The Once and Future King (54 page)

When the Ill—Made Knight came back from Corbin, Guenever was still in a rage. For some reason she was determined to believe that Elaine had become his mistress again, possibly because this seemed to be the best way of hurting her lover. She claimed that he had only been pretending about his religious feelings – as was shown by his immediately going off with Elaine when he had the chance. This, she said, had been at the back of his mind all along. He was a sham, and a weak sham at that. They had hysterical scenes together, about his weakness and shamness, alternating with other scenes of a more affectionate kind, which were necessary to counter—balance the idea that she had been in love with a sham man all her life. She began to look healthier, even beautiful again, as a result of these quarrels. But two lines came between her eyebrows, and she had a frightening eye sometimes, which glittered like a diamond. Lancelot began to have a dogged look. They were drifting.

Elaine had been explained to, and it was Elaine who now struck the only strong blow of her life. She struck it unintentionally, by committing suicide.

A death—barge came down the river to the capital, since rivers were the highways of the day, and it was moored beneath the palace wall. She was in it – the plump partridge who had always been helpless. Probably people commit suicide through weakness, not through strength. Her gentle efforts to guide the hand of destiny, by decoying her master with feeble tricks or by reticent considerations – these had not been strong enough to be recognized in the despotism of life. Her son had gone, and her lover, and there was nothing left. Even the promise to return had failed her futile grasp. It had once been something
to live for, a handrail – not a particularly sumptuous handrail, but sufficiently serviceable to keep her upright. She had been able to make do. Never having been a high—handed or demanding girl, she had been able to make a little go a long way. But now even the little was gone.

Everybody went down to see the barge. It was not a lily maid of Astolat they saw, but a middle—aged woman whose hands, in stiff—looking gloves, grasped a pair of beads obediently. Death had made her look older and different. The stern, grey face in the barge was evidently not Elaine – who had gone elsewhere, or vanished.

Even if Lancelot was a weak man, or a Games—Maniac, or that infuriating creation, a person who consistently tries to be decent, he does not seem to have had an easy time of it. With his inherited tendency to madness, and his fantastic face, the confusion of his loyalties and moral standards, it must have been difficult enough to keep the balance of life without the various blows which were given to him above the bargain. He could have supported even the extra blows if he had been blessed with a callous heart. But his heart had been made as a match for Elaine’s, and now it was unable to bear the burden which hers had been forced to lay down. All the things which he might have done for the poor creature, but which it was now too late to do, and all the shameful questions about responsibility which go with the irrevocable, united in his mind.

‘Why were you not kinder to her?’ cried the Queen. ‘Why could you not have given her something to live for? You might have showed her some bounty and gentleness, which would have preserved her life.’

Guenever, who did not yet realize that Elaine had come between them more effectively than ever, said this quite spontaneously, and she meant it. She was overwhelmed with pity for her rival in the barge.

The new kind of life went on at Camelot in spite of the suicide. Nobody could have called it a specially happy kind – but people are tenacious of life, and will go on living. It was not all of it a plot—like life: most of it was just story – one thing after the other – a chain of unnecessary accidents. One ridiculous accident which happened about this time is worth mentioning, not because it had any consequences or antecedents, but because it was somehow the sort of thing which happened to Lancelot. He behaved about it in his own way.

He was lying on his stomach in a wood one day, with what sad thoughts nobody knows, when a lady archer came by, who was hunting. It does not say whether she was a masculine sort of lady with a moustache and gentlemen’s neckwear, or whether she was one of those scatterbrains from the film world who do archery because it is so cute. Anyway, she saw Lancelot, and she thought he was a rabbit. On the whole she must have been one of the masculine ladies, for, although it is a pretty trait to shoot at men in mistake for rabbits, it would have been unusual for a film star to hit the mark. Lancelot, bounding to his feet with about six inches of arrow embedded in his rump, behaved exactly like Colonel Bogey – driven into on the second tee at golf. He said passionately: ‘Lady or damsel, what that thou be, in an evil time bare ye a bow; the devil made you a shooter!’

In spite of the wound in his backside, Lancelot fought in the next tournament – an important one, because of several things which happened at it. The true tension at court – which was apparent to everybody except Lancelot, who was too innocent to be conscious of such things – began to show itself clearly at the Westminster jousts. For one thing, Arthur began to assert his position in their wretched triangle. He did this, poor fellow, by suddenly taking the opposite side to Lancelot in the
grand
mêlée.
He set upon his best friend, and tried to hurt him, and lost his temper. He did nothing unknightly, and, as it happened, did no harm to Lancelot. But the strange turn of feeling was there all the same. Before and afterwards they were friends. But just for that one moment of anger Arthur was the cuckold and Lancelot his betrayer. Such is the apparent explanation – an unconscious recognition of their relationship – but there may have been another thought behind it. It was a long time since Arthur had been the happy Wart, long since his home and his kingdom had been at their fortunate peak. Perhaps he was tired of the struggle, tired of the Orkney clique and the strange new fashions and the difficulties of love and modern justice. He may have fought against Lancelot in the hope of being killed by him – not a hope exactly, not a conscious attempt. This just and generous and kind—hearted man may have guessed unconsciously that the only solution for him and for his loved ones must lie in his own death – after which Lancelot could marry the Queen and be at peace with God – and he may have given Lancelot the chance of killing him in fair fight, because he himself was worn out. It may have been. At all events, nothing came of it. There was the blaze of temper, and then their love was fresh again.

Another important feature of the tournament was that Lancelot, with innocent idiocy, alienated the Orkneys finally and for good. He unhorsed the whole clan except Gareth, one after the other, and Mordred and Agravaine he unhorsed twice. Only a saint could have been fool enough to have saved their lives so often in rescues from Dolorous Towers and so on – but to cap it by knocking them down at will, at such a time, was the policy of a natural. Gawaine, it is true, was decent enough to refuse to have a hand in plots against Lancelot’s life, and Gaheris was dull. But from this day on it was only a question of time, as between the fashionable party of Mordred and Agravaine and the safety of the commander—in—chief.

A third straw in the wind was that Gareth fought on Lancelot’s side at Westminster. The peculiar cross—plays of sentiment were noticed by everybody – the King against his second self,
and Gareth against his own brothers. With such an undertow there was evidently a storm to come. It came characteristically, from a quarter which nobody had suspected.

There was a cockney knight called Sir Meliagrance, who had never been happy at court. If he had lived in the earlier days, when a man was judged as a man, he might have got along well enough. Unfortunately he belonged to the later generation, of Mordred’s fashions, and he was judged by the new standards. Everybody knew that Sir Meliagrance was not quite out of the top drawer. He knew it himself – the top drawer had been invented by Mordred – and the knowledge did not make him happy. Beside all this, Sir Meliagrance had a special cause for misery which had poisoned society for him. He was desperately, hopelessly – and had been ever since he could remember – in love with Guenever.

The news came while Arthur and Lancelot were at the ninepin alley. They had got into the habit of going off to this unfashionable spot every day to cheer themselves with a little conversation.

Arthur was saying: ‘No, no, Lance. You never understood poor Tristram at all.’

‘He was a cad,’ said Lancelot obstinately.

They were talking in the past tense because Tristram had finally been murdered, while playing the harp to La Beale Isoud, by the exasperated King Mark.

‘Even if he is dead,’ added the knight.

But the King shook his head vehemently.

‘Not a cad,’ he said. ‘He was a buffoon, one of the great comic characters. He was always getting himself into extraordinary situations.’

‘A buffoon?’

‘Absent—minded,’ said the King. ‘That is the great comic affliction. Look at his love affairs.’

‘You mean Isoud White—Hands?’

‘I firmly believe that Tristram got those two girls completely mixed up. He goes mad on La Beale Isoud, and then forgets all
about her. One day he is getting into bed with the other Isoud when something about the action reminds him of something. It dawns on him that there are two Isouds, not one – and he is terribly upset about it. Here am I getting into bed with Isoud White—Hands, he says, when all the time I was in love with La Beale Isoud! Naturally he was upset. And then being nearly murdered in his bath by the Queen of Ireland. There was a light of high comedy about that young man, and you ought to forgive him for being a cad.’

‘I –’ began Lancelot, but at that moment the messenger arrived.

He was a small, breathless boy with an arrow—slit in his jupon, under the right armpit. He held the rent together with his fingers and talked fast.

It was about the Queen, who had gone a—Maying – for it was the first of May. She had started early, as the custom was, intending to be back by ten o’clock, with all the dewy primroses and violets and hawthorn blooms and green—budding branches which it was proper to gather on such a morning. She had left her bodyguard behind – the Queen’s knights, who all bore the vergescu as their badge of office – and had taken with her only ten knights in civilian clothes. They had been dressed in green, to celebrate the festival of spring. Agravaine was among them – he had attached himself to Guenever lately, to spy on her – and Lancelot had been left out on purpose.

Well, they had been riding home cheerfully, all chattering and bloomy and branchy, when Sir Meliagrance had leaped up at their feet, in an ambush. The top—drawer business had preyed on his mind till he had determined to be ungentlemanly in earnest, if everybody accused him of being so. He had known that the Queen’s party was unarmed, and that Lancelot was not with them. He had brought a strong force of archers and men—at—arms to take her captive.

There had been a fight. The Queen’s knights had defended her as best they could with swords and falchions, until they were all wounded, six of them seriously. Then Guenever had surrendered, to save their lives. She had made a bargain with
Sir Meliagrance – whose heart was not really in the business of being a blackguard – that, if she called her defenders off, he must promise to take the wounded knights with her to his castle, and he must let them sleep in the anteroom of her chamber. Meliagrance, loving Guenever, flinching at his own half—hearted wickedness, and knowing the hopelessness of forcing his beloved against her will, had agreed to terms. The poor fellow had never been cut out to be a villain.

In the confusion of getting the sorry procession of hurt men slung across their horses, the Queen had kept her head. She had beckoned the little page, who had a fresh and fast pony, and she had secretly slipped him her ring, with a message for Lancelot. When he saw his opportunity, he was to gallop for his life – and he had done so, with the archers after him. Here was the ring.

Lancelot, half—way through the story, was already shouting for his armour. By the time it was told Arthur was kneeling at his feet, strapping on the greaves.

When the mounted archers rode back crestfallen, saying that they had been unable to shoot the boy, Sir Meliagrance knew what was going to happen. He was distracted with misery, not only because he knew that he had been acting unwisely and wickedly, but also because he was genuinely in love with the Queen. He still had a kick in him, however, and he saw that after having gone so far it was too late to retreat. Lancelot would be bound to come in answer to the message, and it was necessary to gain time. The castle was not ready for a siege – but, if it could be got ready, there would be a fair prospect of making terms with the besiegers, considering that the Queen would be inside. Sir Lancelot must be stopped at all costs, until the castle had been put in posture of defence. He guessed correctly that Lancelot would come riding helter—skelter to the
Queen’s aid, as soon as he could get himself armed. The best way of stopping him would be with a second ambush, at a narrow glade in the wood which he would have to ride through – a glade so narrow that archers would certainly be able to kill his horse, if not to pierce his armour. Since the Troubled Times, all roads had been cleared of undergrowth for the distance of a bowshot on either side – but this glade, on account of peculiarities in the terrain, had been overlooked. And a well—shot arrow at fair range could penetrate the best armour, as Meliagrance knew.

So the ambush was sent out post—haste, and everything within the castle was at sixes and sevens. Herdsmen were driving beasts into the keep – and all the beasts strayed, or got muddled with each other, or would not go through gates. Pump boys were feverishly bringing water to the great tubs – it was one of those futile castles, which appear to have originated in Ireland, whose bailey was without a well. Maids were running about on the verge of hysterics – for Sir Meliagrance, like many people out of the wrong drawer, was determined to receive his captive Queen in a way which would be above criticism. They were making boudoirs for her, and taking the tapestries out of his bachelor bedroom to go in hers, and polishing the silver, and sending to the nearest neighbours for the loan of gold plate. Guenever herself, ushered into a small waiting—room while the state apartments were made ready for her reception, added to the confusion by insisting on bandages and hot water and stretchers for her wounded men. Sir Meliagrance, running up and down stairs with cries of ‘Yes, Ma’am, in ‘arf a minute’ or ‘Marian, Marian, where the ‘ell have you put the candles?’ or ‘Murdoch, take them sheep out of the solar this instant,’ found time to lean his forehead against the cold stone of an embrasure, to clutch his bewildered heart, to curse his folly, and further to disarrange his already disordered plots.

The Queen was the first to get her affairs in order. She only had the bandaging to arrange, and naturally her wants were the earliest to be attended. She was sitting with her waiting—women at one of the windows of the castle, a sort of calm—centre
in the middle of the whirlwind, when one of the girls called out that something was coming down the road.

‘It is a cart,’ said the Queen. ‘It will be something to do with the provisions of the castle.’

‘There is a knight in the cart,’ said the girl, ‘a knight in armour. I suppose somebody is taking him away to be hanged.’

In those days it was considered disgraceful to ride in a cart.

Later, they saw that there was a horse trotting behind the cart – which was coming at a great gallop – with its reins dangling in the dust. Later still they were horrified to see that all the entrails of the horse were dangling in the dust also. It was stuck full of arrows like a porcupine, and trotted along with a strange look of unconcernedness. Perhaps it was numbed by shock. It was Lancelot’s horse, and Lancelot was in the cart, beating the cart—horse with his scabbard. He had fallen into the ambush as expected, had spent some time trying to get at his assailants – who had escaped the heavy dismounted iron man easily, by jumping over hedges and ditches – and then he had set out to walk the rest of the way, in spite of his armour. Meliagrance had counted on the impossibility of such a walk, for a man dressed in an equipment which may have weighed as much as himself – but he had not counted on the cart which Lancelot commandeered. A measure of the great man’s anxiety about the Queen on this occasion is that he is said to have swum his horse across the Thames at the beginning of the ride, from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth, in spite of the fact that, if anything had gone wrong, his armour would certainly have drowned him.

‘How dare you say it was a knight going to be hanged?’ exclaimed the Queen. ‘You are a hussy. How dare you compare Sir Lancelot to a felon?’

The wretched girl blushed and held her tongue, while Lancelot could be seen throwing his reins to the terrified carter, and storming up the drawbridge, shouting at the top of his voice.

Sir Meliagrance heard of the arrival just as Lancelot was bursting in at the Great Gate. A flustered porter, taken by surprise, tried to shut it in his face, but received a blow on the
ear from the iron fist, which knocked him flat. The gate swung open, undefended. Lancelot was in one of his rare passions, possibly on account of the sufferings of his horse.

Meliagrance, who had been overseeing some men—at—arms while they broke up the wooden sheds on the Great Court as a precaution against Greek Fire, lost his nerve. He sprinted for the back stairs and was already kneeling at the Queen’s feet, while Lancelot was raging round the Porter’s lodge, demanding the Queen.

‘What is the matter now?’ asked Guenever, looking at the extraordinary, vulgar man who sprawled before her – a look, curiously enough, not without affection. After all, it is a compliment to be kidnapped for love, especially when all ends happily.

‘I yield, I yield!’ cried Sir Meliagrance. ‘Ow, I yield to you, dear Queen. Save me from that Sir Lancelot!’

Guenever was looking radiantly beautiful. It may have been the Maying, or the compliment which the cockney Knight had paid her, or some premonition such as comes to women before their joy. At any rate she was feeling happy, and she bore no grudge against her captor.

‘Very well,’ she said, cheerfully and wisely. ‘The less noise there is about this, the better for my reputation. I will try to calm Sir Lancelot.’

Sir Meliagrance positively whistled with relief, he sighed so hard.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s the old cock sparrer – ahem! ahem! Beg pardon, I’m sure. Will it please your gracious Majesty to stye the night at Meliagrance Castle, when you ‘ave been and calmed Sir Lancelot, for the sike of your wounded knights?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the Queen.

‘You could all go awai in the morning,’ urged Sir Meliagrance, ‘and we could sye no more abaht it. It would be more regular like. You could sye you was here on a visit.’

‘Very well,’ said the Queen, and she went down to Lancelot while Sir Meliagrance mopped his brow.

He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy. When Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the old electric message went between their eyes before they spoke a word. It was as if Elaine and the whole Quest for the Grail had never been. So far as we can make it out, she had accepted her defeat. He must have seen in her eyes that she had given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself – to love his God, and to do whatever he pleased – so long as he was only Lancelot. She was serene and sane again. She had renounced her possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did. They were young creatures – the same creatures whose eyes had met with the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so long ago. And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake.

‘What is all the fuss about?’ asked the Queen.

They had a light, bantering tone. They were in love again.

‘You may well ask.’

Then he added in an angrier voice, and flushing: ‘He has shot my horse.’

‘Thank you for coming,’ said the Queen. Her voice was gentle. It was the first voice he remembered. ‘Thank you for coming so fast and so bravely. But he has given in, and we must forgive him.’

‘It was shameful to murder my poor horse.’

‘We have made it up.’

‘If I had known you were going to make it up,’ said Lancelot rather jealously, ‘I would not have nearly killed myself in coming.’

The Queen took his bare hand. The gauntlet was off.

‘Are you sorry,’ she asked, ‘because you have done so well?’

He was silent.

‘I don’t care about him,’ said the Queen, blushing. ‘I only thought it would be better not to have a scandal.’

‘I don’t want a scandal any more than you do.’

‘You must do as you please,’ said the Queen. ‘Fight him if you like. You are the one to choose.’

Lancelot looked at her.

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘so ye be pleased, I care not. As for my part, ye shall soon please.’

He always fell into the grandeur of the High Language, when he was moved.