“Then they will probably get them,” said Alice calmly.

As he stared at her, really troubled now, a bell began to ring. Alice picked up the veil that had slipped to the turf, and made to rise, but he put out a hand.

“No, please wait. Tell me what you mean. Are you – you cannot be talking of trickery?”

Not, he was thinking, while you sit there looking like a young angel.

“Not trickery. It’s honest enough, a matter of faith. You see, Chlodovald – that’s the prince – believes; the old queen believes; and the brothers here, too. That’s the real ‘grail’, that belief, even though the actual one must have been broken to fragments hundreds of years ago. It’s an idea, a symbol, just as it was meant to be on that first evening. That’s what my father says, anyway – and Jesus said so himself, if you remember?”

“You talk as if you’d known him.”

“I think I did, when I was very little.”

Another pause, while the chapel bell rang to its sweet, echoing finish, and silence came back.

“I came to find the grail,” he said suddenly. His voice was rather too loud, and he lowered it. “I came on a sinful quest, to find Macsen’s great cup, and take it, by guile or by force, for someone who wanted its power. Someone whom I served. Other knights have travelled abroad on the same quest. None of them have found it, and two at least have died in the seeking.”

“Then,” she said, very simply, “they have found some sort of truth. And you? Will you go on? This person you serve, will he require you to do so?”

“I was sent by a lady. For me, it was a quest, and an adventure. For her, it was –” He checked himself.

“For her? For its power, you said? Well,” said Alice, “perhaps she thinks she has need of it. Everyone has their own grail.”

“That lady?” He said it violently, then stopped, ashamed. “Forgive me,” he said, very humbly. “I have been very wrong. I had no right to speak to you as I have done, or to speak about – her, as I would wish. I think I had better leave you.”

This time it was she who put out a hand. “No. Please stay. Why don’t you tell me about it, this quest of yours that troubles you so much?”

So he stayed. He sat down again beside her on the warm grass and told her the whole story, from its beginning at Craig Arian to its shadowed ending in the Dark Tower. There, indeed, he could not bring himself to tell her everything, but even so, when he had done, he sat in unhappy silence, not looking at her, awaiting either her censure or a silent and disgusted withdrawal.

She was, indeed, silent for some time, but when she spoke she merely asked: “And now?”

“I don’t know. I can’t go on with this quest, nor can I turn around and go south to deal with King March. Both quests are wrong, though I am in a sense vowed to both; I can see now that one is sinful and the other foolish. But what is left for me? What am I to do?”