Authors: Delia Sherman
The Grail took the form of the lance that pierced the Savior's side and fell to the ground with a metallic clang, splattering the company with blood. Involuntarily, Galahad hugged his sides. The king, too.
"I am not a gravy boat,” clucked the Grail. “I perform my role, as do you all."
Exclamations rang out in the great hall.
"Silence!” Arthur broke in.
The king had spoken. All fell silent except the Grail, which became the Lia F?il that sings at the coming of the true king, which, quite logically, began to sing “We're Knights of the Round Table."
"Let the Grail take another shape,” Galahad murmured, “and the Quest be over. I shall ask the Question, I shall come again, and I shall heal the king and the kingdom."
"All in good time,” Arthur assured him. “Your hour of glory will come again. Right now, it's Perceval's turn."
Having come to the second chorus of “We eat ham and spam and jam a lot,” the Grail suddenly broke off.
"It's gone again,” Perceval announced, a bit sad.
Probably one floor down,
Arthur thought
. There, where I play the Fisher King waiting for a knight to come ask me the Question that will deliver me from the evil spell, thus ending the Quest. Everything is simultaneous.
"We should declare war on the renegade Mordred,” declared Lancelot, stiff as a broomstick.
Arthur's expression clouded. His gaze hardened, his jaw froze, but after a precarious moment, he sighed and raised his hands peaceably. “Your enthusiasm is getting the better of you. I already died yesterday, and I'll die tomorrow; let me at least reign over a prosperous kingdom tonight. My fall is only as great as my grandeur. The more noble I am, the more cruel a blow to my soul will be the treason of those I love. The purer my love, the deeper my wound, the graver the fall of the kingdom, and the more important the Quest. Be great, Lancelot, and betray me well. It is necessary."
A bit embarrassed, the knight dropped his gaze to the table and mumbled, “Sometimes I stay virtuous, too."
Arthur left the man in peace and gazed on the infinitely variable companyâespecially the recognizable faces. The others were condemned to remain anonymous, to have no worth beyond their presence, to impress by sheer numbers and nothing more.
At the far end, a small voice piped up: “We're not numbers, we're free men!” But no one paid attention except the shadow, the figure dressed in blackness that stood propped against the wall. People seemed to look right through it. It glanced furtively at the protester, but the crowd had already swallowed and censored him.
The shadow turned its attention to Arthur and his knights.
"I did not summon you for reasons of the Geste,” the king went on. “I think it's time we had a talk as
ourselves
. We perform the Quest, our rise to power and afterwards, our fall ... Oh, what's the use. As the ideal king, I come into power and die betrayed a thousand different ways; heroes, characters, even mythological figures, we embody an infinite set of variations on the same idea, the same archetype, at once figures of the mind and independent concepts."
All the knights were turned toward their king, petrified, staring at him uncomprehendingly, as though they'd heard his words but didn't understand them.
Arthurâthe Bear, Ambrosius Aurelianus, the god Lir, or even Beowulfâfelt dizzy.
"We are ... archetypes,” he repeated, nodding, hoping to lend weight to his words. “And yet we all seek to flee the isle..."
"I nevere!” roared Lancelot, rising to his feet. “Lord, it is blaspheme! Myn armes ben thyne, and I nyl nat straye."
Arthur was dumbfounded.
"But, Lancelot ... you leave the isle every three days, and you drown every time. Don't you remember?” He could almost hear Girflet/Bedivere scolding him, as though he'd proposed something obscene:
But everything has to go in threes.
Outraged, the knight dumped his wine on the floor and stormed from the great hall.
"He'll be back,” Galahad whispered. “None of us could desert you, Sire."
Except Mordred,
Arthur thought bitterly.
"I'm hungry. Can we eat yet?” asked young Perceval, an idiot's smile on his lips.
Mordred
"What a bunch of losers,” the renegade grumbled, contemplating his army of hairy peasants.
"Countryfolk, my son, countryfolk,” Morgana said placatingly.
"Still,” Mordred sniffed disdainfully. “They stink, and they're filthy. In
Excalibur
, John Boorman gave me a real army."
"Boorman? What knight is this?
Mordred glanced at his mother, who wasn't always Morgana la Fay. Tall, powerful, of indeterminate age, she gazed back, her eyes full of love and ferocity.
"Never mind,” he said. “I don't understand how I always manage to win with such a band of underfed savages."
Morgana let her hand fall on her son's armored shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Because you have the vigor of youth, my son. A new wind blows across the isle. A storm that will overthrow Arthur's reign."
"Yeah, I know. I'm the archetype of change, the unconscious force that always pushes men to outdo themselves, to overcome what came before them."
Morgana gazed at him proudly, one brow raised in surprise. “Exactly. How well you speak! I couldn't have said it better myself."
Mordred sighed.
So, even a goddess can forget. How many among us have let ourselves be gulled by the illusion that we are self-aware, human, and have forgotten our symbolic natures?
He bit into one of the golden apples that a spy regularly brought him from the gardens of Avalon, and then he held it out to Morgana.
He readied himself to play his role to the hilt, to drown in it with all the energy of despair.
"We'd better start training these savages,” he said with disgust.
D?jeuner sur l'herbe
The knights, clad in their eternal silver armor, and the ladies, richly bedecked in diaphanous veils, strolled in the orchard, chatting gaily of the news of the realm, lunching in high spirits on golden fruit they plucked from the trees. To one side, Arthur watched, disillusioned and not without worry.
Can't they see this kingdom and our very existence are only fictions?
"Mm. Wars not make one great,” said a deep voice behind him.
The king started and turned, irate. “I hate it when you do that, Merlin."
The enchanter, dressed in a long habitâhis face sometimes bare and sometimes covered with an imposing white beardâapproached him, a long rod in his hand.
"It's part of my nature. I am mystery. I do try, but it's impossible for me to approach someone from the front."
Merlin reached the king and gazed out on the people of Camelot.
"They've forgotten,” Arthur said. “Or rather, they refuse to remember. The isle dwindles when we're not looking, Merlin. They all want to leave, but they all deny it. Lancelot even pretended that he's never tried to leave Avalon. And yet it's uncontrollable. We're burying ourselves. We're becoming fossils. We need to transcend our symbolism, but we're so frozen in our forms I fear it's too late. It's a real ... neurosis."
"What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
"I'm in no mood for riddles."
"Forgive me.” Merlin picked a golden apple from a low-hanging branch. “When man was emerging from barbarism and awakening to civilization, he thirsted for an ideal. This thirst was so great that the burgeoning collective unconscious named, fashioned, and codified the heroic archetypes it lacked. Neither being, nor idea, but something intangible halfway between. Unfortunately, the Geste is so powerful that nothing can replace it."
The mage smiled.
"We are, rather, so human that we refuse to get out of the way,” Arthur argued. “We'd rather anchor ourselves to this miserable speck of dust than go have a look elsewhere."
"But no one can see elsewhere, Arthur. Even you, when you die, when you leave the realm on the funeral barge sailing for Avalonâyou return here, because you never really leave."
"So, help me."
"I don't know what you're talking about, little grasshopper. Good morning!” Hastily, Merlin stalked away from the king, without a backward glance.
We are all constrained by our madness.
Not far away, wearing a straw hat, perched on a ladder, the shadow trimmed the golden apple trees.
Three little turns and then...
Since we are constrained by our roles, perhaps I could try something completely random,
thought Arthur, desperate, walking aimlessly, his hands behind his back.
He reached the edge of the sea-lake and picked up a yellowish, half-rotten apple. One end of a worm poked through the bruised flesh.
To be or not to be. On the isle of archetypes, how many inchworms to a metric foot?
He eyed the beast.
And if I dubbed thee a heroic couplet?
I, too, could leave thought behind and hurl myself headlong into endless rehearsal of the Geste.
Elsewhere, somewhere, Arthur was dying, receiving the sword from the Lady of the Lake or pulling it from a stone, meeting Guinevere for the first time: blonde, brunette, or redhead.
The problem is, I've had it up to here, quite frankly, and everyone around me is nuts.
Suddenly irritated, Arthur threw the apple with all his strength against the bank of fog that drew inexorably nearer to Avalon/Camelot. The grayness swallowed it greedily.
Of course the fruit came back from behind and hit him in the head. Disappointed, the king mumbled a vague “Eureka, yeah right” and paid it no more attention.
He began to shuffle along the shore.
Do something completely random. Why not, since I'm at the end of my rope.
He started to skip like a child, tried a cartwheel and crumpled under the weight of his armor, picked a flower and picked off its petalsâshe loves me, she loves me notâwhile thinking of Guinevere, etched insults in the dust with Excalibur's point to shock the skies.
Nothing happened. Dripping with sweat, staring at the bank, Arthur walked on, discouraged.
Deviance
isn't the answer. The others deviate all the time, and nothing changes. All I've done is act contrary to my usual vision, which is not really random. It's just the exact opposite of my fundamental nature. Which reveals it as much as anything else.
Arthur passed by the orchard where his court picnicked, bewildered and careless. The shadow climbed down his ladder, took off his straw hat, and went to walk beside Arthur. The king didn't notice a thing.
He finished his lap round the isle, returning to his starting point, where the same moldy apple lay on the ground. Elsewhere, at the same time, he was marrying Guinevere, discovering Lancelot's betrayal, recruiting Perceval or Galahad.
I am a code, the incarnation of a concept. Tragically, I am only myself. How can I understand what I lack, if my wings are clipped? The Grail Quest is, above all, a journey of enlightenment. But even the Quest can't give us answers; it, like everything else, is part of the Geste. It belongs to the system.
The shadow matched Arthur's progress, handsâor sleevesâjoined, head tilted forward like a monk in his cloister. They passed the trees again. The knights were finishing their feast and returning to the castle.
The Grail, too, is a symbol. The human mind gave it the form of something to be sought in a wilderness because that was easy to understand, but in the end, the Grail is just an illusion. Only what it signifies matters here.
Arthur picked the rotten apple off the ground and, without thinking much about it, bit down. He began methodically to chew its flesh, sickly sweet and still crunchy in places. Swallowed the syrupy juice squeezed out by his teeth. Felt the sugary aroma of rot rising into his nasal cavities, choking his throat, burning the sides of his tongue. Ignored the wild wriggling of worms going down his royal gullet.
He finished the putrefied fruit and turned on the shadow.
Which nodded in return. Far off, emerging from the fog, rose the evanescent pillars of a misty and immaculate bridge, woven from light, appearing bit by bit, reaching the shore of l'ile close.
Somewhere, the first few measures of “O Fortuna” from
Carmina Burana
rang out.
Staggered by fear of what was to come, the king fell to his knees and vomited forth the awful seeds of reality.
The Third Way
Anonymous corpses littered the plain of Camlann all the way to the horizonâa very close horizon: the sea was lapping at the castle on all three sides now, and before the battle, the two armies had faced off only a few yards apart. And yet the epic charge of the final battle of Arthur's reign had seemed to last an eternity, and the faceless dead were heaped up in their thousands.
Arthur, his handsome armor scarlet-stained, his hair and beard sticky with mud, sweat, and blood, advanced unsteadily through the groans of the dying, Excalibur in his fist. The sticky sword was heavy, still heavier to bear than the crown: his royalty resided in the weapon, in divine glory, and not in the human symbol of kingship.
A single idea, one sole desire drove the king to the end of his era: to find Mordred, his treason, the heir he'd never have.
"Mooordred!” he shouted over the plain.
A young man with a face too perfect to be beautiful emerged from the smoke, bloody lance in hand, and advanced with a faltering step, a grimace of hatred on his lips.
"Here I am, father,” he growled.
The true king and the usurper met in the center of the plain of Camlann among the remnants of past grandeur, amid fire and death, beside Stygian waters.
The Geste neared its end. Again.
Mordred let out an animal roar that grew in intensity. With a final effort, burning with hatred, he brandished his lance, ready to commit parricide.
Arthur opened his arms. And flung Excalibur aside like a fence picket.
"I abdicate,” he announced.
There was a moment of uncertainty. Mordred remained frozen, as though he'd been hit in the stomach, and then gathered himself. “It's a trickâyou're trying to win by cheating, you want to keep things as they are!” he hissed through his clenched teeth.