Incipit Liber Quartus
CANDLE
IN THE WIND
"He thought a little and said: I have found the Zoological Gardens of service to many of my patients. I should prescribe Mr. Pontifex a course of the larger mammals. Don't let him think he is taking them medicinally....'"
The addition of years had not been kind to Agravaine. Even when he was forty he had looked his present age, which was fifty-five. He was seldom sober.
Mordred, the cold wisp of a man, did not seem to have any age. His years, like the depths of his blue eyes and the inflexions of his musical voice, were non-committal.
The two were standing in the cloisters of the Orkney palace at Camelot, looking out at the hawks who sat beneath the sun, on their blocks in the green courtyard. The cloisters had the new-fashioned flamboyant arches, in whose graceful frames the hawks stood out with noble indifference— a jerfalcon, a goshawk, a falcon and her tiercel, and four little merlins who had been kept all winter, yet had survived. The blocks were clean—for the sportsmen of those days considered that, if you went in for blood sports, it was your duty to conceal the beastliness with scrupulous care. All were lovingly ornamented with Spanish leather in scarlet, and with gold tooling. The leashes of the hawks were plaited out of white horse leather. The jer had a snow-white leash and jesses cut from guaranteed unicorn skin, as a tribute to her station in life. She had been brought all the way from Iceland, and that was the least they could do for her.
Mordred said pleasantly: "For God his sake let's get out of this. The place stinks."
When he spoke the hawks moved slightly, so that their bells gave a whisper of sound. The bells had been brought from the Indies, regardless of expense, and the pair worn by the jer were made of silver. An enormous eagle-owl who was sometimes used as a decoy, but who was at present standing on a perch in the shade of the cloister, opened his eyes when the bells rang. Before he had opened them, he might have been a stuffed owl, a dowdy bundle of feathers. The moment they had dawned, he was a creature from Edgar Allan Poe. You hardly liked to look at him. They were red eyes, homicidal, terrific, seeming actually to give out light. They were like rubies filled with flame. He was called the Grand Duke.
"I don't smell anything," said Agravaine. He sniffed suspiciously, frying to smell. But his palate was gone, both for smell and taste, and he had a headache.
"It stinks of Sport," said Mordred in inverted commas, "and the Done Thing and the Best People. Let's go to the garden."
Agravaine returned tenaciously to the subject which they had been discussing.
"It is no good making a fuss about it," he said. "We know the rights and wrongs, but nobody else knows. Nobody would listen."
"But they must listen," Small flecks in the iris of Mordred's eyes burned with a turquoise light, as bright as the owl's. Instead of being a foppish man with a crooked shoulder, dressed in extravagant clothes, he became a Cause. He became, on this matter, everything which Arthur was not— the irreconcilable opposite of the Englishman. He became the invincible Gael, the scion of desperate races more ancient than Arthur's, and more subtle. Now, when he was on fire with his Cause, Arthur's justice seemed bourgeois and obtuse beside him. It seemed merely to be dull complacency, beside the savagery and feral wit of the Pict. His maternal ancestors crowded into his face when he was spurning at Arthur—ancestors whose civilization, like Mordred's, had been matriarchal: who had ridden bare-back, charged in chariots, fought by stratagem, and ornamented their grisly strongholds with the heads of enemies. They had marched, long-haired and ferocious, an ancient writer tells us, "sword in hand, against rivers in flood or against the storm-tossed ocean." They were the race, now represented by the Irish Republican Army rather than by the Scots Nationalists, who had always murdered landlords and blamed them for being murdered—the race which could make a national hero of a man like Lynchahaun, because he bit off a woman's nose and she a Gall—the race which had been expelled by the volcano of history into the far quarters of the globe, where, with a venomous sense of grievance and inferiority, they even nowadays proclaim their ancient megalomania. They were the Catholics who could fly directly in the face of any pope or saint—Adrian, Alexander or St. Jerome—if the saint's policies did not suit their own convenience: the hysterically touchy, sorrowful, flayed defenders of a broken heritage. They were the race whose barbarous, cunning, valiant defiance had been enslaved, long centuries before, by the foreign people whom Arthur represented. This was one of the barriers between the father and his son.
Agravaine said: "Mordred, I want to talk. There doesn't seem to be anywhere to sit. Sit on that thing, and I will sit here. Nobody can hear us."
"I don't mind if they do hear. That is what we want. It should be said out loud, not whispered in cloisters."
"The whispers will get there in the end."
"No, they won't. That is what they won't do. He doesn't want to hear, and, so long as we whisper, he can always pretend that he can't. You are not the King of England for all these years, without knowing how to use hypocrisy."
Agravaine was uncomfortable. His hatred for the King was not a reality like Mordred's—indeed, he had little personal feeling against anybody except Lancelot. His attitude was more of malice at random.
"I don't think it is any good complaining about what happened in the past," he said gloomily. "We can't expect other people to side with us when everything is complicated, and happened so long ago."
"It may have happened long ago, but that doesn't alter the fact that Arthur is my father, and that he turned me adrift in a boat as a baby."
"It may not alter it for you," said Agravaine, "but it alters it for other people. It is such a muddle that nobody cares. You can't expect ordinary people to remember about grandfathers and half-sisters and things of that sort. In any case human beings don't go to war for private quarrels nowadays. You need a national grievance—something to do with politics which is waiting to burst out. You need to use the tools which are ready to hand. This man John Ball, for instance, who believes in communism: he has thousands of followers who would be ready to help in a disturbance, for their own purposes. Or there are the Saxons. We could say we were in favour of a national movement. For that matter, we could join them together and call it national communism. But it has to be something broad and popular, which everybody can feel. It must be against large numbers of people, like the Jews or the Normans or the Saxons, so that everybody can be angry. Either we must be the leaders of the Old Ones, who seek for justice against the Saxon: or of the Saxon against the Norman; or of the serf against society. We want a banner, yes, and a badge too. You could use the Fylfot. Communism, Nationalism, something like that. But as for a private grudge against the old man, it's useless. Anyway it would take you half an hour to explain it, even if you did begin to shout it from the roof tops."
"I could shout that my mother was his sister, and that he tried to drown me because of that."
"If you wanted to," said Agravaine.
They had been talking, before the eagle-owl woke up, about the earlier wrongs of their family—about their grandmother, Igraine, who had been wronged by Arthur's father —about all the long-gone feud of Gael and Gall, which had been taught them by their dam in old Dunlothian. It was these wrongs which Agravaine's colder blood could recognize as far too distant and confused to serve as weapons against the King. Now they had reached the more recent grievance—the sin of Arthur with his half-sister which had ended in an attempt to murder the bastard who resulted. These might certainly be stronger weapons, but the trouble was that Mordred was himself the bastard. The elder brother's cowardice told him, in his craftier head, that a son could hardly raise his illegitimacy as a banner under which to overthrow his father. Besides, the business had been hushed up long before, by Arthur. It seemed bad policy that Mordred should be the one to bring it up.
They sat in silence, looking at the floor. Agravaine was out of condition, with pouches under his eyes. Mordred was as slim as ever, a neat figure in the height of fashion. The exaggeration of his dress made a good camouflage for him, under which you hardly noticed his crooked shoulder.
He said: "I am not proud."
He looked bitterly at his half-brother, putting more meaning into the look than the other could be expected to catch. He was saying with his eyes: "Look at my hump, then. I have no reason to be proud of my birth."
Agravaine got up impatiently.
"I must have a drink in any case," he said, clapping his hands for the page. Then he passed his trembling fingers over his eyelids and stood wearily, looking at the owl with distaste. Mordred, while they were waiting for the drink, watched him with contempt.
"If you rake the old muck," said Agravaine, revived by the hippocras, "you will get yourself in the muck. We are not in Lothian, you must remember. We are in Arthur's England, and his English love him. Either they will refuse to believe you, or, if they do believe you, they will blame you, and not him, because it was you who brought the matter up. It is certain that not a single man would follow a rebellion of that sort."
Mordred looked at him. He was hating him, like the owl—condemning him as a coward. He could not bear to be thwarted in his day-dream of revenge, so he was wreaking his spite on Agravaine in his thoughts, saying to himself that the latter was a drunken traitor to the family.
Agravaine saw this, and, already consoled by half the bottle, laughed in his face. He patted the good shoulder, forcing the younger man to fill his glass.
"Drink," he said, chuckling. Mordred drank like a cat being dosed.
"Have you heard," asked Agravaine waggishly, "of a mighty saint called Lancelot?"
He winked one of the pouchy eyes, looking down his nose with benevolence.
"Go on."
"I gather you have heard about our preux chevalier."
"I know Sir Lancelot, of course."
"I think I am not wrong in saying that this pure gentleman has given both of us a fall or two?"
"The first time Lancelot unhorsed me," said Mordred, "is so long ago that I can't remember. But it means nothing. Because a man can push you off a horse with a stick, it doesn't mean that he is a better man than you are."
It was a strange feature—now that Lancelot was in the conversation—that Mordred's vivid feeling was exchanged for indifference. But Agravaine, who had been reluctant before this, became fluent.
"Precisely," he said. "And our noble knight has been the Queen of England's lover all the time."
"Everybody knows that Gwen has been Lancelot's mistress since before the deluge, but what good is that? The King knows it himself. He has been told so three times, to my certain knowledge. I don't see that we can do anything."
Agravaine put his finger by the side of his nose like a drunken piper, then shook it at his brother.
"He has been told so," he announced, "but in roundabout ways. People have sent him hints, such as shields with cognizances on them that had double meanings, or horns which only faithful wives could drink from. But nobody has told him about it in open court, face to face. Meliagrance only made a general accusation, and even that was in the days of trial by battle. Think what would happen if we were to denounce Sir Lancelot personally, under these new-fashioned Laws, so that the King was forced to investigate."
Mordred's eyes dawned, as the owl's had done.
"Well?"
"I can't see that anything could happen, except a split. Arthur depends on Lancelot as his commander, and the chief of his troops. That is where his power comes from, because everybody knows that nobody can stand against brute force. But if we could make a little merry mischief between Arthur and Lancelot, because of the Queen, their power would be split. Then would be the time for policy. Then would be the tune for discontented people, Lollards and Communists and Nationalists and all the riff-raff. Then would be the time to take your famous revenge."
"We could break them up, because they were broken among thelmselves"
"But it means more than that."
"It means that the Cornwalls would be even for grandfather and I for mother..."
"... not by using force against force, but by using our brains."
"It means that I could revenge myself on the man who tried to drown me as a baby..."
"... by getting behind the bully first, and then by being a little careful."
"Behind our famous Double Blue..."
"... Sir Lancelotl"
The position was, and perhaps it may as well be laboured for the last time, that Arthur's father had killed the Earl of Cornwall. He had killed the man because he wanted to enjoy the wife. On the night of the Earl's killing, Arthur had been conceived upon the unfortunate Countess. Being born too soon for the various conventions of mourning, marriage, and so forth, he had been secretly put to nurse with Sir Ector of the Forest Sauvage. He had grown up in ignorance of his parentage until, when he was a young boy of nineteen summers, he had fallen in with Morgause, without knowing that she was one of his half-sisters by the Countess and the slaughtered Earl. This half-sister, already the mother of Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth, had been twice the age of the young King—and she had successfully seduced him. The offspring of their union had been Mordred, who had been brought up alone with his mother, in the barbarous remoteness of the outer Isles. He had been brought up alone with Morgause, because he was so much younger than the rest of the family. The others had already flown to the King's court—forced there by ambition because it was the greatest court in the world, or else to escape their mother. Mordred had been left to be dominated by her, with her ancestral grudge against the King and her personal spite. For, although she had contrived to seduce young Arthur in his nonage, he had escaped her— to settle down with Guenever as his wife. Morgause, brooding in the North with the one child who remained to her, had concentrated her maternal powers on the crooked boy. She had loved and forgotten him by turns, an insatiable carnivore who lived on the affections of her dogs, her children and her lovers. Eventually one of the other sons had cut her head off in a storm of jealousy, on discovering her in bed at the age of seventy with a young man called Sir Lamorak. Mordred—confused between the loves and hatreds of his frightful home—had at the time been a party to her assassination. Now, in the court of a father who had been considerate enough to hide the story of his birth, the wretched son found himself the acknowledged brother of Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris and Gareth—found himself lovingly treated by the King-father whom his mother had taught him to hate with all his heart—found himself misshapen, intelligent, critical, in a civilization which was too straightforward for purely intellectual criticism—found himself, finally, the heir to a northern culture which has always been antagonistic to the blunt morals of the south.
The page who had brought Sir Agravaine's hippocras came in from the cloister door. He bowed double, with the exaggerated courtesy which was expected of pages before they became esquires on their way to knighthood, and announced: "Sir Gawaine, Sir Gaheris, Sir Gareth."
The three brothers followed him, boisterous from the open air and their recent doings, so that now the clan was complete. All of them, except Mordred, had wives of their own tucked away somewhere—but nobody ever saw them. Few saw the men thelmselves separate for long. There was something childish about them when they were together, which was attractive rather than the reverse. Perhaps there was something childish about all the paladins of Arthur's story—if being simple is the same as childishness.
Gawaine, who was the head of the family, walked first, with a falcon in juvenile plumage on his fist. The burly fellow had pale hairs in his red head now. Over the ears it was yellowish, the colour of a ferret's, and would soon be white. Gaheris looked like him, or at least he was more like him than the others. But his was a milder copy; not so red, nor so strong, nor so big, nor so obstinate. Indeed, he was a bit of a fool. Gareth, the youngest of the full brothers, had retained the traces of his youth. He walked with a spring in his step, as though he enjoyed being alive.
"Tuts!" exclaimed Gawaine's hoarse voice in the doorway, "drinking already?" He still kept bis outland accent in defiance of the mere English, but he had ceased to think in Gaelic. His English had improved against his will. He was getting old.
"Well, Gawaine, well."
Agravaine, who knew that his nips before noon were disapproved of, asked politely: "Did you have a good day?"
"It wasna bad."
"It was a splendid day," exclaimed Gareth. "We entered her on the haul vollay with Lancelot's passager, and she was genuinely grey-minded. I never thought she would take to it without a bagman! Gawaine had managed her perfectly. She dropped into it without a second's hesitation, as if she had never been flying to anything but the heron, took a fine circle right round the new ricks by Castle Blanc, and got above him just to the Ganis side of the pilgrim's way. She..."
Gawaine, who had noticed that Mordred was yawning on purpose, said, "Ye may spare yer breath."
"It was a fine flight," he concluded lamely. "As she had handled her quarry, we thought we could give her a name."
"What did you call her?" they asked him condescendingly.
"Since she comes from Lundy, and begins with an L, we thought it might be a good idea to call her after Lancelot. We could call her Lancelotta, or something like that. She will be a first-class falcon."
Agravaine looked at Gareth under the lids of his eyes. He said with a slow tone: "Then you had better call her Gwen."
Gawaine came back from the courtyard, where he had been putting the peregrine on her block.
"Leave that," he said.
"I'm sorry if I am not suggesting the truth."
"I care nought about the truth or not. All I say is, Haud yer tongue."
"Gawaine," said Mordred to the air, "is such a preux chevalier that nobody must say anything wicked, or there will be trouble. You see, he is strong—and he apes the great Sir Lancelot."
The red fellow turned on him with dignity.
"I am'na muckle strong, brother, and I dinna trade upon it. I only seek to keep my people decent."
"And, of course," said Agravaine, "it is decent to sleep with the King's wife, even if the King's family has smashed our family, and got a son by our mother, and tried to drown him."
Gaheris protested: "Arthur has always been good to us. Do stop this whining for once."
"Because he is afraid of us."
"I don't see," said Gareth, "why Arthur should be afraid, when he has Lancelot. We all know that he is the best knight in the world, and can master anybody. Don't we, Gawaine?"
"For masel', I dinna wish to speak of it."
Suddenly Mordred was flaming at them, fired by Gawaine's lordly tone.
"Very well, and I do. I may be a weak knight at jousting, but I have the courage to stand for my family and rights. I am not a hypocrite. Everybody in this court knows that the Queen and the Commander-in-chief are lovers, and yet we are supposed to be pure knights, and protectors of ladies, and nobody talks about anything except this so-called Holy Grail. Agravaine and I have decided to go to Arthur now, in full court, and ask about the Queen and Lancelot to his face."
"Mordred," exclaimed the head of the clan, "ye will do naething of the like! It would be sinful."
"He will," said Agravaine, "and I shall go there with him."
Gareth remained between pain and amazement.
"But they mean it," he protested.
Out of the moment of astonishment, Gawaine took the lead and forged into action.
"Agravaine, I am the head of the clan, and I forbid ye."
"You forbid me."
"Yes, I do forbid ye; for ye will be a sair fule if ye do."
"The honest Gawaine," remarked Mordred, "thinks you are a sair fule."
This time the towering fellow swung on him like a shying horse.
"Nane o' that!" he shouted. "Ye think I winna hit ye because ye are crookit, and ye take advantage. But I wull hit ye, mannie, if ye sneer."
Mordred heard his own voice speaking coldly, seeming to come from behind his ears.
"Gawaine, you surprise me. You have produced a sequence of thought."
Then, as the giant came towards him, the same voice said: "Go on. Strike me. It will show your courage."
"Ah, do stop, Mordred," pleaded Gareth. "Can't you stop this nagging for a minute?"
"Mordred wouldn't nag, as you call it," interjected Agravaine, "if you didn't bully."
Gawaine exploded like one of the new-fashioned cannons. He swung away from Mordred, a baited bull, and shouted at them both.
"My soul to the devil, will ye be quiet or will ye clear out? Can we have no peace in the family ever? Shut yer trap, in the name of God, and leave this daft clatter about Sir Lancelot,"
"It is not daft," said Mordred, "nor shall we leave it."
He stood up.
"Well, Agravaine," he asked. "Do we go to the King? Is any other coming?"
Gawaine planted himself in their path.
"Mordred, ye shallna go."
"Who is to stop me?"
"I am."
"Brave fellow," remarked the icy voice, still from somewhere in the air, and the humpback moved to pass.
Gawaine put out his red hand, with golden hairs on the back of the fingers, and pushed him back. At the same time Agravaine put out his own white hand, with fat fingers, to the hilt of his sword.
"Don't move, Gawaine. I have a sword."
"You would have a sword," cried Gareth, "you devil!"
The younger brother's life had suddenly fitted into a pattern and recognized itself. Their murdered mother, and the unicorn, and the man now drawing, and a child in a store-room flashing a dirk: these things had made him cry out.
"All right, Gareth," snarled Agravaine, as white as a sheet, "I know what you mean, and now I draw."
The situation passed out of control: they began acting like puppets, as if it had happened before—which it had. Gawaine, at the sight of steel, went into one of his blind rages. He swung away from Mordred, burst into a torrent of words, drew the hunting knife which was all he carried, and advanced on Agravaine—these things simultaneously. The fat man, as if thrown back on the defensive by the impact of his brother's fury, retreated before him, holding the sword in front with shaking hand.
"Aye," roared Gawaine, "ye ken fine what he means, my bonny butcher. We maun draw on yer ain brother, for ye ever speired to murder folk unarmed. The curse of the grave-cloth on ye! Put up yon sword, man! Put it up! What d'ye mean? Is it nae enough that ye should slay our mother? Damn ye, lay down yon sword, or hae the spunk to fight with it. Agravaine —"
Mordred was slipping behind his back, with a hand on his own dagger. In a second the glint of steel flashed in the shadows, lit by the owl's eyes, and at the same moment Gareth jumped to the defence. He caught Mordred by the wrist, crying: "Now enough! Gaheris, look to the others."
"Agravaine, put the sword up! Gawaine, leave him alone,"
"Away, man! I can teach the hound masel'."
"Agravaine, put the sword down quickly, or he will kill you. Be quick, man. Don't be a fool Gawaine, leave him alone. He didn't mean it Gawaine! Agravaine!"
But Agravaine had made a feeble thrust at the head of the family, which Gawaine turned contemptuously with his knife. Now the towering old fellow, with the ferret-coloured temples, had rushed in and pinned him round the waist. The sword clattered to the floor as Agravaine went backward over the hippocras table, with Gawaine on top of him. The dagger rose in venom to complete the work—but Gaheris caught it from behind. There was a tableau of perfect silence, all motionless. Gareth held Mordred. Agravaine, hiding his eyes with the free hand, flinched from the knife. And Gaheris held the avenging arm suspended.
At this complicated moment the cloister door was opened for the second time, and the courteous page announced as impassively as ever: "His Majesty the King!"
Everybody relaxed. They let go of whatever they were holding, and began to move. Agravaine sat up panting. Gawaine turned away from him, drawing a hand across his face.
"Ach God!" he muttered. "If but I hadna siclike waeful
The King was on the threshold.
He came in, the quiet old man who had done his best so long. He looked older than his age, which was considerable. His royal eye took in the situation without a nicker. He moved across the cloister to kiss Mordred gently, smiling upon them all.
Lancelot and Guenever were sitting at the solar window. An observer of the present day, who knew the Arthurian legend only from Tennyson and people of that sort, would have been startled to see that the famous lovers were past their prime. We, who have learned to base our interpretation of love on the conventional boy-and-girl romance of Romeo and Juliet, would be amazed if we could step back into the Middle Ages—when'the poet of chivalry could write about Man that he had "en del un dieu, par terre une deesse." Lovers were not recruited then among the juveniles and adolescents: they were seasoned people, who knew what they were about. In those days people loved each other for their lives, without the conveniences of the divorce court and the psychiatrist. They had a God in heaven and a goddess on earth—and, since people who devote thelmselves to goddesses must exercise some caution about the ones to whom they are devoted, they neither chose them by the passing standards of the flesh alone, nor abandoned it lightly when the bruckle thing began to fail.
Lancelot and Guenever were sitting by the window in the high keep, and Arthur's England stretched below them, under the level rays of sunset.
It was the Gramarye of the Middle Ages, which some people are accustomed to think of as the Dark Ages, and Arthur had made it what it was. When the old King came to his throne it had been an England of armoured barons, and of famine, and of war. It had been the country of trial by ordeal with red-hot irons, of the Law of Englishry, and of the sad, wordless song of Morfa-Rhuddlan. Then, on the sea-coast, within a foreign vessel's reach, not an animal, not a fruit tree, had been left. Then, in the fens and the vast forests, the last of the Saxons had defended thelmselves against the bitter rule of Uther the Conqueror; then the words "Norman" and "Baron" had been equivalent to the modern word of "Sahib"; then Llewellyn ap Griffith's head, in its crown of ivy, had mouldered on the clustered spikes of the Tower; then you would have met the mendicants by the roadside, mutilated men who carried their right hands in their left, and the forest dogs would have trotted beside them, also mutilated by the removal of one toe—so that they could not hunt in the woodlands of the lord. When Arthur first came, the country people had been accustomed to bar thelmselves in their cottages every night as if for siege, and had prayed to God for peace during darkness, the goodman of the house repeating the prayers used at sea on the approach of storm and ending with the plea "the Lord bless us and help us," to which all present had replied "Amen." In the baron's castle, in the early days, you would have found the poor men being disembowelled—and their living bowels burned before them—men being slit open to see if they had swallowed their gold, men gagged with notched iron bits, men hanging upside down with their heads in smoke, others in snake pits or with leather tourniquets round their heads, or crammed into stone-filled boxes which would break their bones. You have only to turn to the literature of the period, with its stones of the mythological families such as Plantagenets, Capets and so forth, to see how the land lay. Legendary kings like John had been, accustomed to hang twenty-eight hostages before dinner; or, like Philip, had been defended by "sergeants-at-mace," a kind of storm troopers who guarded their lord with maces; or, like Louis, had decapitated their enemies on scaffolds under the blood of which the children of the enemy had been forced to stand. This, at all events, is what Ingulf of Croyland used to tell us, until he was discovered to be a forgery. Then there had been Archbishops nicknamed "Skin-villain," and churches used as forts—with trenches in the graveyards among the bones—and price-lists for fining murderers, and bodies of the excommunicated lying unburied, and famishing peasants eating grass or tree-bark or one another, (One of them ate forty-eight.) There had been roasting heretics on the one hand—forty-five Templars had been burned in one day—and the heads of captives being thrown into besieged castles from catapults on the other. Here a leader of the Jacquerie had been writhing in his chains, as he was crowned with a red-hot tripod. There a Pope had been complaining, as he was held to ransom, or another one had been wriggling, as he was poisoned. Treasure had been cemented into castle walls, in the form of gold bars, and the builders had been executed afterwards. Children playing in the streets of Paris had frolicked with the dead body of a Constable, and others, with the women and old men, had starved outside the walls of beleaguered towns, yet inside the ring of the besiegers. Hus and Jerome, with the mitres of apostasy upon their heads, had flamed and fizzled at the stake. The hamstrung imbeciles of Jumièges had floated down the Seine. Giles de Retz had been found to have no less than a ton of children's bones, calcined, in his castle, after having murdered them at the rate of twelve score a year for nine years. The Duke of Berry had lost a kingdom through the unpopularity which he earned by feeling sorry for eight hundred foot soldiers who had been killed in a battle. The youthful count of St. Pol had been taught the arts of war by being given twenty-four living prisoners to slaughter in various ways, for practice. Louis the Eleventh, another of the fictional kings, had kept obnoxious bishops in rather expensive cages. The Duke Robert had been surnamed "the Magnificent" by his nobles—but "the Devil" by his parishioners. And all the while, before Arthur came, the common people—of whom fourteen were eaten by wolves out of one town in a single week, of whom one third were to die in the Black Death, of whom the corpses had been packed in pits "like bacon," for whom the refuges at evening had often been forests and marshes and caves, for whom, in seventy years, there had been known to be forty-eight of famine—these people had looked up at the feudal nobility who were termed the "lords of sky and earth," and—themselves battered by bishops who, because they were not allowed to shed blood, went for them with iron clubs—had cried aloud that Christ and his saints were sleeping.
"Pourquoi," the poor wretches had sung in their misery:
"Pourquoi nous laisser faire dommage?
Nous sommes hommes comme Us sont."
Such had been the surprisingly modern civilization which Arthur had inherited. But it was not the civilization over which the lovers looked out. Now, safe in the apple-green sunset before them, there stretched the fabled Merry England of the Middle Ages, when they were not so dark. Lancelot and Guenever were gazing on the Age of Individuals.
What an amazing time the age of chivalry was! Everybody was essentially himself—was riotously busy fulfilling the vagaries of human nature. There was such a gusto about the landscape which stretched before their window, such a riot of unexpected people and things, that you hardly knew how to begin describing it.
The Dark and Middle Ages! The Nineteenth Century had an impudent way with its labels. For there, under the window in Arthur's Gramarye, the sun's rays flamed from a hundred jewels of stained glass in monasteries and convents, or danced from the pinnacles of cathedrals and castles, which their builders had actually loved. Architecture, in those dark ages of theirs, was such a light-giving passion of the heart that men gave love-names to their fortresses. Lancelot's Joyous Gard was not a singularity in an age which has left us Beaute, Plaisance, or Malvoisin—the bad neighbour to its enemies—an age in which even an oaf like the imaginary Richard Coeur de Lion, who suffered from boils, could call his castle "Gaillard," and speak of it as "my beautiful one-year-old daughter." Even that legendary scoundrel William the Conqueror had a second nickname: "the Great Builder." Think of the glass itself, with its five grand colours stained right through. It was rougher than ours, thicker, fitted in smaller pieces. They loved it with the same fury as they gave to their castles, and Villars de Honnecourt, struck by a particularly beautiful specimen, stopped to draw it on his journeys, with the explanation that "I was on my way to obey a call to the land of Hungary when I drew this window because it pleased me best of all windows." Picture the insides of those ancient churches— not the grey and gutted interiors to which we are accustomed —but insides blazing with colour, plastered with frescoes in which all the figures stood on tip-toe, fluttering with tapestry or with brocades from Bagdad. Picture also the interiors of such castles as were visible from Guenever's window. These were no longer the grim keeps of Arthur's accession. Now they were filling with furniture made by the joiner, instead of the carpenter; now their walls rippled doorless with the flexible gaieties of Arras, tapestries like that of the Jousts of St. Denis which, although covering more than four hundred square yards, had been woven in less than three years, such was the ardour of its creation. If you look closely in a ruined castle even nowadays, you can sometimes find the hooks from which these flashing tapestries were hung. Remember, too, the goldsmiths of Lorraine, who made shrines in the shape of little churches, with aisles, statues, transepts and all, like dolls' houses: remember the enamellers of Limoges, and the champlevé work, and the German ivory carvers, and the garnets set in Irish metal. Finally, if you are willing to picture the ferment of creative art which existed in our famous ages of darkness, you must get rid of the idea that written culture came to Europe with the fall of Constantinople. Every clerk in every country was a man of culture in those days —it was his profession to be so. "Every letter written," said a medieval abbot, "is a wound inflicted on the devil." The library of St. Piquier, as early as the ninth century, had 256 volumes, including Virgil, Cicero, Terence and Macrobius. Charles the Fifth had no less than nine hundred and ten volumes, so that his personal collection was about as big as the Everyman Library is today.
Lastly there were under the window the people thelmselves —the coruscating mixture of oddities who reckoned that they possessed the things called souls as well as bodies, and who fulfilled them in the most surprising ways. In Silvester the Second a famous magician ascended the papal throne, although he was notorious for having invented the pendulum clock. A fabled King of France called Robert, who had suffered the misfortune to be excommunicated, ran into dreadful troubles about his domestic arrangements, because the only two servants who could be persuaded to cook for him insisted on burning the saucepans after meals. An archbishop of Canterbury, having excommunicated all the prebendaries of St. Paul's in a pet, rushed into the Priory of St. Bartholomew and knocked out the sub-prior in the middle of the chapel—which created such an uproar that his own vestments were torn off, revealing a suit of armour underneath, and he had to flee to Lambeth in a boat. The Countess of Anjou always used to vanish out of the window at the secreta of the mass. Madame Trote de Salerno used her ears as a handkerchief and let her eyebrows hang down behind her shoulders, like silver chains. A bishop of Bath, under the imaginary Edward the First, was considered after due reflection to be an unsuitable man for the Archbishopric, because he had too many illegitimate children—not some, but too many. And the bishop himself could hardly hold a candle to the Countess of Henneberge, who suddenly gave birth to 365 children at one confinement.
It was the age of fullness, the age of wading into everything up to the neck. Perhaps Arthur imposed this idea on Christendom, because of the richness of his own schooling under Merlyn.
For the King, or at least this is how Malory interprets him, was the patron saint of chivalry. He was not a distressed Briton hopping about in a suit or woad in the fifth century—nor yet one of those nouveaux riches de la Poles, who must have afflicted the last years of Malory himself. Arthur was the heart's king of a chivalry which had reached its flower perhaps two hundred years before our antiquarian author began to work. He was the badge of everything that was good in the Middle Ages, and he had made these things himself.
As Malory pictures him, Arthur of England was the champion of a civilization which is misrepresented in the history books, The serf of chivalry was not a slave for whom there was no hope. On the contrary, he had at least three legitimate ways of rising, the greatest of which was the Catholic Church. With the assistance of Arthur's policies this church—still the greatest of all corporations free to learned men on earth—had become a highway open to the lowest slave. A Saxon peasant was Pope in Adrian IV, the son of a carpenter in Gregory VII. In those despised Middle Ages of theirs you could become the greatest man in the world, by simply having learning. And it is a mistake to believe that Arthur's civilization was weak in this famous science of ours. The scientists, although they happened to call them magicians at the time, invented almost as terrible things as we have invented—except that we have become accustomed to theirs by use. The greatest magicians, like Albertus Magnus, Friar Bacon, and Raymond Lully, knew several secrets which we have lost today, and discovered as a side issue what still appears to be the chief commodity of civilization, namely gunpowder. They were honoured for their learning, and Albert the Great was made a bishop. One of them who was called Baptista Porta seems to have invented the cinema—though he sensibly decided not to develop it.
As for aircraft, in the tenth century a monk called Aethelmaer was experimenting with them, and might have succeeded but for an accident in adjusting of his tail unit. He crashed "quod"—says William of Malmesbury—"caudam in posteriori parte oblitus fuerat adaptare."
Even in modernity, the ages of darkness were not so far behind us. At least they had some sparkling names for their fiercer cocktails: which they called Huffe Cap, Mad Dog, Father Whoresonne, Angel's Food, Dragon's Milke, Go to the Wall, Stride Wide, and Lift Leg.
The view from the window was delightful, though in some cases it was odd. Where we have hedged fields and parklands, they had village communities, moorlands, fens and forests of enormous size. Sherwood stretched for hundreds of miles, from Nottingham to the middle of York. The busyness that went on in the island, the bee-keeping and the rook-scaring and the ploughing with oxen: for these you must look in the Lutterell Psalter, where they are beautifully drawn. In those days, if you had been interested by peculiar things, perhaps you would have had the luck to notice a knight-in-armour riding past the window. You would have noticed his head, which was shaved round the ears and at the back: but on the top his hair rose up like a Japanese doll's, so that the skull looked like a cottage loaf. This top-knot made an excellent shock-absorber, under his helm. The next man to pass might have been a clerk, perhaps on an ambler, and the hair of this one would have been exactly the opposite of the knight's—for he would have been completely bald on top, because of his tonsure. When he had gone to the bishop to be made a clerk in the first place, he had taken a pair of scissors with him. Next, if you wanted some peculiar person to ride by, there might have come a crusader who had promised to deliver the grave of God. You would have expected the cross on his surcoat, no doubt, but you might not have realized that he was so delighted with the whole affair that he put the same symbol almost everywhere that it could be made to go. Like a new Boy Scout, transported with enthusiasm, he would have stuck the cross on his escutcheon, on his coat, on his helm, on his saddle, and on the horse's curb. The next man to pass the window might have been one sort of Cistercian lay-brother, whom you would have expected to be a learned man because of his cloth. But no, he was ex officio an illiterate. It was his business to stick the leaden seals on papal bulls, and, so as to preserve the Secrecy of the Pope, they used to make sure that he could not read a word. Now might come a Saxon wearing the beard and a sort of Phrygian cap, as a sign of defiance—now a knight from the Marches of the Northern border. The latter, because he lived by raiding during the night-time, would have borne a moon and stars on azure in his coat. Here might be some smoke in the landscape, rising from the bellows of an alchemist who was, most sensibly, trying to turn lead to gold —an art which has remained beyond us to the present day, though we are getting nearer to it with atomic fusion. There, far away in the environs of a monastery, you might have seen a procession of angry monks making a barefoot march round their foundation—but they might have been walking against the sun, in malediction, because they had fallen out with the abbot Perhaps, if you looked in this direction, you would see a vineyard fenced with bones—it had been discovered, during the early years of Arthur, that bones made an excellent fence for vineyards, graveyards, or even for forts—and perhaps, if you looked in the other, you could see a castle door that looked like a keeper's gallows. It would have been completely covered with the nailed heads of wolves, bears, stags, and so forth. Far away, over there to the left, perhaps there would be a tournament going on according to the laws laid down by Geoffrey de Preully, and the Kings-at-arms would be carefully examining the combatants, like referees before a boxing match, to see that they were not stuck to their saddles. The referees at a judicial duel between a certain Earl of Salisbury and a Bishop of Salisbury, under the supposed King Edward III, found that the bishop's champion had prayers and incantations sewn all over him, under bis armour—which was almost as bad as a boxer biding a horse-shoe in his glove. Below the window-ledge a pair of constipated papal nuncios might have been riding gloomily back to Rome. Such a pair were once sent with bulls to excommunicate Barnabas Visconti, but Barnabas only made them eat their bulls—parchment, ribbons, leaden seals and all. Following closely behind them perhaps there would have strode a professional pilgrim, supporting himself on a stout knobbed staff shod like an alpenstock and weighed down with blessed medals, relics, shells, vernicles and so forth. He would have called himself a palmer and, if he were a well-travelled one, his relics might have included a feather from the Angel Gabriel, some of the coals on which St. Lawrence was grilled, a finger of the Holy Ghost "whole and sound as ever it was," "a vial of the sweat of St. Michael whereas he fought with the devil," a little of "the bush in which the Lord spake to Moses," a vest of St. Peter's, or some of the Blessed Virgin's milk preserved at Walsingham. After the palmer perhaps there would have prowled a rather more sinister figure: one of those who "sleep by day and watch by night, eat well and drink well, but possess nothing." He would be an outlaw, of whom they wrote:
"For an outlawe this is the lawe, that men hym take and binde
Wythout pytee, hanged to bee, and waver with the wynde."
But before he came to his last wavering in the wind, he would have lived a free life. His mate would be marching sturdily beside him, also with a price on her head—her hair shaven off before she took to the woods, and known as a weyve. She would glance back occasionally, alert for the hue and cry with which they might be hunted.
Here might come a baron with a hot pie carried carefully before him, because he had to bring such a pie to the King once a year, so as to let King Arthur sniff it in payment of his feudal dues. There might go another baron at full tilt after some dragon or other, and bump! down he might come, while the horse cantered away. But if he did so, one of his attendants would immediately mount him again on bis own horse—just as we would do to a master-of-hounds today—because that was the feudal law. In the distance of the north, under the fading sunset, there might spring up the cottage light of some busy witch who was not only making a wax image of somebody she disapproved of, but also getting the image baptised—this was the operative factor—before she stuck some pins into it. One of her priestly friends, by the way, who had gone to the Little Master, might be willing to say a Requiem Mass against anybody you wanted to dispose of—and, when he came to the "Requim aetemum dona ei, Domine," he would mean it, although the man was alive. Equally distant in the west, under the same sunset, you might have seen Enguerrand de Marigny, who built the enormous gallows at Mountfalcon, himself rotting and clanking on the same gallows, because he had been found guilty of Black Magic. The Dukes of Berry and Brittany, two decent men, might have been trotting along the road, in satin cuirasses which imitated steel. These two did not like to accept the advantage of armour, and, finding the satin cooler to wear, they were determined to be ordinary and brave. Lancelot might have done the same sort of thing. Above them on the hillside, but unobserved by them, might have sat Joly Joly Wat, with his tar-box beside him. He was the most typical figure of Gramarye, his tar being the antiseptic of his sheep. If you had said to him, "Don't spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar," he would have agreed with you at once—for it was he who invented the adage, which we have translated from sheep into ships.
Towards the remoter distance perhaps a bankrupt might have been getting a vigorous whacking in some muscovite market-place—not out of ill-feeling toward himself, but in the fervent hope that if only he squealed loud enough some of his friends or relations in the crowd would pay his debts out of commiseration. Further south, towards the Mediterranean basin, you might have seen a seaman being punished for gambling, under a law of Richard Coeur de Lion. The punishment consisted in being thrown into the water three times from the mainmast tree, and his comrades used to acclaim each belly-flopper with a cheer. A third ingenious punishment might possibly have been inflicted in the market-place below you. A wine merchant whose wares were of bad quality would have been stuck in the pillory and there he would have been made to drink an excessive quantity of his own liquor—after which the rest would be poured over his head. What a headache next morning! In this direction, if you happened to be broad-minded, you might have been amused to see the saucy Alisoun who cried "Tee-Heel" after she had been given the unusual kiss which Chaucer tells about. In that one, you might notice an exasperated Miller and his family, trying to straighten out the hurrah's nest which happened last night through the displacement of a cradle, as the Reeve tells in his tale. A schoolboy who had had the good luck and the initiative to shoot an Earl of Salisbury dead, with one of the new-fangled cannons, might be being idolized by his fellow scholars in the playground of yonder monastery school. Plum trees, only lately introduced like Merlyn's mulberry, might be shedding blossom under the light of eve beside the playground. Another little boy, this time a king of four years old in Scotland, might be sadly issuing a royal mandate to his Nannie, which empowered her to spank him without being guilty of High Treason. A disreputable army, who used to live by the sword as a trained band, might be begging its bread from door to door — a good fate for all armies — and a man who had taken sanctuary in that church away to the east there, might have had his leg cut off because he had taken half a step outside the door. In the same sanctuary there would be quite a congeries of forgers, thieves, murderers and debtors, all busy forging away or sharpening their knives for the evening's outing, in the restful seclusion of the church where they could not be arrested. The worst that could happen to them, once they had got their sanctuary, was banishment. Then they would have had to walk to Dover, always keeping to the middle of the road and clutching a crucifix — if they let go of it for a moment, you were allowed to attack them — and, once there, if they could not get a boat immediately, they would have had to walk into the sea daily up to their necks, to prove that they were really trying.
Did you know that in these dark ages which were visible from Guenever's window, there was so much decency in the world that the Catholic Church could impose a peace to all their fighting — which it called The Truce of God — and which lasted from Wednesday to Monday, as well as during the whole of Advent and Lent? Do you think that they, with their Battles, Famine, Black Death and Serfdom, were less enlightened than we are, with our Wars, Blockade, Influenza and Conscription? Even if they were foolish enough to believe that the earth was the centre of the universe, do we not ourselves believe that man is the fine flower of creation? If it takes a million years for a fish to become a reptile, has Man, in our few hundred, altered out of recognition?
Lancelot and Guenever looked over the sundown of chivalry, from the tower window. Their black profiles stood out in silhouette against the setting light. Lancelot's, the old ugly man's, was the outline of a gargoyle. It might have looked in hideous meditation from Notre Dame, his contemporary church. But, in its maturity, it was nobler than before. The lines of ugliness had sunk to rest as lines of strength. Like the bull-dog, which is one of the most betrayed of dogs, Lancelot had grown a face which people could trust.
The touching thing was that the two were singing. Their voices, no longer full in tone like those of people in the strength of youth, were still tenacious of the note. If they were thin, they were pure. They supported one another.
"When that the moneth of May (sang Lancelot)
Comes and the day
In beames gives light,
I fear no more the fight."
"When," sang Gueneyer,
"When that the sonne,
His daily course y-ronne,
Is no more bright,
I fear namore the night."
"But oh," they sang together,
"But oh, both day and night,
My heart's delight,
Must one day leave foredone
All might, all gone."
They stopped, with an unexpected grace-note on the portative, and Lancelot said: "Your voice is good. I'm afraid mine is getting rusty."
"You shouldn't drink spirits."
"What an unfair thing to sayl I have been nearly a teetotaller since the Grail."
"Well, I had rather you didn't drink at all."
"Then I won't drink, not even water. I will die of thirst at your feet, and Arthur will give me a splendid funeral, and never forgive you for making me."
"Yes, and I shall go into a Nunnery for my sins, and live happily ever after. What shall we sing now?"
Lancelot said: "Nothing. I don't want to sing. Come and sit close to me, Jenny."
"Are you unhappy about something?"
"No. I was never so happy in my life. And I dare say I shall never be so happy again."
"Why so happy?"
"I don't know. It is because the spring has come after all, and there is the bright summer in front of us. Your arms will go brown again, just a flush along the top here, and a rosy round elbow. I am not sure I don't like the places where you bend best, like the insides of your elbows."
Guenever retreated from these charming compliments.
"I wonder what Arthur is doing?"
"Arthur is visiting the Gawaines, and I am talking about your elbows."
"I see."
"Jenny, I was happy because you were ordering me about. That's the explanation. You were nagging about not drinking too much. I like you to look after me, and to tell me what I ought to do."
"You seem to need it."
"I do need it," he said. And then, with a suddenness which surprised them both: "May I come tonight?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Lance, please don't ask. You know that Arthur is at home, and it is much too dangerous."
"Arthur won't mind."
"If Arthur were to catch us," she said wisely, "he would have to kill us."
He denied it.
"Arthur knows all about us. Merlyn warned him in so many words, and Morgan le Fay sent him two broad hints, and then there was the trouble with Sir Meliagrance. But he doesn't want to have things upset. He would never catch us unless he was made to."
"Lancelot," she said angrily, "I am not going to have you talking about Arthur as if he were a go-between."
"I am not talking about him like that. He was my first friend, and I love him."
"Then you are talking about me as if I were worse."
"And now you are behaving as if you were."
"Very well, if that is all you have to say, you had better go."
"So that you can make love to him, I suppose."
"Lancelot!"
"Oh, Jenny!" He jumped up, nimble as ever, and caught her. "Don't be angry. I am sorry if I was unkind."
"Go away! Leave me alone."
But he continued to hold her tightly, like someone restraining a wild animal from running away.
"Don't be angry. I am sorry. You know I didn't mean it."
"You are a beast."
"No, I am not a beast, and nor are you. Jenny, I shall go on holding you until you stop being cross. I said it because I was miserable."
Her muffled and restrained voice remarked plaintively: "You said you were happy just now."
"Well, I am not happy. I am very unhappy and miserable about the whole world."
"Do you suppose you are the only one?"
"No, I don't. And I am sorry for what I said. It will make me unhappy for having said it. There, please be a dear and don't make me unhappy for longer?"
She relented. The years had smoothed their earlier tempers.
"Then I won't."
Bet her smile and yielding only moved him afresh.
"Come away with me, Jenny?"
"Please don't start it all over again."
"I can't help starting," he said desperately. "I don't know what to do. God, we have been going over this all our lives, but it seems to be worse in the spring. Why won't you come with me to Joyous Card and have the whole thing above board?"
"Lance, let go of me and be sensible. There, sit down and we will have another song."
"But I don't want to sing."
"And I don't want to have all this."
"If you would come with me to Joyous Gard it would be finished, once for all. We could live together for our old age, anyway, and be happy, and not have to go on deceiving every day, and we should die in peace."
"You said that Arthur knew all about it," she said, "and that we were not deceiving him at all."
"Yes, but it is different. I love Arthur and I can't stand it when I see him looking at me, and know that he knows. You see, Arthur loves us."
"But, Lance, if you love him so much, what is the good of running away with his wife?"
"I want it to be in the open," he said stubbornly, "at least at the end,"
"Well, I don't want it to be."
"In fact," and now he was furious again, "what you really want is to have two husbands. Women always want everything."
She declined the quarrel patiently.
"I don't want to have two husbands, and I am just as uncomfortable as you are: but what is the good of being in the open? As we are now it is horrible, but at least Arthur knows about it inside himself, and we still love each other and are safe. If I were to run away with you, the result would be that everything would be broken. Arthur would have to declare war on you and lay siege to Joyous Gard, and then one or other of you would be killed, if not both, and hundreds of other people would be killed, and nobody would be better off. Besides, I don't want to leave Arthur. When I married him, I promised to stay with him, and he has always been kind to me, and I am fond of him. The least I can do is to go on giving him a home, and helping him, even if I do love you too. I can't see the point of being in the open. Why should we make Arthur publicly miserable?"
Neither of them had noticed, in the deepening twilight, that the King himself had come in as she was speaking. Profiled against the window, they could see little of the room behind. But he had entered He had stood for the fraction of a second collecting his wits, which had been far away considering the Orkneys or some other matter of state. He had stopped in the curtained doorway, his pale hand with the royal signet gleaming in the darkness as it held the tapestry aside—and then, without eavesdropping for a moment, he had let the tapestry fall and disappeared. He had gone to find a page to announce him.
"The only decent thing," Lancelot was saying, twisting his hands together between his knees, "the only decent thing would be for me to go away, and not come back. But my brain didn't stand it the other time, when I tried."
"My poor Lance, if only we had not stopped singing! Now you are going to get into a state again, and have one of your attacks. Why can't we leave everything alone, and let your famous God look after it? It is no good trying to think, or do anything because it is right or wrong. I don't know what is right or wrong. But can't we trust ourselves, and do what does itself, and hope for the best?"
"You are his wife and I am his friend."
"Well," she said, "who made us love each other?"
"Jenny, I don't know what to do."
"Then don't do anything. Come here and give me a kind kiss, and God will look after us both."
"My sweetheart!"
This time the page clattered up the stairs with the usual noise, in the way of pages, bringing light with him at the same time. Arthur had ordered the candles.
The room glowed into colour round the lovers, who had released each other quickly. It began to show the splendour of its hangings as the boy put fire to the wicks. The flowery meads and bird-fruitful spinneys of the Arras teemed and rippled over the four walls. The door curtain lifted again, and the King was in the room.
He looked old, older than either of them. But it was the noble oldness of self-respect. Sometimes even nowadays you can meet a man of sixty or more who holds himself as straight as a rush, and whose hair is black. They were in that class. Lancelot, now that you could see him clearly, was an erect refinement of humanity—a fanatic for human responsibility. Guenever, and this might have been surprising to a person who had known her in her days of tempest, looked sweet and pretty. You could almost have protected her. But Arthur was the touching one of the three. He was so plainly dressed, so gentle and patient of his simple things. Often, when the Queen was entertaining distinguished company under the flambeaux of the Great Hall, Lancelot had found him sitting by himself in a small room, mending stockings. Now, in his homely blue gown—blue, since it was an expensive tincture in those days, was reserved for kings, or for saints and angels in pictures—he paused on the threshold of the gleaming room, and smiled.
"Well, Lance. Well, Gwen."
Guenever, still breathing quickly, returning his greeting. "Well, Arthur. You took us by surprise."
"I'm sorry. I have only just got back."
"How were the Gawaines?" asked Lancelot, in the old tone which he had never succeeded in making natural.
"They were having a fight when I arrived."
"How like them!" they exclaimed. "What did you do? What were they fighting about?" They made it sound as if it were a matter of life or death, getting the mood wrong because of their own.
The King looked steadily in front of him.
"I didn't ask."
"Some family affair," said the Queen, "no doubt."
"No doubt it was."
"I hope nobody got hurt?"
"Nobody got hurt."
"Well then," she cried, noticing that her relief sounded absurd, "that was all right."
"Yes, that was all right."
They saw that his eyes were twinkling. He was amused at their trouble, and the atmosphere was normal.
"Now," said the King, "need we talk about the Gawaines any more? Do I never get a kiss from my wife?"
"Dear."
She drew his head towards her and kissed him on the forehead, thinking of him as a faithful old thing—her friendly bear.
Lancelot stood up. "Perhaps I ought to be off."
"Don't go, Lance. It is nice to have you to ourselves for a little. Come: sit by the fire, and sing us a song. We shall be able to do without the fires soon."
"So we shall," said Guenever. "Fancy, it will soon be summer."
"Still, it is nice to sit by the fire—at home."
"It is nice for you in your home," said Lancelot peculiarly.
"But what?"
"I have no home."
"Never mind, Lance, you will. Wait until you are my age, and then start worrying about it."
"It is not," said the Queen, "as if every woman you met didn't chase you for miles."
"With a hatchet," added Arthur.
"Half of them actually propose."
"And then you complain about not having a home."
Lancelot began to laugh, and the last strand of tension seemed to have broken.
"Would you," he asked, "marry a woman who chased you with a hatchet?"
The King considered the matter gravely before he answered.
"I couldn't do that," he said in the end, "because I am married already."
"To Gwen," said Lancelot.
It was peculiar. They seemed to have started talking with meanings which were separate from the words they used. It was like ants talking with their antennae.
"To Queen Guenever," said the King, in contradiction. "Or Jenny?" suggested the Queen. "Yes," he agreed, but only after a long pause, "or Jenny,"
There was a deeper silence, until Lancelot rose for the second time. "Well, I must go." Arthur put one hand on his arm. "No, Lance, stay a minute. I want to tell Guenever something this evening, and I would like you to hear it too. We have been together such a long time. I want to make a ciean breast about an old business to both of you, because you are one of the family." Lancelot sat down.
"That's right. Now give me a hand each, both of you, and I shall sit between you like this. There. My Queen and my Lance, and neither of you is to blame me for what I am going to tell."
Lancelot said bitterly: "We are not in a position to blame people. King,"
"No? Well, I don't know what you mean by that; but I want to tell you the story of something which I did when I was yoong. It was before I was married to Gwen, and long before you were knighted. Will you mind if I do that?" "Of course we shan't mind, if you want to." "But we don't believe you did anything wrong." "It started before I was born, really, for my father fell in love with the Countess of Cornwall, and killed the Earl in order to get her. She was my mother. You know that part of the story." "Yes,"
"Perhaps you didn't know that I was born at rather an awkward date. It was too soon after the marriage of my father and mother. That was why they hushed me up altogether, and sent me off in my swaddling bands to be brought up by Sir Ector. Merlyn was the person who took me." "And then," said Lancelot cheerfully, "you were brought back to court when your father died, and pulled a magic sword out of a stone, which proved that you were the rightful King born of all England, and lived happily ever afterward, and that was the end of that. I don't call it a bad story."
"Unfortunately that was not the end."
"How?"
"Well, my dears, I was taken away from my mother the moment I was born, and she never knew where I was taken. Nor did I know who my mother was. The only people who knew the relationship between us were Uther Pendragon and Merlyn. Many years afterward, when I was already a king, I met my mother's family, still without knowing who they were. Uther was dead, and Merlyn was always so muddled with his second sight that he had forgotten to tell me, and so we met as strangers. I thought that one of them was clever and handsome."
"The famous Cornwall sisters," mentioned the Queen coldly.
"Yes, dear, the famous Cornwall sisters. There were three daughters by the former Earl, and of course, though I did not know it, they were my half-sisters. They were called Morgan le Fay, Elaine, and Morgause, and they were considered to be the most beautiful women in Britain."
They waited for his quiet voice to resume, which it did without a falter.
"I fell in love with Morgause," it added, "and we had a baby."
If either of them felt surprise, resentment, commiseration or envy, they did not show it. The only surprising thing to them was that the secret had been kept so long. But they could teil from his voice that he was suffering and that he did not want to be interrupted until he had purged his heart in full.
They stared into the fire for the longest of their silences. Then Arthur shrugged his shoulders.
"So, you see," he said, "I am Mordred's father. Gawaine and the others are nephews, but he is my full son."
Lancelot saw by the eyes that he might speak.
"I don't think your story is wicked, even at that. You didn't know she was your half-sister. You hadn't met Gwen. And probably, knowing her subsequent history, it was the fault of Morgause in any case. That woman was a devil."
"She was my sister—and the mother of my son."
Guenever stroked his hand. , -
"I am sorry." . '
"Besides," he said, "she was & very beautiful creature."
"Morgause..." began Lancelot.
"Morgause has paid for her share by having her head cut off, so we must leave her to rest in peace."
"Cut off," said Lancelot, "by her own child, because he found her sleeping with Sir Lamorak..."
"Please, Lancelot."
"I am sorry."
"I still don't think it was wicked of you, Arthur. After all, you didn't know she was your sister."
The King took a long breath, and began again more huskily.
"I have not told you," he said, "the worst part of what I did."
"What was that?"
"You see, I was young, I was nineteen. And Merlyn came, too late, to say what had happened. Everybody told me what a dreadful sin it was, and how nothing but sorrow would come of it, and also a lot of other things about what Mordred would be like if he was born. They frightened me with horrible prophecies, and I did something which has haunted me ever since. Our mother had hidden Morgause away as soon as it was known."
"What did you do?"
"I let them make a proclamation that all the children born at a certain time were to be put in a big ship and floated out to sea. I wanted to destroy Mordred for his own sake, and I didn't know where he would be born."
"Did they do it?"
"Yes, the ship was floated off, and Mordred was on it, and it was wrecked on an island. Most of the poor babies were drowned—but God saved Mordred, and sent him back to shame me afterwards, Morgause sprang him on me one day, long after she had got him back. But she always pretended to other people that he was a proper son of Lot's, like Gawaine and the rest. Naturally she didn't want to talk about the business to outside people, and neither have the rest of his brothers,"
"Well," said Guenever, "if nobody knows about it except the Orkneys and ourselves, and if Mordred is safe and sound..."
"You mustn't forget the other babies," he said miserably. "I dream about them."
"Why didn't you tell us before?"
"I was ashamed to."
This time Lancelot exploded.
"Arthur," he exclaimed, "you have nothing to be ashamed of. What you did was done to you, when you were too young to know better. If I could lay my hands on the brutes who frighten children with stories about sin, I would break their necks. What good does it do? Think of all that suffering, and for nothing! And the poor babies!"
"All drowned."
They sat again, looking into the flames, until Guenever turned to her husband.
"Arthur," she asked, "why did you tell the story today?"
He waited, collecting the words.
"It is because I am afraid that Mordred bears me a grudge, poor boy—and rightly too."
"Treason?" inquired the commander-in-chief.
"Well, not exactly treason, Lance; but I think he is dissatisfied."
"Cut the sniveller's head off, and have done with him."
"No, I could never think of it! You forget that Mordred is my son. I am fond of him. I have done the boy a great deal of wrong, and my family has always somehow been hurting the Cornwalls, and I couldn't add to the wickedness. Besides, I am his father. I can see myself in him."
"There does not seem to be a great resemblance."
"But there is. Mordred is ambitious and fond of honour, as I always was. It is only because he has a weak body that he has failed in our sports, and this has embittered him, as it probably would have embittered me if I had not been lucky. He is brave, too, in a queer way, and he is loyal to his people. You see, his mother set him against me, which was natural, and I stand for the bad things in his mind. He is almost sure to get me killed in the end."
"Are you seriously advancing this as a reason for not killing him now?"
The King suddenly looked surprised, or shocked. He had been sitting relaxed between them, because he was tired and unhappy, yet now he drew himself up and met his captain in the eve.
"You must remember I am the King of England. When you are a king you can't go executing people as the fancy takes you, A king is the head of his people, and he must stand as an example to them, and do as they wish."
He forgave the startled expression in Lancelot's face, and took his hand once more.
"You will find," he explained, "that when the kings are bullies who believe in force, the people are bullies too. If I don't stand for law, I won't have law among my people. And naturally I want my people to have the new law, because then they are more prosperous, and I am more prosperous in consequence."
They watched him, wondering what he meant to convey. He held the look, trying to speak with their eyes.
"You see, Lance, I have to be absolutely just. I can't afford to have any more things like those babies on my conscience. The only way I can keep clear of force is by justice. Far from being willing to execute his enemies, a ideal king must be willing to execute his friends."
"And his wife?" asked Guenever.
"And his wife," he said gravely.
Lancelot moved uncomfortably on the settle, remarking with an attempt at humour: "I hope you won't be cutting off the Queen's head very soon?"
The King still held his hand, still looked upon him.
"If Guenever or you, Lancelot, were proved to be guilty of a wrong to my kingdom, I should have to cut off both your heads,"
"Goodness me," she exclaimed. "I hope nobody is going to prove that!"
"I hope so too."
"And Mordred?" asked Lancelot, after a time.
"Mordred is an unhappy young man, and I am afraid he might try any means of giving me an upset. If, for instance, he could see a way of getting at me through you, dear, or through Gwen, I am sure he would try it Do you see what I mean?"
"I see."
"So if there should ever come a moment when either of you might, well... might give him a sort of handle... you will be careful of me, won't you? I am in your hands, dears."
"But it seems so senseless..."
"You have been kind to him," said Lancelot, "since he came here. Why should he want to harm..." The King folded his hands in his lap, seemed under his lowered lids to be looking on the flames.
"You forget," he said gently, "that I never managed to give Gwen a son. When I am dead, Mordred may be the King of England."
"If he tries any treason," said Lancelot, clenching his fists, "I will kill him myself."
Immediately the blue-veined hand was on his arm.
"That is the one thing you must never do, Lance. Whatever Mordred does, and even if he makes an attempt on my life, you must promise to remember that he is a sort of heir apparent to the blood. I have been a wicked man..."
"Arthur," exclaimed the Queen, "you are not to say so. It is so ridiculous that it makes me feel ashamed."
"You would not call me a wicked man?" he asked in surprise.
"Of course not."
"But I should have thought, after the story of those babies..."
"Nobody," cried Lancelot fiercely, "would dream of such a thought."
The King stood up in the firelight, looking puzzled and pleased. He considered it ridiculous to suppose that he was not wicked, but he was grateful for their love.
"Well," he said, "in any case I don't propose to be wicked any longer. It is a king's business to prevent bloodshed if he can, not to provoke it."
He looked at them once more, under his eyebrows.
"So now, my dears," he ended cheerfully, "I shall run along to the Court of Pleas, and arrange some of our famous justice. You stay here with Gwen, Lance, and cheer her up after that wretched story—there's a good fellow."
5
When Arthur had said that he was going to arrange some of his famous justice, he did not mean that he was actually going to sit. Kings did sit personally in the Middle Ages, even as late as the so-called Henry IV, who was supposed to have sat both in the Exchequer and the King's Bench. But tonight it was too late for law-giving. Arthur was off to read the pleas for the morrow, a practice which he followed like a conscientious man. Nowadays the Law was his chief interest, his final effort against Might.
In Uther Pendragon's time there had been no law to speak of, except a childish and one-sided kind of etiquette which was reserved for the upper classes. Even now, since the King had begun to encourage Justice so as to bind the power of Fort Mayne once for all, there were three kinds of law to be wrestled with. He was trying to boil them down, from Customary, Canon and Roman law, into a single code which he hoped to call the Civil one. This occupation, as well as reading the morrow's pleas, was what used to call him off to labour every evening, to solitude and silence in the Justice Room.
The Justice Room was at the other end of the palace. It was not as empty as it should have been.
Although there were five people in it, waiting for the King, perhaps the first thing which a modern visitor would have noticed would have been the room itself. The startling thing about it was that the hangings made it square. It was night, so that the windows were covered, and the doors were never uncovered. The result was that you felt you were in a box: you had the strange feeling of symmetrical enclosure which must be known by butterflies in killing-bottles. You wondered how the five people had been introduced into the place, as if it were a Chinese puzzle. All round the walls, from floor to ceiling in a double row, the stories of David and Bathsheba and of Susannah and the Elders were told in flexible pictures whose gay colours were in full tone. The faded things which we see today bear no relationship to the bright tapestry which made the justice Room a painted box.
The five men glittered in the candle-light. There was little furniture to distract the eye from them—only a long table with the parchments laid out for the King's inspection, the King's high chair, and, in the corner, a raised reading-desk and seat combined. The colour of the place was in the walls and men. Each of them wore a silk Jupon blazoned with the chevron and the three thistles, distinguished in the case of the younger brothers with various labels of cadency, so that they looked like a hand of playing cards spread out. They were the Gawaine family, and, as usual, they were quarrelling.
Gawaine said: "For the last time, Agravaine, will ye hold yer gab? I winna have airt nor pairt in it."
"Nor will I," said Gareth.
Gaheris said: "Nor I."
"If ye press on with it, ye will but split the clan. I have told ye plain that none of us will help ye. Ye will be left to yer ain stour."
Mordred had been waiting with sneering patience.
"I am on Agravaine's side," he said. "Lancelot and my aunt are a disgrace to all of us. Agravaine and I will take the responsibility, if no one else will."
Gareth turned on him fiercely.
"Ye were aye fit for work of shame."
"Thank you."
Gawaine made an effort to be conciliatory. He was not a conciliatory man, so the effort looked actually physical, like an earthquake.
"Mordred," he said, "for dear sakes, hearken reason. Ye'll be a brave hind and let it bide? I am the elder of ye, and can see what ill will come."
"Whatever comes of it, I am going to the King."
"But, Agravaine, if you do, it will mean war. Don't you see that Arthur and Lancelot will have to go for each other, and half the kings of Britain will side with Lancelot because of his reputation and it will be a civil war?"
The chieftain of the clan lumbered over to Agravaine like a good-natured animal doing a trick, and patted him with a huge paw.
"Tuts, man. Forget the wee blow struck this forenoon. There is a passion in every man, and, at the hinder end of it, we are but brothers. I canna see how ye may bring yourself to act against Sir Lancelot, knowing what he has done for us long syne. Dinna ye mind he rescued you, and Mordred to it, from Sir Turquine? Away, ye owe him for your lives. And so do I, man, from Sir Carados in the Dolorous Tower."
"He did it for his own honour."
Gareth turned on Mordred.
"You can say what you like about Lancelot and Guenever between ourselves, because unfortunately it is true, but I won't have you sneering. When I first came to court as a kitchen page, he was the only person who was decent to me. He had not the faintest idea who I was, but he used to give me tips, and cheer me up, and stand up for me against Kay, and it was he who knighted me. Everybody knows that he has never done a mean thing in his life."
"When I was a young knight," said Gawaine, "God forgive it, and fell into disputatious battle, I was used to backslide into passions—aye, and kill a body after he had yielded. And foreby I have killed a lassie. But Lancelot grieves no creature weaker than himsel'."
Gaheris added: "He favours the young knights, and tries to help them win the spurs. I can't see your grudge against him."
Mordred shrugged his shoulders, flicking his coat sleeve, and made belief to yawn.
"As for Lancelot," he observed, "it is Agravaine who is after him. My feud is with the merry monarch."
"Lancelot," stated Agravaine, "is above his station."
"He is not," said Gareth. "He is the greatest man I know."
"I have no schoolboy's passion for him ..."
A door on the other side of the tapestry squeaked on its hinges. The handle grated.
"Peace, Agravaine," urged Gawaine softly, "hold off yer noise."
"I will not."
Arthur's hand lifted the curtain.
"Please, Mordred," whispered Gareth.
The King was in the room.
"It is only fair," said Mordred, raising his voice so that it must be heard, "that our Round Table should have justice, after all."
Agravaine also, pretending not to have noticed anyone coming, added his loud reply: "It is time that somebody should tell the truth."
"Mordred, be quiet!"
"And nothing but the truth!" concluded the hunchback with a sort of triumph.
Arthur, who had come pattering through the stone corridors of his palace with a mind fixed on the work in front of him, stood waiting in the doorway without surprise. The men of the chevron and thistle, turning to him, saw the old King in the last minute of his glory. They stood for a few heartbeats silent, and Gareth, in a pain of recognition, saw him as he was. He did not see a hero of romance, but a plain man who had done his best—not a leader of chivalry, but the pupil who had tried to be faithful to his curious master, the magician, by thinking all the time—not Arthur of England, but a lonely old gentleman who had worn his crown for half a lifetime in the teeth of fate.
Gareth threw himself on his knee.
"It has nothing to do with us!"
Gawaine, lumbering to one knee more slowly, joined him on the floor.
"Sir, I came ben hoping to control my brothers, but they willna listen. I dinna wish to hear what they may say."
Gaheris was the last to kneel.
"We want to go before they speak."
Arthur came into the room and lifted Gawaine gently.
"Of course you can go, my dear," he said, "if you wish it. I hope I am not going to cause a family trouble?"
Gawaine turned blackly on the others.
"It is a trouble," he said, drawing the old language of knighthood round him like a cloak, "that will aye destroy the flower of chivalry in all the world: a mischief to our noble fellowship: and all by cause of two unhappy knights!"
When Gawaine had swept contemptuously out of the room, pushing Gaheris before him and followed by Gareth with a helpless gesture, the King walked over to the throne in silence. He took two cushions from the seat and put them on the steps.
"Well, nephews," he said evenly, "sit down and tell me what you want,"
"We would rather stand."
"You can please yourselves, of course."
Such a beginning did not suit the policy of Agravaine. He protested: "Ah, Mordred, come! Nay, we are not quarrelling with our King. There is no thought of that about it."
"I shall stand."
Agravaine sat on one of the cushions humbly.
"Would you care for two cushions?"
"No, thank you, sir."
The old man watched and waited—as a man who was to be hanged might submit to the hangman, but who would not need to help with the noose. He watched with a tired irony, leaving the work to them.
"Perhaps it would be wiser," said Agravaine, with well-made reluctance, "to say no more about it."
"Perhaps it would."
Mordred burst through the situation by main force.
"This is ridiculous. We came to tell our uncle and it is right he should be told."
"It is unpleasant."
"In that case, my dear boys, if you would prefer it, don't let us talk about the matter any further. These spring nights are too beautiful for us to worry with unpleasant things, so who don't the two of you go off and make it up with Gawaine? You could ask him to lend you that clever goshawk of his for tomorrow. The Queen was mentioning just now, how she would enjoy a nice young leveret for dinner."
He was fighting for her, perhaps for all of them.
Mordred, glaring at his father with blazing eyes, announced without preamble: "We came to tell you what every person in this court has always known. Queen Guenever is Sir Lancelot's mistress openly."
The old man leaned down to straighten his mantle. He twitched it over his feet to keep them warm, raised himself again, and looked them in the face.
"Are you ready to prove this accusation?"
"We are."
"You know," he asked them gently, "that it has been made before?"
"It would be extraordinary if it had not."
"The last time that rumors of this kind were circulated, they were produced by a person called Sir Meliagrance. As the matter was not susceptible of proof in any other way, it was put to the decision of personal combat. Sir Meliagrance appeached the Queen of treason, and offered to fight for his opinion. Fortunately Sir Lancelot was kind enough to stand for Her Majesty. You remember the results."
"We remember well."
"When, finally, the combat took place, Sir Meliagrance lay flat on his back and insisted on yielding to Sir Lancelot. It was impossible to make him get up in any way, until Lancelot offered to take off his helm, and the left side of his armour, and to have one hand tied behind his back. Sir Meliagrance accepted the offer, and was duly chopped."
"We know all this," exclaimed the youngest brother, impatiently. "Personal combat has no meaning. It is an unfair justice anyway. It is the thugs who win."
Arthur sighed and folded his hands. He continued in the quiet voice, which he had not raised.
"You are still very young, Mordred. You have yet to learn that nearly all the ways of giving justice are unfair. If you can suggest another way of settling moot points, except by personal combat, I will be glad to try it."
"Because Lancelot is stronger than others, and always stands for the Queen, it does not mean that the Queen is always in the right."
"I am sure it doesn't. But then, you see, moot points have to be settled somehow, once they get thrust upon us. If an assertion cannot be proved, then it must be settled some other way, and nearly all of these ways are unfair to somebody. It is not as if you would have to fight the Queen's champion in your own person, Mordred. You could plead infirmity and hire the strongest man you knew to fight for you, and the Queen would, of course, get the strongest man she knew to fight for her. It would be much the same thing if you each hired the best arguer you knew, to argue about it. In the last resort it is usually the richest person who wins, whether he hires the most expensive arguer or the most expensive fighter, so it is no good pretending that this is simply a matter of brute force.
"No, Agravaine," he went on, as the latter made a movement to speak, "don't interrupt me at the moment. I want to make it clear about these decisions by personal combat. So far as I can see, it is a matter of riches: of riches and pure luck, and, of course, there is the will of God. When the riches are equal, we might say that the luckier side wins, as if by tossing a coin. Now, are you two sure, if you did appeach Queen Guenever of treason, that your side would be the luckier one?"
Agravaine entered the conversation with his imitation of diffidence. He had been drinking carefully, and his hand no longer shook.
"If you will excuse me, uncle, what I was going to say was this. We hoped to settle the matter without a personal combat at all."
Arthur looked up at once.
"You know quite well," he said, "that trial by ordeal has been abolished, and, as for doing it by purgation, it would be impossible to find the necessary number of peers for a Queen."
Agravaine smiled.
"We don't know much about the new law," he said smoothly, "but we thought that when an assertion could be proved, in one of these new law-courts of yours, then the need for personal combat did not arise. Of course, we may be wrong."
"Trial by Jury," observed Sir Mordred contemptuously, "is that what you call it? Some pie-powder affair."
Agravaine, exulting in his cold mind, thought: "Hoist with his own petard!"
The King drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. They were pressing, flanking and driving him back. He said slowly: "You know a great deal about the law."
"For instance, uncle, if Lancelot were actually found in Guenever's bed, in front of witnesses, then there would be no need for combat, would there?"
"If you will forgive my saying so, Agravaine, I would prefer you to speak of your aunt by her title, at least in front of me—even in this connection."
"Aunt Jenny," remarked Mordred.
"Yes, 1 believe I have heard Sir Lancelot calling her by that name."
" 'Aunt Jenny'! 'Sir Lancelot'! 'If you will forgive my saying so!' And they are probably kissing now!"
"You must speak civilly, Mordred, or you must leave my room."
"I am sure he does not mean to be presumptuous, uncle. It is only that he is upset about the dishonour to your fair fame. We wanted to ask for justice, and Mordred feels so deeply—well—for his House. Don't you, Mordred?"
"I don't care a damn about my House."
The King; whose face had begun to look more haggard, sighed and retained his patience.
"Well, Mordred," he said, "we had better not start wrangling about smaller things. I have no longer the resistance to be rude about them. You tell me that my wife is the mistress of my best friend, and apparently you are to prove this by demonstration, so let us stick to that. I take it that you understand the implications of the charge?"
"No, I do not."
"I am sure that Agravaine will, at all events. The implications are these. If you insist on a civil proof, instead of an appeal to the Court of Honour, the matter will go forward along the lines of civil proof. Should you establish your case, the man who saved you both from Sir Turquine will have his head cut off, and my wife whom I love very much, will have to be burned alive, for treason. Should you fail to establish your case, I must warn you that I should banish you, Mordred, which would deprive you of all hope of succession, such as it is, while I should condemn Agravaine to the stake in his turn, because by making the accusation, he would himself have committed treason."
"Everybody knows that we could establish our case at once."
"Very well, Agravaine: you are a keen lawyer, and you are determined to have the law. I suppose it is no good reminding vou that there is such a thing as mercy?"
"The kind of mercy," asked Mordred. "which used to set those babies adrift, in boats?"
"Thank you, Mordred. I was forgetting." "We do not want mercy," said Agravaine, "we want justice."
"I understand the situation."
Arthur put his elbows on his knees and covered his eyes with his fingers. He sat drooping for a moment, collecting the powers of duty and dignity, then spoke from the shade of his hand.
"How do you propose to take them?" The bulky man was all politeness. "If you would consent, uncle, to go away for the night, we should get together an armed band and capture Lancelot in the Queen's room. You would have to be away or he wouldn't go."
"I don't think I could very well set a trap for my own wife, Agravaine. I think it would be just to say that the onus of proof lies with you. Yes, I think that is just. Clearly I have the right to refuse to become—well, a sort of accomplice. It is not part of my duty to go away on purpose, in order to help you. No, I should be able to refuse to do that with a clear heart."
"But you can't refuse to go away ever. You can't spend the rest of your life chained to the Queen, on purpose to keep Lancelot away. What about the hunting party you were supposed to join next week? If you don't go on that, you will be altering your plans deliberately, so as to thwart justice."
"Nobody succeeds in thwarting justice, Agravaine." "So you will go on the hunting party, Uncle Arthur, and we have permission to break into the Queen's room, if Lancelot is there?" The elation in his voice was so indecent that even Mordred was disgusted. The King stood, pulling his gown round him, as if for warmth.
"We will go."
"And you will not tell them beforehand?" The man's voice tripped over itself with excitement. "You won't warn them after we have made the accusation? It would not be fair?"
"Fair?" he asked.
He looked at them from an immense distance, Seeming to weigh truth, justice, evil and the affairs of men.
"You have our permission."
His eyes came back from the distance, fixing them personally with a falcon's gleam.
"But if I may speak for a moment, Mordred and Agravaine, as a private person, the only hope I now have left is that Lancelot will kill you both and all the witnesses—a feat which, I am proud to say, has never been beyond my Lancelot's power. And I may add this also, as a minister of Justice, that if you fail for one moment in establishing this monstrous accusation, I shall pursue you both remorselessly, with all the rigor of the laws which you yourselves have set in motion."
Lancelot knew that the King had gone to hunt in the New Forest, so he was sure that the Queen would send for him. It was dark in his bedroom, except for the one light in front of the holy picture, and he was pacing the floor in a dressing-gown. Except for the gay dressing-gown, and a sort of turban wound round his head, he was ready for bed: that is, he was naked.
It was a sombre room, without luxuries. The walls were bare and there was no canopy over the small hard couch. The windows were unglazed. They had some sort of oiled, opaque linen stretched over them. Great commanders often have these plain, campaigning bedrooms—they say that the Duke of Wellington used to sleep on a camp bed at Walmer Castle—with nothing in them except perhaps a chair, or an old trunk. Lancelot's room had one coffin-like, metal-bound chest. Apart from that, and from the bed, there was nothing to be seen—except his huge sword which stood against the wall, its straps hanging about it.
There was a kettle-hat lying on the chest. After some time, he picked it up and carried it to the picture light, where he stood with the same puzzled expression which the boy had had so long ago—looking at his reflection in the steel. He put it down, and began to march once more.
When the tap came on the door, he thought it was the signal. He was picking up the sword, and stretching his hand to the latch, when the door opened on its own account. Gareth came in.
"May I come?"
"Gareth!"
He looked at him in surprise, then said without enthusiasm: "Come in. It is nice to see you."
"Lancelot, I have come to warn you."
After a close look, the old man grinned.
"Gracious!" he said. "I hope you are not going to warn me about anything serious?"
"Yes, it is serious."
"Well, come in, and shut the door."
"Lancelot, it is about the Queen. I don't know how to begin."
"Don't trouble to begin then."
He took the younger man by the shoulders, began propelling him back to the door.
"It was charming of you to warn me," he said, squeezing the shoulders, "but I don't expect you can tell me anything I don't know."
"Oh, Lancelot, you know I would do anything to help you. I don't know what the others will say when they hear I have been to you. But I couldn't stay away."
"What is the trouble?"
He stopped their progress to look at him again.
"It is Agravaine and Mordred. They hate you. Or Agravaine does. He is jealous. Mordred hates Arthur most. We tried our best to stop them, but they would go on. Gawaine says he won't have anything to do with it, either way, and Gaheris was never good at making up his mind. So I had to come myself. I had to come, even if it is against my own brothers and the clan, because I owe everything to you, and I couldn't let it happen."
"My poor Gareth! What a state you have got yourself in!"
"They have been to the King and told him outright that you—that you go to the Queen's bedroom. We tried to stop them, and we wouldn't stay to listen, but that is what they told,"
Lancelot released the shoulder. He took two paces through the room.
"Don't be upset about it," he said, coming back. "Many people have said so before, but nothing came of it. It will blow over."
"Not this time. I can feel it won't, inside me,"
"Nonsense."
"It is not nonsense, Lancelot. They hate you. They won't try a combat this time, not after Meliagrance. They are too cunning. They will do something to trap you. They will go behind your back."
But the veteran only smiled and patted him.
"You are imagining things," he announced. "Go home to bed, my friend, and forget it. It was nice of you to come— but go home now and cheer up, and have a good sleep. If the King had been going to make a fuss, he would never nave gone off hunting,"
Garefh bit his fingers, plucking up the face to speak directly. "
At last he said; "Please don't go to the Queen tonight."
Lancelot lifted one of his extraordinary eyebrows—but lowered it on second thoughts.
"Why not?"
"I am sure it is a trap. I am sure the King has gone away for the night on purpose that you should go to her, and thea Agravaine will be there to catch you."
"Arthur would never do a thing Like that,"
"He has."
"Nonsense. I have known Arthur since you were in the nursery, and he wouldn't do it."
"But it is a risk!"
"If it is a risk, I shall enjoy it."
"Please!"
This time he put his hand in the small of Gareth's back, and began moving him seriously to the door.
"Now, my dear kitchen page just listen. In the first place, I know Arthur: in the second place, I know Agravaine. Do you think I ought to be afraid of him?"
"But treachery..."
"Gareth, once when I was a young fellow a lady came skipping past me, chasing after a peregrine which had snapped its creance. The trailing part of the creance got wound up in a tree, and the peregrine hung there at the top. The lady persuaded me to climb the tree, to get her hawk. I was never much of a climber. When I did get to the top, and had freed the hawk, the lady's husband turned up in full armour and said he was going to chop my head off. All the hawk business had been a trap to get me out of my armour, so that he would have me at his mercy. I was in the tree in my shirt, without even a dagger."
"Yes?"
"Well, I knocked him on the head with a branch. And he was a much better man than poor old Agravaine, even if we have grown rheumaticky since those bright days."
"I know you can deal with Agravaine. But suppose he attacks you with an armed band?"
"He won't do anything."
"He will."
There was a scratch at the door, a gentle drumming. A mouse might have made it, but Lancelot's eyes grew vague.
"Well, if he does," he said shortly, "then I shall have to fight the band. But the situation is imaginary."
"Couldn't you stay away tonight?"
They had reached the door, and the King's captain spoke decisively.
"Look," he said, "if you must know, the Queen has sent for me. I could hardly refuse, once I was sent for, could I?"
"So my treachery to the Old Ones will be useless?"
"Not useless. Anybody who knew would love you for facing it. But we can trust Arthur."
"And you will go in spite of everything?"
"Yes, kitchen page, and I shall go this minute. Good gracious, don't look so tragic about it. Leave it to the practised scoundrel and run away to bed."
"It means Good-bye."
"Nonsense, it means Good night. And, what is more, the Queen is waiting."
The old man swung a mantle over his shoulder, as easily as if he were still in the pride of youth. He lifted the latch and stood in the doorway, wondering what he had forgotten.
"If only I could stop you!" "Alas, you can't."
He stepped into the darkness of the passage, dismissing the subject from his mind, and disappeared. What he had forgotten was his sword.
Guenever waited for Lancelot in the candle-light of her splendid bedroom, brushing her grey hair. She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul. She was singing by herself. It was a hymn—of all things—the beautiful Veni, Sancte Spiritus which is supposed to have been written by a Pope.
The candle flames, rising up stilly on the night air, were reflected from the golden lioncels which studded the deep blue canopy of the bed. The combs and brushes sparkled with ornaments in cat paste. A large chest of polished latoun had saints and angels enamelled in the panels. The brocaded hangings beamed on the walls in soft folds—and, on the floor, a desperate and reprehensible luxury, there was a genuine carpet. It made people shy when they walked on it, since carpets were not originally intended for mere floors. Arthur used to walk round it.
Guenever was singing and brushing, her low voice fitting the stillness of the candles, when the door opened softly. The commander-in-cbief dropped his black cloak on the chest and stepped across to stand behind her. She saw him in the mirror without surprise.
"May I do it for you?" ' '
"If you like,"
He took the brush, and began sweeping it through the silver avalanche with fingers which were deft from practice, while the Queen closed her eyes.
After a time, he spoke.
"It is like... I don't know what. Not like silk. It is more like pouring water, only there is something cloudy about it too. The clouds are made of water, aren't they? Is it a pale mist, or a winter sea, or a waterfall, or a hayrick in the frost? Yes, it is a hayrick, deep and soft and full of scent."
"It is a nuisance," she said.
"It is the sea," he said solemnly, "in which I was born."
The Queen opened her eyes and asked: "Did you come safely?"
"Nobody saw."
"Arthur said he was coming back tomorrow."
"Did he? Here is a white hair."
"Pull it out."
"Poor hair," he said. "It is a thin one. Why is your hair so beautiful, Jenny? I should have to plait about six of them together, to be as thick as one of mine. Shall I pull?"
"Yes, pull."
"Did it hurt?"
"No."
"Why didn't it? When I was small, I used to pull my sisters' hair, and they used to pull mine, and it hurt like fury. Do we lose our faculties as we get older, so that we can't feel our pains and joys?"
"No," she explained. "It is because you only pulled one of them. When you pull a whole lock together, then it hurts. Look."
He held down his head so that she could reach, and she, stretching up backward with a white arm, twisted his forelock round her finger. She tugged until he made a face.
"Yes, it still hurts. What a relief!"
"Was that how your sisters pulled it?"
"Yes, but I pulled theirs much harder. Whenever I came near one of my sisters she used to hold her pigtails in both hands, and glare at me."
She laughed.
"I'm glad I wasn't one of your sisters."
"Oh, but I should never have pulled yours. Yours is too beautiful. I should have wanted to do something else with it."
"What would you have done?"
"I should ... well, I think I should have curled up inside it like a dormouse, and gone to sleep. I should like to do that now."
"Not until it is finished."
"Jenny," he asked suddenly, "do you think this will last?"
"What do you mean?"
"Gareth came to me just now, to warn us that Arthur had gone away on purpose to set a trap, and that Agravaine or Mordred was going to catch us out."
"Arthur would never do a thing like that."
"That's what I said."
"Unless he was made to," she reflected.
"I don't see how they could make him."
She went off at a tangent.
"It was nice of Gareth to go against his brothers."
"Do you know, I think he is one of the nicest people at court. Gawaine is decent, but he is quick-tempered and rather unforgiving,"
"He is loyal."
"Yes, Arthur used to say that if you were not an Orkney, they were frightful: but, if you were, you were a lucky man. They fight like cats, but they adore each other really. It is a clan."
The Queen's tangent had somehow brought her back to the circle,
"Lance," she asked In a startled voice, "do you think they could have forced the King's hand?"
"How do you mean?"
"Arthur has a terrific sense of justice."
"I wonder,"
"There was that conversation last week. I thought he was trying to warn us, Listen! Did you hear something?"
"No."
"I thought I heard somebody at the door."
"I'll go and see,"
He went to the door and opened it, but there was nobody there.
"A false alarm." -.
"Bolt it then."
He slid the wooden beam across — a great bar of oak five inches thick, which slid into a channel deep in the thickness of the wail. Coming back to the candle-light, he separated the shining hair into convenient strands and began to plait them swiftly. His hands moved like shuttles.
"It Is silly to be nervous," he observed.
She was still speculating, however, and replied with a question.
"Do you remember Tristram and Iseult?"
"Of course."
"Tristram used to sleep with King Mark's wife, and the King murdered him for it."
"Tristram was a lout."
"I thought he was nice."
"That was what he wanted you to think. But he was a Cornish knight, like the rest of them."
"He was said to be the second-best knight in the world. Sir Lancelot, Sir Tristram, Sir Lamorak..."
"That was tittle-tattle."
"Why did you think he was a lout?" she asked.
"Well, it's a long story. You don't remember what chivalry used to be before your Arthur started the Table, so you don't know what a genuis you have married. You don't see what a difference there is between Tristram, and, well, Gareth for instance."
"What difference?"
"In the old days it was a case of every knight for himself. The old stagers, people like Sir Bruce Saunce Pité, were pirates. They knew they were impregnable in armour, and they did as they pleased. It was open manslaughter and bold bawdry. When Arthur came to the throne, they were furious. You see, he believed in Right and Wrong."
"He still does."
"Fortunately he had a tenacious character as well as this idea of his. It took him about five years to set it on foot, but it was that people ought to be gentle. I must have been one of the first knights to catch the idea of gentleness from him, and I caught it young, and he made it part of my inside. Everybody is always saying what a parfit, gentle knight I am, but it has nothing to do with me. It is Arthur's idea. It is what he has wished on all the younger generation, like Gareth, and now it is fashionable. It led to the Quest for the Grail."
"And why was Tristram a lout?"
"Well, he just was. Arthur says he was a buffoon. He lived in Cornwall; he had never been educated by Arthur; but he had got wind of the fashion. He had got some garbled notion into his head that famous knights ought to be gentle, and he was always rushing about trying to live up to the fashion, without properly understanding it or feeling it in himself. He was a sort of copycat. Inside, he was not a bit gentle. He was foul to his wife, he was always bullying poor old Palomides for being a nigger, and he treated King Mark most shamefully. The knights from Cornwall are Old Ones and have always been hostile to Arthur's idea, inside thelmselves, even if they do get hold of a part of it."
"Like Agravaine,"
"Yes. Agravaine's mother was from Cornwall. The reason why Agravaine hates me is because I stand for the idea. It is a funny thing, but all three of us that the common people ased to call the three best knights—I mean Lamorak, Tristram and myself—have been hated by the Old Ones. They were delighted when Tristram was murdered because he copied the idea, and, of course, It was the Gawaine family who actually killed Sir Lamorak by treachery."
"I think," she said, "that the reason why Agravaine hates you is the old story of sour grapes. I don't think he cares a bit about the idea, but he naturally envies anybody who is a better fighter than himself. He loathed Tristram because of the thrashing he got from him on the way to Joyous Gard, and he helped to murder Lamorak because the boy had beaten him at the Priory Jousts, and—how many times have you upset him?"
"I don't remember."
"Lance, do you realize that the two other people he hated are dead?"
"Everybody dies, sooner or later."
Suddenly the Queen had swept her plaits out of his fingers. She had twisted round in the chair, and, with one hand holding a pigtail, she was staring at him with round eyes.
"I believe it Is true, what Gareth said! I believe they are coming to catch as tonight!"
She jumped out of the chair and began pushing him to the door.
"Go away. Go while there is time."
"But, Jenny..."
"No, No buts, I know it is true. I can feel it. Here is your cloak. Oh, Lance, please go quickly. They stabbed Sir Lamorak in the back."
"Come, Jenny, don't get excited about nothing. It is only a fancy..."
"It is not a fancy. Listen. Listen,"
"I can't hear anything."
"Look at the door"
The handle which lifted the latch of the door, a piece of wrought iron shaped like a horse-shoe, was moving softly to the left. It moved like a crab, uncertainly.
"What is the matter with the door?"
"Look at the handle!"
They stood watching it in fascination, as it moved blindly, in jerks, a sly, hesitating exploration.
"Oh, God," she whispered. "And now it is too late!"
The handle fell back into place and there was a loud, iron knocking on the wood of the door. It was a good door of double ply, one grain running vertically and the other horizontally, and it was being beaten from the other side with a gauntlet. Agravaine's voice, echoing in the cavern of his helmet, cried: "Open the door, in the King's name!"
"We are undone," she said.
"Traitor Knight," cried the neighing voice, as the wood thundered under the metal. "Sir Lancelot, now art thou taken."
Many more voices joined the outcry. Many joints of harness, no longer under the necessity of precaution, clanked on the stone stair. The door butted against its beam.
Lancelot dropped unconsciously into the language of chivalry also.
"Is there any armour in the chamber," he asked, "that I might cover my body withal?"
"There is nothing. Not even a sword."
He stood, facing the door with a puzzled, business-like expression, biting his fingers. Several fists were hammering it, so that it shook, and the voices were like a pack of hounds.
"Oh, Lancelot," she said, "there is nothing to fight with, and you are almost naked. They are armed and many. You will be killed, and I shall be burned, and our love has come to a bitter end."
He was cross at not being able to solve the problem.
"If only I had my armour," he said with irritation, "it seems ridiculous to be caught like a rat in a trap."
He looked round the room, cursing himself for having forgotten his weapon.
"Traitor Knight," boomed the voice, "come out of the Queen's chamber!"
Another voice, musical and self-possessed, cried pleasantly; "Wit thou well, here are fourteen armed, and thou canst not escape." It was Mordred, and the hammering was growing louder.
"Well, damn them then," he said. "We can't have this noise. I shall have to go, or they will wake the castle."
He turned to the Queen and took her in his arms.
"Jenny, I am going to call you my most noble Christian Queen. Will you be strong?"
"My dear."
"My sweet old Jenny. Let us have a kiss. Now, you have always been my special good lady, and we have never failed before. Do not be frightened this time. If they kill me, remember Sir Bors. All my brothers and nephews will look after you. Send a message to Bors or Demaris, and they will rescue you if necessary. They will take you safe to Joyous Gard, and you can live there on my own land, like the Queen you are. Do you understand?"
"If you are killed, I shall not want to be rescued."
"You will," he said firmly. "It is important that somebody should be alive to explain about us decently. That is the hard work which you will have to do. Besides, I should want you to pray."
"No. The prayers will have to be done by somebody else. If they kill you, they can burn me. I shall take my death as meekly as any Christian queen."
He kissed her tenderly and set her in the chair.
"Too late to argue," he said. "I know you will be Jenny whatever happens, and I must e'en be Lancelot." Then, still glancing round the room with a preoccupied look, he added absent-mindedly: "It makes no odds about my quarrel, but they did ill to force it on you."
She watched him, trying not to cry.
"I would give my foot," he said, "to have a little armour —even just a sword, so that they could remember."
"Lance, if they would kill me, and save you, I should be happy."
"And I should be extremely miserable," he answered, suddenly finding himself in intense good humour. "Well, well, we shall have to do the best we can. Bother my very old bones, but I believe I am going to enjoy it!"
He put the candles on the lid of the Limoges chest, so that they would be behind his back when he opened the door. He picked up his black cloak and folded it carefully lengthwise into four, after which he wound it round his left hand and forearm as a protection. He picked up the foot-stool from beside the bed, balanced it in his right hand, and took a last look round the room. All the time the noise was getting louder outside, and two men were evidently trying to cut through the wood with their battle-axes, an attempt which was frustrated by the cross grains of the double ply. He went to the door and raised his voice, at which there was immediate silence.
"Fair Lords," he said, "leave your noise and your rashing. I shall set open this door, and then ye may do with me what it liketh you."
"Come off then," they cried confusedly. "Do it." "It availeth thee not to strive against us all." "Let us into the chamber." "We shall save thy life if you come to King Arthur."
He put his shoulder against the leaping door and softly pushed the beam back, into the wall. Then, still holding the door shut with his shoulder—the people on the other side had desisted from their hewing, feeling that something was about to happen—he settled his right foot firmly on the ground, about two feet from the door jamb, and let the door swing open. It stopped with a jerk at his foot, leaving a narrow opening so that it was more ajar than open, and a single knight in full armour blundered through the gap with the obedience of a puppet on strings. Lancelot slammed the door behind him, shot the bar, took the figure's sword by the pommel in his padded left hand, jerked him forward, tripped him up, bashed him on the head with the stool as he was falling, and was sitting on his chest in a trice—as limber as he had ever been. All was done with what seemed to be ease and leisure, as if it were the armed man who was powerless. The great turret of a fellow, who had entered in the height and breadth of armour, and who had stood for a second looking for his adversary through the slit of his helmet, this man had given an impression of docility—he seemed to have come in, and to have handed his sword to Lancelot, and to have thrown himself upon the ground. Now the iron hulk lay, as obediently as ever, while the bare-legged man pressed its own swordpoint through the ventail of the visor. It made a few protesting shudders, as he pressed down with both hands on the pommel of the sword.
Lancelot stood up, rubbing his hands on the dressing-gown.
"I am sorry I had to kill him."
He opened the visor and looked. "Agravaine of Orkney!"
There was a terrific outcry from beyond the door, with hammering, hewing and cursing, as Lancelot turned to the Queen. "Help with the armour," he said briefly. She came at once, without repugnance, and they kneeled together beside the body, stripping it of the vital pieces.
"Listen," he said as they worked. "This gives us a fair chance. If I can drive them off I shall turn back for you, and you will come to Joyous Gard."
"No, Lance. We have done enough harm. If you do fight your way out, you must keep away till it blows over. I shall stay here. If Arthur forgives me, and if it can be hushed up, then you can come back later. If he does not forgive me, you can come to the rescue. Where does this go?" "Give it to me." "Here is the other one."
"You were far better to come," he urged, struggling into the habergeon like a footballer putting on his jersey.
"No. If I come, everything is broken forever. If I stay, we may be able to patch it up. You can always rescue me if necessary."
"I don't like to leave you."
"If I am condemned, and you rescue me, I promise I will come to Joyous Gard." "And if not?"
"Wipe the helmet with your cloak," she said. "If not, then you can come back later, and everything will be as it was." "Very well. There. I can do without the rest." He straightened himself, holding the bloody sword, and looked at the dead body which had killed its mother.
"Gareth's brother," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps he was drunk. God rest him—though it seems absurd to say it." The old lady turned him to face the candles. "It means Good-bye," she whispered, "for a little." "It means Good-bye." "Give me a kiss?" she asked.
He kissed her hand, because he was armed and dirty with blood and covered with metal. They thought simultaneously of the thirteen men outside.
"I should like you to take something of mine, Lance, and to leave me something of yours. Will you change rings?" They changed them.
"God be with my ring," she said, "as I am with it."
Lancelot turned away and went to the door. They were calling out: "Come out of the Queen's chamber!" "Traitor to the Kingl" "Open the door!" They were making as much noise as possible, to aid the scandal. He stood facing the tumult, with legs apart, and answered them in the language of honour.
"Leave your noise, Sir Mordred, and take my council. Go ye all from this chamber door, and make not such crying and such manner of slander as ye do. An ye will depart, and make no more noise, I shall tomorn appear before the King: and then it will be seen which of you all, outher else you all, will accuse me of treason. There I shall answer you as a knight should, that hither I came for no manner of mal engine; and I will prove that there, and make it good upon you with my hands."
"Fie on thee, traitor," cried the voice of Mordred. "We will have thee maugre thy head, and slay thee if we list."
Another voice shouted: "Let thee wit we have the choice of King Arthur, to save thee or to slay thee,"
Lancelot dropped the visor over his shadowed face and pushed the door-bar sideways with his point. The stout wood, crashing open, showed a lintel crammed with iron men and tossing torches.
"Ah sirs," he said with a grimness, "is there none other grace with you? Then keep yourselves."
The Gawaine clan was waiting in the Justice Room, a week later. The room looked different by daylight, because the windows were uncovered. It was no longer a box, no longer that faintly threatening or deceitful blandness of four walls, no longer the kind of arras trap which tempted Hamlet's rapier to prick about for rats. The afternoon sunlight streamed in at the casements, illuminating the tapestry of Batbsheba, as she sat with her two round breasts in a tub on the battlements of a castle, which seemed to have been built from children's bricks—picking out David, on the roof next door, with a crown and a beard and a harp—rippling from a hundred horses, parallel lances, helms and suits of armour, which thronged the battle scene in which Uriah was killed. Uriah himself was tumbling from his horse, like rather an inexperienced diver, under the influence of a stroke which one of the opposing knights had delivered in the region of his midriff. The sword was half-way through his body, so that the poor man was coming in two pieces, and a lot of realistic vermilion worms were gushing out of the wound in a grisly manner, which were intended to be his guts.
Gawaine sat gloomily on one of the side benches placed there for petitioners, with his arms folded and his head against the arras. Gaheris, perched on the long table, was fiddling with the braces of a leather hood for a hawk. He was trying to alter them so that they would shut more firmly, and, as the interlacement of such braces was complicated, he had got himself in a muddle. Gareth was standing beside him, itching to get the hood into his own hands, because he was certain that he could set the matter right. Mordred, with a white face and his arm in a sling, was leaning at the embrasure of one of the windows, looking out. He was still in pain.
"It ought to go under the slit," said Gareth.
"I know, I know. But I am trying to put this one through first."
"Let me try."
"Just a minute. It is coming."
Mordred said from the window: "The executioner is ready to begin."
"Oh."
"It will be a cruel death," he said. "They are using seasoned wood, and there will be no smoke, and she will burn before she suffocates."
"So ye believe," observed Gawaine morosely.
"Poor old woman," said Mordred. "One can almost feel sorry for her."
Gareth turned on him fiercely.
"You should have thought of that before."
"Now the top one," said Gaheris.
"I understand," continued Mordred, in what was almost a soliloquy, "that our liege lord himself must watch the execution from this window."
Gareth lost his temper completely.
"Can't you hold your tongue about it for a minute? Anyone would think that you enjoyed watching people being burned."
Mordred replied contemptuously: "So will you, really. Only you think it is not good form to say so. They will burn her in her shift."
"For the sake of God, be silent,"
Gaheris said, in his slow way: "I don't think you need to worry."
In a flash Mordred was facing him.
"What do you mean, he need not worry?"
"Of course he needna worry," said Gawaine angrily. "Do ye think that Lancelot willna come to rescue her? He is no coward, at any rate."
Mordred was thinking quickly. His still pose by the window had given place to nervous excitement.
"If he tries to rescue her, there will be a fight. King Arthur will have to fight him."
"King Arthur will watch from here."
"But this is monstrous!" he exploded. "Do you mean to say that Lancelot will be allowed to slip off with the Queen, under our noses?"
"That is exactly what will happen."
"But nobody will be punished at all!"
"Good heavens, man," cried Gareth. "Do you want to see the woman burn?"
"Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Gawaine, are you going to sit there and let this happen after your own brother has been killed?"
"I warnit Agravaine."
"You cowards! Gareth! Gaheris! Make him to do something. You can't let this happen. He murdered Agravaine, your brother."
"So far as I can understand the story, Mordred, Agravaine went with thirteen other knights, fully armed, and tried to kill Lancelot when he had nothing but his dressing-gown. The upshot was that Agravaine himself was killed, together with all thirteen of the knights—except one, who ran away."
"I did not run away."
"Ye survivit, Mordred."
"Gawaine, I swear I didn't run away. I fought him as well as I could. But he broke my arm, and then I could do no more. On my honour, Gawaine, I tried to fight."
He was almost weeping.
"I am not a coward."
"If you didn't run away," asked Gaheris, "how came it that Lancelot let you go, after killing the others? It was in his interest to kill the lot of you, because then there would have been no witnesses." "He broke my arm." "Yes, but he didn't kill you." "I am telling the truth." "But he didn't kill you."
What with the pain of his arm, and rage, the man began to cry like a child.
"You traitors! It is always like this. Because I am not strong, you side against me. You stand for the muscular fools, and will not believe what I say. Agravaine is dead, and waked, and you are not going to punish anybody for it. Traitors, traitors! And it will all be as it was!"
He broke down as the King came in. Arthur, looking tired, walked slowly to the throne and set himself on it. He motioned to them, to resume their seats. Gawaine slumped back on the bench from which he had risen, while Gareth and Gaheris. remained standing, observing the King with looks of pity, to the background of Mordred's sobs. Arthur stroked his forehead with his hand. "Why is he crying?" he asked.
"He was for explaining to us," said Gawaine, "how Lancelot killed thirteen knights, but resolvit on his second thoughts that he shouldna kill our Mordred. It was by cause there was a fondness between them seemingly."
"I think I can explain. You see, I asked Sir Lancelot not to kill my son, ten days ago."
Mordred said bitterly: "Thank you for nothing." "You don't have to thank me, Mordred. Lancelot would be the right person to thank for that." "I wish he had killed me."
"I am glad he did not. Try to be a little forgiving, my son, now that we are in this trouble. Remember that I am your father. I shall have no family left, except for you." "I wish I had never been born."
"So do I, my poor boy. But you are born, so now we must do the best we can."
Mordred went over to him with haste, with a sort of shamefaced dissimulation.
"Father," he said, "do you know that Lancelot is bound to come and rescue her?" "I have been expecting it."
"And you have posted knights to stop him? You have arranged for a strong guard?"
"The guard is as strong as it can be, Mordred. I have tried to be just."
"Father," he said eagerly, "send Gawaine and these two to strengthen them. He will come with great force."
"Well, Gawaine?" asked the King.
"Thank ye, uncle. I had liefer ye didna ask."
"I ought to ask you, Gawaine, out of justice to the guard which is already there. You see, it would be unfair to leave a weak guard, if I thought that Lancelot was coming, because that would be treachery to my own men. It would be sacrificing them."
"Whether ye ask me or no, saving your Majesty, I shallna go. I warned the twa of them at their outselling that I wouldna have to do with it. I have nae wish to see Queen Guenever burn, and I maun say I hope she willna, nor will I help to burn her. There ye have it"
"It sounds like treason."
"It may be treason, but I have my fondness for the Queen."
"I also am fond of the Queen, Gawaine. It was I who married her. But where a matter of public justice arises, the feelings of common people have to be left out"
"I fear I canna leave my feelings."
The King turned to the others.
"Gareth? Gaheris? Will you oblige me by putting on your armour, and strengthening the guard?"
"Uncle, please don't ask us."
"It gives me no pleasure to ask you, Gareth."
"I know it doesn't, but please don't force us. Lancelot is my friend, so how could I fight against him?"
The King touched his hand.
"Lancelot would have expected you to go, my dear, whoever it was against. He believes in justice too."
"Uncle, I can't fight him. He knighted me. I will go if you wish, but I won't go in armour. I am afraid that mine is treason too."
"I am ready to go in armour," said Mordred, "even if my arm is broken."
Gawaine observed sarcastically: "It will be safe enough for you, my mannie. We ken the King has bidden Lancelot not hurt ye."
"Traitor!"
"And Gaheris?" asked the King.
"I will go with Gareth, unarmed."
"Well, I suppose it is the best we can do. I hope I have tried to do what I ought." Gawaine got up from his bench and tramped over to the King with clumsy sympathy.
"Ye have done more than e'er a body could expect," he said warmly, holding the veined hand in his paw, "and now we must look onward for the best. Let my brothers go, unarmed. He willna hurt them, gin he see their faces. I maun stay ben with you,"
"Go then,"
"Shall I tell the executioner to begin?"
"Yes, if you must, Mordred. Give him my ring and get the warrant from Sir Bedivere,"
"Thank you, father. Thank you. We shall be hardly a minute,"
The pale face, burning with enthusiasm and for the moment with a strangely genuine gratitude, hurried from the room. He followed his brothers, who had gone to join the guard, with blazing eyes and a nervous twitch of his mouth. The old King, left behind with Gawaine, sank his head upon his hands.
"He might have done it with a little more decency. He might have tried to show that he was not so pleased,"
Gawaine put his hand on the stooping shoulder.
"Never fear, uncle," he said. "It will come to right. Lancelot will rescue her in God's good time, and nae harm done,"
"I have tried to do my duty."
"Ye have striven to admiration."
"I sentenced her because it was the law to sentence her. I have done my best to see the sentence will be carried out."
"But it willna be. Lancelot will bring her safe."
"Gawaine, you are not to think that I am trying to get ner rescued, I am the Justice of England, and it is our business now to burn her to the death, without remorse,"
"Aye, uncle, and every man kens fine how you have tried. But that dinna alter the truth, that we both desire at heart she may come safe."
"Oh, Gawaine," he said. "I have been married to her all these years!"
The other turned his back and went to the window.
"Dinna disturb yerself. The coil will come to right."
"What is right?" cried the old man, looking after him with a face of misery, "What is wrong? If Lancelot does come to rescue her, he may kill those innocent fellows of the guard, which I have set to burn her. They have trusted me and I have put them there to keep him off, because it is justice. If he saves her, they will be killed. If they are not killed, she will be burned. But burned to death, Gawaine, in horrible, burning flames—and she is my much-loved Gwen."
"Dinna think about it, uncle. It willna happen."
But the King was breaking down.
"Why doesn't he come at once, then? Why does he wait so long?"
Gawaine said steadily: "He has to wait until she is in the open, in the square, for otherwise it would mean to storm the castle."
"I tried to warn them, Gawaine. I tried to warn them a few days before they were caught. But it was difficult to say the things in plain English, without hurting people's feelings. And I was a fool, too. I didn't want to be conscious of it. I hoped that if only I was not quite conscious of everything, it would come straight in the end. Do you think it was my fault? Do you think I could have saved them, if I had done something else?"
"Ye did the best ye could."
"When I was a young man I did something which was not just, and from it has sprung the misery of my life. Do you think you can stop the consequences of a bad action, by doing good ones afterwards? I don't. I have been trying to stopper it down with good actions, ever since, but it goes on in widening circles. It will not be stoppered. Do you think this is a consequence too?"
"I dinna ken."
"How horrible it is to wait like this!" he cried. "It must be worse for Gwen. Why can't they bring her out at once, to have done with it?"
"They will do so soon."
"And it is not her fault. Is it mine? Ought I to have refused to accept Mordred's evidence and over-ridden the whole affair? Ought I to have acquitted her? I could have set my new law aside. Ought I to have done that?"
"Ye might have done."
"I could have acted as I wished."
"Aye."
"But what would have happened to justice then? What would have been the consequence? Consequences, justice, bad deeds, babies drowned! I could see them about me, all last night."
Gawaine spoke quietly, in a changed voice.
"Ye must forget sic things. Ye maun summon up your powers to what is difficult. Will ye do that?" The King held the arms of his throne.
"Yes."
"1 fear ye must come to the window. They are for bringing her out."
The old man made no movement, except that his fingers tightened on the wood. He sat staring in front of him. Then he pulled himself to his feet, taking his weight on the wrists, and went to his duty. Unless he was present at the execution, it would not be a legal one. "She is in a white shift."
They stood together quietly, watching like people who must not feel. There was a numbness in their crisis, which forced language into conversational levels. "Aye."
"What are they doing?"
"I dinna ken."
"Praying, I suppose."
"Aye. Yon is the bishop in front."
They examined the praying."How straege they look."
"They are just ordinary."
"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 is 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 foundering in 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 sparring 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'll 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 thelmselves in the 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 Giliimer, Sir Reynold's three brothers, Sir Damas, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay the Stranger, Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Hermmde, 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 gelid 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. Bannerets, 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 chessplayers 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 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 cuir-bouillé, 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:
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 eployment 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:
"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."
"So His Holiness has made their peace for them," said Mordred savagely.
"Aye."
They were in the Justice Room, Gawaine and himself, waiting for the last stages of the negotiations. Both were in black—but with the strange difference that Mordred was resplendent in his, a sort of Hamlet, while Gawaine looked more like the grave-digger. Mordred had begun dressing with this dramatic simplicity since the time when he had become a leader of the popular party. Their aims were some kind of nationalism, with Gaelic autonomy, and a massacre of the Jews as well, in revenge for a mythical saint called Hugh of Lincoln. There were already thousands, spread over the country, who carried his badge of a scarlet fist clenching a whip, and who called thelmselves Thrashers. About the older man, who only wore the uniform to please his brother, there was a homespun blackness, the true, despairing dark of mourning.
"Just fancy," Mordred went on. "If it had not been for the Pope, we should never have had this beautiful procession with everybody carrying olive branches and the innocent lovers dressed in white," "It was a guid procession,"
Gawaine's mind did not move easily along the paths of irony, so he accepted the sneer as statement of fact. "It was well stage-managed."
The older brother moved uncomfortably, as if to ease his position, but returned to the same one from which he had started.
He said doubtfully, almost as if it were a question or an appeal: "Lancelot says in his letters that he killed our Gareth by mistake. He says he didna see him,"
"It would be just like Lancelot to lay about him at unarmed men, without looking to see who they were. He was always famous for that,"
This time the irony was so heavy that even Gawaine took it as it was,
"I ween it dinna seem likely,"
"Likely? Of course it isn't. That was not Lancelot's line. He was the preux chevalier who always spared people—who never slew a person weaker than himself. That was the high road to Lancelot's popularity. Do you suppose he would have suddenly dropped this pose, to begin killing unarmed men regardless?"
With a pathetic effort to be fair, Gawaine said; "There seems to be nae reason why he should have killed them."
"Reason? Was Gareth our brother? He killed him as a reprisal, out of revenge because it was our family that had caught him with the Queen."
More carefully, he added: "It was because Arthur is fond of you, and he was jealous of your influence. He planned it fair, to weaken the clan Orkney," "He has weakened himsel'."
"Besides, he was jealous of Gareth. He was afraid that our brother would poach on his preserves. Our Gareth copied him, which did not suit the preux chevalier. You can't have two knights without reproach."
The Justice Room had been prepared for the final pageant. It looked barren, with only two men in it. They were sitting in a curious way, one behind the other on the steps of the throne, which meant that they did not look each other in the face. Mordred looked at the back of Gawaine's
head, and Gawaine at the floor. He said with a slight choke: "Gareth was the best of us." If he had turned round quickly, he might have been surprised at the intentness with which he was being watched. The younger face was at variance with the music of its voice. If you had looked closely, you might have noticed that Mordred's manner in the past six months had become stranger.
"Dear fellow," he said, "and to be killed by the very man who had his faith."
"It will teach me ne'er to trust the southron."
Mordred altered the pronoun with an imperceptible emphasis.
"Yes, it will teach us."
The old tyrant swung round. He seized the white hand so as to press it, speaking with confusion.
"I was used to thinking it was Agravaine's mischief— Agravaine's and yours. I thocht ye were over prejudiced against Sir Lancelot. I am ashamed."
"Blood is thicker than water."
"It is that, Mordred. A body may clatter about ideals— about right and wrong and matters of that ilk—but in the end it comes to your ain folk. I mind when Gareth used to rob the priest's wee orchard, by the cliff—"
He tailed off lamely, till the thin man prompted him.
"His hair was almost white when he was a boy, it was so fair."
"Kay used to name him Pretty Hands."
"That was meant for an insult."
"Aye, but it was true. His hands were bonnie."
"And now he is in his grave."
Gawaine flushed to the eyebrows, the veins swelling at his temples.
"God's curse on them! I willna have this peace. I willna forgive them. Why should King Arthur seek to smooth it o'er? What business has the Pope within it? It is my brother that was butchered, none of theirs, and, God Almighty, I will have the vengeance!"
"Lancelot will slip through our fingers. He is an oily man to hold."
"He shallna slip. We hold him this time. The Cornwalls have forgiven over much."
Mordred shifted on the steps.
"Have you ever thought what the Table has done to Cornwall and Orkney? Arthur's father killed our grandfather. Arthur seduced our mother. And Lancelot has killed three of our brothers, besides Florence and Lovel. Yet here we are, selling our honour, to reconcile the two Englishmen. It seems cowardly?"
"Nay, it isna cowardly. The Pope may force the King to take his Queen, but there is nae word in his bulls about Sir Lancelot. We gave him sanctuary to bring the woman, and we will also let him go. But, after that..."
"Why should we let him escape us, even now?"
"By cause he has safe-conduct. Guid sakes, man Mordred, we are knighted men!"
"We must not stoop to dirty weapons, even if our enemies do."
"Aye, just. We will let the boar have law to run, and then pursue him to the death. Arthur is failing: he will do our will"
"It is sad," said Sir Mordred, "how the poor King seems to lose his grip, since all this business started."
"Aye, it is sad. But he kens the difference yet of right and wrong."
"It is a change for him."
"Ye mean, to fail his powers."
"You guess so quickly."
His sarcasms were as easy as teasing a blind man.
"He canna have it every way. He never should have sided with that traitor at the start."
"Nor married Gwen."
"Aye, the fault lies with them. It isna we who sought the quarrel."
"Indeed, it is not."
"The King must stand for justice. Even if His Holiness should make him take the woman to his bed, we have our right towards Sir Lancelot. Man, he has done strong treason when he took the Queen, as well as when he slew our brothers."'
"We have every right."
The burly fellow took the other's hand again, the pale one in the horny sexton's. He said with difficulty: "It would be woeful sore to be alone."
"We had the same mother, Gawaine."
"Aye!"
"And she was Gareth's mother too..."
"Here comes the King."
The pageant of reconciliation had reached its final stages. With trumpets blowing in the courtyard, the dignitaries of Church and State began to filter up the stairs. The courtiers, bishops, heralds, pages, judges, and spectators were talking as they came. The cube of tapestry, an empty vase before, began to flower with them. It flowered with bald-faced ladies in head-dresses which looked like crescents or cones or the astonishing coiffure worn by the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland. In bright bodices with their waists under their armpits, in long skirts and flowing sleeves, in camelin de Tripoli or taffeta or rosete, the delicate creatures swam into their places with an aroma of myrrh and honey —with which they had washed their teeth. Their gallants— young squires in the height of fashion, many of them wearing Mordred's badge as Thrashers—came mincing in with their long-toed shoes, in which it was impossible to walk upstairs. At the foot of the steps they had slipped out of them, and their pages had carried them up. The impression given by the young men was mainly of legs in stockings— it had even been found necessary to pass a sumptuary law, which insisted that their jacket should be long enough to cover the buttocks. Then there were more responsible councillors in extraordinary hats, some of which were like tea-cosies, some turbans, some bird wings, some muffs. The gowns of these were pleated and padded, with high ruff-like collars, epaulettes and jewelled belts. There were clerks with neat little skull-caps to keep their tonsures warm, dressed in sober clothes which contrasted with the laity. There was a visiting cardinal in the glorious tasselled hat which still adorns the notepaper of Wolsey's College at Oxford. There were furs of every kind, including a handsome arrangement of black and white lambs' wool, sewn in contrasting diamonds. The talkers made a noise like starlings.
This was the first part of the pageant. The second part began with nearer premonitions on the trumpets. Then came several Cistercians, secretaries, deacons and other religious people, all burdened with ink made by boiling the bark of blackthorn, parchment, sand, bulls, pens, and the sort of pen-knife which scribes used to carry in their left hands when they were writing. They also had tally sticks and the minutes of the last meeting.
The third instalment was the Bishop of Rochester, who had been appointed nuncio. He came in all the state of a nuncio, though he had left his canopy downstairs. He was a silk-haired senior, with his cope and crosier, alb and ring —urbane, ecclesiastical, knowing the spiritual power.
Finally the trumpets were at the door, and England came. In weighty ermine, which covered his shoulders and the left arm, with a narrower strip down the right—in the blue velvet cloak and overwhelming crown—heavy with majesty and supported, almost literally supported, by the proper officers, the King was led to the throne on the dais, its canopy golden with embroideries of the dragons ramping in red— and there, the crowd now parting, Gawaine and Mordred were revealed to meet him. He sank down where he was put. The standing nuncio seated himself also, on a throne opposite, hung with white and gold. The buzz subsided.
"We are ready to begin?"
Rochester's priestly, voice relieved the tension: "The Church is ready."
"So is the State,"
It was Gwaine's ramble, faintly offensive. '
"Is there anything which we ought to settle before they come?"
"It is a' fair settled."
Rochester turned his eyes to the Laird of Orkney.
"We are obliged to Sir Gawaine,"
"Ye are welcome."
"In that case,," said the King, "I suppose we must tell Sir Lancelot that the Court is waiting to receive him."
"Bedivere man, send forth to bring the prisoners."
It was noticed that Gawaine had put himself in the habit of speaking for the throne, and that Arthur let him do It. The nuncio, however, was less subdued.
"One moment, Sir Gawaine. I have to point out that the Church does not regard these people as prisoners. The mission of His Holiness which 1 represent is one of pacification, not of revenge."
"The Church can aye regard the prisoners as she pleases. We are for doing what the Church has said, but we shall do it in our ain poor fashion. Bring forth the prisoners."
"Sir Gawaine...."
"Blow for Her Majesty. The Court sits."
In the middle of music like a bad pageant, and of music answered from outside, the heads turned round to the door.
There was a rustle among the silks and furs. A lane was made with shuffling. In the archway, now open, Lancelot and Guenever waited for their cue.
There was something pathetic about their grandeur, as if they were dressed up for a charade but not quite fitted. They were in white cloth, of gold tissue, and the Queen, no longer young or lovely, carried her olive branch ungracefully. They came shyly down the lane, like well-meaning actors who were trying to do their best, but who were not good at acting. They kneeled in front of the throne.
"My most redoubted King."
The movement of sympathy was caught by Mordred.
"Charming!"
Lancelot looked to the elder brother.
"Sir Gawaine."
Orkney showed him his back.
He turned towards the Church.
"My lord of Rochester."
"Welcome, my son."
"I have brought Queen Guenever, by the King's command, and by the Pope's."
There was an awkward silence, in which nobody dared to help their speech along.
"It is my duty, then, if nobody will answer, to affirm the Queen of England's innocence."
"Liar!"
"I am come to maintain with my body that the Queen is fair, true, good and clean to King Arthur, and this I will make good upon any challenge, excepting only if it were the King or Sir Gawaine. It is my duty to the Queen to make this proffer."
"The Holy Father bids us to accept your proffer, Lancelot."
The pathos which was growing in the room was broken by the Orkney faction for the second tune.
"Fie on his proud words," cried Gawaine. "As for the Queen, let her bide and be forgiven. But thou, false recreant knight, what cause had'st thou to slay my brother, that loved thee more than all my kin?"
Both the great men had slipped into the high language, suitable to the place and passion.
"God knows it helps me not to excuse myself, Sir Gawaine. I would rather to have killed my nephew, Sir Bors. But I did not see them, Gawaine, and I have paid it!"
"It was done in despite of me and of Orkney!"
"It repents me to the heart," he said, "that you should think so, my lord Sir Gawaine, for I know that while you are against me I shall never more be accorded with the King."
"True words, man Lancelot. Ye came under safe-conduct and sanctuary, to bring the Queen, but ye shall go hence as the murderer ye are."
"If I am a murderer, God forgive me, my lord. But I never slew by treason."
He had intended his protest in innocence—but it was received at more than its face value. Gawaine, clapping one hand to his dagger, cried: "I take your meaning in that. Ye mean Sir Lamorak...." The Bishop of Rochester lifted his glove. "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 her 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 thelmselves 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. 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-baked 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 shall 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 forever."
"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 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 soldier 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 county— 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 place 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 thek 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 noise and smell. The latest addition was a full-sized 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 blackbkds 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."
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, he could have killed him there and then."
"But he didn't."
"No. Sir Lancelot stood back and leaned on bis 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, 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 Protector, 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 Sk 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 Sk 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 thelmselves 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.
"Our Agnes seems to be in a nervous state," he said. "Good evening, Guenever."
"Good evening, Mordred."
"A little fine embroidery? I thought you would be knitting socks for soldiers."
"Why have you come?"
"Just an evening call. You must forgive the drama."
"Do you always wait outside doors? "
"One has to come through a door somehow, madam. It is more convenient than coming through the window— though, I believe, some people have been known to do that."
"I see. Will you sit down?"
He took his seat with an elaborate gesture, the pug jumping into his lap. In a way it was tragic to watch him, for he was doing what his mother did. He was acting, and had ceased to be real.
People write tragedies in which fatal blondes betray their paramours to ruin, in which Cressidas, Cleopatras, Delilahs, and sometimes even naughty daughters like Jessica bring their lovers or their parents to distress: but these are not the heart of tragedy. They are fripperies to the soul of man. What does it matter if Antony did fall upon his sword? It only killed him. It is the mother's not the lover's lust that rots the mind. It is that which condemns the tragic character to his walking death. It is Jocasta, not Juliet, who dwells in the inner chamber. It is Gertrude, not the silly Ophelia, who sends Hamlet to his madness. The heart of tragedy does not lie in stealing or taking away. Any featherpated girl can steal a heart. It lies in giving, in putting on, in adding, in smothering without the pillows. Desdemona robbed of life or honour is nothing to a Mordred, robbed of himself—his soul stolen, overlaid, wizened, while the mother-character lives in triumph, superfluously and with stifling love endowed on him, seemingly innocent of ill-intention. Mordred was the only son of Orkney who never married. He, while his brothers fled to England, was the one who stayed alone with her for twenty years—her living larder. Now that she was dead, he had become her grave. She existed in him like the vampire. When he moved, when he blew his nose, he did it with her movement. When he acted he became as unreal as she had been, pretending to be a virgin for the unicorn. He dabbled in the same cruel magic. He had even begun to keep lap dogs like her—although he had always hated hers with the same bitter jealousy as that with which he had hated her lovers.
"Do I feel a coldness in the air this evening?"
"It is bound to be cold in February."
"I was referring to the delicacy of our personal relationship."
"The Protector, whom my husband appointed, is bound to be welcome to the Queen."
"But not the husband's bastard, I suppose?"
She lowered her needle and looked him in the face."I don't understand your coming like this, and I don't koow what you want."
She had no wish to be hostile, but he was forcing her. She had never been afraid of anyone.
"I was thinking of a chat about the political situation-just a little chat."
She knew that they had reached a crisis of some sort, and it made her weak. She was too old now to deal with madmen, although she still had no suspicion of his sanity. Only the cumbrous irony of his tone made her feel unreal herself—made her unable to put her own words simply. But she would not give in.
"I shall be glad to hear what you want to say."
"That is extremely generous of you... Jenny."
It was monstrous. He was making her into one of his fantasies, not speaking to a real person at all.She said indignantly: "Will you be so kind as to address me by my title, Mordred?"
"But certainly. I must apologize if I have been trespassing on Lancelot's preserves."
The sneer acted like a tonic. It raised her stature to the royal lady which she was, to a straight-backed dowager whose rheumatic lingers flashed with rings, who had ridden the world successfully for fifty years.
"I believe," she said at once, "you would find some difficulty in doing that."
"Well! However, I am afraid I asked for it. You were always a bit of a spitfire... Queen Jenny."
"Sir Mordred, if you can't behave like a gentleman, I shall go."
"And where will you go?"
"I should go anywhere: anywhere where a woman old enough to be your mother would be safe from this extravagance."
"The question is," he observed reflectively, "where you would be safe? The plan seems bound to founder in the last resource, when you consider that everybody has gone away to France, and that I am the ruler of the kingdom. Of course, you could go to France... if you could get there."
She understood, or began to understand,
"I don't know what you mean."
"Then you must think it out."
"If you will excuse me," she said, rising, "I will call my woman."
"Call her by all means. Though I should have to send her away."
"Agnes will take her orders from me."
"I doubt it. Let us try."
"Mordred, will you leave me?"
"No, Jenny," he said. "I want to stay. But, if you will sit down quietly for a minute, and listen, I promise to behave like a perfect gentleman—like one of your preux chevaliers, in fact."
"You leave no option."
"Very little."
"What do you want?" she asked. She sat down, folding her hands in her lap. She was accustomed to a life of danger.
"Come now," he said, in high good humour, quite mad, enjoying his cat-and-mouse. "We must not rush it in this bald way. We must be at ease before we begin our conversation, otherwise it will seem so strained."
"I am listening."
"No, no. You must call me Mordy, or some such pet name. Then it will seem more natural when I call you Jenny. Everything will go forward so much more pleasantly."
She would not answer.
"Guenever, have you any idea of your position?"
"My position Is that of the Queen of England, as yours is that of the Protector."
"While Arthur and Lancelot are fighting each other in France."
"That is so."
"Suppose I were to tell you," he asked, stroking the pug, "that I had a letter this morning? That Arthur and Lancelot are dead?"
"I should not believe you."
"They killed each other in battle."
"It is not true," she told him quietly.
"As a matter of fact, it isn't. How did you guess?"
"If it was not true, it was cruel to say so. Why did you say it?"
"A great many people would have believed it, Jenny. I expect a great many will."
"Why should they?" she asked, before she had caught his drift. Then she stopped, catching her breath. For the first time, she began to feel afraid; but it was for Arthur.
"You can't mean..."
"Oh, but I can," he exclaimed gaily, "and I do. What do you think would happen if I were to announce poor Arthur's death?"
"But, Mordred, you couldn't do such a thing! They are alive.. You owe everything... The King made you his deputy,.. Your fealty... It would not be true! Arthur has always treated you with such scrupulous justice...."
He said with cold eyes: "I have never asked to be treated with justice. It is something which he does to people, to amuse himself."
"But he is your father!"
"So far as that goes, I did not ask to be born. I suppose he did that to amuse himself, also."
"I see."
She sat, twisting her sewing in her hands, trying to think.
"Why do you hate my husband?" she asked, almost with wonder.
"I don't hate him. I despise him."
"He didn't know," she explained gently, "that your mother was his sister, when it happened."
"And I suppose he didn't know that I was his son, when he put us out in the boat?"
"He was scarcely nineteen, Mordred. They had frightened him with prophecies, and he did what they made him."
"My mother was a good woman until she met King Arthur. She had a happy home with Lot of Orkney, and she bore him four brave sons. What happened after?"
"But she was more than twice his age! I should have thought..."
He stopped her, holding up his hand.
"You are speaking of my mother."
"I am sorry, Mordred, but really..."
"I loved my mother."
"Mordred..."
"King Arthur came to a woman who was faithful to her husband. When he left, she was a wanton. She ended her life in a naked bed with Sir Lamorak, justly slain by her own child."
"Mordred, it is no good saying anything if you can't see... if you can't believe that Arthur is kind and sorry and in trouble. He is fond of you. He was saying how he loved you only a day or two before this misery began...."
"He can keep his love."
"He has been so fair," she pleaded.
"The just and noble kingl Yes, it is easy to be fair, when it is over. That is the amusing part. Justice! He, can keep that too."
She said, trying to speak steadily: "If you proclaim yourself king, they will come from France to fight you. Then we shall have a double war instead of a single one, and it will be fought in England. The whole fellowship will be blotted out."
He smiled in pure delight.
"It seems unbelievable," she said, pinching the embroidery.
There was nothing she could do. For a moment it crossed her mind that if she humiliated herself to him, knelt down on her stiff old knees to plead for mercy, he might be soothed. But it was evidently hopeless. He was fixed in a course, like a ball in a groove. Even his conversation was, as it were, a spoken part. It would end according to the script.
"Mordred," she said helplessly, "have pity on the country people, if you will have none on Arthur or on me."
He pushed the pug off his lap and stood up, smiling at her with crazy satisfaction. He stretched himself, looking down on her, but not seeing her at all.
"I should, of course, have pity on you," he said, "if not on Arthur."
"What do you mean?"
"I was thinking of a pattern, Jenny, a simple pattern."
She watched him without speaking.
"Yes. My father committed incest with my mother. Don't you think it would be a pattern, Jenny, if I were to answer it by marrying my father's wife?"
It was dark in Gawaine's tent, except for a flat pan of charcoal which lit it dimly from below. The tent was poor and shabby, compared with the splendid pavilions of the English knights. On the hard bed there were a few plaids in the Orkney tartan, and the only ornaments were a leaden bottle of holy water which he was taking for medicine, marked "Optimus egrorum, medicus fit Thomas bonorum," together with a withered bunch of heather, tied to the pole. These were his household gods.
Gawaine was stretched face downward on the plaids. The man was crying, slowly and hopelessly, while Arthur, sitting beside him, stroked his hand. It was his wound that had weakened him, or else he would not have cried. The old King was trying to soothe him.
"Don't grieve about it, Gawaine," he said. "You did the best you could."
"It is the second time he has spared me, the second time in a month."
"Lancelot was always strong. The years don't seem to touch Mm."
"Why canna he kill me, then? I begged him to have done with it. I told him that if he left me to be patched, I should but fight him fresh when I was mended.
"And, God!" he added tearfully, "my head sore aches!"
Arthur said with a sigh: "It was because you got both blows on the same place. That was bad luck."
"It makes a body feel shamed."
"Don't think about it, then. Lie quiet, or you will get feverish again, and will not be able to fight for a long tune. Then what would we do? We should be quite lost without our Gawaine to lead the battle for us."
"I am but a man of straw, Arthur," he said. "I am but an ill-passioned bully, and I canna kill him."
"People who say they are no good are always the good ones. Let's change the subject and talk about something pleasant. England, for instance."
"We shall never see England again."
"Nonsense! We shall see England just in the spring. Why, it is almost spring now. The snow-drops will have been out for ages, and I dare say Guenever will have some crocuses already. She is good at gardening."
"Guenever was kind to me."
"My Gwen is kind to everybody," said the old man proudly. "I wonder what she is doing now? Going to bed, I suppose. Or perhaps she is sitting up late, having a talk with your brother. It would be nice to think that they were talking about us at this minute, perhaps saying admiring things about Gawaine's prowess: or Gwen might be saying that she wished her old man would come home."
Gawaine moved restlessly on the bed.
"I have a mind to gang home," he muttered. "If Lancelot hates clan Orkney, as Mordred says, why does he spare the laird of it? Mayhap he did kill Gareth by mischance."
"I am sure it was mischance. If you will help to end the war, we may be able to stop it fairly soon. It is your justice we are said to be fighting for now, you know. I and the others who want to fight would have to bow to that eventually. If you are content to make it up there is nobody who will be more happy than I will be."
"Aye, but I swore to fight him to the death."
"You have had two good tries."
"And taken a braw thrashing ilka time," he said bitterly. "He could have made the war end twice. Nay, it would look like cowardice to compound."
"The bravest people are the ones who don't mind looking like cowards. Remember how Lancelot hid in Joyous Gard for months, while we sang songs outside."
"I canna forget our Gareth's face."
"It was sad for all of us."
Gawaine was trying to think, an effort not made easy to him by practice. On this dark evening it was twice as difficult, because of his head. Since the time when Galahad gave him concussion in the quest for the Grail he had been liable to headaches, and now, by a curious accident, Lancelot had given him two blows in separate duels, on the same place.
"What for should I give in," he asked, "because he beats me? It would be fleeing him to give in now. If I could fell him in a third engagement, maybe. And spare the chiel... It would be even."
"The fields," said the King thoughtfully, "will soon be king-cups and daisies in England. It would be nice to win a peace."
"Aye, and the spring hawking."
The figure twisted in its dim bed with a movement of remembrance, but froze as the pain shot through its skull. "Almighty, but my head throbs sorely." "Would you like me to get a wet cloth for it, or a drink of milk?"
"Nay. Let it bide. It willna help." "Poor Gawaine. I hope nothing is broken in it." "The thing that is broken is my spirit. Let us talk of other matters."
The King said doubtfully: "I ought not to talk too much. I think I ought to go away, and leave you to sleep."
"Ach, stay. Dinna leave me by mysel'. It irks me when I am by my lone." "The doctor said..."
"Tae hell wi' the doctor. Bide a wee while. Hold my hand. Tell me of England."
"There ought to be a post tomorrow, and then we shall be able to read about England. We shall have the latest news, and there will be a letter from young Mordred, and perhaps my Gwen will write to me."
"Mordred's letters are cold cheer, some way." Arthur hastened to defend him.
"That is only because he has an unhappy life. You may depend upon it there is a regular fire of love inside him. Gwen used to say that all his warmth was for his mother." "He was fond of our mother." "Perhaps he was in love with her." "That would account for why he was jealous of ye." Gawaine was surprised at this discovery, which had struck him for the first time.
"Perhaps that was why he allowed Sir Agravaine to kill her, when she had that affair with Lamorak... Poor boy, he has been ill-treated by the world,"
"He is the only brother I have left"
"I know. Lancelot's was a tragic accident."
The laird of Lothian moved his bandage feverishly.
"But it canna have been accident. I could jalouse it had they worn their helms, but they were bonnetiess. He must have known them."
"We have talked this over often."
"Aye, it is vain."
The old man asked with tragic diffidence: "You don't think you could bring yourself to forgive him, Gawaine, however it happened? I am not seeking to abandon duty, but if justice could be tempered with mercy..."
"I will temper it when I hold him at my mercy, not before."
"Well, it is for you to say. Here comes the doctor to tell me I have stayed too long. Come in, doctor, come in."
But it was the Bishop of Rochester who entered in a bustle, carrying packets and an iron lantern.
"It is you, Rochester. We thought you were the doctor."
"Good evening, sir. And good evening to you, Sir Gawaine."
"Good evening."
"How is the head today?"
"It grows better, thank you, my lord."
"Well, that is excellent news.
"And I," he added archly, "have brought some good news too. The post has come in early!"
"Letters!"
"One for you," he handed it to the King, "a long one."
"Is there ought for me?" asked Gawaine.
"Nothing, I am afraid, this week. You will have better luck next time."
Arthur took the letter to the lantern and broke the seal.
"You will excuse me if I read."
"Of course. We cannot stand on ceremony with the news from England. Dear me, I never thought I should become a palmer at my time of life, Sir Gawaine, and have to gallivant in foreign parts...."
The bishop's prattle died away. Arthur had made no movement. He had turned neither red nor pale, nor dropped the letter, nor stared in front of him. He was reading quietly. But Rochester stopped speaking, and Gawaine raised himself on one elbow. They watched him reading, open-mouthed.
"Sir..."
"Nothing," he said, brushing them away with his hand.
"Excuse me. The news."
"I hope..."
"Let me finish, please. Talk to Sir Gawaine."
Gawaine asked: "Is there ill tidings... May I see?"
"No, please, a minute."
"Mordred?"
"No. It is nothing. The doctor says... My lord, I would like to speak to you outside."
Gawaine began to heave himself into a sitting position. "I will be told."
"There is nothing to be upset about. Lie down. We will come back."
"If ye go without telling me, I shall follow."
"It is nothing. You will hurt your head."
"What is it?"
"Nothing. It is only..."
"Well?"
"Well, Gawaine," he said, suddenly collapsing, "it seems that Mordred has proclaimed himself the King of England, under this New Order of his."
"Mordred!"
"He has told his Thrasners that we are dead, you see," Arthur explained, as if it were some sort of problem, "and..."
"Mordred says we are dead?" "He says we are dead, and —" But he could not frame it. "And what?"
"He is going to marry Gwen."
There was a moment of dead silence, while the bishop's hand strayed vaguely to his pectoral cross and Gawaine's clenched itself in the bed clothes. Then they both spoke at once.
"The Lord Protector..."
"It canna be true. It will be a jest. My brother wouldna do a thing like yon."
"Unfortunately it is true," said the King patiently. "This is a letter from Guenever. Heaven knows how she managed to get it through."
"The Queen's age..."
"After the proclamation, he proposed to her. She had nobody to help. The Queen accepted his proposal."
"Accepted Mordred!"
Gawaine had managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed."Uncle, give me the letter."
He took it out of the limp hand, which yielded it automatically, and began to read, tilting the page to the light. Arthur continued to explain.
"The Queen accepted Mordred's proposal, and asked for permission to go to London for her trousseau. When she was in London with the few who remained faithful, she threw herself suddenly into the Tower and barred the gates. Thank God, it is a strong fort. They are besieging her in the Tower of London now, and Mordred is using guns."
Rochester asked in bewilderment: "Guns?"
"He is using the cannon."
It was too much for the old priest's intellects.
"It is incredible!" he said. "To say we are dead, and to marry the Queen! And then to use cannon..."
"Now that the guns have come," said Arthur, "the Table is over. We must hurry home."
"To use cannons against men!",
"We must go to the rescue immediately, my lord. Gawaine can stay here..."
But the Laird of Orkney was out of bed.
"Gawaine, what are you doing? Lie down at once."
"I am coming with ye."
"Gawaine, lie down. Rochester, help me with him."
"My last brother has broken his fealty."
"Gawaine..."
"And Lancelot... Ah God, my head!"
He stood swaying in the dim light, holding the bandage with both hands, while his shadow moved grotesquely round the tent pole.
Anguish of Ireland had once dreamed of a wind which blew down all their castles and towns—and this one was conspiring to do it. It was blowing round Benwick Castle on all the organ stops. The noises it made sounded like inchoate masses of silk being pulled through trees, as we pull hair through a comb—like heaps of sand pouring on fine sand from a scoop—like gigantic linens being torn —like drums in distant battle—like an endless snake switching through the world's undergrowth of trees and houses— like old men sighing, and women howling and wolves running. It whistled, hummed, throbbed, boomed in the chimneys. Above all, it sounded like a live creature: some monstrous, elemental being, wailing its damnation. It was Dante's wind, bearing lost lovers and cranes: Sabbathless Satan, toiling and turmoiling.
In the western ocean it harried the sea flat, lifting water bodily out of water and carrying it as spume. On dry land it made the trees lean down before it The gnarled thorn trees, which had grown in double trunks, groaned one trunk against the other with plaintive screams. In the whipping and snapping branches of the trees, the birds rode it out head to wind, their bodies horizontal, their neat claws turned to anchors. The peregrines in the cliffs sat stoically, their mutton-chop-whiskers made streaky by the rain and the wet feathers standing upright on their heads. The wild geese beating out to their night's rest in the twilight scarcely won a yard a minute against the streaming air, their tumultuary cries blown backward from them, so that they had to be past before you heard them, although they were only a few feet up. The mallard and widgeon, coming in high with the gale behind, were gone before they had arrived.
Under the doors of the castle the piercing blasts tortured the flapping rushes of the floors. They boo'ed in the tubes of the corkscrew stairs, rattled the wooden shutters, whined shrilly through the shot windows, stirred the cold tapestries in frigid undulations, searched for backbones. The stone towers thrilled under them, trembling bodily like the bass strings of musical instruments. The slates flew off and shattered thelmselves with desultory crashes.
Bors and Bleoberis were crouching over a bright fire, to which the bitter wind seemed to have given the property of throwing out light without heat. Even the fire seemed frozen, like a painted one. Their minds were baffled by the plague of air.
"But why did they go so quickly?" asked Bors complainingly.
"I never knew a siege to be raised like that before. They raised it overnight. They went as if they had been blown away."
"They must have had bad news. Something must have gone wrong in England." "Perhaps."
"If they had decided to forgive Lancelot, they would have sent a message."
"It does seem strange, sailing away at a moment's notice, without saying anything."
"Do you think there can have been a revolt in Cornwall, or in Wales, or in Ireland?"
"There are always the Old Ones," agreed Bleoberis numbly.
"I don't think it could be a revolt. I think the King was taken ill, and had to be carried home quickly. Or Gawaine might have been taken ill. That blow which Lancelot gave him the second time, perhaps it perched his brain-pan?"
"Perhaps." Bors banged the fire.
"To go off like that, and never say a word!"
"Why doesn't Lancelot do something?"
"What can he do?"
"I don't know."
"The King has banished him."
"Yes."
"Then there is nothing to do."
"All the same," said Bleoberis, "I wish he would do something."
A door opened with a clatter at the bottom of the turret stairs. The tapestries swirled out, the rushes stood on end, the fire gushed smoke, and Lancelot's voice embedded in the wind, shouted: "Bors! Bleoberis! Demaris!"
"Here."
"Where?"
"Up here."
As the distant door closed, silence returned to the room. The rushes lay down again, and Lancelot's feet sounded clearly on the stone steps, where before it had been difficult to hear his shout. He came in hastily, carrying a letter.
"Bors. Bleoberis. I have been looking for you."
They had stood up.
"A letter has come from England. The messengers were blown ashore, five miles up the coast. We shall have to go at once."
"To England?"
"Yes, yes. To England, of course. I have told Lionel to act as transport officer, and I want you, Bors, to look after the fodder. We shall have to wait until the gale blows itself out."
"Why are we going?" asked Bors.
"You should tell us the news..."
"News?" he said vaguely. "There is no time for that. I will tell you in the boat. Here, read the letter."
He handed it to Bors, and was gone before they could reply.
"Well!"
"Read what it says."
"I don't even know who it is from."
"Perhaps it will say in the letter."
Lancelot re-appeared before they had taken their researches further than the date."Bleoberis," he said, "I forgot. I want you to look after the horses. Here, give me the writing. If you two start speffing it out, you will be reading all night."
"What does it say?"
"Most of the news came by the messenger. It seems that Mordred has revolted against Arthur, proclaimed himself the Leader of England, and proposed to Guenever."
"But she is married already," protested Bleoberis.
"That was why the siege was broken up. Then, it appears, Mordred raised an army in Kent to oppose the King's landing. He had given it out that Arthur was dead. He is besieging the Queen in the Tower of London, and using cannon."
"Cannon!"
"He met Arthur at Dover and fought a battle to prevent the landing. It was a bad engagement, half on sea and half on land, but the king won. He won to land."
"Who wrote the letter?"
Lancelot suddenly sat down.
"It is from Gawaine, from poor Gawaine! He is dead."
"Dead!"
"How can he write..." began Bleoberis.
"It is a dreadful letter. Gawaine was a good man. All you people who forced me to fight him, you didn't see what a heart he had inside."
"Read it," suggested Bors impatiently.
"It seems that a cut which I gave him on the head was a dangerous one. He never ought to have travelled. But he was lonely and miserable and he had been betrayed. His last brother had turned traitor. He insisted on going back to help the King—and, in the landing battle, he tried to strike his blow. Unfortunately he was clubbed on the old wound, and died of it a few hours later."
"I don't see why you should be disturbed."
"Listen to the letter."
Lancelot carried it to the window and fell silent, examining the writing. There was something touching about it, the hand being so unlike its author. Gawaine had hardly been the sort of person you thought of as a writer. Indeed it would have seemed more natural if he had been illiterate, like most of the others. Yet here, instead of the spiky Gothic then in use, was the lovely old Gaelic minuscule, as neat and round and small as when he had learned it from some ancient saint in dim Dunlothian. He had written so unfrequentiy since, that the art had retained its beauty. It was an old-maid's hand, or an old-fashioned boy's, sitting with his feet hooked round the legs of a stool and his tongue out, writing carefully. He had carried this innocent precision, these dainty demoded cusps, through misery and passion to old age. It was as if a bright boy had stepped out of the black armour: a small boy with a drop on the end of his nose, his feet bare with blue toes, a root of tangle in the thin bundle of carrots which were his fingers.
"Unto Sir Lancelot, flower of all noble knights that ever / heard of or saw by my days: I, Sir Gawaine, King Lot's son of Orkney, sister's son unto the noble King Arthur, send thee greetings. "And I will that all the world wit that I, Sir Gawaine, Knight of the Round Table, sought my death at thy hands— and not through thy deserving, but it was mine own seeking. Wherefore I beseech thee, Sir Lancelot, to return again unto this realm and see my tomb, and pray some prayer more or less for my soul.
"And this same day that I wrote this cedle, I was hurt to the death in the same wound which I had on thy hand, Sir Lancelot—for of a more nobler man might I not be slain.
"Also, Sir Lancelot, for all the love that ever was betwixt us..."
Lancelot stopped reading and threw the letter on the table.
"Here," he said, "I can't go on. He urges me to come with speed, to help the King against his brother: his last relation. Gawaine loved his family, Bors, and in the end he was left with none. Yet he wrote to forgive me. He even said that it was his own fault. God knows, he was a right good brother."
"What are we to do about the King?"
"We must get to England as quickly as we can. Mordred has retreated to Canterbury, where he offers a fresh battle. It may be over by now. This news has been delayed by storm. Everything depends on speed."
Bleoberis said: "I will go and look to the horses. When do we sail?"
"Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. When the wind drops. Be quick with them."
"Good,"
"And you, Bors, the fodder,"
"Yes."
Lancelot followed Bleoberis to the stairs, but turned in the doorway.
"The Queen besieged," he said. "We must get her out."
"Yes."
Bors, left alone with the wind, picked up the letter with curiosity. He tilted it in the failing light, admiring the zed-like g, the curly b, and the curved t, like the blade of a plough. Each tiny line was the furrow it threw up, sweet as the new earth. But the furrow wandered towards the end. He turned it about, observing the brown signature. He spelled out the conclusion—making speaking movements with his mouth, while the rushes tapped and the smoke puffed and the wind howled.
"And at this date my letter was written, but two hours and a half afore my death, written with mine own hand, and so subscribed with part of my heart's blood.
Gawaine of Orkney."
He spelled the name out twice, and tapped his teeth. Gawaine. "I suppose," he said out loud, doubtfully, "they would have pronounced it Cuchullain in the North? You can't tell with ancient languages."
Then he put down the letter, went over to the dreary window, and began humming a tune called Brume, brume on hil, whose words have been lost to us in the wave of time. Perhaps they were like the modern ones, which say that
Still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
The same wind of sorrow whistled round the King's pavilion at Salisbury. Inside there was a silent calm, after the riot of the open. It was a sumptuous interior, what with the royal tapestries—Uriah was there, still in the article of bisection—and the couch strewn deep with furs, and the flashing candles. It was a marquee rather than a tent. The King's mail gleamed dully on a rack at the back. An ill-bred falcon, who was subject to the vice of screaming, stood hooded and motionless on a perch like a parrot's, brooding in some ancestral nightmare. A greyhound, as white as ivory, couching on its hocks and elbows, its tail curved into the bony sickle of the greyhound, watched the old man with the doe-soft eyes of pity. A superb enamelled chess-board, with pieces of jasper and crystal, stood at checkmate beside the bed. There were papers everywhere. They covered the secretary's table, the reading desk, the stools—dreary papers of government, still bravely persevered in—of law, still to be codified—of commissariat and of armament and of orders for the day. A large ledger lay open at the note of some wretched defaulter, William atte Lane, who had been condemned to be hanged, suspendatur, for looting. On the margin, in the secretary's neat hand, was the laconic epitaph "susp.", suitable to the mood of tragedy. Covering the reading desk there were endless piles of petitions and memorials, all annotated with the royal decision and signature. On those to which the King had agreed, he had written laboriously "Le roy le veult." The rejected petitions were marked with the courtly evasion always used by royalty: "Le ray s'advisera." The reading desk and its seat were made in one piece, and there the King himself sat drooping. His head lay among the papers, scattering them. He looked as if he were dead—he nearly was.
Arthur was tired out. He had been broken by the two battles which he had fought already, the one at Dover, the other at Barbara Down. His wife was a prisoner. His oldest friend was banished. His son was trying to kill him. Gawaine was buried. His Table was dispersed. His country was at war. Yet he could have breasted all these things in some way, if the central tenet of his heart had not been ravaged. Long ago, when his mind had been a nimble boy's called Wart—long ago he had been taught by an aged benevolence, wagging a white beard. He had been taught by Merlyn to believe that man was perfectible: that he was on the whole more decent than beastly: that good was worth trying: that there was no such thing as original sin. He had been forged as a weapon for the aid of man, on the assumption that men were good. He had been forged, by that deluded old teacher, into a sort of Pasteur or Curie or patient discoverer of insulin. The service for which he had been destined had been against Force, the mental illness of humanity. His Table, his idea of Chivalry, his Holy Grail, his devotion to Justice: these had been progressive steps in the effort for which he had been bred He was like a scientist who had pursued the root of cancer all his life. Might—to have ended it— to have made men happier. But the whole structure depended on the first premise: that man was decent.
Looking back at his life, it seemed to him that he had been struggling all the time to dam a flood, which, whenever he had checked it, had broken through at a new place, setting him his work to do again. It was the flood of Force Majeur. During the earliest days before his marriage he had tried to match its strength with strength—in his battles against the Gaelic confederation—only to find that two wrongs did not make a right. But he had crushed the feudal dream of war successfully. Then, with his Round Table, he had tried to harness Tyranny in lesser forms, so that its power might be used for useful ends. He had sent out the men of might to rescue the oppressed and to straighten evil —to put down the individual might of barons, just as he had put down the might of kings. They had done so—until, in the course of time, the ends had been achieved, but the force had remained upon his hands unchastened. So he had sought for a new channel, had sent them out on God's business, searching for the Holy Grail. That too had been a failure, because those who had achieved the Quest had become perfect and been lost to the world, while those who had failed in it had soon returned no better. At last he had sought to make a map of force, as it were, to bind it down by laws. He had tried to codify the evil uses of might by individuals, so that he might set bounds to them by the impersonal justice of the state. He had been prepared to sacrifice his wife and his best friend, to the impersonality of Justice. And then, even as the might of the individual seemed to have been curbed, the Principle of Might had sprung up behind him in another shape—in the shape of collective might, of banded ferocity, of numerous armies insusceptible to individual laws. He had bound the might of units, only to find that it was assumed by pluralities. He had conquered murder, to be faced with war. There were no Laws for that.
The wars of his early days, those against Lot and the Dictator of Rome, had been battles to upset the feudal convention of warfare as foxhunting or as gambling for ransom. To upset it, he had introduced the idea of total war. In his old age this same total warfare had come back to roost as total hatred, as the most modern of hostilities.
Now, with his forehead resting on the papers and his eyes closed, the King was trying not to realize. For if there was such a thing as original sin, if man was on the whole a villain, if the bible was right in saying that the heart of men was deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, then the purpose of his life had been a vain one. Chivalry and justice became a child's illusions, if the stock on which he had tried to graft them was to be the Thrasher, was to be Homo ferox instead of Homo sapiens.
Behind this thought there was a worse one, with which he dared not grapple. Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe—his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction. Perhaps Might was a law of Nature, needed to keep the survivors fit. Perhaps he himself...
But he could challenge it no further. He felt as if there was something atrophied between his eyes, where the base of the nose grew into the skull. He could not sleep. He had bad dreams. Tomorrow was the final battle. Meanwhile there were all these papers to read and sign. But he could neither read nor sign them. He could not lift his head from the desk.
Why did men fight?
The old man had always been a dutiful thinker, never an inspired one. Now his exhausted brain slipped into its accustomed circles: the withered paths, like those of the donkey in the treadmill, round which he had plodded many thousand times ia vain.
Was it the wicked leaders who led innocent populations to slaughter, or was it wicked populations who chose leaders after their own hearts? On the face of it, it seemed unlikely that one Leader could force a million Englishmen against their will. If, for instance, Mordred had been anxious to make the English wear petticoats, or stand on their heads, they would surely not have joined his party—however clever or persuasive or deceitful or even terrible his inducements? A leader was surely forced to offer something which appealed to those he led? He might give the impetus to the falling building, but surely it had to be toppling on its own account before it fell? If this were true, then wars were not calamities into which amiable innocents were led by evil men. They were national movements, deeper, more subtle in origin. And, indeed, it did not feel to him as if he or Mordred had led their country to its misery. If it was so easy to lead one's country in various directions, as if she was a pig on a string, why had he failed to lead her into chivalry, into justice and into peace? He had been trying. Then again—this was the second circle—it was like the Inferno—if neither he nor Mordred had really set the misery in motion, who had been the cause? How did the fact of war begin in general? For any one war seemed so rooted in its antecedents. Mordred went back to Morgause, Morgause to Uther Pendragon, Uther to his ancestors. It seemed as if Cain had slain Abel, seizing his country, after which the men of Abel had sought to win their patrimony again for ever. Man had gone on, through age after age, avenging wrong with wrong, slaughter with slaughter. Nobody was the better for it, since both sides always suffered, yet everybody was inextricable. The present war might be attributed to Mordred, or to himself. But also it was due to a million Thrashers, to Lancelot, Guenever, Gawaine, everybody. Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it. It was as if everything would lead to sorrow, so long as man refused to forget the past. The wrongs of Uther and of Cain were wrongs which could have been righted only by the blessing of forgetting them.
Sisters, mothers, grandmothers: everything was rooted in the past! Actions of any sort in one generation might have incalculable consequences in another, so that merely to sneeze was a pebble thrown into a pond, whose circles might lap the furthest shores. It seemed as if the only hope was not to act at all, to draw no swords for anything, to hold oneself still, like a pebble not thrown. But that would be hateful.
What was Right, what was Wrong? What distinguished Doing from Not Doing? If I were to have my time again, the old King thought, I would bury myself in a monastery, for fear of a Doing which might lead to woe.
The blessing of forgetfulness: that was the first essential. If everything one did, or which one's fathers had done, was an endless sequence of Doings doomed to break forth bloodily, then the past must be obliterated and a new start made. Man must be ready to say: Yes, since Cain there has been injustice, but we can only set the misery right if we accept a status quo. Lands have been robbed, men slain, nations humiliated. Let us now start fresh without remembrance, rather than live forward and backward at the same time. We cannot build the future by avenging the past. Let us sit down as brothers, and accept the Peace of God.
Unfortunately men did say this, in each successive war. They were always saying that the present one was to be the last, and afterwards there was to be a heaven. They were always to rebuild such a new world as never was seen. When
the time came, however, they were too stupid. They were like children crying out that they would build a house—but, when it came to building, they had not the practical ability. They did not know the way to choose the right materials.
The old man's thoughts went laboriously. They were leading him nowhere: they doubled back on thelmselves and ran the same course twice: yet he was so accustomed to them that he could not stop. He entered another circle.
Perhaps the great cause of war was possession, as John Batt the communist had said. "The matters gothe nat well to passe in Englonde," he had stated, "nor shall nat do tyll every thyng be common, and that there be no villayns nor gentylmen." Perhaps wars were fought because people said my kingdom, my wife, my lover, my possessions. This was what he and Lancelot aad all of them had always held behind their thoughts. Perhaps, so long as people tried to possess things separately from each other, even honour and souls, there would be wars for ever. The hungry wolf would always attack the fat reindeer, the poor man would rob the banker, the serf would make revolutions against the higher class, and the lack-penny nation would fight the rich. Perhaps wars only happened between those who had and those who had not. As against this, you were forced to place the fact that nobody could define the state of "having." A knight with a silver suit of armour would immediately call himself a have-not, if he met a knight with a golden one.
But, he thought, assume for a moment that "having," however it is defined, might be the crux of the problem.
I have, and Mordred has not. He protested to himself in contradiction: it is not fair to put it like that, as if Mordred or I were the movers of the storm. For indeed, we are nothing but figureheads to complex forces which seem to be under a kind of impulse. It is as if there was an impulse in the fabric of society. Mordred is urged along ahnost helplessly now, by numbers of people too many to count: people who believe in John Ball, hoping to gain power over their fellow men by asserting that all are equal, or people who see in any upheaval a chance to advance their own might. It seems to come from underneath. Ball's men and Mordred's are the under-dogs seeking to rise, or the knights who were not leaders of the Round Table and therefore hated it, or the poor who would be rich, or the powerless seeking to gain power. And my men, for whom I am no more than a standard or a talisman, are the knights who were leaders—the rich defending their possessions, the powerful unready to let it slip. It is a meeting of the Haves and Have-Nots in force, an insane clash between bodies of men, not between leaders. But let that pass. Assume the vague idea that war is due to "having" in general. In that case the proper thing would be to refuse to have at all. Such, as Rochester had sometimes pointed out, was the advice of God. There had been the rich man who was threatened with the needle's eye, and there had been the money changers. That was why the Church could not interfere too much in the sad affairs of the world, so Rochester said, because the nations and the classes and the individuals were always crying out "Mine, mine," where the Church was instructed to say "Ours."
If this were true, then it would not be a question only of sharing property, as such. It would be a question of sharing everything—even thoughts, feelings, lives. God had told people that they would have to cease to live as individuals. They would have to go into the force of life, like a drop falling into a river. God had said that it was only the men who could give up their jealous selves, their futile individualities of happiness and sorrow, who would die peacefully and enter the ring. He that would save his life was asked to lose it.
Yet there was something in the old white head which could not accept the godly view. Obviously you might cure a cancer of the womb by not having a womb in the first place. Sweeping and drastic remedies could cut out anything—and life with the cut. Ideal advice, which nobody was built to follow, was no advice at all. Advising heaven to earth was useless.
Another worn-out circle spun before him. Perhaps war was due to fear: to fear of reliability. Unless there was truth, and unless people told the truth, there was always danger in everything outside the individual. You told the truth to yourself, but you had no surety for your neighbour. This uncertainty must end by making the neighbour a menace. Such, at any rate, would have been Lancelot's explanation of the war. He had been used to say that man's most vital possession was his Word. Poor Lance, he had broken his own word: all the same, there had been few men with such a good one.
Perhaps wars happened because nations had no confidence in the Word. They were frightened, and so they fought. Nations were like people—they had feelings of inferiority, or of superiority, or of revenge, or of fear. It was right to personify nations.
Suspicion and fear: possessiveness and greed: resentment for ancestral wrong: all these seemed to be a part of it. Yet they were not the solution. He could not see the real solution. He was too old and tired and miserable to think constructively. He was only a man who had meant well, who had been spurred along that course of thinking by an eccentric necromancer with a weakness for humanity. Justice had been his last attempt—to do nothing which was not just. But it had ended in failure. To do at all had proved too difficult. He was done himself.
Arthur proved that he was not quite done, by lifting his bead. There was something invincible in his heart, a tincture of grandness in simplicity. He sat upright and reached for the iron bell.
"Page," he said, as the small boy trotted in, knuckling his eyes.
"My lord."
The King looked at him. Even in his own extremity he was able to notice others, especially if they were fresh or decent. When he had comforted the broken Gawaine in his tent, he had been the one who was more in need of comfort.
"My poor child," he said. "You ought to be in bed."
He observed the boy with a strained, thread-bare attention. It was long since he had seen youth's innocence and certainty.
"Look," he said, "will you take this note to the bishop? Don't wake him if he is asleep."
"My lord."
"Thank you."
As the live creature went, he called it back.
"Oh, page?"
"My lord?"
"What is your name?"
"Tom, my lord," it said politely.
"Where do you live?" "Near Warwick, my lord." "Near Warwick."
The old man seemed to be trying to imagine the place, as if it were Paradise Terrestre, or a country described by Mandeville.
"At a place called Newbold Revell. It is a pretty one."
"How old are you?"
"I shall be thirteen in November, my lord."
"And I have kept you up all night."
"No, my lord. I slept a lot on one of the saddles."
"Tom of Newbold Revell," he said with wonder. "We seem to have involved a lot of people. Tell me, Tom, what do you intend to do tomorrow?"
"I shall fight, sir. I have a good bow."
"And you will kill people with this bow?"
"Yes, my lord. A great many, I hope."
"Suppose they were to kill you?"
"Then I should be dead, my lord."
"I see."
"Shall I take the letter now?"
"No. Wait a minute. I want to talk to somebody, only my head is muddled."
"Shall I fetch a glass of wine?"
"No, Tom. Sit down and try to listen. Lift those chessmen off the stool. Can you understand things when they are said?"
"Yes, my lord. I am good at understanding."
"Could you understand if I asked you not to fight tomorrow?"
"I should want to fight," it said stoutly.
"Everybody wants to fight, Tom, but nobody knows why. Suppose I were to ask you not to fight, as a special favour to the King? Would you do that?"
"I should do what I was told."
"Listen, then. Sit for a minute and I will tell you a story. I am a very old man, Tom, and you are young. When you are old, you will be able to tell what I have told tonight, and I want you to do that. Do you understand this want?"
"Yes, sir. I think so."
"Put it like this. There was a king once, called King Arthur. That is me. When he came to the throne of England, he found that all the kings and barons were fighting against each other like madmen, and, as they could afford to fight in expensive suits of armour, there was practically nothing which could stop them from doing what they pleased. They did a lot of bad things, because they lived by force. Now this king had an idea, and the idea was that force ought to be used, if it were used at all, on behalf of justice, not on its own account. Follow this, young boy. He thought that if he could get his barons fighting for truth, and to help weak people, and to redress wrongs, then their fighting might not be such a bad thing as once it used to be. So he gathered together all the true and kindly people that he knew, and he dressed them in armour, and he made them knights, and taught them his idea, and set them down, at a Round Table. There were a hundred and fifty of them in the happy days, and King Arthur loved his Table with all his heart. He was prouder of it than he was of his own dear wife, and for many years his new knights went about killing ogres, and rescuing damsels and saving poor prisoners, and trying to set the world to rights. That was the King's idea."
"I think it was a good idea, my lord."
"It was, and it was not. God knows."
"What happened to the King in the end?" asked the child, when the story seemed to have dried up.
"For some reason, things went wrong. The Table split into factions, a bitter war began, and all were killed."
The boy interrupted confidently. "No," he said, "not all. The King won. We shall win."
Arthur smiled vaguely and shook bis head. He would have nothing but the truth."Everybody was killed," he repeated, "except a certain page. I know what I am talking about."
"My lord?"
"This page was called young Tom of Newbold Revell near Warwick, and the old King sent him off before the battle, upon pain of dire disgrace. You see, the King wanted there to be somebody left, who would remember their famous idea. He wanted badly that Tom should go back to Newbold Revell, where he could grow into a man and live his life in Warwickshire peace—and he wanted him to tell everybody who would listen about this ancient idea, which both of them had once thought good. Do you think you could do that, Thomas, to please the King?"
The child said, with the pure eyes of absolute truth: "I would do anything for King Arthur."
"That's a brave fellow. Now listen, man. Don't get these legendary people muddled up. It is 1 who tell you about my idea. It is I who am going to command you to take horse to Warwickshire at once, and not to fight with your bow tomorrow at all. Do you understand all this?"
"Yes, King Arthur."
"Will you promise to be careful of yourself afterward? Will you try to remember that you are a kind of vessel to carry on the idea, when things go wrong, and that the whole hope depends on you alive?"
"I will."
"It seems selfish of me to use you for it."
"It is an honour for your poor page, good my lord."
"Thomas, my idea of those knights was a sort of candle, like these ones here. I have carried it for many years with a hand to shield it from the wind. It has flickered often. I am giving you the candle now—you won't let it out?"
"It will burn."
"Good Tom. The light-bringer. How old did you say you were?"
"Nearly thirteen."
"Sixty more years then, perhaps. Half a century."
"I will give it to other people, King. English people."
"You will say to them in Warwickshire: Eh, he wor a wonderly fine candle?"
"Aye, lad, that I will."
"Then 'tis: Na, Tom, for thee must go right quickly. Thou'St take the best son of a mare that thee kinst find, and thou wilt ride post into Warwickshire, lad, wi' nowt but the curlew?"
"I will ride post, mate, so that the candle burn."
"Good Tom, then, God bless 'ee. Doant thee ferget thick Bishop of Rochester, afore thou goest."
The little boy kneeled down to kiss his master's hand— his surcoat, with the Malory bearings, looking absurdly new.
"My lord of England," he said.
Arthur raised him gently, to kiss him on the shoulder.
"Sir Thomas of Warwick," he said—and the boy was gone.
The tent was empty, tawny and magnificent. The wind wailed and the candles guttered. Waiting for the Bishop, the old, old man sat down at his reading desk. Presently his head drooped forward on the papers. The greyhound's eyes, catching the candles as she watched him, burned spectrally, two amber cups of feral light. Mordred's cannonade, which he was to keep up through the darkness until the morning's battle, began to thud and bump outside. The King, drained of his last effort, gave way to sorrow. Even when his visitor's hand lifted the tent flap, the silent drops coursed down his nose and fell on the parchment with regular ticks, like an ancient clock. He turned his head aside, unwilling to be seen, unable to do better. The flap fell, as the strange figure in cloak and hat came softly in.
"Merlyn?"
But there was nobody there: he had dreamed him in a catnap of old age.
Merlyn?
He began to think again, but now it was as clearly as it had ever been. He remembered the aged necromancer who had educated him—who had educated him with animals. There were, he remembered, something like half a million different species of animal, of which mankind was only one. Of course man was an animal—he was not a vegetable or a mineral, was he? And Merlyn had taught him about animals so that the single species might learn by looking at the problems of the, thousands. He remembered the belligerent ants, who claimed their boundaries, and the pacific geese, who did not. He remembered his lesson from the badger. He remembered Lyo-lyok and the island which they had seen on their migration, where all those puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes had lived together peacefully, preserving their own kinds of civilization without war—because they claimed no boundaries. He saw the problem before him as plain as a map. The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing. Frontiers were imaginary lines. There was no visible line between Scotland and England, although Hodden and Bannockburn had been fought about it. It was geography which was the cause—political geography. It was nothing else. Nations did not need to have the same kind of civilization, nor the same kind of leader, any more than the puffins and the guillemots did. They could keep thek own civilizations, like Esquimaux and Hottentots, if they would give each other freedom of trade and free passage and access to the world. Countries would have to become counties—but counties which could keep their own culture and local laws. The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined. The airborne birds skipped them by nature. How mad the frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly.
The old King felt refreshed, clear-headed, almost ready to begin again.
There would be a day—there must be a day—when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, Just as the world had none—a table without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.
But it was too late for another effort then. For that time it was his destiny to die, or, as some say, to be carried off to Avilion, where he could wait for better days. For that time it was Lancelot's fate and Guenever's to take the tonsure and the veil, while Mordred must be slain. The fate of this man or that man was less than a drop, although it was a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.
The cannons of his adversary were thundering in the tattered morning when the Majesty of England drew himself up to meet the future with a peaceful heart.
EXPLICIT LIBER REGIS QUONDAM REGISQUE FUTURI
THE BEGINNING
Back to Table of Contents