The unfinished thought dangled between us.

“If what, Bedivere?”

He spread his arms, let them fall at his sides. “I don’t know.”

“There is something.”

“Na, foolish,” Bedivere shrugged it off. “I’m not one for second sight. But I’ve a bad feeling about the going north.”

“Omens?” I asked.

“Na, na, but it keeps coming back. I want to see Rhonda’s children. And yet so many years, so many battles without a hurt. Kay lying in the mud at Badon, and the thought was on me. It is on me, wakes me sweating at night.”

I sat down beside him, concerned. “What thought, Bedivere?”

My friend looked away across the courtyard. He considered the words before he shared them. “I don’t think there’s any luck left in me, Artos.”

And then the rider out of the south pounding up to the gate, into the courtyard, off the winded horse and dashing up flights of stairs, his news spreading before him like a wave to wash over

lords, ladies and servants alike before he fell on his knees to gasp it out to me. Lord Culwych, one of Peredur’s escort. “It is found, sir. The Holy Grail is found!”

“I can see the sun on their lance heads.” Bedivere leaned out over the parapet. “Gareth, how many?”

“A great, long snake of them,” Gareth bubbled. “Two hun-• dred at least. And look at the Bors, will you now! If he reins that nag any tighter, he’ll break its suffering neck.”

Bors was indeed the picture of pride—head high, lance socketed and rigid in his stiffly straightened arm, the horse controlled to a swaggering trot that was almost a dance. I called down into the courtyard.

“There by the gate! Tell Lord Bors we wait him in the great hall.”

1 clapped my friends by the shoulders. “Come on, you two barnacles, let’s make him feel important. It’s a great day.”

Camelot came alive with the news. While Bors dismounted in the courtyard, the great hall was already filling with lords and their wives, priests, eager servants and, trailing last, mortified and frantic, Bors’ young wife, Lady Regan.

“Oh, he would come iike this with no warning,” she wailed. “No decent time to change or groom. What will he think?”

“That he married a treasure.” I beckoned her up to the-dais with Bedivere and myself. “Stand here by me so he can tell us both.”

A hubbub at the entrance, an eddy of people moving aside, and Bors strode down the long chamber, sweating in full mail, to kneel before me.

“Long life to my king.” One brimming glance at Regan. “Praise God who lets me be His poor messenger. I am to say the Grail is found, and it comes even now with Prince Peredur.”

For all the portent of his news, there was something hesitant in his manner, an ambivalence.

“Praise God,” Bors mouthed dutifully.

“Amen,” I said. It was echoed by a number of the eager company hanging on his words. “But you might include Regan here.”

She skipped down from the dais—when you’re sixteen and in love, you can skip. “Welcome, husband. Forgive my hasty dress. I was about some mending, and—”

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“Oh, lass, I don’t care.” Bors squeezed her tight as if she might disappear if he let go. “Just hold me. My head’s not big enough to know the half of this.”

“Come up beside me,” I ordered. “Bring Regan and tell all

of us.”

Facing the expectant throng, Bors was even less certain of himself. The odd manner contrasted so sharply with his tidings. Unused to oratory, he took a moment to collect himself, unbuckling the heavy sword belt, turning it in his hands while he spoke.

“My king and lords, the Grail is found. That is, Prince Peredur says it is found.”

And Peredur was the meat of his story. They made camp by the well at the foot of Wyrral Tor. Day by day as they dredged the bottom, a larger and larger crowd gathered to watch the work. Monks from the monastery, the folk of Ynnis Witrin. Word spread and eventually even Lady Eleyne came from Astolat to fuss over and nurse the failing prince who would not rest but sifted with his own hands through the muck and centuries’ debris in the growing pile. Old pots, rusted bits of iron, rotted bucket staves and hoops, slime-green stones.

Then the workmen said they’d dredged nigh to the bottom and the well had nothing left but water in it. And Peredur held up a small object he’d been cleaning.

“It was a coin,” Bors went on. “Hardly used by the look. When it was burnished clean, you could see the image of a man’s head with his name on the back. Emperor Tiberius, Peredur said. And that meant we were probably as close as we’d

get.’”

But it was no Grail and there was little teft at the bottom. The workmen were shivering blue with going down and filling the buckets, and the monks themselves suggested most tactfully that folk did need the well for water. Lady Eleyne turned on them all like an iron judgment. Was she not of St. Joseph’s own blood? Did she not rule here in the absence of Lord Ancellius? Quickly on with the work and let these commons fetch their water from River Brue.

“They went down again and came back empty-handed. Nothing but sand and loose stones at the bottom. The divers were pure spent from being under cold-water so long. Then it was that the prince took off his robe and, all in his drawers, with the folk looking on, started to climb down the well.”

Bors protested, of course. It wasn’t fitting for a prince to labor

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so. Bad enough in private, but with commons looking on—but Peredur would have none of it.

“I alone,” he said. And he went down the rope into the cold water.

He came up once to say that they weren’t bottom stones, but loose rocks thrown in to raise the water level. The second time, be sent up a large load of mem, pausing only to fill his lungs, and dove again to dislodge another bucketful of the greenish rocks.

“He was down so long, we began to worry and then to pray outright. He was much weakened and the water like ice.”

Then Peredur’s arm broke the surface, coming straight up with something dark clutched in its fingers. His head bobbed up; Peredur sputtered and gasped, “Hu-haul me out! Quick, I’m starting to cramp.”

“And we did,” Bors reported baldly, voice sunk to a halting whisper in which there was still more puzzlement than reverence. “There it was in his hand.”

An old priest stepped forward, eager, “What, Lord Bors?”

“Something. I know not what. Ail caked with green weed and God knows’what else.”

I pressed him. “But what?”

He only bowed his head, miserable. “The prince can tell of it.”

“But you saw something, boy?”

“Yes, sir.” Bors sounded only weary now. “But I have no words. You see, all my life—I mean, it doesn’t …”

Bors looked down at Regan pressed against his side and tightened his arm around the girl as if to comfort her, comfort all of us.

“I have only my faith,” he ended doggedly. “But it is not what we thought.”

If the Grail was an anticlimax for Bors, the procession of honor was not. I suspect Eleyne had a hand in its elaboration. First came Bors’ detachment, stiff and proud, then a dozen trumpeters with bucinas rummaged from the shards of Trajanus’ old camp. The players were not keenly proficient with the obsolete instrument; they distracted the horses more than they stirred die heart. Immediately behind them came a burly monk holding aloft a great silver cross. More monks then, a dun clump of them, hands clasped and singing Hallelujah and Nova gaudia.

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Before Peredur’s litter strode a young priest, chanting sonorously, “The blessing of God on Prince Peredur who has restored to us the proof of Christ in Britain. Praises to his name which shall be called Venerable.”

Peredur swayed limply with the motion of his Utter, wrapped in blankets, head propped on a pillow of rich fabric, one bloodless hand resting on a jeweled reliquary in which, I assumed, lay the triumph of his quest.

And then in state came Lady Eleyne, carried in a chair and wearing the ancient crown of Dyfneint. Close behind in their moth-eaten finery followed the eider nobles of Dyfneint. A few Caerleon lords rode after to keep the rear in some kind of order. In their wake, the holy procession trailed off raggedly into jubilant and curious common folk, larking children, dogs and beggars who followed any royal progress for alms.

It was a brave spectacle, goggled at and cheered from every casement and rampart in Camelot. With their huzzahs and the monks’ singing and the dogs’ woofing, it was quite a racket, but I suffered it. If God himself sent down an order for quiet, no one would have heeded.

The glittering, hosanna-ing parade entered the south gate of Camelot and filled the courtyard before we shut the gates against the commons still cheering outside. I sent two servants with a hoard of small coins to distribute and several more to clean the cold leftovers from the kitchens, so that the country around the palace looked like a huge, holy picnic, not far off the mark for definition.

As I took Peredur’s hand, a faded picture came to mind: Ambroshis coming to Eburacum, his death hanging on him like a dingy garment.

His eyes glittered with fever. His head barely moved on the pillow. “Thanks, Arthur. For the chance.”

“Call it an investment. I suppose you’re the holiest prisoner since Jesus. Welcome, Perry-fach.”

A great, swelling Hallelujah and Amen went up from the monks around us as I lifted Peredur from the litter. His mouth was close to my ear and, with the last of his energy, Peredur whispered, “I do hope God likes music. They’ve not let up since Caerleon.”

Eleyne hovered over Peredur, grimly solicitous. She was sole ruler in Dyfneint now, though she referred to Lancelot’s defec—

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tion as a mere absence and acted as if she expected him momentarily. Guenevere she mentioned not at all.

She was thirty-nine. Her brief bloom had faded rather quickly, leaving the immutable, leaden seriousness etched deeper as she settled directly into middle age, convinced as ever of her place among the angels. Harder, bleaker. She’d wrapped her life around Lancelot. When the truth filtered at last through her granite sensibilities, she must have been very unhappy in her submerged soul, but never spoke a word against the husband to whom she was forever bound by God.