The Once and Future King (36 page)

He took the wretched ball away from her with a gesture which was almost rough.

‘That’s no good,’ he said, and he began to unwind her hopeful work with angry fingers. His eyebrows made a horrible scowl.

There was a moment in which everything stood still. Guenever stood, hurt in her heart. Lancelot, sensing her stillness, stood also. The hawk stopped bating and the leaves did not rustle.

The young man knew, in this moment, that he had hurt a real person of his own age. He saw in her eyes that she thought he was hateful, and that he had surprised her badly. She had been giving kindness, and he had returned it with unkindness. But the main thing was that she was a real person. She was not a minx, not deceitful, not designing and heartless. She was pretty Jenny, who could think and feel.

The first two people to notice that Lancelot and Guenever were falling in love with each other were Uncle Dap and King Arthur himself. Arthur had been warned about this by Merlyn – who was now safely locked up in his cave by the fickle Nimue – and he had been fearing it subconsciously. But he always hated knowing the future and had managed to dismiss it from his mind. Uncle Dap’s reaction was to give his pupil a lecture, as they stood in the mews with the chastened jer.

‘God’s Feet!’ said Uncle Dap, with other exclamations of the same kind. ‘What is this? What are you doing? Is the finest knight in Europe to throw away everything I have taught him for the sake of a lady’s beautiful eyes? And a married lady too!’

‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’

‘Don’t know! Won’t know! Holy Mother!’ shouted Uncle Dap. ‘Is it Guenever I am talking about, or is it not? Glory be to God for evermore!’

Lancelot took the old gentleman by the shoulders and sat him down on a chest.

‘Look, Uncle,’ he said with determination. ‘I have been wanting to talk to you. Isn’t it time you went back to Benwick?’

‘Benwick!’ cried his uncle, as if he had been stabbed to the heart.

‘Yes, Benwick. You can’t go on pretending to be my squire for ever. For one thing, you are the brother of two kings, and for another thing, you are three times as old as I am. It would be against the laws of arms.’

‘Laws of arms!’ shouted the old man. ‘Pouf!’

‘Well, it is no good saying Pouf.’

‘And me that has taught you everything you know! Me to go back to Benwick without having seen you prove yourself at all! Why, you have not even used your sword in front of me,
not used Joyeux! It is ingratitude, perfidy, treachery! Sorrow to the grave! My faith! By the Blue!’

And the agitated old fellow went off into a long string of Gallic remarks, including the so—called William the Conqueror’s oath of
Per Splendorem Dei
, and the
Pasque Dieu
which was the imaginary King Louis the Eleventh’s idea of a joke. Inspired by the royal train of thought he added the exclamations of Rufus, Henry the First, John, and Henry the Third, which were, in that order, By the Holy Face of Lucca, By God’s Death, By God’s Teeth, and By God’s Head. The jerfalcon, seeming to appreciate the display, roused his feathers heartily, like a housemaid shaking a mop out of the window.

‘Well, if you won’t go, you won’t,’ said Lancelot. ‘But please don’t talk to me about the Queen. I can’t help it if we are fond of each other, and there is nothing wrong in being fond of people, is there? It is not as if the Queen and I were villains. When you begin lecturing me about her, you are making it seem as if there was something wrong between us. It is as if you thought ill of me, or did not believe in my honour. Please do not mention the subject again.’

Uncle Dap rolled his eyes, disarranged his hair, cracked his knuckles, kissed his finger—tips, and made other gestures calculated to express his point of view. But he did not refer to the love affair afterwards.

Arthur’s reaction to the problem was complicated. Merlyn’s warning about his lady and his best friend had contained within itself the seeds of its own contradiction, for your friend can hardly be your friend if he is also going to be your betrayer. Arthur adored his rose—petalled Guenever for her dash, and had an instinctive respect for Lancelot, which was soon to become affection. This made it difficult either to suspect them or not to suspect.

The conclusion which he came to was that it would be best to solve the problem by taking Lancelot with him to the Roman war. That, at any rate, would separate the boy from Guenever,
and it would be pleasant to have his disciple with him – a fine soldier – whether Merlyn’s warning were true or not.

The Roman war was a complicated business which had been brewing for years. It need not concern us long. It was in its way the logical consequence of Bedegraine – the continuation of that battle on a European scale. The feudal idea of war for ransom had been squashed in Britain, but not abroad, and now the foreign ransom—hunters were after the newly settled King. A gentleman called Lucius, who was the Dictator of Rome – and it is strange to reflect that Dictator is the very word which Malory uses – had sent an embassy asking for tribute from Arthur – it was called a tribute before a battle and a ransom afterwards – to which the King, after consulting his parliament, had returned a message that no tribute was due. So the Dictator Lucius had declared war. He had also sent his messengers, like Lars Porsena in Macaulay, to all the points of the compass to gather allies. He had no less than sixteen kings marching with him from Rome into High Germany, on their way to do battle with the English. He had allies from Ambage, Arrage, Alisandrie, Inde, Hermonie, Euphrates, Affrike, Europe the Large, Ertaine, Elamie, Arabie, Egypt, Damaske, Damiete, Cayer, Capadoce, Tarce, Turkey, Pounce, Pampoille, Surrie and Galacie, beside others from Greece, Cyprus, Macedone, Calabre, Cateland, Portingale, and many thousands of Spaniards.

During the first weeks of Lancelot’s infatuation for Guenever, it became time for Arthur to cross the Channel to meet his enemy in France – and it was on this war that he decided to carry the young man with him. Lancelot, of course, was not at that time recognized as the chief knight of the Round Table, or he would have been taken in any case. At the present period of his life he had only fought one joust with Arthur himself, and the accepted captain of the knights was Gawaine.

Lancelot was angry at being taken from Guenever, because he felt that it implied a lack of trust. Besides, he knew that Sir Tristram had been left with King Mark’s wife of Cornwall on
a similar occasion. He did not see why he should not be left with Guenever in the same way.

There is no need to go into the whole story of the Roman campaign, although it lasted several years. It was the usual sort of war, with a great deal of shoving and shouting on both sides, great strokes smitten, many men overthrown, and great valiances, prowesses, and feats of arms shown every day. It was Bedegraine enlarged – with the same refusal on Arthur’s part to regard it as a sporting or commercial enterprise – although it did have its characteristic touches. Red—headed Gawaine lost his temper when sent on an embassy and killed a man in the middle of the negotiations. Sir Lancelot led a terrific battle in which his men were outnumbered by three to one. He slew the King Lyly and three great lords called Alakuke, Herawd, and Heringdale. During the campaign three notorious giants were accounted for – two of them by Arthur himself. Finally, in the last engagement, Arthur gave the Emperor Lucius such a blow on the head that Excalibur stinted not till it came to his breast, and it was discovered that the Sowdan of Surrie and the King of Egypt and the King of Ethiope – an ancestor of Haile Selassie – together with seventeen other kings of diverse regions and sixty senators of Rome, were among the slain. Arthur put their bodies into sumptuous coffins – not sarcastically – and sent them to the Lord Mayor of Rome, instead of the tribute which had been demanded. This induced the Lord Mayor and nearly the whole of Europe to accept him as overlord. The lands of Pleasance, Pavia, Petersaint, and the Port of Tremble yielded him homage. The feudal convention of battle was broken for good, on the Continent as well as in England.

During this warfare Arthur became genuinely fond of Lancelot, and, by the time they came home, he no longer believed in Merlyn’s prophecy at all. He had put it at the back of his mind. Lancelot was acknowledged to be the greatest fighter in the army. Both of them were determined that Guenever could not come between them, and the first few years were safely past.

What sort of picture do people have of Sir Lancelot from this end of time? Perhaps they only think of him as an ugly young man who was good at games. But he was more than this. He was a knight with a medieval respect for honour.

There is a phrase which you sometimes come across in country districts even nowadays, which sums up a good deal of what he might have tried to say. Farmers use it in Ireland, as praise or compliment, saying, ‘So—and—so has a Word. He will do what he promised.’

Lancelot tried to have a Word. He considered it, as the ignorant country people still consider it, to be the most valuable of possessions.

But the curious thing was that under the king—post of keeping faith with himself and with others he had a contradictory nature which was far from holy. His Word was valuable to him not only because he was good, but also because he was bad. It is the bad people who need to have principles to restrain them. For one thing, he liked to hurt people. It was for the strange reason that he was cruel, that the poor fellow never killed a man who asked for mercy, or committed a cruel action which he could have prevented. One reason why he fell in love with Guenever was because the first thing he had done was to hurt her. He might never have noticed her as a person, if he had not seen the pain in her eyes.

People have odd reasons for ending up as saints. A man who was not afflicted by ambitions of decency in his mind might simply have run away with his hero’s wife, and then perhaps the tragedy of Arthur would never have happened. An ordinary fellow, who did not spend half his life torturing himself by trying to discover what was right so as to conquer his inclination towards what was wrong, might have cut the knot which brought their ruin.

When the two friends arrived in England from the Roman war, the fleet landed at Sandwich. It was a grey September day, with the blue and copper butterflies flitting in the aftergrass, the partridges calling like crickets, the blackberries colouring, and the hazel nuts still nursing their tasteless little kernels in cradles of cotton wool. Queen Guenever was on the beach to meet them, and the first thing Lancelot knew after she had kissed the King, was that she was able to come between them after all. He made a movement as if his entrails were tying themselves in knots, saluted the Queen, went off to bed in the nearest inn at once, and lay awake all night. In the morning, he asked leave of absence from the court.

‘But you have hardly been at court at all,’ said Arthur. ‘Why do you want to go away so soon?’

‘I ought to go away.’

‘Ought to go away?’ asked the King. ‘What do you mean, you ought to go away?’

Lancelot clenched his fist until the knuckles stood out, and said, ‘I want to go on a quest. I want to find an adventure.’

‘But, Lance –’

‘It is what the Round Table is for, isn’t it?’ shouted the young man. ‘The knights are to go on quests, aren’t they, to fight against Might? What are you trying to stop me for? It’s the whole point of the idea.’

‘Oh, come,’ said the King. ‘You needn’t get excited about it. If you want to go, of course you can do whatever you like. I only thought it would be nice to have you with us for a little. Don’t be cross, Lance. I don’t know what has come over you.’

‘Come back soon,’ said the Queen.

This was the beginning of the famous quests. They were not made to win him fame or recreation. They were an attempt to escape from Guenever. They were his struggles to save his honour, not to establish it.

We shall have to describe one of the quests in detail – so as to show the way in which he tried to distract himself, and the way in which this famous honour of his worked. Also it will give a picture of the state of England, which forced King Arthur to work for his theory of justice. It was not that Arthur was a prig – it was that his country of Gramarye lay in such a toil of anarchy in the early days that some idea like the Round Table was needed to make the place survive. The warfare of people like Lot had been suppressed, but not the unbiddable baronage who lived like gangsters on their own estates. Barons were pulling teeth out of Jews to get their money, or roasting bishops who contradicted them. The villeins who belonged to bad masters were being basted over slow fires, or sprinkled with molten lead, or impaled, or left to die with their eyes gouged out, or else they were crawling along the roads on hands and knees, because they had been hamstrung. Petty feuds were raging to the destruction of the poor and helpless, and, if a knight did happen to be dragged from his horse in a battle, he was so well screwed up that only an expert could do him harm. Philip Augustus of France, for instance, was dismounted and surrounded at the legendary battle of Bouvines: yet, as the unfortunate infantry were quite unable to puncture him, he was rescued soon after, and continued to fight all the better because he had lost his temper. But the story of Lancelot’s first quest must speak for their troubled age of Might in its own way.

There were two knights on the borders of Wales called Sir Carados and Sir Turquine. They were of Celtic stock. These two conservative barons had never yielded to Arthur, and they
did not believe in any form of government except the rule of force. They had strong castles and wicked retainers, who found more opportunity for wickedness under their leadership than they would have found in a settled state of society. They existed like eagles, to prey on weaker brethren. It is unfair to compare them with eagles, for many of these birds are noble creatures, while Sir Turquine at any rate was not noble. If he had lived now he might even have been locked in a lunatic hospital, and his friends would certainly have urged him to be psycho—analysed.

One day, when Sir Lancelot had been riding on his adventure for about a month – and all the time going away from where he wanted to be, so that every pace of his horse was a torment – there appeared a knight in armour riding a great mare, with another bound knight thrown across the saddlebow. The bound knight had fainted. He was bloody and bedraggled, and his head, which hung by the mare’s shoulders, had red hair. The riding knight who had captured him was a man of enormous stature, and Lancelot recognized him by his blazon as Sir Carados.

‘Who is your prisoner?’

The big knight lifted the prisoner’s shield, which was hanging behind him, and showed
or, a chevron gules, between three thistles vert.

‘What are you doing with Sir Gawaine?’

‘Mind your own business,’ said Sir Carados.

Gawaine must have come to his senses when the mare halted, for his voice now said, coming from upside down: ‘Is that you, man, Sir Lancelot?’

‘What cheer, Gawaine. How stands it with you?’

‘Never so hard,’ said Sir Gawaine, ‘unless that ye help me, for without ye rescue me, I know nae knight that may.’

He was speaking formally in the High Language of Chivalry – for in those days there were two kinds of speech like High and Low Dutch or Norman French and Saxon English.

Lancelot looked at Sir Carados, and said in the vernacular: ‘Will you put that fellow down, and fight with me instead?’

‘You are a fool,’ said Sir Carados. ‘I shall only serve you in the same way.’

Then they put Gawaine on the ground, tied up so that he could not get away, and prepared for battle. Sir Carados had a squire to give him his spear, but Lancelot had insisted on leaving Uncle Dap at home. He had to serve himself alone.

The fight was different from the one with Arthur. For one thing, the knights were more evenly matched, and, in the tilt with which it began, neither of them was unhorsed. They broke their ashwood spears to splinters, but both stayed in the saddle, and the horses stood the shock. In the sword—play which followed, Lancelot proved to be the better of the two. After little more than an hour’s fighting he managed to give Sir Carados such a buffet on the helm that it pierced his brain—pan – and then, while the dead man was still swaying in the saddle, he caught him by the collar, pulled him under his horse’s feet, dismounted in the same instant, and struck off his head. He liberated Sir Gawaine, who thanked him heartily, and rode on again into the wild ways of England, without giving Carados another thought. He fell in with a young cousin of his own, Sir Lionel, and they rode together in search of wrongs to redress. But it was unwise of them to have forgotten Sir Carados.

One day, when they had been riding for some time, they came to a forest during a sultry noon, and Lancelot was so worn out by the struggle inside him about the Queen, and by the weather as well, that he felt he could not go further. Lionel felt sleepy also, so they decided to lie down under an apple tree in a hedge, after tying their horses to sundry branches. Lancelot went to sleep at once – but the buzzing of the flies kept Sir Lionel awake, and while he was awake a curious sight came by.

The sight was of three knights fully armed, galloping for their lives, with a single knight in pursuit of them. The horses’ hoofs thundered on the ground and shook it – so that it was peculiar that Lancelot did not wake up – until, one by one, the huge pursuer ran his quarries down, unhorsed them, and bound them prisoners.

Lionel was an ambitious boy. He thought that he would steal
a march on his famous cousin. He got up quietly, put his armour to rights, and rode off to challenge the victor. In less than a minute he too was lying on the ground, trussed so that he could not move, and before Lancelot woke the whole pageant had disappeared. The mysterious conqueror in these four battles was Sir Turquine, a brother to the Carados whom Lancelot had lately killed. His habit was to take his captives into his grim castle, where he took off all their clothes and whacked them to his heart’s content, as a hobby.

Lancelot was still asleep when a new pageant came prancing by. In the middle of it there was a green silk canopy borne on four spears by four knights gorgeously apparelled. Under the canopy there rode four middle—aged queens on white mules, looking picturesque. They were passing the apple tree, when Lancelot’s charger gave a brassy neigh.

Queen Morgan le Fay, who was the senior queen of the four – all witches – halted the procession and rode over to Sir Lancelot. He looked dangerous as he lay there in full armour of war, among the long grasses.

‘It is Sir Lancelot!’

Nothing travels quicker than scandal, especially among supernatural people, so the four queens knew that he was in love with Guenever. They also knew that he was now recognized as the strongest knight in the world. They were jealous of Guenever on this account. They were delighted by the opportunity which they saw before them. They began to quarrel among themselves, about which of them should have him for her magic.

‘We need not quarrel,’ said Morgan le Fay. ‘I will put an enchantment on him so that he does not wake for six hours. When we have got him safely into my castle, he can choose which of us he will have, himself.’

This was done. The sleeping champion was carried on his shield, between two knights, into the Castle Chariot. The castle no longer had its fairy appearance as a castle of food, but its everyday aspect of an ordinary fortress. There he was put into
a cold, bare chamber, fast asleep, and left until the enchantment wore off.

When Lancelot woke, he did not know where he was. The room was dark, and seemed to be made of stone like a dungeon. He lay in the dark wondering what would happen next. Later he began to think about Queen Guenever.

The thing which did happen, was that a young damsel came in with his dinner and asked him what cheer?

‘How are you, Sir Lancelot?’

‘I don’t know, fair damsel. I don’t know how I got here, so I don’t rightly know how I am.’

‘No need to be frightened,’ she said. ‘If you are as great a man as you are supposed to be, I may be able to help you tomorrow morning.’

‘Thank you. Whether you can help me or not, I should like you to think kindly of me.’

So the fair maid went away.

In the morning there was banging of bolts and creaking of rusty locks and several retainers in chain mail came into the dungeon. They lined up on either side of the door, and the magic queens came in behind them, all dressed in their best clothes. Each of the queens made a stately curtsey to Sir Lancelot. He stood up politely and bowed gravely to each of the queens. Morgan le Fay introduced them as the queens of Gore, Northgalis, Eastland, and the Out Isles.

‘Now,’ said Morgan le Fay, ‘we know about you, so you need not think we don’t. You are Sir Lancelot Dulac, and you are having a love affair with Queen Guenever. You are supposed to be the best knight in the world, and that is why the woman is fond of you. Well, that is all over now. We four queens have you in our power, and you have to choose which of us you will have for your mistress. It would be no good unless you chose for yourself, obviously – but one of us you must have. Which is it to be?’

Lancelot said: ‘How can I possibly answer a thing like that?’

‘You have to answer.’

‘In the first place,’ he said, ‘what you say about me and the
King’s wife of Britain is untrue. Guenever is the truest lady unto her lord living. If I were free, or had my armour, I would fight any champion you liked to put forward, to prove that. And in the second place, I certainly will not have any of you for my mistress. I am sorry if this is discourteous, but it is all I can say.’

‘Oh!’ said Morgan le Fay.

‘Yes,’ said Lancelot.

‘That is all?’

‘Yes.’

The four queens curtsied with frigid dignity, and marched out of the room. The sentries made smart about—turns, their mail ringing on the stone floor. The light went out of the door. The door slammed, and the key creaked, and the bolts rumbled into their sockets.

When the fair damsel came in with the next meal, she showed signs of wanting to talk to him. Lancelot noticed that she was a bold creature, who was probably fond of getting her own way.

‘You said you might be able to help me?’

The girl looked suspiciously at him and said: ‘I can help you if you are who you are supposed to be. Are you really Sir Lancelot?’

‘I am afraid I am.’

‘I will help you,’ she said, ‘if you will help me.’

Then she burst into tears.

While the damsel is weeping, which she did in a charming and determined way, we had better explain about the tournaments which used to take place in Gramarye in the early days. A real tournament was distinct from a joust. In a joust the knights tilted or fenced with each other singly, for a prize. But a tournament was more like a free fight. A body of knights would pick sides, so that there were twenty or thirty on either side, and then they would rush together harum—scarum. These mass battles were considered to be important – for instance, once you had paid your green fee for the tournament, you were admitted on the same ticket to fight in the jousts – but if you
had only paid the jousting fee, you were not allowed to fight in the tourney. People were liable to be dangerously injured in the mêlées. They were not bad things altogether, provided they were properly controlled. Unfortunately, in the early days, they were seldom controlled at all.

Merry England in Pendragon’s time was a little like Poor Ould Ireland in O’Connell’s. There were factions. The knights of one county, or the inhabitants of one district, or the retainers of one nobleman, might get themselves into a state in which they felt a hatred for the faction which lived next door. This hatred would become a feud, and then the king or leader of the one place would challenge the leader of the other one to a tourney – and both factions would go to the meeting with full intent to do each other mischief. It was the same in the days of Papist and Protestant, or Stuart and Orangeman, who would meet together with shillelaghs in their hands and murder in their hearts.

‘Why are you crying?’ asked Sir Lancelot.

‘Oh dear,’ sobbed the damsel. ‘That horrid King of Northgalis has challenged my father to a tournament next Tuesday, and he has got three knights of King Arthur’s on his side, and my poor father is bound to lose. I am afraid he will get hurt.’

‘I see. And what is your father’s name?’

‘He is King Bagdemagus.’

Sir Lancelot got up and kissed her politely on the forehead. He saw at once what he was expected to do.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘If you can rescue me out of this prison, I will fight in the faction of King Bagdemagus next Tuesday.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ said the maiden, wringing out her handkerchief. ‘Now I must go, I am afraid, or they will miss me downstairs.’

Naturally she was not going to help the magic Queen of Northgalis to keep Lancelot in prison – when it was the King of Northgalis himself who was going to fight her father.

In the morning, before the people of the castle had got up, Lancelot heard the heavy door opening quietly. A soft hand
was put in his, and he was led out in the darkness. They went through twelve magic doors, until they reached the armoury, and there was all his armour bright and ready. When he had put it on, they went to the stables, and there was his charger scratching on the cobbles with a sparkling shoe.

‘Remember.’

‘Of course,’ he said. And he rode out over the drawbridge into the morning light.

While they had crept through the corridors of Castle Chariot, they had made a plan about meeting King Bagdemagus. Lancelot was to ride to an abbey of white friars which was situated near by, and there he was to meet the damsel – who would, of course, be forced to flee from Queen Morgan because of her treachery in letting him escape. At this abbey they were to wait until King Bagdemagus could be brought over, and then the arrangements for the tournament were to be made. Unfortunately, the Castle Chariot was in the Forest Sauvage, and Lancelot now lost his way to the abbey. He and his horse wandered about all day, bumping against branches, getting tangled in blackberry bushes, and rapidly losing their tempers. In the evening they stumbled on a pavilion of red sendal, with nobody inside.