The Once and Future King (55 page)

The wounded knights were laid on stretchers in the outer room. The inner room, where Guenever slept, had a window with iron bars. There was no glass.

Lancelot had noticed a ladder in the garden, which was long enough for his purpose – and, although they had made no assignation, the Queen was waiting. When she saw his crumpled face at the window, with the inquisitive nose against the stars, she did not think it was a gargoyle or a demon. She stood for a few heartbeats, feeling the wild blood surge in her neck, then went silently to the window – the silence of an accomplice.

Nobody knows what they said to each other. Malory says that ‘they made either to other their complaints of many divers things.’ Probably they agreed that it was impossible to love Arthur and also to deceive him. Probably Lancelot made her understand about his God at last, and she made him understand about her missing children. Probably they fully agreed to accept their guilty love as ended.

Later, Sir Lancelot whispered: ‘I wish I might come in.’

‘I would as fain.’

‘Would you, madam, with all your heart that I were with you?’

‘Truly.’

The last iron bar, as he broke it out, cut the brawn of his hand to the bone.

Later still, the whispers faltered, and there was silence in the darkness of the room.

Queen Guenever lay long in bed next morning. Sir Meliagrance, anxious to get the whole affair safely ended as soon as possible, fussed in the antechamber, wishing she were gone. For one thing, he was not anxious to prolong his own torture, by keeping the Queen under his roof, whom he loved and could not have.

At last, partly to hurry her off and partly out of a lover’s uncontrollable curiosity, he went into the bedroom to wake her up – a proceeding which was possible in the days of the levee.

‘Mercy,’ said Sir Meliagrance, ‘what ails you, Ma’am, to sleep so long?’

He was looking at his lost beauty in the bed, and pretending not to do so. The blood of Lancelot’s cut hand was all over the sheets.

‘Traitress!’ cried Sir Meliagrance suddenly. ‘Traitress! You are a traitor to King Arthur!’

He was beside himself with rage and jealousy, believing himself deceived. He had been assuming, since his own enterprise had gone agley, that the Queen was a pure woman; and that he, in seeking to enjoy her, was in the wrong. Now he saw that all the time she had been cheating him, only pretending to be too virtuous to love him, and meanwhile sporting with her wounded knights under his very nose. He had jumped to the conclusion that the blood had come from a wounded knight – otherwise why should she have insisted on having them in the antechamber? The wildest envy was mixed with his rage. He never saw the bars of the window, which had been replaced as carefully as possible.

‘Traitress! Traitress! I accuse you of high treason!’

The yells of Sir Meliagrance brought the hurt knights hobbling to the door – the commotion spread – tire—women and serving maids, pages, turf boys, a couple of grooms, all came with excitement to the scene.

‘They are all false,’ cried Sir Meliagrance, ‘all or some. A wounded knight hath been here.’

Guenever said, ‘That is untrue. They can prove it.’

‘It is a lie,’ the knights shouted. ‘Choose which of us you will fight. We will fight you.’

‘No, you won’t,’ yelled Sir Meliagrance. ‘Away with your proud language. A wounded knight ‘as been sleeping with ‘er Majesty!’

And he kept on pointing to the blood, which was certainly good evidence, until Sir Lancelot arrived among the now sheepish bodyguard. Nobody noticed that his hand was in a glove.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Lancelot.

Meliagrance began telling him, wildly, gesticulating, seizing with excitement upon a fresh person to tell. He was like a man crazy with grief.

Lancelot said coldly: ‘May I remind you about your own conduct towards the Queen?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. I don’t care. I know a knight was in this room last evening.’

‘Be careful what you say.’

Lancelot looked at him hard, trying to warn him and to bring him to his senses. They both knew that this accusation must end in trial by combat, and Lancelot wanted to make him realize with whom he would have to fight. Sir Meliagrance did realize this eventually. He looked at Lancelot with unexpected dignity.

‘And you be careful too, Sir Lancelot,’ he said quietly. ‘I know you are the best knight in the world, but be careful ‘ow you fight in a wrong quarrel. God might strike a stroke for justice, Sir Lancelot, after all.’

The Queen’s true lover set his teeth.

‘That must be left to God,’ he said.

Then he added, very meanly: ‘So far as I am concerned, I say plainly that none of these wounded knights was in the Queen’s room. And if you want to fight about it, I will fight you.’

Lancelot was, in the end, to fight for the Queen at the stake three times: first in the good quarrel of Sir Mador, second in this very doubtful quibble of words with Sir Meliagrance, and third in a quarrel which was wrong altogether – and each fight brought them nearer to destruction.

Sir Meliagrance threw down his glove. He was so certain of
the truth of his assertion that he had become obstinate, as people do in violent arguments. He was prepared to die rather than withdraw. Lancelot took the glove – what else could he do? Everybody began attending to the paraphernalia of a challenge, the usual sealing of the gages with signets and so on, and the fixing of the date. Sir Meliagrance grew quieter. Now that he was caught in the machinery of justice, he had time to reflect, and, as usual, his reflections went the opposite way. He was an inconsistent man.

‘Sir Lancelot,’ he said, ‘now that we are fixed to have a fight, you won’t do nothing treacherous to me meanwhile?’

‘Of course not.’

Lancelot looked at him in genuine amazement. His heart was like Arthur’s. He was always getting himself into trouble – as, for instance, by unhorsing the Orkneys at Westminster – through underestimating the wickedness of the world.

‘We will be friends till the battle?’

The old warrior felt his long—accustomed pang of shame. He was to fight this man for saying what was practically true.

‘Yes,’ he said enthusiastically, ‘friends!’

He moved towards Meliagrance with an uprush of remorse.

‘Then we will have peace for now,’ said Meliagrance in a pleased voice. ‘Everything above board. Would you like to see my castle?’

‘Indeed I should.’

Meliagrance led him all over the castle, from room to room, until they came to a chamber with a trapdoor. The board rolled and the trap opened. Lancelot fell sixty feet, landing on deep straw in a dungeon. Then Meliagrance ordered one of the horses to be hidden, and went back to the Queen to tell her that her champion had ridden ahead. Lancelot’s well—known habit of abrupt departures lent colour to the story. It seemed to Meliagrance the best way of ensuring that God should not choose the wrong side of this quarrel – for Meliagrance was muddled with his standards too.

The second trial by combat was as sensational as the Mador one had been. For one thing, Lancelot arrived, at the last moment, by a still narrower margin. They had waited for him, and given him up, and persuaded Sir Lavine to fight in his place. Sir Lavine was actually riding into the lists when the great man came at full gallop, on a white horse which belonged to Meliagrance. He had been held captive in the dungeon until that morning – when the girl who brought him his food had finally liberated him in the absence of her master, in exchange for a kiss. He had suffered some complicated scruples about this kiss: but had decided in the end that it was permissible.

Meliagrance went down at the first charge, and refused to get up.

‘I yield,’ he said. ‘I’m a gonner.’

‘Get up, get up. You have not fought at all.’

‘I shan’t,’ said Sir Meliagrance.

Lancelot stood over him in perplexity. He owed him a thrashing for the business of the horse, and for the treachery of the trapdoor. But he knew that the man’s accusation was essentially right, and he did not like the idea of killing him.

‘Mercy,’ said Sir Meliagrance.

Lancelot turned his eyes sideways to the Queen’s pavilion, where she sat under the Constable’s ward. Nobody could see this look of inquiry because of the great helm.

Guenever saw it, however, or felt it in her heart. She turned her thumb down, over the edge of the box, and secretly jabbed it downward several times. Meliagrance, she thought, was a dangerous man to keep alive.

There was great silence in the arena, while everybody waited without breath, leaning forward and looking upon the combatants like a circle of vultures whose prey is not yet dead. Everybody was waiting for the
coup de grâce
, like the people at a
Roman amphitheatre or at a Spanish bullfight, and everybody was sure that Lancelot would give it. The accusation of Meliagrance had been, in their opinion, much more serious than the accusation of Mador – and they thought, like Guenever, that he deserved to perish. For in those days love was ruled by a different convention to ours. In those days it was chivalrous, adult, long, religious, almost platonic. It was not a matter about which you could make accusations lightly. It was not, as we take it to be nowadays, begun and ended in a long week—end.

The spectators saw Lancelot hesitating over the man, then heard his voice coming muffled by the helm. He was making proposals.

‘I will give you odds,’ he was saying, ‘if you will get up and fight me properly, to the death. I will take off my helm and all the armour on the left side of my body, and I will fight without a shield, with my left hand tied behind my back. That will be fair, surely? Will you get up and fight me like that?’

A sort of high, hysterical squeal came from Sir Meliagrance, who could be seen crawling towards the King’s box and making violent gestures.

‘Don’t forget what’e said,’ he was shouting. ‘Everybody ‘eard ‘im. I accept ‘is terms. Don’t let ‘im go back on ’em. No harmour for the left side, no shield or ‘elm, and ‘is left hand tied behind ‘is back. Everybody ‘eard! Everybody ‘eard!’

The King cried, ‘Ho and abide!’ The heralds and kings—at—arms came down the lists, and Meliagrance was silenced. Everybody felt shame on his behalf. In the distasteful stillness, while he muttered and insisted that the terms should be observed, reluctant hands disarmed Sir Lancelot and tied him. They felt they were helping at the execution of somebody whom they loved very much, for the odds were too heavy. When they had bound him and given him his sword, they patted him – pushing him forward towards Meliagrance with these rough pats, and turning away their faces.

There was a flash in the sandy lists, like a salmon jumping a weir. It was Lancelot showing his naked side to draw the blow. And, as the blow came, there was the click of changing
forms – the same click as comes in the kaleidoscope when the image alters. The blow which Meliagrance was giving had changed to a blow which Lancelot was giving.

Sir Meliagrance was dragged out of the field by horses. His helm and head were in two pieces.

Well, that is the long story of how the foreigner from Benwick stole Queen Guenever’s love, of how he left her for his God and finally returned in spite of the taboo. It is a story of love in the old days, when adults loved faithfully – not a story of the present, in which adolescents pursue the ignoble spasms of the cinematograph. These people had struggled for a quarter of a century to reach their understanding, and now their Indian Summer was before them. Lancelot had given his God to Guenever, and she had given him his freedom in exchange. Elaine, who had never been more than an incidental part of the muddle, had achieved a peace of her own. Arthur, whose corner of the triangle was the least fortunate from a personal point of view, was not entirely wretched. Merlyn had not intended him for private happiness. He had been made for royal joys, for the fortunes of a nation. These, for the time of their sunset, Lancelot’s two sensational victories had restored. Fashion and modernity and the rot at the Table’s heart were in hiding, and his great idea was on the move once more. He was inventing Law as Power. Nor had Arthur cause for private reproach. He had kept himself aloof from the pains of Guenever and Lancelot, unconsciously trusting them not to bring the matter to his consciousness, not from motives of fear or of weak connivance, but from the noblest of motives. The power had been in the King’s hands. He had been in the position of a husband who could, by a single command, solve the problem of eternal triangles by reference to the headman’s block or to the stake. His wife and her lover had been at his mercy – and that was the
reason, not any reason of cowardice, why his generous heart had been determined to remain unconscious.

The Indian Summer was within their grasp, gossip was silenced, discourtesy put down. The Orkney faction could only grumble, a distant and almost subterranean complaint. In the scriptoria of the abbeys, and in the castles of the great nobles, the harmless writers scribbled away at Missals and Treatises of Knighthood, while the limners illuminated the capital letters and carefully drew blazons of arms. The goldsmiths and silversmiths hammered away, with small hammers, at gold leaf. They twisted gold wire and inlaid interlacements of the wildest complexity on the crosiers of the bishops. Pretty ladies kept robins and sparrows for pets, or tried very hard to teach their magpies to talk. Housewives of a provident turn of mind filled their cupboards with treacle as a medicine for bad air, and with homemade plasters called Flos Unkuentorum for the rheumatics and muskballs to smell. They provided against Lent by purchasing dates, and green ginger of almonds, and herrings at 4s 6d the horse—load. Falconers and austringers abused each other’s hawks to their hearts’ content. In the new law courts – for Fort Mayne was over – the lawyers were as busy as bees, issuing writs for attainder, chancery, chevisance, disseisin, distraint, distress, embracery, exigent, fieri facias, maintenance, replevin, right of way, oyer and terminer, scot and lot, Quorum bonorum, Sic et non, Pro et contra, Jus primae noctis, and Questio quid juris? Thieves – it is true – could be hanged for stealing goods to the value of one shilling – for the codification of Justice was still weak and muddled – but that was not so bad as it sounds, when you remember that for a shilling you could buy two geese, or four gallons of wine, or forty—eight loaves of bread – a troublesome load for a thief in any case. In the country lanes the mere lovers, who were not gentles, walked in the sunsets with their arms round each other’s waists, so that they gave the impression of a capital X when seen from behind.

Arthur’s Gramarye was at peace, and the joys of peace stretched before Lancelot and Guenever. But there was a fourth corner in the puzzle.

God was Lancelot’s totem. He was the other person of their battle, and now He chose the final moment to step across the path. The small boy who looked in the kettle—hat, and who dreamed of well—water which always slipped away from his lips, had cherished an ambition to do some ordinary miracle. He had managed a sort of miracle, when he rescued Elaine from her tub by being the best knight in the world – before he was trapped by Elaine on that terrible evening so that he broke his taboo. For a quarter of a century he had remembered the night with grief, and it had been with him through all the searches for the Grail. Before it, he had thought himself a man of God. Since then, he had been a swindle. Now the time had finally come to a head, when he was to be forced to face his doom.

There was a knight from Hungary called Sir Urre, who had received wounds in a tournament seven years before. He had been fighting with a man called Sir Alphagus, whom he had killed after getting these wounds – three of them on the head, four on the body and on the left hand. The mother of the dead Alphagus had been a Spanish witch, and she had put an enchantment on Sir Urre of Hungary, so that none of the wounds could ever heal up. All the time they were to go on bleeding, turn about, until the best knight in the world had tended and salved them with his hands.

Sir Urre of Hungary had long been carried from country to country – perhaps it was a sort of haemophilia – searching for the best knight who would be able to help him. At last he had braved the Channel to reach this foreign, northern land. Everybody had told him, everywhere, that his only chance was Lancelot, and in the end he had come to seek.

Arthur, who always felt the best of everybody, was sure that Lance would be able to do it – but he thought it fair that every knight of the Table should have a try. There might be a hidden excellence lurking somewhere, as had happened before.

The court was at Carlisle at the time, for the feast of Pentecost, and it was arranged that everybody should meet in the town meadow. Sir Urre was carried there in a litter and laid on a cushion of gold cloth, for the attempt at healing to begin.
A hundred and ten knights – forty were away on quests – stood round him in ordered ranks, in their best clothes, and there were carpets laid down, and pavilions set up for the great ladies to watch. Arthur loved his Lancelot so much that he wanted him to have a splendid setting, in which his crowning achievement could be done.

This is the end of the book of Sir Lancelot, and now we are to see him for the last time in it. He was hiding in the harness—room of the castle, whence he could spy the field. There were plenty of leather reins in the room, hanging orderly among the saddles and the bright bits. He had noticed that they were strong enough to bear his weight. He was waiting there, hidden, praying that somebody – Gareth perhaps? – would be able to do the miracle quickly; or, if not, that they would overlook him, that his absence would not be noticed.

Do you think it would be fine to be the best knight in the world? Think, then, also, how you would have to defend the title. Think of the tests, such repeated, remorseless, scandal—breathing tests, which day after day would be applied to you – until the last and certain day, when you would fail. Think also that you know of a good reason for your failure, which you have tried to hide, tried pathetically to hide and overlook, for five and twenty years. Think that you are now to go out, before the largest and most honourable gallery that can be assembled, to make a public demonstration of your sin. They are expecting you to succeed, and you are to fail: you are to publish the deceit which you have practised for a quarter of a century, and they will all immediately know the reason for it – that reason of shame which you have sought to conceal from your own mind, and which, when it has remembered itself in the silence of your empty chamber, has pricked you into a physical motion of your head to throw it off. Miracles, which you wanted to do so long ago, can only be done by the pure in heart. The people outside are waiting for you to do this miracle because you have traded on their belief that your heart was pure – and now, with treachery and adultery and murder wringing the heart like a cloth,
you are to go out into the sunlight for the test of honour.

Lancelot stood in the harness—room as white as a sheet. Guenever was out there, he knew, and she was also pale. He twisted his fingers and looked at the strong reins, and prayed as best he could.

‘Sir Servause le Breuse!’ cried the heralds, and Sir Servause stepped forward – a knight far down the list of competitors. He was a shy man, interested only in natural history, who had never fought with anybody in his life. He went over to Sir Urre, who was groaning from all the handling, and he knelt down and did his best.

‘Sir Ozanna le Cure Hardy!’

It went on like that down the full list of a hundred and ten, whose gorgeous names are given by Malory in their proper order, so that you almost see the fine cut of their heavy brigandines, the tinctures of their blazons, and the gay colour in each panache. Their feathered heads made them look like Indian braves. The plates of their sabathons clinked as they walked, giving the firm, exciting ring of spurs. They knelt down, and Sir Urre winced, and it was no good.

Lancelot did not hang himself with the reins. He had broken his taboo, deceived his friend, returned to Guenever, and murdered Sir Meliagrance in a wrong quarrel. Now he was ready to take his punishment. He went to the long avenue of knights who waited in the sun. By the very attempt to evade notice, he had brought on himself the conspicuous place of last. He walked down the curious ranks, ugly as ever, self—conscious, ashamed, a veteran going to be broken. Mordred and Agravaine moved forward.

When Lancelot was kneeling in front of Urre, he said to King Arthur: ‘Need I do this, after everybody has failed?’

‘Of course you must do it. I command you.’

‘If you command me, I must. But it would be presumptuous to try – after everybody. Could I be let off?’

‘You are taking it the wrong way,’ said the King. ‘Of course
it is not presumptuous for you to try. If you can’t do it, nobody can.’

Sir Urre, who was weak by now, raised himself on an elbow.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I came for you to do it.’

Lancelot had tears in his eyes.

‘Oh, Sir Urre,’ he said, ‘if only I could help you, how willingly I would. But you don’t understand, you don’t understand.’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Sir Urre.

Lancelot looked into the East, where he thought God lived, and said something in his mind. It was more or less like this: ‘I don’t want glory, but please can you save our honesty? And if you will heal this knight for the knight’s sake, please do.’ Then he asked Sir Urre to show him his head.

Guenever, who was watching from her pavilion like a hawk, saw the two men fumbling together. Then she saw a movement in the people near, and a mutter came, and yells. Gentlemen began throwing their caps about, and shouting, and shaking hands. Arthur was crying the same words again and again, holding gruff Gawaine by the elbow and putting them into his ear. ‘It shut like a box! It shut like a box!’ Some elderly knights were dancing around, banging their shields together as if they were playing Pease Pudding Hot, and poking each other in the ribs. Many of the squires were laughing like madmen and slapping each other on the back. Sir Bors was kissing King Anguish of Ireland, who resented it. Sir Galahalt, the hault prince, had fallen over his scabbard. Generous Sir Belleus, who had borne no grudge for having his liver cut open on that distant evening beside the pavilion of red sendal, was making a horrible noise by blowing on a grass blade held edgewise between his thumbs. Sir Bedivere, frightfully repentant ever since his visit to the Pope, was rattling some holy bones which he had brought home as a souvenir of his pilgrimage: they had written on them in curly letters, ‘A Present from Rome.’ Sir Bliant, remembering his gentle Wild Man, was embracing Sir Castor, who had never forgotten the Chevalier’s knightly rebuke. Kind and sensitive Aglovale, the forgiver of the Pellinore feud, was exchanging
hearty thumps with the beautiful Gareth. Mordred and Agravaine scowled. Sir Mador, as red as a turkey cock, was making it up with Sir Pinel the poisoner, who had come back incognito. King Pelles was promising a new cloak all round, on him. The snow—haired Uncle Dap, so old as to be absolutely fabulous, was trying to jump over his walking—stick. The tents were being let down, the banners waved. The cheers which now began, round after round, were like drum—fire or thunder, rolling round the turrets of Carlisle. All the field, and all the people in the field, and all the towers of the castle, seemed to be jumping up and down like the surface of a lake under rain.

In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself. This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others. The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. ‘And ever,’ says Malory, ‘Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.’

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