The Once and Future King (64 page)

‘Gawaine, cannot we leave this wrangling to another time? The immediate business is to restore the Queen. No doubt Sir Lancelot would like to make an explanation of the trouble, so that the Church may be justified in his reconciliation.’

‘Thank you, my lord.’

Gawaine glared about him, till the King’s tired voice prompted the proceedings. They were going forward clumsily, by a series of jerks.

‘You were taken with the Queen.’

‘Sir, I was sent for to my lady your Queen, I know not for what cause; but I was not so soon within the chamber door
when immediately Sir Agravaine and Sir Mordred beat upon it, calling me traitor and recreant knight.’

‘They called thee right.’

‘My lord Sir Gawaine, in their quarrel they proved themselves not in the right. I speak for the Queen, not for my own worship.’

‘Well, well, Sir Lancelot.’

The Ill—Made knight turned to his oldest friend, to the first person he had loved with his poises. He dropped the language of chivalry, falling into the simple tongue.

‘Can’t we be forgiven? Can’t we be friends again? We have come back in penitence, Arthur, when we needn’t have come at all. Won’t you remember the old days, when we fought together and were friends? All this wickedness could be smoothed out by the goodwill of Sir Gawaine, if you would give us mercy.’

‘The King gives justice,’ said the red man.’ Did ye give mercy to my brothers?’

‘I have given mercy to all of you, Sir Gawaine. I dare say I may speak without boasting, when I say that many in this room are indebted to me for liberty, if not for life. I have fought for the Queen in others’ quarrels, so why not in my own? I have fought for you also, Sir Gawaine, and saved you from an ignoble death.’

‘Yet now,’ said Mordred, ‘there are but two of Orkney left.’

Gawaine flung back his head.

‘The King may do as he will. My mind was made six months ago, when I found Sir Gareth in his blood – unarmed.’

‘I would to God he had been armed, for then he might have withstood me. He might have killed me, and saved our misery.’

‘A noble speech.’

The old fellow cried out passionately and suddenly, to anybody who would listen: ‘Why will you believe that I wanted to kill them? I knighted Gareth. I loved him. The moment I heard he was dead, I knew you would never forgive me. I knew it meant the end of hope. It was against my interest to kill Sir Gareth.’

Mordred whispered: ‘It was against our heart.’

Lancelot tried one last effort of persuasion.

‘Gawaine, forgive me. My own heart bleeds for what I have done. I know how you are hurt, because it has hurt me too. Won’t you give peace to our country, if I make a penance? Don’t force me to fight for my life, but let me make a pilgrimage for Gareth’s sake. I will start at Sandwich in my shirt, and walk barefoot to Carlisle, and I will endow a chantry for him every ten miles in between.’

‘Gareth’s blood,’ said Mordred, ‘is not to be paid for by chantries, we think – however much it might pleasure the Bishop of Rochester.’

The old knight’s patience broke.

‘Hold your tongue!’

Gawaine was flaming on the instant.

‘Keep civil, my murdering mannie, or we will stab you at the King’s own feet!’

‘It would need more…’

Again the nuncio intervened.

‘Sir Lancelot, please. Let some of us keep due temper and decency, at any rate. Gawaine, sit down. A penance has been offered for Gareth’s blood by means of which the war may be brought to an end. Give us your answer.’

With the moment of expectant silence, the sandy—headed giant swam into the higher tone.

‘I ha’ heard Sir Lancelot’s speech and his great proffers, but he hath slain my brothers. That I may never forgive, in chief his treachery to Sir Gareth. If it please mine uncle, King Arthur, to accord with him, then the King will lose my service and that of all the Gael. However we may talk of it, we ken the truth. The man is a revealed traitor, to the King and to masel’.’

‘There is nobody alive, Gawaine, who has called me a traitor. I have explained about the Queen.’

‘We have done with that. I make no insinuations about the woman, if it be proper not to do so. I speak of what airt your own judgment is to be.’

‘If it is the King’s judgment, I shall accept it.’

‘The King is agreed with me already, before ye came.’

‘Arthur…’

‘Speak to the King by his title.’

‘Sir, is this true?’

But the old man only bowed his head.

‘At least let me hear it from the King’s mouth!’

Mordred said: ‘Speak, father.’

He shook his head like a baited bear. He moved it with the heavy movement of a bear, but would not look from the floor.

‘Speak.’

‘Lancelot,’ he was heard to say, ‘you know how the truth stands between us. My Table is broken, my knights parted or dead. I never sought a quarrel with you, Lance, nor you with me.’

‘But can’t it be ended?’

‘Gawaine says…’ he began faintly.

‘Gawaine!’

‘Justice…’

Gawaine rose to his feet, foxy, burly and towering.

‘My King, my lord and my uncle. Is it the court’s will that I pronounce sentence upon this recreant traitor?’

The silence became absolute.

‘Know then, all ye, that this is the King’s Word. The Queen shall come back to him with her liberty as it was, and she shall stand in nae peril for nothing that was surmised afore this day. This is the Pope’s will. But thou, Sir Lancelot, thou shalt go forth banished out of this kingdom within fifteen days, a revealed recreant; and, by God, we shall follow thee after that time, to pull down the strongest castle of France about thine ears.’

‘Gawaine,’ he asked painfully, ‘don’t follow me. I will accept the banishment. I will live in my French castles. But don’t follow me, Gawaine. Don’t keep the war for ever.’

‘Leave that to thy betters. Such castles are the King’s.’

‘If you follow me, Gawaine, don’t challenge me: don’t let Arthur come against me. I can’t fight against my friends. Gawaine, for God’s sake don’t make us fight.’

‘Leave talking, man. Deliver the Queen and remove yer body quickly from this court.’

Lancelot pulled himself together with a sort of final care. He looked from England to his tormentor. He turned slowly to the Queen, who had not spoken. He saw her ridiculous olive branch, her clumsiness and silly clothes. With a lifted head he raised their tragedy to nobleness and gravity.

‘Well, madam, it seems that we must part.’

He took her by the hand, led her to the middle of the room, translating her into his remembered lady. Something in his grip, in his step, in the fullness of his voice, made her bloom again – it was their last partnership – into the Rose of England. He lifted her to a crest of conquest which they had forgotten. As stately as a dance, the gargoyle took her to the centre. There, poising her flushing, the arch—stone of the realm, he made an end. It was the last time that Sir Lancelot, King Arthur and Queen Guenever were to be together.

‘My King and my old friends, a word before I go. My sentence is to leave this fellowship, which I have served in all my life. It is to depart your country, and to be pursued with war. I stand then, for the last time, as the Queen’s champion. I stand to tell you, lady and madam, in the presence of all this court, that if any danger may threaten you in future, then’ one poor arm will come from France to defend you – and so let all remember.’

He kissed her fingers deliberately, turned stiffly, and began to pace in silence down the long length of the room. His future closed about him as he went.

Fifteen days to Dover was the time assigned to any felon who had taken sanctuary. He would have to do it in the felon’s way ‘ungirt, unshod, bareheaded, in his bare shirt as if he were hanged on a gallows.’ He would have to walk in the middle of the road clutching the small cross in his hand, which was the symbol of his sanctuary. Probably Gawaine or his men would be skulking at his heels, in case for a moment he should lay the talisman aside. But still, whether in shirt or mail, he would be their old Commander. He would walk steadily, without haste, looking straight in front of him. As he passed the threshold,
the look of endurance was already on him. People felt tawdry in the Justice Room when the old soldiers had left it, and many eyed the red whips sideways, with a secret dread.

Guenever sat in the Queen’s chamber at Carlisle Castle. The huge bed had been re—made as a settee. It looked tidy and rectangular under its canopy, so that you were shy of sitting down. There was a fireplace with a little pot warming beside it, a high chair, and the reading desk. Also there was a book to read, perhaps the Galeotto one which Dante mentions. It had cost the same price as ninety oxen, but, as Guenever had already read it seven times, it was no longer exciting. A late fall of snow threw the evening light upward into the chamber, shining on the ceiling more than on the floor, so as to alter the usual shadows. They were blue, and in the wrong places. The great lady was sewing, sitting rather formally in the high chair with the book beside her, and one of her waiting—women, sitting on the steps of the bed, was sewing too.

Guenever stitched away with the half—blank mind of a needlewoman, the other half of her brain moving idly among her troubles. She wished she was not at Carlisle. It was too near the north – which was Mordred’s country – too far away from the securities of civilization. For instance, she would have liked to be at London – in the Tower, perhaps. She would have liked, instead of this dreary expanse of snow, to be looking out from the Tower windows at the fun and bustle of the metropolis: at London Bridge, with the staggering houses all over it, which were constantly tumbling off into the river. She remembered it as a bridge of great personality, what with the houses and the heads of rebels on spikes and the places where Sir David had fought a full—dress joust with the Lord Welles. The cellars of the houses were in the piers of the bridge, and it had a chapel of its own, and a tower to defend it. It was a perfect toy—town
of a place, with housewives popping their heads out of windows, or letting down buckets into the river on long ropes, or throwing out slops, or hanging the washing, or screaming to their children when the drawbridge was going to be pulled up.

For that matter, it would have been nice merely to be in the Tower itself. Here, in Carlisle, everything was as still as death. But there, in the Conqueror’s tower, a constant ebb and flow of cockneys would be livening the frost. Even Arthur’s menagerie, which he now kept in the Tower, would be giving a comfortable background of poise and smell. The latest addition was a fullsized elephant, presented by the King of France, and specially drawn for the record by the indefatigable news—hawk, Matthew Paris.

When Guenever got to the elephant, she put down the sewing and began to rub her fingers. They were numb. They did not thaw so quickly as they used to.

‘Have you put the crumbs out for the birds, Agnes?’

‘Yes, madam. The robin was perky today. He sang quite a trill against one of the blackbirds who was greedy.’

‘Poor creatures. Still, I suppose they will all be singing in a few weeks.’

‘It seems a long time since everybody went away,’ said Agnes. ‘The court is like the birds now, it is so silent and heartless.’

‘They will come back, no doubt.’

‘Yes, madam.’

The queen took up her needle again, and pushed it carefully through.

‘They say Sir Lancelot has been brave.’

‘Sir Lancelot always was a brave gentleman, madam.’

‘In the last letter it says that Gawaine had a duel with him. He must have been miserable, to fight him.’

Agnes said emphatically: ‘I can’t think why the King will go with that there Sir Gawaine against his best friend. Anybody can see that it is only out of blind temper. And then to lay waste the land of France, just to spite Sir Lancelot, and to do these terrible killings, and to say such things as them Thrashers
do. It won’t do nobody no good, to carry on like that. Why can’t they let bygones be bygones, is what I ask?’

‘I think the King goes with Sir Gawaine because he is trying to be just. He thinks that the Orkneys have a right to demand justice for Gareth’s death – and I suppose they have. Besides, if the King didn’t cling to Sir Gawaine he would have nobody left. He was prouder of the Round Table than of anything, and now it is splitting up and he wants to keep somebody.’

‘It is a poor way to keep the Table together,’ said Agnes, ‘by fighting Sir Lancelot.’

‘Sir Gawaine has a right to justice. At least, they say he has. And the King’s choice is not free either. He is swept along by the people – by men who want conquest in France and have made a claim to it, or who are sick of the long peace he has managed to keep, or who are anxious for military promotion and a killing in return for those who died in the Market Square. There are the young knights of Mordred’s party, who believe in nationalism, and who have been taught to think that my husband is an old fogey, and there are the relatives of the ones who were in the fight on the stairs, and there is the clan Orkney, with their ancient hatreds on their minds. War is like a fire, Agnes. One man may start it, but it will spread all over. It is not about any one thing in particular.’

‘Ah, these high and mighty matters, madam – they are beyond us poor women. But come now, what did it say in the letter?’

Guenever sat for some time, looking at the letter without seeing it, while her mind revolved the problems of her husband. Then she said slowly: ‘The King likes Lancelot so much that he is forced to be unfair to him – for fear of being unfair to other people.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘It says,’ said the Queen, noticing the letter she was looking at with a start, ‘it says that Sir Gawaine rode in front of the castle every day, and called out that Lancelot was a coward and a traitor. Lancelot’s knights were angry, and went out to him one by one, but he charged them all down, and hurt some of
them badly. He nearly killed Bors and Lionel, until at last Sir Lancelot had to go himself. The people inside the castle made him. He told Sir Gawaine that he was driven to it, like a beast at bay.’

‘And what did Sir Gawaine say?’

‘Sir Gawaine said: “Leave thy babbling and come off, and let us ease our hearts.”’

‘And did they?’

‘Yes, they had a duel in front of the castle. Everybody promised not to interfere, and they began at nine o’clock in the morning. You know how Sir Gawaine can always fight better in the mornings. That was why they began so early.’

‘Mercy on Sir Lancelot, to have him as strong as three! For I did hear tell that the Old Ones have the fairy blood in them, through the red hair, you know, madam, and this makes the laird as strong as three people before noon, because the sun fights for him!’

‘It must have been terrible, Agnes. But Sir Lancelot was too proud not to give the advantage.’

‘I wonder he was not killed.’

‘He nearly was. But he covered himself with his shield and parried slowly all the time and gave ground. It says he received many sad brunts, but he managed to defend himself until midday. Then, of course, when the fairy strength had gone down, he was able to take the offensive, and he ended by giving Gawaine a blow on the head which knocked him over. He could not get up.’

‘Alas, Sir Gawaine!’

‘Yes, but he could have killed him there and then.’

‘But he didn’t.’

‘No. Sir Lancelot stood back and leaned on his sword. Gawaine begged him to kill him. He was more furious than ever and called out: “Why do you stop? Come on then: kill me and finish your butchering. I will not yield. Kill me at once, for I shall only fight you again if you spare my life.” He was crying.’

‘We may depend upon it,’ said Agnes wisely, ‘that Sir Lancelot refused to strike a felled knight.’

‘We may depend.’

‘He was always a kind, good gentleman, though not what you may call a beauty.’

‘He was the chief of all.’

They fell silent, shy of their feelings, and began to stitch. Presently the Queen said: ‘The light gets bad, Agnes. Do you think we could have the rushes?’

‘Certainly, madam. I was thinking the same myself.’

She began lighting them at the fire, grumbling about the backward place and the naked, northern savages to have no candles, while Guenever hummed absently. It was the duet which she used to sing with Lancelot, and, when she recognized it, she stopped abruptly.

‘There, madam. The days seem to draw out.’

‘Yes: we shall have the spring soon.’

Sitting down and stitching away in the smoky light, Agnes resumed her catechism where it had broken off.

‘And what did the King say about the business?’

‘He cried when he saw how Gawaine was spared. It made him remember things, and he became so wretched that he was ill.’

‘Would that be what they call a nervous shakedown, madam?’

‘Yes, Agnes. He fell sick for sorrow, and Gawaine had concussion, so they were bad together. But the knights are keeping up the siege.’

‘Well, it isn’t a very cheerful letter, is it, madam?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘I remember having a letter once – but there, they say bad news travels the fastest.’

‘Everything is letters now – now that the court is empty, and the world split, and nobody left but the Lord Protector.’

‘Ah, and that there Sir Mordred: I never could abide the likes of him. What does he want to go a—speechifying at the people for, and taking off his hat to make them cheer? Why
can’t he dress more cheerful like, instead of hanging about in that black, as if he were Holy Doomsday? He caught it from poor Sir Gawaine, I dare say.’

‘The uniform is supposed to be in mourning for Gareth.’

‘He never cared for Sir Gareth, that one didn’t. I don’t believe he cares for anybody.’

‘He cared for his mother, Agnes.’

‘Aye, and she had her throat slit for being no better than she should be. They are a queer pack, the lot of them.’

‘Queen Morgause,’ said Guenever thoughtfully, ‘must have been a strange person. It is common knowledge, now that Mordred is made the Lord Proctector, so it doesn’t matter talking about it. But she must have been a powerful woman to have caught our King when she had four big boys of her own. Why, she caught Sir Lamorak when she was a grandmother. She must have had a terrible effect on her sons, if one of them could have felt so fiercely about her that he killed her. She was nearly seventy. I expect she ate Mordred, Agnes, like a spider.’

‘They did used to talk at one time, about the Cornwall sisters being witches. Of course, the worst of them was Morgan le Fay. But that there Morgause ran her close.’

‘It makes one sorry for Mordred.’

‘You keep your pity for yourself, my lady, for you will get none from him.’

‘He has been polite since he was left in charge.’

‘Aye, that he has. It is the quiet ones that do the mischief.’

Guenever considered this, holding her material to the light. She asked with some anxiety: ‘You don’t think that Sir Mordred means to do wrong, do you, Agnes?’

‘He is a dark one.’

‘He wouldn’t do anything wrong when the King has left him to look after the country, and to look after us?’

‘That King of yours, madam, if you will excuse the liberty, is quite beyond my comprehension. First he goes to fight with his best friend because Sir Gawaine tells him to, and then he leaves his bitterest enemy to be the Lord Protector. Why does he choose to act so blind?’

‘Mordred has never broken the laws.’

‘That is because he is too cunning.’

‘The King said that Mordred would have to be the heir to the throne, and you could not take the King and the heir out of the country at the same time, so naturally he had to be left as the Protector. It was only fair.’

‘That fairness, madam, it will never come to no good.’

They sewed away.

Agnes added: ‘The King should have stayed, if that is true, and let Sir Mordred go.’

‘I wish he had.’

Later she explained: ‘I think the King wants to be with Sir Gawaine, in case he can moderate between them.’

They stitched uneasily, the needles fusing through the dark material with a long gleam like falling stars.

‘Are you frightened of Sir Mordred, Agnes?’

‘Yes, madam, that I am.’

‘So am I. He walks about so softly lately, and…looks at people in a queer way. And then there are all these speeches about Gaels and Saxons and Jews, and all the shouting and hysterics. I heard him laughing last week, by himself. It was horrible.’

‘He is a sly one. Maybe he is listening now.’

‘Agnes!’

Guenever dropped her needle as if she had been struck.

‘Oh, come now, madam: you must not take on. I was only having my joke.’

But the Queen remained frozen.

‘Go to the door. I believe you are right.’

‘Oh, madam, I couldn’t do that.’

‘Open it at once, Agnes.’

‘Madam, but suppose he is there!’

She had caught the feeling. The hopeless rushlights were not enough. He might have been in the room itself, in a dark corner. She rose in a flutter, like a partridge while the hawk is over, and plucked at her skirt. For both women the castle was suddenly too dark, too empty, too lonely, too northerly, too full of night and winter.

‘If you open it, he will go away.’

‘But we must give him time to go away.’

They strove with their voices, feeling themselves to be under a black wing.

‘Stand near it and speak loudly then, before you open.’

‘Madam, what shall I say?’

‘Say, “Shall I open the door?” Then I will say, “Yes, I think it is time to go to bed.”’

‘I think it is time to go to bed.’

‘Go on.’

‘Very good, madam. Shall I begin?’

‘Begin, yes, quickly.’

‘I don’t know as I can do it.’

‘Oh, Agnes, please be quick!’

‘Very well, madam. I think I can do it now.’

Facing the door as if it might attack her, Agnes addressed it at the top of her voice.

‘I am going to open the door!’

‘It is time to go to bed!’

Nothing happened.

‘Now open it,’ said the Queen.

She lifted the latch and threw it open, and there was Mordred smiling in the frame.

‘Good evening, Agnes.’

‘Oh, sir!’

The wretched woman dropped him a fluttering curtsey, with one hand clutching at her breast, and scuttled past him for the stairs. He stood aside politely. When she was gone he stepped into the room, sumptuous in his black velvet, with one cold diamond beaming in the rushlight from his scarlet badge. Anybody who had not seen him for a month or two would have known at once that he was mad – but his brains had gone so gradually that those who lived with him had failed to see it. He was followed by his small black pug dog, flirting its bright eyes and curly tail.