The Once and Future King (62 page)

‘Do you think I could sit down,’ he asked, like a child, ‘now that I have shown myself?’

‘Ye maun stay.’

‘I don’t think I can.’

‘Ye must.’

‘But, Gawaine, if she were to glance up?’

‘If ye dinna stay, it willna be right at law.’

Outside, in the foreshortened market—place under the window, they seemed to be singing a hymn. It was impossible to distinguish the words or melody. They could see the processional clerics busy about the decencies of death, and the twinkling knights standing motionless, and the people’s heads, like baskets of coco—nuts, round the outside of the square. It was not easy to see the Queen. She was too much obscured in the eddies of the ceremonial, being led in this and that direction, being converged upon by small coveys of officials or of confessors, being introduced to the executioner, being persuaded to kneel down and pray, being exhorted to stand up and make a speech, being aspersed, being given candles to hold, being forgiven and being asked to forgive, being carried patiently onward, being ushered out of life with circumstance and dignity. There was nothing dingy, at any rate, about a legal murder in the Age of Darkness.

The King asked: ‘Can you see any rescue coming?’

‘Nay.’

‘It seems a long time.’

Outside the window, the chanting ceased, making a distressing silence.

‘How much longer?’

‘Some minutes yet.’

‘They will let her pray?’

‘Aye, they will let her.’

The old man suddenly asked: ‘Do you think we ought to pray?’

‘If ye wish it.’

‘Ought we to kneel down?’

‘I doubt it matters.’

‘What shall we say?’

‘I dinna ken.’

‘Shall I say the Our Father? It is all I can remember.’

‘That will do fine.’

‘Shall we say it together?’

‘If ye wish it.’

‘Gawaine, I fear I must kneel down.’

‘I will stand,’ said the laird of Orkney.

‘Now…’

They were beginning their unprofessional petition, when the faint bugle sounded from beyond the market.

‘Whist, uncle!’

The prayer fell at mid—word.

‘There are soldiers coming. Horses, I think!’

Arthur was on his feet, was at the window.

‘Where?’

‘The trumpet!’

And now, clear, shrill, exultant, the song of brass was piercing the room itself. The King, shaking Gawaine by the elbow, with trembling voice began to cry: ‘My Lancelot! I knew he would!’

Gawaine forced his heavy shoulders through the frame. They were jealous for the view.

‘Aye. It is Lancelot!’

‘Look at him. In silver.’

‘The argent, a bend gules!’

‘The bonnie rider!’

‘Look at them all!’

Indeed, it was worth looking. The market—place was an avalanche, like a scene from the Wild West. The baskets of fruit were broken, so that the coco—nuts poured down. The knights of the guard were mounting, hopping beside their chargers with one foot in the stirrup, while each horse revolved about the axis of its rider. The acolytes were throwing away their censers. The priests were butting their way through the crowd. The bishop, who wanted to stay, was being bundled away towards the church, while his crosier came after him like a standard, carried high above the tumult by some faithful deacon. A canopy, which had been carried on four poles over somebody or something, was sinking with the poles askew, like a liner floundering in the Atlantic. The onrushing tide, of flashing cavalry with clanking arms and brassy music, poured into the square with feathers tossing as if they were the heads of Indians, their swords rising and falling like a strange machinery. Abandoned by the cluster of ministrants who had obscured her as the last rites were being offered, Guenever stood like a beacon. In her white shift, tied to the high stake, she remained motionless in the movement. She rode above them. The battle closed about her feet.

‘What spurring and plucking up of horses!’

‘Nae other body ever charged like yon.’

‘Oh, the poor guard!’

Arthur was wringing his hands.

‘Some man is down.’

‘It is Segwarides.’

‘What a mêlée!’

‘His charges,’ stated the King vehemently, ‘were always irresistible, always. Ah, what a thrust!’

‘There goes Sir Pertilope.’

‘No. It is Perimones. It is his brother.’

‘Look at the braw swords in the sun. Look at the colours. Well struck, Sir Gillimer, well struck!’

‘No, no! Look at Lancelot. Look how he thrangs and rashes. There is Aglovale unhorsed. Look, he is coming to the Queen.’

‘Priamus will stop him.’

‘Priamus – nonsense! We shall win, Gawaine – we shall win!’

The big fellow twisted round, grinning with enthusiasm.

‘Wha is We?’

‘Very well – “they” then, you chucklehead. Sir Lancelot, of course. He will win. There goes Sir Priamus.’

‘Sir Bors is down.’

‘No matter. They will horse Bors again in a minute. Here he is, coming to the Queen. Oh, look! He has brought her a kirtle and a gown.’

‘Aye, has he!’

‘My Lancelot would not let my Guenever be seen in her shift.’

‘He wouldna.’

‘He is putting them on her.’

‘She is smiling.’

‘Bless them both, the creatures. But oh, the foot—people!’

‘It is finished, ye might say.’

‘He won’t do more execution than he need. We can trust him for that?’

‘We can trust the man for that.’

‘Is that Damas under the horse?’

‘Aye. Damas had ever a red panache. I think they are for drawing off. How quick they have been!’

‘Guenever is up.’

The bugle music touched the room again, a different call.

‘They must be away. That is the retreat. Lord, lord, will ye look at the confusion!’

‘I hope there are not many hurt. Can you see? Ought we to have gone to their help?’

‘There will be many stiff from this,’ said Gawaine.

‘The faithful guard.’

‘Above the dozen.’

‘My brave men! And it is my fault!’

‘I dinna see that it was the fault of any man particular: unless it was my brother’s, and he now dead. Aye, there gangs the last of them. Ye can see the Queen’s white gown above the press.’

‘Shall I wave to her?’

‘No.’

‘It would not be right?’

‘No.’

‘Well, then, I suppose I must not. Still, it would have been nice to do something, as she is going.’

Gawaine turned upon him with a swirl of affection.

‘Uncle Arthur,’ he said, ‘ye’re a grand man. I telled ye it would come to right.’

‘And you are a grand man, too, Gawaine, a good man and a kind one.’

They kissed in the ancient way, joyfully, on both cheeks. ‘There,’ they said. ‘There.’

‘And now what is to be done?’

‘That is for you to say.’

The old King looked about him as if he were searching for the thing to do. His age, the suggestion of infirmity, had lifted from him. He looked straighter. His cheeks were rosy. The crow’s feet round his eyes were beaming.

‘I think we ought to have a monstrous drink to begin with.’

‘Verra guid. Call the page.’

‘Page, page!’ he cried at the door. ‘Where the devil have you gone? Page! Here, you varmint, bring us some drink. What have you been doing? Watching your mistress being burned? And a very good sell for you!’

The delighted child gave a squeak and rattled down the stairs again, which he was half—way up.

‘And then, after the drink?’ asked Gawaine.

Arthur came back cheerfully, rubbing his hands.

‘I have not thought. Something will happen. Perhaps we can make Lancelot apologize, or some arrangement like that – and then he can come back. We could get him to explain that he was in the Queen’s bedroom because she had sent for him to
pay the Meliagrance fee, as she had briefed him, and she didn’t want to have any talk about the payment. And then, of course, he had to rescue her, because he knew she was innocent. Yes, I think we could manage something like that. But they would have to behave themselves in future.’

Gawaine’s enthusiasm had evaporated before his uncle’s. He spoke slowly, with his eyes on the floor.

‘I doubt…’ he began.

The King looked at him.

‘I doubt ye will ever patch it up in full, while Mordred is on life.’

Lifting the tapestry of the doorway with a pale hand, the ghostly creature in half—armour, its unarmed elbow in a sling, stood on the threshold.

‘Never,’ it said with the bitter drama of a perfect cue, ‘while Mordred is alive.’

Arthur turned round in surprise. He surveyed the feverish eyes, then went to his son with a movement of concern.

‘Why, Mordred!’

‘Why, Arthur.’

‘Dinna speak to the King like yon. How dare ye?’

‘Do not speak to me at all.’

Its toneless voice had stopped the King half—way. Now he pulled himself together.

‘Come,’ he said kindly. ‘It has been a terrible carnage, we know. We saw it from the window. But surely it is better that your aunt should be safe, and all the forms of justice satisfied…’

‘It has been a terrible carnage.’

The voice was that of an automaton, but deep with meaning.

‘The foot—people…’

‘Trash.’

Gawaine was turning on his half—brother like a mechanism. His whole body turned.

‘Mordred,’ he asked with a cumbrous accent. ‘Mordred, wha’ have ye left Sir Gareth?’

‘Where have I left them both?’

The red man began to ejaculate, making his words fast.

‘Dinna ape me,’ he shouted. ‘Dinna cry like a parrot. Speak where they are.’

‘Go and look for them, Gawaine, among the people on the square.’

Arthur began: ‘Gareth and Gaheris…’

‘Are lying in the market—place. It was difficult to recognize them, because of the blood.’

‘They are not hurt, surely? They were unarmed. They are not wounded?’

‘They are dead.’

‘Havers, Mordred.’

‘Havers, Gawaine.’

‘But they had no armour,’ protested the King.

‘They had no armour.’

Gawaine said, with frightful emphasis: ‘Mordred, if ye are telling a lie…’

‘…the righteous Gawaine will slay the last of his kin.’

‘Mordred!’

‘Arthur,’ he replied. He turned on him a face of stone, insanely mixed between venom, blandness and misery.

‘If it is true, it is terrible. Who could have wanted to kill Gareth, and him unarmed?’

‘Who?’

‘They were not even going to fight. They were going to stand by, because I told them to. Besides, Lancelot is Gareth’s best friend. The boy was friendly with the Ban family. It seems impossible. Are you sure you are not making a mistake?’

Gawaine’s voice suddenly filled the room: ‘Mordred, wha killed my brothers?’

‘Who indeed?’

He rushed upon the crooked man, towering with passion.

‘Who but Sir Lancelot, my husky friend.’

‘Liar! I must away to see.’

He stumbled out of the room, still rushing, in the same charge which had taken him towards his brother.

‘But, Mordred, are you sure they are dead?’

‘The top of Gareth’s head was off,’ he said with indifference,
‘and he had a surprised expression. Gaheris had no expression, because his head was split in half.’

The King was more puzzled than horrified. He said with wondering sorrow: ‘Lance could not have done it. He knew them…He loved them. They had no helmets on, so that he could recognize them. He knighted Gareth. He would never have done such a thing.’

‘No, of course.’

‘But you say he did.’

‘I say he did.’

‘It must have been a mistake.’

‘It must have been a mistake.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that the pure and fearless Knight of the Lake, whom you have allowed to cuckold you and carry off your wife, amused himself before he left by murdering my two brothers – both unarmed, and both his loving friends.’

Arthur sat down on the bench. The little page, coming back with the ordered drink, bowed himself double.

‘Your drink, sir.’

‘Take it away.’

‘Sir Lucan the Butler says, sir, can he have some help to bring the wounded men in, sir, and is there any bandage linen?’

‘Ask Sir Bedivere.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Page,’ he cried, as the child went.

‘Sir?’

‘How many casualties?’

‘They say twenty knights dead, sir. Sir Belliance the Orgulous, Sir Segwarides, Sir Griflet, Sir Brandiles, Sir Aglovale, Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gillimer, Sir Reynold’s three brothers, Sir Damas, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay the Stranger, Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde, Sir Pertilope.’

‘But Gareth and Gaheris?’

‘I heard nothing of them, sir.’

Blubbering and still running, the red, mountainous man was in the room once more. He was running to Arthur like a child.
He was sobbing: ‘It is true! It is true! I found a man wha’ saw it done. Poor Gaheris and our wee brother Gareth – he has killed them both, unarmed.’

He fell on his knees. He buried his sand—white head in the old King’s mantle.

On a bright winter day, six months later, Joyous Gard was invested. The sun shone at right—angles to the north wind, leaving the east side of the furrows white with frost. Outside the castle, the starlings and green plover searched anxiously in the stiff grass. The deciduous trees stood up in skeleton, like maps of the veins or of the nervous system. The cow—droppings, if you hit them, rang like wood. Everything had the colour of winter, the faded lichen green, like a green velvet cushion which has been left in the sun for years. The vein—trees, like the cushion, had a nap on their trunks. The conifers had it all over their funeral draperies. The ice crackled in the puddles and on the gellid moat. Joyous Gard itself stood up, a beautiful picture in the powerless sunshine.

Lancelot’s castle was not forbidding. The old—fashioned keeps of Arthur’s accession had given place to a gaiety of defence, now difficult to imagine. You must not picture it like the ruined strongholds, with mortar crumbling between the stones, which you see today. It was plastered. They had put chrome in the plaster, so that it was faintly gold. Its slated turrets, conical in the French fashion, crowded from complicated battlements in a hundred unexpected aspirations. There were little fantastic bridges, covered like the Bridge of Sighs, from this chapel to that tower. There were outside staircases, going heaven knows where – perhaps to heaven. Chimneys suddenly soared out of machicolations. Real stained—glass windows, high up and out of danger, gleamed where once there had been blank walls. Bannerettes, crucifixes, gargoyles, water—spouts, weather—cocks,
spires and belfries crowded the angled roofs – roofs going this way and that, sometimes of red tile, sometimes of mossy stone, sometimes of slate. The place was a town, not a castle. It was light pastry, not the dour unleavened bread of old Dunlothian.

Round the joyful castle there was the camp of its besiegers. Kings, in those days, took their household tapestries with them on campaign, which was a measure of the kind of camps they had. The tents were red, green, checkered, striped. Some of them were of silk. In a maze of colour and guy—ropes, of tent—pegs and tall spears, of chess—players and sutlers, of tapestried interiors and of gold plate, Arthur of England had sat down to starve his friend.

Lancelot and Guenever were standing by a log fire in the hall. Fires were no longer lit in the middle of the rooms, leaving the smoke to escape as best it could through lanterns. Here there was a proper fireplace, richly carved with the arms and supporters of Benwick, and half a tree smouldered in the grate. The ice outside had made the ground too slippery for horses. So it was a day of truce, though undeclared.

Guenever was saying: ‘I can’t think how you could have done it.’

‘Neither can I, Jenny. I don’t even know that I did do it, except that everybody says so.’

‘Can’t you remember anything?’

‘I was excited, I suppose, and frightened about you. There was a press of people waving weapons, and knights trying to stop me. I had to cut my way.’

‘It seems unlike you.’

‘You don’t suppose I wanted to, do you?’ he asked, bitterly. ‘Gareth was fonder of me than he was of his brothers. I was almost his godfather. Oh, let’s leave it, for God’s sake.’

‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I dare say he is better out of it, poor dear.’

Lancelot kicked the log thoughtfully, one arm on the mantelpiece, looking into the ashy glow.

‘He had blue eyes.’

He stopped, considering them in the fire.

‘When he came to court, he would not name his parents. It was because he had to run away from home, so as to come, in the first place. There was a feud between his mother and Arthur, and the old woman hated him coming. But he couldn’t keep away. He wanted the romance and the chivalry and the honour. So he ran away to us, and wouldn’t say who he was. He didn’t ask to be knighted. It was enough for him to be at the great centre until he had proved his strength.’

He pushed a stray branch into place.

‘Kay took him to work in the kitchen, and gave him a nickname: “Pretty Hands.” Kay was always a bully. And then…it seems so long ago.’

In the silence – while they stood, each with an elbow on the mantel and a foot towards the fire, the weightless ash shuffled down.

‘I used to give him tips sometimes, to buy himself his little things. Beaumains the kitchen page. He took to me for some reason. I knighted him with my own hands.’

He looked at his fingers in surprise, moving them as if he had not seen them before.

‘Then he fought the adventure of the Green Knight, and we found out what a champion he was…

‘Gentle Gareth,’ he said, almost in amazement, ‘I killed him with the same hands too, because he refused to wear his armour against me. What horrible creatures humans are! If we see a flower as we walk through the fields, we lop off its head with a stick. That is how Gareth has gone.’

Guenever took the guilty hand with distress.

‘You couldn’t help it.’

‘I could have helped it.’ He was in his customary religious misery. ‘It was my fault. You are right that it was unlike me. It was my fault, my fault, my grievous fault. It was because I laid about me in the press.’

‘You had to make the rescue.’

‘Yes, but I could have fought the armed knights only. Instead of which, I laid about me against the half—armed foot—soldiers,
who had no chance. I was cap—à—pied, and they were in cuirbouillé, just leather and pikes. But I cut at them and God punished us. It was because I had forgotten my knighthood that God made me kill poor Gareth, and Gaheris too.’

‘Lance!’ she said sharply.

‘Now we are in this hellish misery,’ he went on, refusing to listen. ‘Now I have got to fight against my own King, who knighted me and taught me all I know. How can I fight him? How can I fight Gawaine, even? I have killed three of his brothers. How can I add to that? But Gawaine will never let me off. He will never forgive now. I don’t blame him. Arthur would forgive us, but Gawaine won’t let him. I have got to be besieged in this hole like a coward, when nobody wants to fight except Gawaine, and then they come outside with their fanfares and sing:

Traitor knight

Come out to fight.

Yah! Yah! Yah
!’

‘It doesn’t matter what they sing. It doesn’t make you a coward because they sing it.’

‘And my own men are beginning to think so too. Bors, Blamore, Bleoberis, Lionel – they are always asking me to go out and fight. And when I do go out, what happens?’

‘So far as I can learn,’ she said, ‘what happens is that you beat them, and then you let them off and beg them to go home. Everybody respects your kindness.’

He hid his head in the crook of his elbow.

‘Do you know what happened in the last battle? Bors had a tilt with the King himself, and knocked him down. He jumped off his horse and stood over Arthur with his sword drawn. I saw it happen, and galloped like mad. Bors said: Shall I make an end of this war? Not so hardy, I shouted, on pain of thy head. So we got Arthur back on his horse and I begged him, begged him on my knees, to go away. Arthur began to cry. His eyes filled with tears, and he stared at me and said nothing. He looks much older. He doesn’t want to fight us, but it is Gawaine.
Gawaine was once on our side, but I slew his brothers in my wickedness.’

‘Forget your wickedness. It is Gawaine’s black temper and Mordred’s cunning.’

‘If it were just Gawaine,’ he lamented, ‘there would still be a hope of peace. He is decent inside himself. He is a good man. But Mordred is always there, hinting to him and making him miserable. And there is the whole hatred of Gael and Gall, and this New Order of Mordred’s. I can’t see the end.’

The Queen suggested for the hundredth time: ‘Would it be any use if I were to go back to Arthur, and put myself on his mercy?’

‘We have offered it, and they have refused. It is no use going in the face of that. They would probably burn you after all.’

She left the fireplace and drifted over to the great embrasure of the window. Outside, the siege works were spread below. Some tiny soldiers in the enemy camp were merrily playing Fox—and—Geese on a frozen pond. Their clear laughter came up, separated by distance from the tumbles which gave it rise.

‘All the time the war goes on,’ she said, ‘and footmen who are not knights get killed, but nobody notices that.’

‘All the time.’

She observed, without turning: ‘I think I will go back, dear, and chance it. Even if I am burned, that would be better than having the Trouble.’

He followed her to the window.

‘Jenny, I would go with you, if it were any use. We could go together, and let them cut our heads off, if there was any hope of stopping the war by that. But everybody has gone mad. Even if we did give ourselves up, Bors and Ector and the rest would carry on the feud – if we were killed. There are a hundred extra feuds on foot, for those we killed in the market—place and on the stairs, and for things through half a century of Arthur’s past. Soon I will not be able to hold them, even as it is. Hebes le Renoumes, Villiers the Valiant, Urre of Hungary: they would
begin revenging us, and everything would be worse. Urre is horribly grateful.’

‘Civilization seems to have become insane,’ she said.

‘Yes, and it seems that we have made it so. Bors, Lionel and Gawaine wounded, and everybody raving for blood. I have to sally out with my knights and rush about pretending to strike, and perhaps Arthur will be urged against me, or Gawaine will come, and then I have to cover myself with the shield, and defend myself, and I mustn’t hit back. The men notice it, and say that by not exerting myself I am prolonging the war, which makes it worse for them.’

‘What they say is true.’

‘Of course it is true. But the alternative is to kill Arthur and Gawaine, and how can I do that? If only Arthur would take you back, and go away, it would be better than this.’

She might have flared up at such a tactless suggestion, twenty years before. It was a measure of their autumn that now she was amused.

‘Jenny, it is a terrible thing to say, but it is true.’

‘Of course it’s true.’

‘We seem to be treating you like a dummy.’

‘We are all dummies.’

He leaned his head against the cold stone of the embrasure, until she took his hand.

‘Don’t think about it. Just stay in the castle, and be patient. Perhaps God will look after us.’

‘You said that once before.’

‘Yes, the week before they caught us.’

‘Even if God won’t,’ he remarked bitterly, ‘we could apply to the Pope.’

‘The Pope!’

He looked up.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, Lance, the thing you said…If the Pope was to send bulls to both sides, saying he would excommunicate us if we didn’t come to terms? If we appealed for a papal ruling? Bors and the others would have to accept it. Surely…’

He looked at her closely, as she chose the words.

‘He could appoint the Bishop of Rochester to administer the terms of peace…’

‘But what terms?’

She had caught her idea, however, and was on fire with it.

‘Lance, we two would have to accept them, whatever they might be. Even if they were to mean…even if they were bad for us, they would mean peace for the people. And our knights would have no excuse for carrying on the feud, because they would have to obey the Church…’

He could find no words.

‘Well?’

She turned to him with a face of composure and relief – the efficient and undramatic face which women achieve when they have nursing to do, or some other employment of efficiency. He did not know how to answer it.

‘We can send a messenger tomorrow,’ she said.

‘Jenny!’

He could not bear it that she was allowing herself to be handed from one to another, no longer young, or that he was to lose her, or that he was not to lose her. Between men’s lives and their love and his old totems, he was left with nothing but shame. This she saw, and helped him with it also. She kissed him tenderly. Outside, the daily chorus was beginning.

Traitor knight

Come out to fight.

Yah! Yah! Yah
!

‘There,’ she said, stroking his white hair. ‘Don’t listen to them. My Lancelot must stay in the castle, and there will be a happy ending.’