Kingdom of the Grail Read online

  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

  When 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 th
at 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.”

  “Minds are subtle in Baghdad,” said Roland.

  “And not in Francia?”

  “We’re the world’s innocents,” Roland said. “And also its strong arm. We’re very good at it.”

  “Is that what you would like to be? Simple brawn?”

  “Sometimes I think it would be more comfortable,” he said with a touch of wryness.

  “More comfortable? And what would be less?”

  “Many things.” He soothed a restless horse, stroking the sleek neck, murmuring in the twitching ear.

  “You aren’t simple,” she said. Dangerously, maybe, but the words were out of her before she could catch them.

  “Mostly we aren’t,” he said. “We try to tell the truth, most times. That makes less . . . blunt people think we can’t see all the ways around a thought.”

  “Do you always tell the truth?”
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  If he sensed that this was a trap, he did not show it. He shrugged a little, spread his hands. “I try.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “I choose silence.”

  “Always?”

  His black brows rose. Fine straight brows they were, too, and his face so open and fair, but those eyes . . . “And what lie might you think I have told?”

  “None at all,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. She could not tell if he was angry, or troubled, or amused. “It’s a great insult in this country to call a man a liar. Even a lady of rank might be wary of it, for fear of making enemies.”

  “Are you my enemy?”

  He met her stare. “No, lady. Are you mine?”

  “I should not like to be,” she heard herself say.

  “Good,” he said again.

  There was a silence. Not silence with a falsehood in it, she hoped. Her hand had a terrible, almost irresistible desire to take his. They were close enough for that, standing side by side among the horses. She clenched her fist and set it firmly behind her. “Tell me one thing,” she said.

  “If I can,” he said. He sounded wary.

  “If you were offered a throne, would you take it?”

  “Not from my king,” he said promptly. “Not ever from my king.”

  “And yet you took the sword.”

  “The sword took me.”

  That was manifestly true. He did not say it with great joy, either.

  “And if a throne took you? Would you accept?”

  “Are you offering me one?”

  “Not this moment,” she said.

  “I will not betray my king,” he said. “Never. Do you understand? Never.”

  “I understand,” she said. And maybe she did, if her heart was to be trusted, and not her head. It was her heart that said, “The sword has chosen a man of honor. Spain will be more than glad of him.” Spain, she thought, and more than Spain. But he was not ready yet to know of that.