it was. “A song without words, my king.” The bard went on playing.

“I learned it from Trystan of Castle Dore.”

The music pressed out of the strings. Standing in the prow, I heard again that strange three-note figure that dominated all of Trystan’s later songs: two notes rising, a hesitation, a fall on the third. And again and again. And I knew at last what it was.

The motion of a ship rolling.

Neither Bedivere nor Gareth was really cut out for the post of lord-milite and neither wanted it. My next logical choice was Ancellius.

/ know this is not a post you would choose, Lancelot, nevertheless I must overbear your modesty. Bring Eleyne and Galahalt if they are up to the voyage.

The journey up Severn wouldn’t be dangerous, but any other would. Cerdic darted in and out along our coasts in rapid feints to search out our weaknesses. Daily couriers brought Marcus’ concern about the raiders cruising offshore, turgidly majestic letters that never relaxed to a personal pronoun. Marcus wrote for the ages, he did.

We do sorrow for Caradoc, our loyal tributary of Dyfneint, who passed to heaven in peaceful sleep.

No doubt Marcus sorrowed more for tire result. As heir to Astolat, Geraint was thorn enough. Crowned he was chaos, but

his sheer thrusting energy made him an inspiration and rallying point for every young warrior in Cornwall and a nightmare for his harried ministers. If they wished to consult, they did it riding or running to stay abreast of his loping stride as he caromed from one place to another, bridle in one hand, breakfast in the other, a volcano of changing mood, innocent wonder, ignorant ire.

But his affection was lavish as his wrath. We had some happy days at Camelot that summer before I left. Guenevere and I had never felt so ringed with loyalty. Peredur was visiting. Lancelot came to take up his new post with Eleyne and their small son, Galahalt, in tow. And to wrap the gift, Geraint erupted from the ship with his sister to swear his new-crowned allegiance to me. “Just that and farewell, though I’d give my heart to stay. But I must be south again to set things right. Look you, Mark trembles at every sight of a fishing boat off his banks, and there’s a whisper Cerdic will try Llongborth next. Ah, it’ll come to naught all—Mother of God, will you look at that! A rent in my breeches that were new not a fortnight gone. Now what good is it, Arthur, what good to be a king and not even able to get my poor breeches mended? Na, sister, I know: I should marry, and I will—Devil if I don’t—the first moment God and Mark give me to breathe.”

By the fire in our private chambers, Peredur thoroughly charmed the house of Astotat, especially Eleyne. He had his father’s easy grace without the underlying craft. Cador stoutly refusing to die, Peredur had grown into an idle and vaguely unsatisfied man, now absorbed in the defense of the north, now ready to return to the Church.

He’d been a month on the Wall before coming to us. The dust

aggravated his bad lung, and he coughed a good deal of blood.

Thin and tired, he must have embodied Eleyne’s conception of a

saint, deep-set eyes burning in a narrow, ascetic face, devout and

sensuous at the same time. He was someone to bully with her

mothering as he sprawled in his chair and listened to her prattle.

For all Eleyne’s attention to Peredur, you always knew who

she was married to. Lancelot wasn’t long out of her sight or off

• her tongue. He grew squarer and thicker and quieter through the

years, and I wondered now if anything since had struck the chord

of joy I heard from him the day Eleyne told him of the Grail. He

spent a great deal of time searching for it, but was no nearer

. discovery than that day. Now and then as we talked about the

; fire, his eyes would go to Guenevere—a moment only—and

|; something would peer through that was no part of God or Grails.

222

Firelord

Wheel of Shadow, Wheel of Sun

223

His son seemed to have little of Lancelot in him, purely his mother’s child, solemn as a tomb and already millstoned with a heavy bronze cross around his fat baby neck. I searched in vain for some of Drost’s darting mischief. Galahalt’s wide, complacent stare looked from birth on a fixed cosmos where God sat ringed about with the house of Astolat, the archangels somewhere below the salt.

Eleyne chattered on to Peredur’s gallant if passive attention, but one subject did fascinate him: the Holy Grail. Her rendering of the tale was as sepulchral now as when I first heard it at Neth

Dun More.

“—And the spear pierced his side upon the instant, and the Holy Grail disappeared from the sight of men. And we blood of Saint Joseph have mournfully searched for our lost charge these four hundred years since. Now, is that not a tale of sad wonder, my lord Prince?”

“fascinating,” Peredur mused, “I mean, if it could be found.”

“No, it is gone from mortal sight,” said Lancelot. “I’ve searched, but with my—with our imperfections, we can’t hope to see it.”

Something unreadable flickered in Guenevere’s eye.

“Galahalt!” Eleyne prodded her wriggling son. “Don’t squirm so in your chair. Noblemen do not squirm before their king.”

“He’s tired, bless him. Dear Eleyne.” Gwen was always oversweet to Lancelot’s wife. “Don’t you think we should put

him to bed?” “By your leave, my lady. It is history of the Grail that he

should hear.” My wife vented on Eleyne the smile usually reserved for

Pictish envoys. “Of course, dear.”

Peredur’s British soul loved the Grail legend though his Roman mind stumbled on its inconsistencies. “Not to deny miracle, but doesn’t it strike you as impractical to search in place and time for something outside both? Forgive me, Ancellius, but there does seem a better way. For instance, I remember the abbey on Wyrral Tor. Built of stone.”

“So it is, like Neth Dun More,” said Geraint.

“And Lady Eleyne is sure of the details of the story?”

Eleyne sure? “Does the sun rise in the east? Am I a woman? Sure of it all, every word passed down by our forefathers one to

the next.”

“Then that’s the place to start,” Peredur concluded with a hint of satisfaction. “The highest hill, Wyrral Tor.”

He caught Guenevere’s hand. “Gwen, love: remember when we used to hide-and-seek in the church at home? The old altar to Diana in the cellar?”

“Yes. I used to hide behind it.”

“And in the sub-cellar one even older, carved with a bull’s head. The hill folk called him Heme the Hunter.”

Even I caught some of his infectious excitement. “What are you onto, lad?”

“The story says Joseph of Arimathea visited Ynnis Witryn many times as a merchant in tin. Then he’d know our people and customs. So, when he built his church, wouldn’t he do as our northern priests and pick a spot already known to the people as a sacred place? A high place?”

His excitement grew as he laid out his reasoning. “Wyrral Tor must be the highest hill around. The stone abbey would take an army to build, hordes more than Joseph had. If he built a church, he built it out of wattle and match, stuff that could be packed up Jhe hill on a few mules. And just like the old bull-altar, I’ll bet the remains of Joseph’s church are under the abbey cellar. The disciples probably built their huts at the foot of the hill.”

“Aye,” Eleyne confirmed. “Where the old well is.”

Peredur thought any search should start with the abbey cellar. “God punish me for pride if I give too much weight to human reason on a matter of faith.”

But Eleyne wouldn’t hear of that. “You are as Christian a lord as ever I knew.” She hooked a possessive arm through Lancelot’s. “Saving my husband. But only God can decide who has sufficient grace.”

“Amen to that,” said Peredur. “But we have only the world in which to look for His wonders, and one has to start somewhere. Geraint, I’ll have my servants pack me to leave with you.”

His decision was a quiet thunderbolt to all of us. Guenevere said, “You’re going to Astolat?”

“That I am, Gwen. I’ve been father’s eyes in the north, tracking this what’s-her-name Faerie queen. Why not the south? If Cador asks, I’m off with Geraint to observe those few Saxons he deigns to leave alive.”

“With me? And why not!” Geraint pounced on the frail prince to thump his approval on Peredur’s less than sturdy back. “Good man that you are, my ship is yours. My ship, my home, my horses. Ask for mem.”

Peredur took refuge from the ebullience in a fit of coughing.

224

Firelord

His British heart might brim with apostolic zeal, but his logic was pure Roman. Our church was anarchic and militant as our tribes. To present the bishops with the Grail in the name of Arthur and Guenevere would tend to rally them behind the throne now when we needed unity.

Something about the tale nagged him, though, something missing. Peredur knew several devout priests in Eburacum who still kept a wife or two without harm to their holy office. God pardon him, he couldn’t believe the Grail would vanish primly at the first sign of healthy blood in its keeper.

“There was a cup,” he reasoned to me later. “Wood or metal and not destroyed, it exists somewhere. Do you notice how Eleyne tells the story? As if she were singing by rote, not really aware of each word. She must tell it again while I write it down. I can’t help feeling there’s a half-Lost hint in the tale itself.” Peredur coughed into the blood-spattered linen. *‘And if there is, by God’s Eyes, I will find it.”

Geraint’s premonition proved correct. Within three days, Marcus’ courier brought news that Cerdic’s scattered raiders had formed and were making for the rich port of Llongborth. Geraint charged to his ship in a flurry of kisses and orders to servants, trundling Peredur aboard in a last-minute whirl of love and disorder.

“Sister, good-bye, I’ll bring Galahalt an heathen banner. Mind those chests, you men! They contain my best armor. Animals! Must I go naked into battle? Oh God, did they set my sword? Come, Peredur, I’ll leave the boldest of the heathen to your lance and none other. Hurry now, hurry! Gently with that horse, God blight you all! Arthur, bless you for a king for bards to remember, and I’ll be back when the south is set right again. Galahalt, kiss your poor uncle who has not even the time to love those dearest to him. Would there were more hours in the day, that’s the sad truth of it. Good-bye … good-bye.”