Roland heard the thunder beneath. He had no choice but to bow and obey.

He had won a little, at least. Turpin would guard Charles, and Roland would look after the rest. And Charles knew now what Ganelon was, and would be more wary. It was not enough, by any means, but it was a beginning.

CHAPTER 12

W
hen the gathering of the Franks dispersed to the year's tasks of governing, tilling the land, and raising armies for the war, the emir Al-Arabi departed with his escort for Spain. But Sarissa remained behind. The queen asked it. Sarissa would have stayed even without that, but it gave her a place, rank of sorts, and a reason to keep watch over the royal ladies. Queen Hildegarde was still not entirely well. Nor would she be, Sarissa thought, until the darkness was removed from the court.

Sarissa was notably less than pleased to discover that when the lords scattered to their domains, Count Roland did not go. One of the king's counselors went instead, armed with authority to act in his name. That was not usual, she gathered. Roland was most attentive to all his duties, in his domain as well as before the king.

They said that the king wished to keep him close because of Durandal, to serve as a banner for the war that was beginning. Sarissa could believe that. She wondered if Roland chafed at his king's command—if it galled him that he could not run home to his master Merlin.

The king rode away from Paderborn, leaving behind him the makers and builders, the city guard, and the freemen who would farm the land to feed them all. Their women had begun to arrive already as the court departed, so that it was a large and mingled company that gathered to see
him go. Already the armed camp was transmuting into a town. It would be a city when next the king saw it, its walls raised, its citadel built, and its houses filled with people.

Charles for his part, with the great train of his court and kin, continued the long round of the royal year. His
palatium
, his palace, was no single edifice or city but the king's own presence attended by his clerks and servants. That went with him wherever he traveled, traversing the whole of his realm from year to year.

This year he kept mostly to the north, but directing his path into the west and south, so that at Christmas he would approach the marches of Spain. The kingdom was alive with news of the war. There was no word of aiding an infidel caliph in putting down a rebellion. Every man seemed to believe that the king intended to take Spain away from the infidels.

The king made no effort to alter this belief, any more than he had before the assembly at Paderborn. Even when the word of crusade swelled to a roar, he let it go on. It brought the young men to the practice-fields where they might not otherwise have gone in the heat of summer or the labor of the harvest. It set the smiths to forging weapons with a fiercer will, and the priests to blessing any who pursued the king's cause. It roused the kingdom as nothing else had, not since his grandfather drove the Saracens back from the very walls of Toulouse.

That was an old enmity, but Sarissa had found another and stronger one: war for the souls of the king and his kin, and most of all for his unborn child.

In Gisela's abbey of Chelles outside the city of Paris, the king's train paused. Queen Hildegarde was brought to bed there, far too early, and delivered of a daughter who drew a breath, loosed a faint whimpering cry, and died. The tiny body was baptized and laid to rest in the nuns' graveyard, in a grave without marking or remembrance, for the life had been too brief and the child too small to bear the weight of a name.

The queen had lost children before. It was the lot of every woman, and God's fortune that she did not lose her own life as well. But the grief was never less, nor the pain of loss. “If I had been stronger—if I could have—”

Sarissa comforted her as she could, and saw that she
rested, that she healed. She was free of the darkness now. Having failed to capture her child alive, it had abandoned her.

It was not Sarissa's task to take word to the king. Sister Aude did that, sorrowfully, but not, Sarissa noticed, in fear. Charles was known as a fair man. He would not slay a messenger who brought him such news.

For men it was not the same. A child lost so young was a lesser grief to them, if it was grief at all. A man who had sons in plenty would hardly feel the loss of another daughter.

He had the grace at least not to demand that the queen depart when the court was ready to go on. It was she who insisted, who climbed into the wagon and refused to be lifted out again. “You will keep me whole,” she said to Sarissa. “I have a need to be away from here. To breathe air that is free. To be outside of walls. To be—to be with my husband and my children who are alive.”

“What killed your child,” Sarissa said bluntly, “is in the court. It could strike again.”

The queen would not listen. She would go. That was her will. There was no choice but to obey it.

The ride from Chelles was almost distressingly lovely. It was a fine day of late summer, no rain to mar it, no mists or fogs to dim its clarity. The sky was clear cloudless blue. Some of the young men were singing, if softly. One clear voice was so sweet and its song so poignant that Sarissa's breath caught in her throat. It was not a sad song, at all, although it was in a minor key. The words were in a language she did not know, yet they seemed to be words of healing and of peace.

The queen was listening. She had had a maid tie back the curtain of her wagon so that she could hear the song. She lay in her banks of cushions, her body at ease for the first time since Sarissa had known her. For a little while, maybe, she forgot her sorrows.

Sarissa beckoned to one of the maids. “Find that singer,” she whispered. “Bring him to us. If he can soothe her majesty . . .”

The woman nodded. Her cheeks were wet with tears, so strongly had the song affected her. She dashed them away as she dragged her mule about and sent it protesting in search of the singer.

She was gone for some little while. The song ended and did not resume. The queen sighed, slipping back visibly into melancholy.

Then came the mule with its rider, and another behind her, mounted on a splendid young grey. Sarissa regarded him in something that wanted very much to be hatred.

Roland did not seem to notice her at all. He rode up beside the queen's wagon, bowed low over his saddlebow, took her thin white hand and kissed it. “My lady,” he said. “Oh, my lady. I am sorry.”

For a man who claimed to know nothing of women, he had a fine gift with this one. She clung to his hand, though the cart's rocking and his horse's gait made it difficult. “Please,” she said. “Sing to me.”

He sang to her all that day. Songs of Brittany, songs of Francia. Hymns and canticles. Love-songs, of which he seemed to know an amazing number. He sang for her ear and not for anyone else's, which saved his voice, but still, by evening it was a whisper. Then at last she let him go, sending him back to his world of men and war.

Sarissa could have escaped at any moment. The king's train was long, and the queen was near the beginning of it. It was a penance of sorts that kept her there, listening, watching, alert for any hint of danger. There was none, but she did not trust that. A sorcerer of the power she suspected in him would be adept at concealing himself.

If he was the one, she thought—if he was, this day's charity was a cruel thing. And yet to the eye and to every sense she had, he was utterly gentle. Had he been anyone else, of any other blood, she would have reckoned him compassionate.

For that, and in defiance of her suspicions, she brought him honey mead with herbs to soothe his throat, no less than three times as the day lengthened. The first time he barely acknowledged her, except with a nod. The second, she fancied that a flush stained his pale cheeks. The third, she knew it. He was noticing her after all, and striving mightily not to show it.

She was all in confusion. Every tale she had heard of Merlin and his works bade her walk wary of this man. But her heart and her body were captivated. If he could know how she loved a sweet singer—if he could—

If she had been thinking clearly, she would have stayed by the queen that evening when they stopped for the night. They had hoped to reach one of the royal estates, but their advance was slow, to spare the queen; therefore they paused instead at a small lordly holding. Its lord was away, but his lady was in residence. She put on a brave face at sight of the king's whole court and retinue, and gave up her house to the king and the queen and their chief attendants, but the rest had to camp in the fields.

Sarissa's belongings were in the manor with the queen and her maids, but she was stifling in the closeness of that small and crowded house. The queen was safe under the queen mother's eye. Sarissa went in search of air.

Or so she told herself. She did not admit that she had decided after she noticed the absence of a certain face among the king's attendants. Some of the Companions, it seemed, had gone to settle the men and to assure that the horses were well tended.

Sarissa's horse came and went as he pleased, which was somewhat difficult to explain. She had asked him to stay in that shape when they were traveling, though if they paused long enough to turn horses out to pasture, he was free to take whatever semblance suited him best. Most often it was a cat.

Tarik was grazing on a tether in the war-stallions' line. The master of horse insisted that he belonged there; lady's mount or no, he was entire, and he had no place in the proximity of mares. Sarissa could hardly inform that profoundly practical Frank that her horse was not a horse, and that he was quite able to control himself in the face of temptation. It was true enough that he might not choose to do that; he might find it greatly diverting to play the stallion in all respects.

He was quiet enough this evening, gleaming in the long golden light, playing his part perfectly. “I must admit,” she said to him, leaning against his moon-white shoulder and smoothing his long waving mane, “that I like this shape best of all.”

Tarik switched his tail. He was most fond of his cat-shape. It was small, sleek, fast, and wicked—the perfect embodiment of his self.

“But you are a beautiful stallion,” she said. “All the king's warriors covet you. Count Ascelin asked me just today if I would consider putting you to a few of his mares. I didn't decline. Though he might find the results . . . interesting.”

Tarik stamped and snapped at a fly. He would happily sire a herd of changeling foals. Some of them might even prefer to be cats.

“I prefer horses,” said Sarissa, which won her a wet and eloquent snort.

It was chance, purely, that one other was among the stallions, tightening tethers, seeing that they were fed, watered, in comfort. It was not the master of horse, though he was horseman enough. His own grey stallion had a place not far from Tarik.

If Sarissa had looked for him to betray himself, to find him off guard, she was disappointed. He did seem startled to see her, but the spirit in him was bright with innocence. If his eyes had been properly human, there would have been no indication at all of his darker blood.

Her heart wanted that to be the truth. She greeted him politely, and suppressed a smile at the quick flush of his cheeks. “You sing beautifully,” she said. “The queen is visibly better tonight because of it.”

He was like a shy boy, not knowing where to look. “I am glad her majesty is better,” he said. “It's a hard thing to lose a child.”

“Not many men would understand that,” Sarissa said.

That brought his eyes up, reminding her forcibly that this was not a simple man. “Maybe not in Spain,” he said.

“There is more to Spain than you may know,” said Sarissa.

“I know little of it,” he conceded. “Only what one can read and hear of. Old tales. Rome was there once. It was Christian; then the Saracens came. And we,” he said, “are going to take it back. Or so people believe.”

“Do you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Your possession of that,” she said, tilting her head toward his sword, “says that it does.”

“You are not a Muslim,” he said. “You should be delighted that this war has been turned into a crusade.”

“It is good that your king comes into Spain,” she said. “For whatever reason.”

“Even the wrong one?”

“If it raises the army he needs, it is right.”

“The Caliph in Baghdad might not agree with you.”

Sarissa felt her brow arch. “It seems to me that the Caliph wants his rebellion put down by whatever means he finds closest to hand.”