The Once and Future King (35 page)

There was a feature about the great families which centred round the doom of Arthur. All three had a resident genius of the family, half—way between a tutor and a confidant, who affected the character of the children in each. At Sir Ector’s castle there had been Merlyn, who was the main influence in
Arthur’s life. In lonely and distant Lothian there had been St Toirdealbhach, whose warlike philosophy must have had something to do with the clannishness of Gawaine and his brothers. In King Ban’s castle there was an uncle of Lancelot’s, whose name was Gwenbors. Actually he was the old man we have met, known to everybody as Uncle Dap, but his given name was Gwenbors. In those days you generally named your children in the same way as we name foxhounds and foals today. If you happened to be Queen Morgause and had four children, you put a G in all their names (Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth) – and, naturally if your brothers happened to be called Ban and Bors, you were doomed to be called Gwenbors yourself. It made it easier to remember who you were.

Uncle Dap was the only one in the family who took Lancelot seriously, and Lancelot was the one who was serious about Uncle Dap. It was easy not to be serious about the old fellow, for he was that peculiar creation which ignorant people laugh at – a genuine maestro. His branch of learning was chivalry. There was not a piece of armour proofed in Europe but what Uncle Dap had a theory about it. He was furious with the new Gothic style, with its ridges and scallop—patterns and fluting. He considered it ridiculous to wear armour like the ropework on a Nelson sideboard, for it was obvious that every groove would be liable to hold a point. The whole object of good armour, he said, was to throw the point off – and, when he thought of the people in Germany making their horrible furrows, he nearly went frantic. There was nothing in Heraldry which he did not know. If anybody committed any of the grosser errors – such as putting metal on metal or colour on colour – he became electrified with passion. His long white moustaches quivered at their tips like antennae, the ends of his fingers came together in gestures of the wildest passion, and he waved his arms and jumped up and down and wagged his eyebrows and almost fizzed. Nobody can be a maestro without being subject to these excitements, so Lancelot seldom minded when he got his face slapped in a mêlée about shields cut
à bouche
or about whether it was a good idea to have a guige on your shield or
not. Sometimes Uncle Dap was tantalized into beating him, but he bore that also. In those days they did.

One reason for not minding Uncle Dap’s transports was that everything the boy wanted could be learned from him. He was not only a distinguished clerk and authority on his own subjects – he was also one of the finest swordsmen in France. It was for this, really, that the boy had attached himself. It was in order to rase and trace and foin under the brutal tuition of genius – in order to hold out a heavy sword at arm’s length in a lunge until he felt he would split in half – only to have Uncle Dap catch hold of his point and pull him into a crueller stretch.

Ever since he could remember, there had been the excited man with the eyes of blue steel, jumping up and down, and snapping his fingers, and shouting out as if life itself depended on it: ‘Doublez! Dédoublez! Dégagez! Un! Deux!’

One fine day in late summer, Lancelot was sitting in the Armoury with his uncle. In the big room there was a lot of dust dancing in the sunbeams, dust which they had themselves been stirring up a moment before, and round the walls there were the ranks of polished armour, and the racks of spears, and helms and morions hanging on pegs. There were misericordes and harness and the various banners and pennoncels, blazoned with the Ban chargers. The two fencers had sat down to rest after an exciting bout, and Uncle Dap was blown. Lancelot was eighteen now. He was a better fencer than his maestro – though Uncle Dap would not admit it, and his pupil tactfully pretended that he was not.

A page came in while they were still panting, and told him that he was wanted by his mother.

‘Why?’

The page said that a gentleman had arrived who wanted to see him, and the Queen had said that he was to come at once.

Queen Elaine was sitting in the solar, where she had been doing tapestry work, and her two guests were sitting on either side of her. She was not the Elaine who had been one of the
Cornwall sisters. It was a popular name in those days and several women in the Morte d’Arthur had it, particularly as some of its manuscript sources have got mixed up. The three grown—ups at the long table looked like a row of examiners in the dim room. One of the guests was an elderly gentleman with a white beard and pointed hat, and the other was a handsome minx with an olive complexion and plucked eyebrows. They all three looked at Lancelot, and the old gentleman spoke first.

‘Hum!’

They waited.

‘You called him Galahad,’ said the old gentleman.

‘His first name was Galahad,’ he added, ‘and now he is Lancelot, since he was confirmed.’

‘However did you know?’

‘It can’t be helped,’ said Merlyn. ‘It is one of the things one does know, and there’s an end on’t. Now, let me see, what are the other things I was supposed to tell you?’

The young lady with the plucked eyebrows put her hand before her mouth and yawned gracefully, like a cat.

‘He will get the hope of his heart thirty years from now, and he will be the best knight in the world.’

‘Shall I live to see it?’ asked Queen Elaine.

Merlyn scratched his head, gave it a bump on the top with his knuckles, and replied:

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ said the Queen, ‘it is all very wonderful, I must say. Do you hear that, Lance? You are to be the best knight in the world!’

The boy asked: ‘Have you come from the court of King Arthur?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is everything well?’

‘Yes. He sends you his love.’

‘Is the King happy?’

‘Very happy. Guenever sent her love too.’

‘Who is Guenever?’

‘Good gracious!’ exclaimed the magician. ‘Didn’t you know
about that? No, of course not. I have been getting bejingled in my brains.’

Here he glanced at the beautiful lady, as if she might be responsible for the jingling – which she was. She was Nimue, and he had fallen in love with her at last.

‘Guenever,’ said Nimue, ‘is Arthur’s new queen. They have been married for some time.’

‘Her father is King Leodegrance,’ explained Merlyn. ‘He gave Arthur a present of a round table when they were married, and a hundred knights to go with it. There is room at the table for a hundred and fifty.’

Lancelot said: ‘Oh!’

‘The King meant to tell you,’ said Merlyn. ‘Perhaps the messenger got drowned on the way over. There may have been a storm. He really did mean to tell you.’

‘Oh,’ said the boy, for the second time.

Merlyn began to talk quickly, because he saw that it was a difficult situation. From Lancelot’s face he could not tell whether he was hurt or whether it was like that always.

‘He has only managed to fill in twenty—nine of the seats so far,’ he said. ‘There is room for twenty—one more. Plenty of room. All the knights’ names are written on them in gold.’

There was a pause, during which nobody knew what to say. Then Lancelot cleared his throat.

‘There was a boy,’ he said, ‘when I was in England. His name was Gawaine. Has he been made one of the knights of the table?’

Merlyn looked guilty, and nodded his head.

‘He was created on the day Arthur was married.’ I see.

There was another long pause.

‘This lady,’ said Merlyn, feeling that he had better fill in the silence, ‘is called Nimue. I am in love with her. We are having a sort of honeymoon together – only it is a magical one – and now we shall have to be off to Cornwall. I am sorry we could not visit you for longer.’

‘My dear Merlyn,’ exclaimed the Queen, ‘but surely you will stay the night?’

‘No, no. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are in a hurry just now.’

‘You will have a glass of something before you leave?’

‘No, thank you. It is very kind of you, but really, we must be off. We have some magic to attend to in Cornwall.’

‘Such a short visit –’ began the Queen.

Merlyn cut her short by standing up and taking Nimue’s hand in his.

‘Good—bye now,’ he said with determination – and in a couple of spins they were both gone.

Their bodies were gone, but the magician’s voice remained in the air.

‘That’s that,’ they could hear him saying in a relieved tone. ‘Now then, my angel, what about that place I was telling you of in Cornwall, the one with the magical cave in it?’

Lancelot went back to Uncle Dap in the Armoury, with slow steps. He stood in front of his uncle, and bit his lip.

‘I am going to England,’ he said.

Uncle Dap looked at him in amazement, but said nothing.

‘I shall start this evening.’

‘It seems sudden,’ said Uncle Dap. ‘Your mother does not usually make up her mind so quickly.’

‘My mother does not know.’

‘Do you mean that you are going to run away?’

‘If I told my mother and father, there would only be a fuss,’ he said. ‘It is not that I am running away. I shall come back again. But I must go to England as quick as I can.’

‘Do you expect me to tell your mother?’

‘Yes, I do.’

Uncle Dap gnawed the ends of his moustache, and wrung his hands.

‘If they get to know that I could have prevented it,’ he said, ‘Ban will cut off my head.’

‘They will not know,’ said the boy indifferently, and he went away to arrange about his packing.

A week later, Lancelot and Uncle Dap were sitting in a peculiar boat in the middle of the English Channel. The boat had a sort of castle at each end. There was another castle half—way up the single mast, which gave it the appearance of a dovecote. It had flags fore and aft. The one gay sail had a Cross Potent on it, while an enormous streamer floated from the top of the mast. There were eight oars, and the two passengers were seasick.

The hero—worshipper rode towards Camelot with a bitter heart. It was hard for him at eighteen to have given his life to a king, only to be forgotten – hard to have spent those sorrowful hours with the heavy arms in the dust of the Armoury, only to see Sir Gawaine knighted first – hardest of all to have broken his body for the older man’s ideal, only to find this mincing wife stepping in at the end of it to snatch away his love at no cost at all. Lancelot was jealous of Guenever, and he was ashamed of himself for being so.

Uncle Dap rode behind the grieving boy in silence. He knew a thing which the other was still too green to know – that he had taught the finest knight in Europe. Like an excited tit which had nursed a cuckoo, Uncle Dap fluttered along behind his prodigy. He was carrying the fighting harness, which was strapped up in apple—pie order according to his own dodges and wrinkles – for, from now on, he was Lancelot’s squire.

They came to a clearing in the wood, and a little stream ran through the middle. There was a ford here and the stream ran tinkling over the clean stones, only a few inches deep. The sun shone down into the clearing. Some wood—pigeons sang drowsily their Take Two Cows Taffy, and, on the other side of the musical water, there was an enormous knight in black armour with his tilting helm in position. He sat motionless on a black charger, and his shield was still in its canvas case. It was
impossible to read his blazon. Being so still, so portly in his iron sheath, and having the great blind helm over his head so that he had no proper face, he had a look of danger about him. You did not know what he was thinking, nor what action he might be going to take. He was a menace.

Lancelot halted, and so did Uncle Dap. The black knight walked his horse into the shallow water, and drew rein in front of them. He raised his lance in a gesture of salute, then pointed with it to a place behind Lancelot’s back. Either he was telling him to go home again, or else he was pointing out a good position from which they could start their charges. Whichever the case might be, Lancelot saluted with his gauntlet and turned round to go to the place. He took one of his spears from Uncle Dap, pulled his tilting helm round in front of him – it had been hanging behind on a chain – and lifted the steel turret into position on his head. He laced it on. Now he too had become a man without an expression.

The two knights faced each other from opposite ends of the little glade. Then, although neither of them had so far spoken a word, they fewtered their spears, put spurs to their horses, and began to charge. Uncle Dap, drawn up safely behind a near—by tree, could hardly contain his delight. He knew what was going to happen to the black knight, although Lancelot did not know, and he began to snap his fingers.

The first time you do a thing, it is often exciting. To go alone in an airplane for the first time used to be so exciting that it nearly choked you. Lancelot had never ridden a serious joust before – and, although he had charged at hundreds of quintains and thousands of rings, he had never taken his life in his hands in earnest. In the first moment of the charge, he felt to himself: ‘Well, now I am off. Nothing can help me now.’ In the second moment he settled down to behave automatically, in the same way as he had always behaved with the quintain and the rings.

The point of his spear took the black knight under the rim of his shoulder—harness at exactly the right place. His mount was in full gallop, and the black knight’s was still in a canter.
The black knight and his horse revolved rapidly toward their sinister side, left the ground together in a handsome parabola, and came down again with a clash. As Lancelot rode by, he could see them sprawling on the ground together, with the knight’s broken lance between the horse’s legs and one flashing horse—shoe tearing the canvas from the fallen shield. The man and the horse were mixed together. Each was afraid of the other, and each was kicking against the other in the effort to be parted. Then the horse got up on its forelegs, its haunches heaved upright, and the knight sat up, lifting one steel gauntlet, as if to rub his head. Lancelot reined in and rode back to him.

Generally, when one knight had given another a fall with the lance, the fallen one used to lose his temper, blame the fall on his horse, and insist upon fighting it out with swords on foot. The usual excuse was to say: ‘The son of a mare hath failed me, but I wote well my father’s sword never shall.’

The black knight, however, did not do the usual thing. He was evidently a more cheerful kind of person than the colour of his armour would suggest, for he sat up and blew through the split of his helm, making a note of surprise and admiration. Then he took off the helm and mopped his brow. The shield, whose cover the horse’s hoof had torn, bore,
or, a dragon rampant gules.

Lancelot threw his spear into a bush, got off his horse very quickly, and knelt down beside the knight. All his love was back again inside him. It was typical of Arthur not to lose his temper, typical of him to sit on the ground making noises of admiration when he had just been given a great fall.

‘Sir,’ said Lancelot, taking off his own helm with a humble gesture; and he bowed his head in the French fashion.

The King began scrambling to his feet in great excitement.

‘Lancelot!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, it’s the boy Lancelot! You are the king’s son of Benwick. I remember seeing you when he came over for the Battle of Bedegraine. What a fall! I never saw anything like it. Where did you learn to do this? It was terrific! Were you coming to my Court? How is King Ban? How is your charming mother? Really, my dear chap, this is magnificent!’

Lancelot looked up at the breathless King, who held out both hands to help him to his feet, and his jealousy and grief were over.

They caught their horses and jogged off toward the palace side by side, forgetting Uncle Dap. They had so much to say to each other that they both talked all the time. Lancelot gave imaginary messages from King Ban or from Queen Elaine, and Arthur talked about how Gawaine had killed a lady. He told how King Pellinore had got so courageous since his marriage that he had killed King Lot of Orkney by mistake in a tournament, and how the Round Table was going as well as could be expected, but very slowly, and how, now that Lancelot had arrived, everything would come right before they knew where they were.

He was knighted the first day – he might have been knighted at any time during the past two years, but he had refused to be done by anybody except Arthur – and he was introduced to Guenever the same evening. There is a story that her hair was yellow, but it was not. It was so black that it was startling, and her blue eyes, deep and clear, had a sort of fearlessness which was startling too. She was surprised by the young man’s twisted face, but not frightened.

‘Now,’ said the King, putting their hands together. ‘This is Lancelot, the one I told you about. He is going to be the best knight I have. I never saw such a fall as he gave me. I want you to be kind to him, Gwen. His father is one of my oldest friends.’

He kissed the Queen’s hand coldly.

He did not notice anything particular about her, because his mind was filled with previous pictures which he had made for himself. There was no room for pictures of what she was really like. He thought of her only as the person who had robbed him, and, since robbers are deceitful, designing, and heartless people, he thought of her as these.

‘How do you do?’ asked the Queen.

Arthur said: ‘We shall have to tell him what has been happening
since he went away. What a lot of things to tell! Where can we begin?’

‘Begin with the Table,’ said Lancelot.

‘Oh dear!’

The Queen laughed and smiled at the new knight.

‘Arthur thinks about it all the time,’ she said. ‘He even dreams about it at night. He won’t be able to tell you unless he talks for a week.’

‘It is not going badly,’ said the King. ‘You can’t expect a thing like that to go smoothly the whole time. The idea is there, and people are beginning to understand it, and that is the great thing. I am sure it will work.’

‘What about the Orkney faction?’

‘They will come round in time.’

‘Is that Gawaine?’ inquired Lancelot. ‘What is the matter with the Orkney faction?’

The King looked uncomfortable. He said: ‘The real matter with them is Morgause, their mother. She brought them up with so little love or security that they find it difficult to understand warm—hearted people themselves. They are suspicious and frightened. They don’t get hold of the idea as I wanted them to do. We have three of them here – Gawaine, Gaheris and Agravaine. It is not their fault.’

‘Arthur had his first Pentecost fast the year we were married,’ explained Guenever, ‘and sent everybody out looking for good adventures, to see how the idea would work. When they came back, Gawaine had cut a lady’s head off, and even dear old Pellinore had failed to rescue a damsel in distress. Arthur was furious about it.’

‘It is not Gawaine’s fault,’ said the King. ‘He is a nice fellow. I like him. It is the fault of that woman.’

‘I hope things have got better since then?’

‘Yes. It is slow work, of course, but I am sure we could say that things have got better.’

‘Did Pellinore repent?’

Arthur said: ‘Pellinore repented, yes. There was not much to repent. It was one of his muddles. But the trouble is that he
has got so valiant since he married the Queen’s daughter of Flanders that he has taken to jousting in earnest, and quite often wins. I was telling you how he killed King Lot one day, when they were having a practice. It has created a great deal of ill—feeling. The Orkney children have sworn to revenge their father’s death, and they are out on the war path for poor old Pellinore’s blood. I am having difficulty in making them behave.’

‘Lancelot will help you.’ said the Queen. ‘It will be nice to have an old friend to help.’

‘Yes, it will be nice. Now, Lance, I expect you will want to see your room.’

It was the second half of summer, and the amateur falconers in Camelot were bringing their peregrines to the last stages of their training. If you are a clever falconer, you get your hawk on the wing quickly. If you are not, you are apt to make mistakes, and the result is that the hawk does not finish her training for some time. So all the falconers in Camelot were trying to show that they were clever ones – by getting their hawks entered as quickly as possible – and, in all directions, if you went for a walk in the fields, there were atrabilious hawk—masters stretching out their creances and quarrelling with their assistants. Hawking, as James the First pointed out, is an extreme stirring up of passions. It is because the hawks themselves are furious creatures, and the people who associate with them catch it.

Arthur presented Sir Lancelot with an inter—mewed jerfalcon, with which to keep himself amused. This was a great compliment, for jerfalcons were only supposed to be used by kings. At any rate that is what the Abbess Juliana Berners tell us – perhaps incorrectly. An emperor was allowed an eagle, a king could have a jerfalcon, and after that there was the peregrine for an earl, the merlin for a lady, the goshawk for a yeoman, the sparrow hawk for a priest, and the musket for a holy—water clerk. Lancelot was pleased with his present, and settled down busily in competition with the other angry falconers, who were hard at work criticizing each other’s methods and sending each other
messages of sugary venom and getting yellow about the eyeballs.

The jerfalcon which had been given to Lancelot was not properly through her moult. Like Hamlet, she was fat and scant of breath. Her long confinement in the mews, while she moulted, had got her into a sulky and temperamental state. So Lancelot had to fly her on the creance for several days before he could be sure that she was safe to the lure.

If you have ever flown a hawk on a creance, which is a long line tied to the hawk’s jesses so that she cannot fly away, you know what a nuisance the thing can be. Nowadays people use a fishing reel, which makes it easier to stretch it out and to wind it up – but in Lancelot’s day there were no good reels, and you simply had to wind your creance into a ball, like string. There were two main horrors to which it was subject, the first of which was the horror peculiar to all balls of string – that they invariably become tangles instead of balls. The second was that if you flew the hawk in any field which had not been carefully mowed, the string became wound round thistles or tufts of grass, thus checking the hawk and doing damage to its training. So Lancelot, and all the other angry men, went circling round Camelot in a bitter atmosphere of knots and competition and bating hawks.

King Arthur had asked his wife to be kind to the young man. She was fond of her husband, and she realized that she had come between him and his friend. She was not such a fool as to try to atone to Lancelot for this, but she had taken a fancy for him as himself. She liked his broken face, however hideous it was, and Arthur had asked her to be kind. There was a shortage of assistants in Camelot for the hawking, because there were so many people at it. So Guenever began going with Lancelot to help him with the balls of string.

He did not take much notice of the woman. ‘Here comes that woman,’ he would remark to himself, or ‘There goes that woman.’ He was already deep in the hawking atmosphere, which was only partly an affair for females, and he seldom thought of her more than that. He had grown into a beautifully
polite youth, in spite of his ugliness, and he was too self—conscious to allow himself to have petty thoughts for long. His jealousy had turned into unconsciousness of her existence. He went on with his hawk—mastery, thanking her politely for her help and accepting it with courtesy.

One day there was particular trouble with a thistle, and he had miscalculated the amount of food which ought to have been given the day before. The jerfalcon was in a foul temper, and Lancelot caught its mood. Guenever, who was not particularly good with hawks and had no special interest in them, was frightened by his frowning brow, and, because she was frightened, she became clumsy. She was sweetly trying her best to help, but she knew that she was not clever at falconry, and there was confusion in her mind. Very carefully and kindly, and with the best intentions, she wound the creance up quite wrong.