‘Tell me your tale, and I’ll see how I like it.’
I lift my shoulders, tugging against the rope. ‘It’s easier to tell with my hands unbound.’
A guard cuts the rope. I rub my wrists, then walk over to the table and take a cup of wine to wet my throat.
‘Long ago, when Arthur was king …’
I make it up as I go along. Sometimes I catch myself digressing, or repeating too much, but each time some instinct draws me back to the story, like a blind man feeling the edge of the path with his stick. I watch the King’s face the same way I watched Ada’s when we sat by the river at Hautfort, catching the things that please him, amplifying them where I can. Some of it comes from the stories my mother told me; other pieces from scraps I’ve heard in other halls, or half-remember from the books I studied as a child. For the rest, I take the coarse threads of my life, dye them vivid colours and weave my own tapestry to hang in the hall.
I tell the king how Perceval was born in the waste forest of Wales. How his father and his brothers were Arthur’s knights, all killed on the same day. How his mother raised him with no knowledge of knights or chivalry, to protect him from the same fate — but how the moment he saw a company of knights riding through the forest, he knew it was his destiny.
I tell how Perceval went to Caerleon where Arthur kept his court. I make great play of looking around the hall.
‘It wasn’t a particularly great or magnificent court …’
Morgan flushes, sensitive to any insult.
‘… only three thousand knights or so.’
They all laugh. Morgan thumps the arm of his chair and nods his approval. The energy in the room lifts and channels into me.
I tell them more. How Arthur dubbed Perceval a knight, and how Perceval set out to find adventures. How he met the Lady Blancheflor, saved her castle from the wicked Clamadeu and made her his sweetheart, though not his wife. In my story, there’s no husband to get in the way.
The hall’s growing dim — the servants have forgotten to replace the candles. I shift position; I crouch to keep my face in the light. I tell how Perceval set out again and came to a broad river and met a fisherman. How the fisherman directed him to a castle in a hidden valley, and how that night at supper he witnessed marvels he did not understand.
As Perceval and his host were talking, a squire entered the hall carrying a lance. He walked in front of the fire, so that everyone there saw the wood and the iron point. A single drop of blood rolled down from its tip and touched the squire’s hand.
Then two more squires entered carrying golden candle-holders, each with a dozen candles glittering off the enamel inlay. A girl came behind them — beautiful and nobly dressed — and in her hands she carried a grail. The dish was made of purest gold, studded with the most precious jewels in earth and sea, and the light from within it was so bright that the candles were swallowed up in its radiance, like the stars at sunrise.
The grail passed by like the lance and disappeared into another chamber. The knight watched them go, but didn’t dare ask who or what purpose it served.
Afterwards, I couldn’t tell you how it came to me that way. All I know is that at that moment there isn’t a man in the hall who would not stay there until dawn to find out what the grail and spear mean.
I tell them how Perceval woke the next morning and found the castle deserted. How as he was riding over the drawbridge it closed behind him. How he never found the castle again — how the quest drove him mad. How he lost his memory so totally that he no longer even remembered God. He wandered for five years, forgetting everything, until on Good Friday a hermit took him in and restored him to sanity. How he vowed he would not spend two consecutive nights under the same roof as long as he lived, until he had found out why the spear bled, and what the grail contained.
How –
I break off suddenly. Morgan thinks it’s a dramatic effect; he waits a moment for me to continue. When he realises I’m not going to, he rises forward like a man woken from a dream.
‘And?’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘I don’t know the ending. The story hasn’t finished yet.’
LI
Blanchard sat in his office and stared at the chessboard on his desk. It was late in the game: the only surviving pieces were two kings and a white knight. He toyed with the knight, testing possible moves.
Which way now?
He was a good chess player — not formally brilliant, no automaton, but hard to beat. He knew that you had to read play not just from your perspective, or even as a textbook might judge it, but as your opponent understood it. Where does he see his strengths? His vulnerabilities? What will he do next? On the rare occasions he played against computers, he did badly: he needed a man sitting across the table to dissect, to worm into and ultimately to defeat.
Take Ellie. The moment she’d walked into his office, even in her frumpy clothes and wide-eyed innocence, he’d known she’d be a formidable adversary. Saint-Lazare had called her a pawn: Blanchard saw she was a pawn who could become a queen. For all he respected her, he’d still underestimated her. He’d failed to block her path. Now she was almost home.
He had one chance left, a single shot. The engineers at Mirabeau said that the chapel was beyond repair: whatever secrets had once adorned it had been blown to pieces by the helicopter. Ellie might resurface, but after their run-in at Annelise Stirt’s she’d be careful about showing herself.
Which way would she go? Which way should he go?
He pushed the chessboard aside, toppling over the king with the sudden motion. He took out his computer. His white finger hovered over a button, then stabbed down.
In twenty-four hours, he’d know.
Thirty-five knights crammed in a stockade makes for an uncomfortable night. There’s not even space to relieve ourselves, except by pissing through the palings. At least we stay warm.
Around midnight the King’s seneschal unlocks the door and brings us back to the hall. The fire’s smouldering, the guards have gone. The King sits alone, wreathed in smoke, as if the dragons on his throne have started to stir.
‘You can have your horses, your arms, and safe conduct out of my kingdom.’
Hugh starts to speak, but Morgan cuts him off.
‘I’ll also give you some news. The men you want left Morgannwg this afternoon, heading north-west. They stopped at an inn to feed their horses — the stable boy heard them talking about a place called Cwm Bychan. It’s in Gwynedd, near the sea. Three days’ hard riding through the mountains.
Hugh gives a slight bow. ‘Thank you, your majesty.’
A terse smile. ‘Make sure you keep your storyteller safe. I want him to tell me how it ends.’
For three days and nights we ride, snatching sleep and food where we can, never more than half an hour, then back in the saddle and on again. The pace is brutal, the terrain unforgiving. I understand why the Normans never really conquered Wales — why Morgan ap Owain could overthrow them the moment the King’s attention was elsewhere. It’s a wild land of sheer valleys, icy swamps and dark forests that stretch to the horizon. It punishes the horses. One by one, they go lame or collapse with exhaustion. We leave the riders behind, though it’s a long, dangerous journey home.
It feels as if the land is swallowing us. Each day the valleys grow deeper, while the peaks reach further towards the clouds. Snow blankets the upper reaches, vast heights where only God and eagles roam.
On the second afternoon we pause at the top of yet another ridge. Hugh reins in next to me and turns round in his saddle, looking for something.