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Title: The Once and Future King
Author: White, T. H. [Terence Hanbury] (1906-1964)
Date of first publication: April 1958
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Collins, March 1959
   [fourth impression]
Date first posted: 5 January 2015
Date last updated: 5 January 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1225

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.






  T. H. WHITE


  THE ONCE
  AND FUTURE KING



  COLLINS
  ST. JAMES'S PLACE, LONDON




  _First Impression April 1958
  Second Impression September 1958
  Third Impression November 1958
  Fourth Impression March 1959_



  _Copyright 1939, 1940 by T. H. White
  Copyright  1958 by T. H. White_

  _Printed in Great Britain by
  Wyman & Sons Ltd.
  London, Reading and Fakenham_




_For J. A. J. A._




_Contents_

I. THE SWORD IN THE STONE

II. THE QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS

III. THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT

IV. THE CANDLE IN THE WIND




_Incipit Liber Primus_

THE SWORD IN THE STONE



  She is not any common earth
   Water or wood or air,
  But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye
   Where you and I will fare.




_Chapter I_

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was Court Hand and Summulae
Logicales, while the rest of the week it was the Organon, Repetition
and Astrology.  The governess was always getting muddled with her
astrolabe, and when she got specially muddled she would take it out of
the Wart by rapping his knuckles.  She did not rap Kay's knuckles,
because when Kay grew older he would be Sir Kay, the master of the
estate.  The Wart was called the Wart because it more or less rhymed
with Art, which was short for his real name.  Kay had given him the
nickname.  Kay was not called anything but Kay, as he was too dignified
to have a nickname and would have flown into a passion if anybody had
tried to give him one.  The governess had red hair and some mysterious
wound from which she derived a lot of prestige by showing it to all the
women of the castle, behind closed doors.  It was believed to be where
she sat down, and to have been caused by sitting on some armour at a
picnic by mistake.  Eventually she offered to show it to Sir Ector, who
was Kay's father, had hysterics and was sent away.  They found out
afterwards that she had been in a lunatic hospital for three years.

In the afternoons the programme was: Mondays and Fridays, tilting and
horsemanship; Tuesdays, hawking; Wednesdays, fencing; Thursdays,
archery; Saturdays, the theory of chivalry, with the proper measures to
be blown on all occasions, terminology of the chase and hunting
etiquette.  If you did the wrong thing at the mort or the undoing, for
instance, you were bent over the body of the dead beast and smacked
with the flat side of a sword.  This was called being bladed.  It was
horseplay, a sort of joke like being shaved when crossing the line.
Kay was not bladed, although he often went wrong.

When they had got rid of the governess, Sir Ector said, "After all,
damn it all, we can't have the boys runnin' about all day like
hooligans--after all, damn it all?  Ought to be havin' a first-rate
eddication, at their age.  When I was their age I was doin' all this
Latin and stuff at five o'clock every mornin'.  Happiest time of me
life.  Pass the port."

Sir Grummore Grummursum, who was staying the night because he had been
benighted out questin' after a specially long run, said that when he
was their age he was swished every mornin' because he would go hawkin'
instead of learnin'.  He attributed to this weakness the fact that he
could never get beyond the Future Simple of Utor.  It was a third of
the way down the left-hand leaf, he said.  He thought it was leaf
ninety-seven.  He passed the port.

Sir Ector said, "Had a good quest today?"

Sir Grummore said, "Oh, not so bad.  Rattlin' good day, in fact.  Found
a chap called Sir Bruce Saunce Pit choppin' off a maiden's head in
Weedon Bushes, ran him to Mixbury Plantation in the Bicester, where he
doubled back, and lost him in Wicken Wood.  Must have been a good
twenty-five miles as he ran."

"A straight-necked 'un," said Sir Ector.

"But about these boys and all this Latin and that," added the old
gentleman.  "Amo, amas, you know, and runnin' about like hooligans:
what would you advise?"

"Ah," said Sir Grummore, laying his finger by his nose and winking at
the bottle, "that takes a deal of thinkin' about, if you don't mind my
sayin' so."

"Don't mind at all," said Sir Ector.  "Very kind of you to say
anythin'.  Much obliged, I'm sure.  Help yourself to port."

"Good port this."

"Get it from a friend of mine."

"But about these boys," said Sir Grummore.  "How many of them are
there, do you know?"

"Two," said Sir Ector, "counting them both, that is."

"Couldn't send them to Eton, I suppose?" inquired Sir Grummore
cautiously.  "Long way and all that, we know."

It was not really Eton that he mentioned, for the College of Blessed
Mary was not founded until 1440, but it was a place of the same sort.
Also they were drinking Metheglyn, not Port, but by mentioning the
modern wine it is easier to give you the feel.

"Isn't so much the distance," said Sir Ector, "but that giant
What's-'is-name is in the way.  Have to pass through his country, you
understand."

"What is his name?"

"Can't recollect it at the moment, not for the life of me.  Fellow that
lives by the Burbly Water."

"Galapas," said Sir Grummore.

"That's the very chap."

"The only other thing," said Sir Grummore, "is to have a tutor."

"You mean a fellow who teaches you."

"That's it," said Sir Grummore.  "A tutor, you know, a fellow who
teaches you."

"Have some more port," said Sir Ector.  "You need it after all this
questin'."

"Splendid day," said Sir Grummore.  "Only they never seem to kill
nowadays.  Run twenty-five miles and then mark to ground or lose him
altogether.  The worst is when you start a fresh quest."

"We kill all our giants cubbin'," said Sir Ector.  "After that they
give you a fine run, but get away."

"Run out of scent," said Sir Grummore, "I dare say.  It's always the
same with these big giants in a big country.  They run out of scent."

"But even if you was to have a tutor," said Sir Ector, "I don't see how
you would get him."

"Advertise," said Sir Grummore.

"I have advertised," said Sir Ector.  "It was cried by the _Humberland
Newsman and Cardoile Advertiser_."

"The only other way," said Sir Grummore, "is to start a quest."

"You mean a quest for a tutor," explained Sir Ector.

"That's it."

"Hic, Haec, Hoc," said Sir Ector.  "Have some more of this drink,
whatever it calls itself."

"Hunc," said Sir Grummore.

So it was decided.  When Grummore Grummursum had gone home next day,
Sir Ector tied a knot in his handkerchief to remember to start a quest
for a tutor as soon as he had time to do so, and, as he was not sure
how to set about it, he told the boys what Sir Grummore had suggested
and warned them not to be hooligans meanwhile.  Then they went
hay-making.

It was July, and every able-bodied man and woman on the estate worked
during that month in the field, under Sir Ector's direction.  In any
case the boys would have been excused from being eddicated just then.

Sir Ector's castle stood in an enormous clearing in a still more
enormous forest.  It had a courtyard and a moat with pike in it.  The
moat was crossed by a fortified stone bridge which ended half-way
across it.  The other half was covered by a wooden drawbridge which was
wound up every night.  As soon as you had crossed the drawbridge you
were at the top of the village street--it had only one street--and this
extended for about half a mile, with thatched houses of wattle and daub
on either side of it.  The street divided the clearing into two huge
fields, that on the left being cultivated in hundreds of long narrow
strips, while that on the right ran down to a river and was used as
pasture.  Half of the right-hand field was fenced off for hay.

It was July, and real July weather, such as they had in Old England.
Everybody went bright brown, like Red Indians, with startling teeth and
flashing eyes.  The dogs moved about with their tongues hanging out, or
lay panting in bits of shade, while the farm horses sweated through
their coats and flicked their tails and tried to kick the horse-flies
off their bellies with their great hind hoofs.  In the pasture field
the cows were on the gad, and could be seen galloping about with their
tails in the air, which made Sir Ector angry.

Sir Ector stood on the top of a rick, whence he could see what
everybody was doing, and shouted commands all over the two-hundred-acre
field, and grew purple in the face.  The best mowers mowed away in a
line where the grass was still uncut, their scythes roaring in the
strong sunlight.  The women raked the dry hay together in long strips
with wooden rakes, and the two boys with pitchforks followed up on
either side of the strip, turning the hay inwards so that it lay well
for picking up.  Then the great carts followed, rumbling with their
spiked wooden wheels, drawn by horses or slow white oxen.  One man
stood on top of the cart to receive the hay and direct operations,
while one man walked on either side picking up what the boys had
prepared and throwing it to him with a fork.  The cart was led down the
lane between two lines of hay, and was loaded in strict rotation from
the front poles to the back, the man on top calling out in a stern
voice where he wanted each fork to be pitched.  The loaders grumbled at
the boys for not having laid the hay properly and threatened to tan
them when they caught them, if they got left behind.

When the wagon was loaded, it was drawn to Sir Ector's rick and pitched
to him.  It came up easily because it had been loaded
systematically--not like modern hay--and Sir Ector scrambled about on
top, getting in the way of his assistants, who did the real work, and
stamping and perspiring and scratching about with his fork and trying
to make the rick grow straight and shouting that it would all fall down
as soon as the west winds came.

The Wart loved hay-making, and was good at it.  Kay, who was two years
older, generally stood on the edge of the bundle which he was trying to
pick up, with the result that he worked twice as hard as the Wart for
only half the result.  But he hated to be beaten at anything, and used
to fight away with the wretched hay--which he loathed like
poison--until he was quite sick.

The day after Sir Grummore's visit was sweltering for the men who
toiled from milking to milking and then again till sunset in their
battle with the sultry element.  For the hay was an element to them,
like sea or air, in which they bathed and plunged themselves and which
they even breathed in.  The seeds and small scraps stuck in their hair,
their mouths, their nostrils, and worked, tickling, inside their
clothes.  They did not wear many clothes, and the shadows between their
sliding muscles were blue on the nut-brown skins.  Those who feared
thunder had felt ill that morning.

In the afternoon the storm broke.  Sir Ector kept them at it till the
great flashes were right overhead, and then, with the sky as dark as
night, the rain came hurling against them so that they were drenched at
once and could not see a hundred yards.  The boys lay crouched under
the wagons, wrapped in hay to keep their wet bodies warm against the
now cold wind, and all joked with one another while heaven fell.  Kay
was shivering, though not with cold, but he joked like the others
because he would not show he was afraid.  At the last and greatest
thunderbolt every man startled involuntarily, and each saw the other
startle, until they laughed away their shame.

But that was the end of the hay-making and the beginning of play.  The
boys were sent home to change their clothes.  The old dame who had been
their nurse fetched dry jerkins out of a press, and scolded them for
catching their deaths, and denounced Sir Ector for keeping on so long.
Then they slipped their heads into the laundered shirts, and ran out to
the refreshed and sparkling court.

"I vote we take Cully and see if we can get some rabbits in the chase,"
cried the Wart.

"The rabbits will not be out in this wet," said Kay sarcastically
delighted to have caught him over natural history.

"Oh, come on.  It will soon be dry."

"I must carry Cully, then."

Kay insisted on carrying the goshawk and flying her, when they went
hawking together.  This he had a right to do, not only because he was
older than the Wart but also because he was Sir Ector's proper son.
The Wart was not a proper son.  He did not understand this, but it made
him feel unhappy, because Kay seemed to regard it as making him
inferior in some way.  Also it was different not having a father and
mother, and Kay had taught him that being different was wrong.  Nobody
talked to him about it, but he thought about it when he was alone, and
was distressed.  He did not like people to bring it up.  Since the
other boy always did bring it up when a question of precedence arose,
he had got into the habit of giving in at once before it could be
mentioned.  Besides he admired Kay and was a born follower.  He was a
hero-worshipper.

"Come on, then," cried the Wart, and they scampered off towards the
Mews, turning a few cartwheels on the way.

The Mews was one of the most important parts of the castle, next to the
stables and the kennels.  It was opposite to the solar, and faced
south.  The outside windows had to be small, for reasons of
fortification, but the windows which looked inward to the courtyard
were big and sunny.  The windows had close vertical slats nailed down
them, but not horizontal ones.  There was no glass, but to keep the
hawks from draughts there was horn in the small windows.  At one end of
the Mews there was a little fireplace and a kind of snuggery, like the
place in a saddle-room where the grooms sit to clean their tack on wet
nights after fox-hunting.  Here there were a couple of stools, a
cauldron, a bench with all sorts of small knives and surgical
instruments, and some shelves with pots on them.  The pots were
labelled Cardamum, Ginger, Barley Sugar, Wrangle, For a Snurt, For the
Craye, Vertigo, etc.  There were leather skins hanging up, which had
been snipped about as pieces were cut out of them for jesses, hoods or
leashes.  On a neat row of nails there were Indian bells and swivels
and silver varvels, each with Ector cut on.  A special shelf, and the
most beautiful of all, held the hoods: very old cracked rufter hoods
which had been made for birds before Kay was born, tiny hoods for the
merlins, small hoods for tiercels, splendid new hoods which had been
knocked up to pass away the long winter evenings.  All the hoods,
except the rufters, were made in Sir Ector's colours: white leather
with red baize at the sides and a bunch of blue-grey plumes on top,
made out of the hackle feathers of herons.  On the bench there was a
jumble of oddments such as are to be found in every workshop, bits of
cord, wire, metal, tools, some bread and cheese which the mice had been
at, a leather bottle, some frayed gauntlets for the left hand, nails,
bits of sacking, a couple of lures and some rough tallies scratched on
the wood.  These read: Conays 11111111, Harn 111, etc.  They were not
spelled very well.

Right down the length of the room, with the afternoon sun shining full
on them, there ran the screen perches to which the birds were tied.
There were two little merlins which had only just been taking up from
hacking, an old peregrine who was not much use in this wooded country
but who was kept for appearances, a kestrel on which the boys had
learned the rudiments of falconry, a spar-hawk which Sir Ector was kind
enough to keep for the parish priest, and, caged off in a special
apartment of his own at the far end, there was the tiercel goshawk
Cully.

The Mews was neatly kept, with sawdust on the floor to absorb the
mutes, and the castings taken up every day.  Sir Ector visited the
place each morning at seven o'clock and the two austringers stood at
attention outside the door.  If they had forgotten to brush their hair
he confined them to barracks.  They took no notice.

Kay put on one of the left-hand gauntlets and called Cully from the
perch--but Cully, with all his feathers close-set and malevolent,
glared at him with a mad marigold eye and refused to come.  So Kay took
him up.

"Do you think we ought to fly him?" asked the Wart doubtfully.  "Deep
in the moult like this?"

"Of course we can fly him, you ninny," said Kay.  "He only wants to be
carried a bit, that's all."

So they went out across the hay-field, noting how the carefully raked
hay was now sodden again and losing its goodness, into the chase where
the trees began to grow, far apart as yet and parklike, but gradually
crowding into the forest shade.  The conies had hundreds of buries
under these trees, so close together that the problem was not to find a
rabbit, but to find a rabbit far enough away from its hole.

"Hob says that we must not fly Cully till he has roused at least
twice," said the Wart.

"Hob does not know anything about it.  Nobody can tell whether a hawk
is fit to fly except the man who is carrying it.

"Hob is only a villein anyway," added Kay, and began to undo the leash
and swivel from the jesses.

When he felt the trappings being taken off him, so that he was in
hunting order, Cully did make some movements as if to rouse.  He raised
his crest, his shoulder coverts and the soft feathers of his thighs.
But at the last moment he thought better or worse of it and subsided
without the rattle.  This movement of the hawk's made the Wart itch to
carry him.  He yearned to take him away from Kay and set him to rights
himself.  He felt certain that he could get Cully into a good temper by
scratching his feet and softly teasing his breast feathers upward, if
only he were allowed to do it himself, instead of having to plod along
behind with the stupid lure.  But he knew how annoying it must be for
the elder boy to be continually subjected to advice, and so he held his
peace.  Just as in modern shooting, you must never offer criticism to
the man in command, so in hawking it was important that no outside
advice should be allowed to disturb the judgment of the austringer.

"So-ho!" cried Kay, throwing his arm upward to give the hawk a better
take-off, and a rabbit was scooting across the close-nibbled turf in
front of them, and Cully was in the air.  The movement had surprised
the Wart, the rabbit and the hawk, all three, and all three hung a
moment in surprise.  Then the great wings of the aerial assassin began
to row the air, but reluctant and undecided.  The rabbit vanished in a
hidden hole.  Up went the hawk, swooping like a child flung high in a
swing, until the wings folded and he was sitting in a tree.  Cully
looked down at his masters, opened his beak in an angry pant of
failure, and remained motionless.  The two hearts stood still.




_Chapter II_

A good while later, when they had been whistling and luring and
following the disturbed and sulky hawk from tree to tree, Kay lost his
temper.

"Let him go, then," he said.  "He is no use anyway."

"Oh, we could not leave him," cried the Wart.  "What would Hob say?"

"It is my hawk, not Hob's," exclaimed Kay furiously.  "What does it
matter what Hob says?  He is a servant."

"But Hob made Cully.  It is all right for us to lose him, because we
did not have to sit up with him three nights and carry him all day and
all that.  But we can't lose Hob's hawk.  It would be beastly."

"Serve him right, then.  He is a fool and it is a rotten hawk.  Who
wants a rotten stupid hawk?  You had better stay yourself, if you are
so keen on it.  I am going home."

"I will stay," said the Wart sadly, "if you will send Hob when you get
there."

Kay began walking off in the wrong direction, raging in his heart
because he knew that he had flown the bird when he was not properly in
yarak, and the Wart had to shout after him the right way.  Then the
latter sat down under the tree and looked up at Cully like a cat
watching a sparrow, with his heart beating fast.

It was well enough for Kay, who was not really keen on hawking except
in so far as it was the proper occupation for a boy in his station of
life, but the Wart had some of the falconer's feelings and knew that a
lost hawk was the greatest possible calamity.  He knew that Hob had
worked on Cully for fourteen hours a day to teach him his trade, and
that his work had been like Jacob's struggle with the angel.  When
Cully was lost a part of Hob would be lost too.  The Wart did not dare
to face the look of reproach which would be in the falconer's eye,
after all that he had tried to teach them.

What was he to do?  He had better sit still, leaving the lure on the
ground, so that Cully could settle down and come in his own time.  But
Cully had no intention of doing this.  He had been given a generous
gorge the night before, and he was not hungry.  The hot day had put him
in a bad temper.  The waving and whistling of the boys below, and their
pursuit of him from tree to tree, had disturbed his never powerful
brains.  Now he did not quite know what he wanted to do, but it was not
what anybody else wanted.  He thought perhaps it would be nice to kill
something, from spite.

A long time after that, the Wart was on the verge of the true forest,
and Cully was inside it.  In a series of infuriating removes they had
come nearer and nearer, till they were further from the castle than the
boy had ever been, and now they had reached it quite.

Wart would not have been frightened of an English forest nowadays, but
the great jungle of Old England was a different matter.  It was not
only that there were wild boars in it, whose sounders would at this
season be furiously rooting about, nor that one of the surviving wolves
might be slinking behind any tree, with pale eyes and slavering chops.
The mad and wicked animals were not the only inhabitants of the crowded
gloom.  When men themselves became wicked they took refuge there,
outlaws cunning and bloody as the gore-crow, and as persecuted.  The
Wart thought particularly of a man named Wat, whose name the cottagers
used to frighten their children with.  He had once lived in Sir Ector's
village and the Wart could remember him.  He squinted, had no nose, and
was weak in his wits.  The children threw stones at him.  One day he
turned on the children and caught one and made a snarly noise and bit
off his nose too.  Then he ran into the forest.  They threw stones at
the child with no nose, now, but Wat was supposed to be in the forest
still, running on all fours and dressed in skins.

There were magicians in the forest also in those legendary days, as
well as strange animals not known to modern works of natural history.
There were regular bands of Saxon outlaws--not like Wat--who lived
together and wore green and shot with arrows which never missed.  There
were even a few dragons, though these were small ones, which lived
under stones and could hiss like a kettle.

Added to this, there was the fact that it was getting dark.  The forest
was trackless and nobody in the village knew what was on the other
side.  The evening hush had fallen, and the high trees stood looking at
the Wart without a sound.

He felt that it would be safer to go home, while he still knew where he
was--but he had a stout heart, and did not want to give in.  He
understood that once Cully had slept in freedom for a whole night he
would be wild again and irreclaimable.  Cully was a passager.  But if
the poor Wart could only mark him to roost, and if Hob would only
arrive then with a dark lantern, they might still take him that night
by climbing the tree, while he was sleepy and muddled with the light.
The boy could see more or less where the hawk had perched, about a
hundred yards within the thick trees, because the home-going rooks of
evening were mobbing that place.

He made a mark on one of the trees outside the forest, hoping that it
might help him to find his way back, and then began to fight his way
into the undergrowth as best he might.  He heard by the rooks that
Cully had immediately moved further off.

The night fell still as the small boy struggled with the brambles.  But
he went on doggedly, listening with all his ears, and Cully's evasions
became sleepier and shorter until at last, before the utter darkness
fell, he could see the hunched shoulders in a tree above him against
the sky.  Wart sat down under the tree, so as not to disturb the bird
any further as it went to sleep, and Cully, standing on one leg,
ignored his existence.

"Perhaps," said the Wart to himself, "even if Hob does not come, and I
do not see how he can very well follow me in this trackless woodland
now, I shall be able to climb up by myself at about midnight, and bring
Cully down.  He might stay there at about midnight because he ought to
be asleep by then.  I could speak to him softly by name, so that he
thought it was just the usual person coming to take him up while
hooded.  I shall have to climb very quietly.  Then, if I do get him, I
shall have to find my way home, and the drawbridge will be up.  But
perhaps somebody will wait for me, for Kay will have told them I am
out.  I wonder which way it was?  I wish Kay had not gone."

He snuggled down between the roots of the tree, trying to find a
comfortable place where the hard wood did not stick into his
shoulder-blades.

"I think the way was behind that big spruce with the spike top.  I
ought to try to remember which side of me the sun is setting, so that
when it rises I may keep it on the same side going home.  Did something
move under that spruce tree, I wonder?  Oh, I wish I may not meet that
old wild Wat and have my nose bitten off!  How aggravating Cully looks,
standing there on one leg as if there was nothing the matter."

At this there was a quick whirr and a smack and the Wart found an arrow
sticking in the tree between the fingers of his right hand.  He
snatched his hand away, thinking he had been stung by something, before
he noticed it was an arrow.  Then everything went slow.  He had time to
notice quite carefully what sort of an arrow it was, and how it had
driven three inches into the solid wood.  It was a black arrow with
yellow bands round it, like a wasp, and its cock feather was yellow.
The two others were black.  They were dyed goose feathers.

The Wart found that, although he was frightened of the danger of the
forest before it happened, once he was in it he was not frightened any
more.  He got up quickly--but it seemed to him slowly--and went behind
the other side of the tree.  As he did this, another arrow came whirr
and frump, but this one buried all except its feathers in the grass,
and stayed still, as if it had never moved.

On the other side of the tree he found a waste of bracken, six foot
high.  This was splendid cover, but it betrayed his whereabouts by
rustling.  He heard another arrow hiss through the fronds, and what
seemed to be a man's voice cursing, but it was not very near.  Then he
heard the man, or whatever it was, running about in the bracken.  It
was reluctant to fire any more arrows because they were valuable things
and would certainly get lost in the undergrowth.  Wart went like a
snake, like a coney, like a silent owl.  He was small and the creature
had no chance against him at this game.  In five minutes he was safe.

The assassin searched for his arrows and went away grumbling--but the
Wart realized that, even if he was safe from the archer, he had lost
his way and his hawk.  He had not the faintest idea where he was.  He
lay down for half an hour, pressed under the fallen tree where he had
hidden, to give time for the thing to go right away and for his own
heart to cease thundering.  It had begun beating like this as soon as
he knew that he had got away.

"Oh," thought he, "now I am truly lost, and now there is almost no
alternative except to have my nose bitten off, or to be pierced right
through with one of those waspy arrows, or to be eaten by a hissing
dragon or a wolf or a wild boar or a magician--if magicians do eat
boys, which I expect they do.  Now I may well wish that I had been
good, and not angered the governess when she got muddled with her
astrolabe, and had loved my dear guardian Sir Ector as much as he
deserved."

At these melancholy thoughts, and especially at the recollection of
kind Sir Ector with his pitchfork and his red nose, the poor Wart's
eyes became full of tears and he lay most desolate beneath the tree.

The sun finished the last rays of its lingering good-bye, and the moon
rose in awful majesty over the silver tree-tops, before he dared to
stand.  Then he got up, and dusted the twigs out of his jerkin, and
wandered off forlorn, taking the easiest way and trusting himself to
God.  He had been walking like this for about half an hour, and
sometimes feeling more cheerful--because it really was very cool and
lovely in the summer forest by moonlight--when he came upon the most
beautiful thing that he had seen in his short life so far.

There was a clearing in the forest, a wide sward of moonlit grass, and
the white rays shone full upon the tree trunks on the opposite side.
These trees were beeches, whose trunks are always more beautiful in a
pearly light, and among the beeches there was the smallest movement and
a silvery clink.  Before the clink there were just the beeches, but
immediately afterward there was a knight in full armour, standing still
and silent and unearthly, among the majestic trunks.  He was mounted on
an enormous white horse that stood as rapt as its master, and he
carried in his right hand, with its butt resting on the stirrup, a
high, smooth jousting lance, which stood up among the tree stumps,
higher and higher, till it was outlined against the velvet sky.  All
was moon-lit, all silver, too beautiful to describe.

The Wart did not know what to do.  He did not know whether it would be
safe to go up to this knight, for there were so many terrible things in
the forest that even the knight might be a ghost.  Most ghostly he
looked, too, as he hoved meditating on the confines of the gloom.
Eventually the boy made up his mind that even if it were a ghost, it
would be the ghost of a knight, and knights were bound by their vows to
help people in distress.

"Excuse me," he said, when he was right under the mysterious figure,
"but can you tell me the way back to Sir Ector's castle?"

At this the ghost jumped, so that it nearly fell off its horse, and
gave out a muffled baaa through its visor, like a sheep.

"Excuse me," began the Wart again, and stopped, terrified, in the
middle of his speech.

For the ghost lifted up its visor, revealing two enormous eyes frosted
like ice; exclaimed in an anxious voice, "What, what?"; took off its
eyes--which turned out to be horn-rimmed spectacles, fogged by being
inside the helmet; tried to wipe them on the horse's mane--which only
made them worse; lifted both hands above its head and tried to wipe
them on its plume; dropped its lance; dropped the spectacles; got off
the horse to search for them--the visor shutting in the process; lifted
its visor; bent down for the spectacles; stood up again as the visor
shut once more, and exclaimed in a plaintive voice, "Oh, dear!"

The Wart found the spectacles, wiped them, and gave them to the ghost,
who immediately put them on (the visor shut at once) and began
scrambling back on its horse for dear life.  When it was there it held
out its hand for the lance, which the Wart handed up, and, feeling all
secure, opened the visor with its left hand, and held it open.  It
peered at the boy with one hand up--like a lost mariner searching for
land--and exclaimed, "Ah-hah!  Whom have we here, what?"

"Please," said the Wart, "I am a boy whose guardian is Sir Ector."

"Charming fellah," said the Knight.  "Never met him in me life."

"Can you tell me the way back to his castle?"

"Faintest idea.  Stranger in these parts meself."

"I am lost," said the Wart.

"Funny thing that.  Now I have been lost for seventeen years.

"Name of King Pellinore," continued the Knight.  "May have heard of me,
what?"  The visor shut with a pop, like an echo to the What, but was
opened again immediately.  "Seventeen years ago, come Michaelmas, and
been after the Questing Beast ever since.  Boring, very."

"I should think it would be," said the Wart, who had never heard of
King Pellinore, nor of the Questing Beast, but he felt that this was
the safest thing to say in the circumstances.

"It is the Burden of the Pellinores," said the King proudly.  "Only a
Pellinore can catch it--that is, of course, or his next of kin.  Train
all the Pellinores with that idea in mind.  Limited eddication, rather.
Fewmets, and all that."

"I know what fewmets are," said the boy with interest.  "They are the
droppings of the beast pursued.  The harborer keeps them in his horn,
to show to his master, and can tell by them whether it is a warrantable
beast or otherwise, and what state it is in."

"Intelligent child," remarked the King.  "Very.  Now I carry fewmets
about with me practically all the time.

"Insanitary habit," he added, beginning to look dejected, "and quite
pointless.  Only one Questing Beast, you know, so there can't be any
question whether she is warrantable or not."

Here his visor began to droop so much that the Wart decided he had
better forget his own troubles and try to cheer his companion, by
asking questions on the one subject about which he seemed qualified to
speak.  Even talking to a lost royalty was better than being alone in
the wood.

"What does the Questing Beast look like?"

"Ah, we call it the Beast Glatisant, you know," replied the monarch,
assuming a learned air and beginning to speak quite volubly.  "Now the
Beast Glatisant, or, as we say in English, the Questing Beast--you may
call it either," he added graciously--"this Beast has the head of a
serpent, ah, and the body of a libbard, the haunches of a lion, and he
is footed like a hart.  Wherever this beast goes he makes a noise in
his belly as it had been the noise of thirty couple of hounds questing.

"Except when he is drinking, of course," added the King.

"It must be a dreadful kind of monster," said the Wart, looking about
him anxiously.

"A dreadful monster," repeated the King.  "It is the Beast Glatisant."

"And how do you follow it?"

This seemed to be the wrong question, for Pellinore began to look even
more depressed.

"I have a brachet," he said sadly.  "There she is, over there."

The Wart looked in the direction which had been indicated with a
despondent thumb, and saw a lot of rope wound round a tree.  The other
end of the rope was tied to King Pellinore's saddle.

"I do not see her very well."

"Wound herself round the other side, I dare say.  She always goes the
opposite way from me."

The Wart went over to the tree and found a large white dog scratching
herself for fleas.  As soon as she saw the Wart, she began wagging her
whole body, grinning vacuously, and panting in her efforts to lick his
face, in spite of the cord.  She was too tangled up to move.

"It's quite a good brachet," said King Pellinore, "only it pants so,
and gets wound round things, and goes the opposite way.  What with that
and the visor, what, I sometimes don't know which way to turn."

"Why don't you let her loose?" asked the Wart.  "She would follow the
Beast just as well like that."

"She goes right away then, you see, and I don't see her sometimes for a
week.

"Gets a bit lonely without her," added the King, "following the Beast
about, and never knowing where one is.  Makes a bit of company, you
know."

"She seems to have a friendly nature."

"Too friendly.  Sometimes I doubt whether she is really chasing the
Beast at all."

"What does she do when she sees it?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, well," said the Wart.  "I dare say she will get to be interested
in it after a time."

"It is eight months, anyway, since we saw the Beast at all."

The poor fellow's voice had grown sadder and sadder since the beginning
of the conversation, and now he definitely began to snuffle.  "It is
the curse of the Pellinores," he exclaimed.  "Always mollocking about
after that beastly Beast.  What on earth use is she, anyway?  First you
have to stop to unwind the brachet, then your visor falls down, then
you can't see through your spectacles.  Nowhere to sleep, never know
where you are.  Rheumatism in the winter, sunstroke in the summer.  All
this horrid armour takes hours to put on.  When it is on it's either
frying or freezing, and it gets rusty.  You have to sit up all night
polishing the stuff.  Oh, how I do wish I had a nice house of my own to
live in, a house with beds in it and real pillows and sheets.  If I was
rich that's what I would buy.  A nice bed with a nice pillow and a nice
sheet that you could lie in, and then I would put this beastly horse in
a meadow and tell that beastly brachet to run away and play, and throw
all this beastly armour out of the window, and let the beastly Beast go
and chase himself--that I would."

"If you could show me the way home," said the Wart craftily, "I am sure
Sir Ector would put you up in a bed for the night."

"Do you really mean it?" cried the King.  "In a bed?"

"A feather bed."

King Pellinore's eyes grew round as saucers.  "A feather bed!" he
repeated slowly.  "Would it have pillows?"

"Down pillows."

"Down pillows!" whispered the King, holding his breath.  And then,
letting it out in one rush, "What a lovely house your gentleman must
have!"

"I do not think it is more than two hours away," said the Wart,
following up his advantage.

"And did this gentleman really send you out to invite me in?"  (He had
forgotten about the Wart being lost.)  "How nice of him, how very nice
of him, I do think, what?"

"He will be pleased to see us," said the Wart truthfully.

"Oh, how nice of him," exclaimed the King again, beginning to bustle
about with his various trappings.  "And what a lovely gentleman he must
be, to have a feather bed!

"I suppose I should have to share it with somebody?" he added
doubtfully.

"You could have one of your own."

"A feather bed of one's very own, with sheets and a pillow--perhaps
even two pillows, or a pillow and a bolster--and no need to get up in
time for breakfast!  Does your guardian get up in time for breakfast?"

"Never," said the Wart.

"Fleas in the bed?"

"Not one."

"Well!" said King Pellinore.  "It does sound too nice for words, I must
say.  A feather bed and none of those fewmets for ever so long.  How
long did you say it would take us to get there?"

"Two hours," said the Wart--but he had to shout the second of these
words, for the sounds were drowned in his mouth by a noise which had
that moment arisen close beside them.

"What was that?" exclaimed the Wart.

"Hark!" cried the King.

"Mercy!"

"It is the Beast!"

And immediately the loving huntsman had forgotten everything else, but
was busied about his task.  He wiped his spectacles upon the seat of
his trousers, the only accessible piece of cloth about him, while the
belling and bloody cry arose all round.  He balanced them on the end of
his long nose, just before the visor automatically clapped to.  He
clutched his jousting lance in his right hand, and galloped off in the
direction of the noise.  He was brought up short by the rope which was
wound round the tree--the vacuous brachet meanwhile giving a melancholy
yelp--and fell off his horse with a tremendous clang.  In a second he
was up again--the Wart was convinced that the spectacles must be
broken--and hopping round the white horse with one foot in the stirrup.
The girths stood the test and he was in the saddle somehow, with his
jousting lance between his legs, and then he was galloping round and
round the tree, in the opposite direction to the one in which the
brachet had wound herself up.  He went round three times too often, the
brachet meanwhile running and yelping the other way, and then, after
four or five back casts, they were both free of the obstruction.
"Yoicks, what!" cried King Pellinore, waving his lance in the air, and
swaying excitedly in the saddle.  Then he disappeared into the gloom of
the forest, with the unfortunate hound trailing behind him at the other
end of the cord.




_Chapter III_

The boy slept well in the woodland nest where he had laid himself down,
in that kind of thin but refreshing sleep which people have when they
begin to lie out of doors.  At first he only dipped below the surface
of sleep, and skimmed along like a salmon in shallow water, so close to
the surface that he fancied himself in air.  He thought himself awake
when he was already asleep.  He saw the stars above his face, whirling
on their silent and sleepless axis, and the leaves of the trees
rustling against them, and he heard small changes in the grass.  These
little noises of footsteps and soft-fringed wing-beats and stealthy
bellies drawn over the grass blades or rattling against the bracken at
first frightened or interested him, so that he moved to see what they
were (but never saw), then soothed him, so that he no longer cared to
see what they were but trusted them to be themselves, and finally left
him altogether as he swam down deeper and deeper, nuzzling into the
scented turf, into the warm ground, into the unending waters under the
earth.

It had been difficult to go to sleep in the bright summer moonlight,
but once he was there it was not difficult to stay.  The sun came
early, causing him to turn over in protest, but in going to sleep he
had learned to vanquish light, and now the light could not rewake him.
It was nine o'clock, five hours after daylight, before he rolled over,
opened his eyes, and was awake at once.  He was hungry.

The Wart had heard about people who lived on berries, but this did not
seem practical at the moment, because it was July, and there were none.
He found two wild strawberries and ate them greedily.  They tasted
nicer than anything, so that he wished there were more.  Then he wished
it was April, so that he could find some birds' eggs and eat those, or
that he had not lost his goshawk Cully, so that the hawk could catch
him a rabbit which he would cook by rubbing two sticks together like
the base Indian.  But he had lost Cully, or he would not have lost
himself, and probably the sticks would not have lighted in any case.
He decided that he could not have gone more than three or four miles
from home, and that the best thing he could do would be to sit still
and listen.  Then he might hear the noise of the haymakers, if he were
lucky with the wind, and he could hearken his way to the castle by that.

What he did hear was a faint clanking noise, which made him think that
King Pellinore must be after the Questing Beast again, close by.  Only
the noise was so regular and single in intention that it made him think
of King Pellinore doing some special action, with great patience and
concentration--trying to scratch his back without taking off his
armour, for instance.  He went toward the noise.

There was a clearing in the forest, and in this clearing there was a
snug cottage built of stone.  It was a cottage, although the Wart could
not notice this at the time, which was divided into two bits.  The main
bit was the hall or every-purpose room, which was high because it
extended from floor to roof, and this room had a fire on the floor
whose smoke came out eventually from a hole in the thatch of the roof.
The other half of the cottage was divided into two rooms by a
horizontal floor which made the top half into a bedroom and study,
while the bottom half served for a larder, storeroom, stable and barn.
A white donkey lived in this downstairs room, and a ladder led to the
one upstairs.

There was a well in front of the cottage, and the metallic noise which
the Wart had heard was caused by a very old gentleman who was drawing
water out of it by means of a handle and chain.  Clank, clank, clank,
went the chain, until the bucket hit the lip of the well, and "Drat the
whole thing!" said the old gentleman.  "You would think that after all
these years of study you could do better for yourself than a
by-our-lady well with a by-our-lady bucket, whatever the by-our-lady
cost.

"By this and by that," added the old gentleman, heaving his bucket out
of the well with a malevolent glance, "why can't they get us the
electric light and company's water?"

He was dressed in a flowing gown with fur tippets which had the signs
of the zodiac embroidered over it, with various cabalistic signs, such
as triangles with eyes in them, queer crosses, leaves of trees, bones
of birds and animals, and a planetarium whose stars shone like bits of
looking-glass with the sun on them.  He had a pointed hat like a
dunce's cap, or like the headgear worn by ladies of that time, except
that the ladies were accustomed to have a bit of veil floating from the
top of it.  He also had a wand of lignum vitae, which he had laid down
in the grass beside him, and a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles like
those of King Pellinore.  They were unusual spectacles, being without
ear pieces, but shaped rather like scissors or like the antennae of the
tarantula wasp.

"Excuse me, sir," said the Wart, "but can you tell me the way to Sir
Ector's castle, if you don't mind?"

The aged gentleman put down his bucket and looked at him.

"Your name would be the Wart."

"Yes, sir, please, sir."

"My name," said the old man, "is Merlyn."

"How do you do?"

"How do."

When these formalities had been concluded, the Wart had leisure to look
at him more closely.  The magician was staring at him with a kind of
unwinking and benevolent curiosity which made him feel that it would
not be at all rude to stare back, no ruder than it would be to stare at
one of his guardian's cows who happened to be thinking about his
personality as she leaned her head over a gate.

Merlyn had a long white beard and long white moustaches which hung down
on either side of it.  Close inspection showed that he was far from
clean.  It was not that he had dirty fingernails, or anything like
that, but some large bird seemed to have been nesting in his hair.  The
Wart was familiar with the nests of Spar-hark and Gos, the crazy
conglomerations of sticks and oddments which had been taken over from
squirrels or crows, and he knew how the twigs and the tree foot were
splashed with white mutes, old bones, muddy feathers and castings.
This was the impression which he got from Merlyn.  The old man was
streaked with droppings over his shoulders, among the stars and
triangles of his gown, and a large spider was slowly lowering itself
from the tip of his hat, as he gazed and slowly blinked at the little
boy in front of him.  He had a worried expression, as though he were
trying to remember some name which began with Choi but which was
pronounced in quite a different way, possibly Menzies or was it
Dalziel?  His mild blue eyes, very big and round under the tarantula
spectacles, gradually filmed and clouded over as he gazed at the boy,
and then he turned his head away with a resigned expression, as though
it was all too much for him after all.

"Do you like peaches?"

"Very much indeed," said the Wart, and his mouth began to water so that
it was full of sweet, soft liquid.

"They are scarcely in season," said the old man reprovingly, and he
walked off in the direction of the cottage.

The Wart followed after, since this was the simplest thing to do, and
offered to carry the bucket (which seemed to please Merlyn, who gave it
to him) and waited while he counted the keys--while he muttered and
mislaid them and dropped them in the grass.  Finally, when they had got
their way into the black and white home with as much trouble as if they
were burgling it, he climbed up the ladder after his host and found
himself in the upstairs room.

It was the most marvellous room that he had ever been in.

There was a real corkindrill hanging from the rafters, very life-like
and horrible with glass eyes and scaly tail stretched out behind it.
When its master came into the room it winked one eye in salutation,
although it was stuffed.  There were thousands of brown books in
leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped
against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not
really trust themselves.  These gave out a smell of must and solid
brownness which was most secure.  Then there were stuffed birds,
popinjays, and maggot-pies and kingfishers, and peacocks with all their
feathers but two, and tiny birds like beetles, and a reputed phoenix
which smelt of incense and cinnamon.  It could not have been a real
phoenix, because there is only one of these at a time.  Over by the
mantelpiece there was a fox's mask, with GRAFTON, BUCKINGHAM TO
DAVENTRY, 2 HRS 20 MINS written under it, and also a forty-pound salmon
with AWE, 43 MIN., BULLDOG written under it, and a very life-like
basilisk with CROWHURST OTTER HOUNDS in Roman print.  There were
several boars' tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in
symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass
snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely
set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went
in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton
wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik
in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared, twenty boxes which
contained stick caterpillars and sixths of the puss-moth, and even an
oleander that was worth sixpence--all feeding on the appropriate
leaves--a guncase with all sorts of weapons which would not be invented
for half a thousand years, a rod-box ditto, a chest of drawers full of
salmon flies which had been tied by Merlyn himself, another chest whose
drawers were labelled Mandragora, Mandrake, Old Man's Beard, etc., a
bunch of turkey feathers and goose-quills for making pens, an
astrolabe, twelve pairs of boots, a dozen purse-nets, three dozen
rabbit wires, twelve corkscrews, some ants' nests between two glass
plates, ink-bottles of every possible colour from red to violet,
darning-needles, a gold medal for being the best scholar at Winchester,
four or five recorders, a nest of field mice all alive-o, two skulls,
plenty of cut glass, Venetian glass, Bristol glass and a bottle of
Mastic varnish, some satsuma china and some cloisonn, the fourteenth
edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (marred as it was by the
sensationalism of the popular plates), two paint-boxes (one oil, one
water-colour), three globes of the known geographical world, a few
fossils, the stuffed head of a cameleopard, six pismires, some glass
retorts with cauldrons, bunsen burners, etc., and a complete set of
cigarette cards depicting wild fowl by Peter Scott.

Merlyn took off his pointed hat when he came into this chamber, because
it was too high for the roof, and immediately there was a scamper in
one of the dark corners and a flap of soft wings, and a tawny owl was
sitting on the black skull-cap which protected the top of his head.

"Oh, what a lovely owl!" cried the Wart.

But when he went up to it and held out his hand, the owl grew half as
tall again, stood up as stiff as a poker, closed its eyes so that there
was only the smallest slit to peep through--as you are in the habit of
doing when told to shut your eyes at hide-and-seek and said in a
doubtful voice:

"There is no owl."

Then it shut its eyes entirely and looked the other way.

"It is only a boy," said Merlyn.

"There is no boy," said the owl hopefully, without turning round.

The Wart was so startled by finding that the owl could talk that he
forgot his manners and came closer still.  At this the bird became so
nervous that it made a mess on Merlyn's head--the whole room was quite
white with droppings--and flew off to perch on the farthest tip of the
corkindrill's tail, out of reach.

"We see so little company," explained the magician, wiping his head
with half a worn-out pair of pyjamas which he kept for that purpose,
"that Archimedes is a little shy of strangers.  Come, Archimedes, I
want you to meet a friend of mine called Wart."

Here he held out his hand to the owl, who came waddling like a goose
along the corkindrill's back--he waddled with this rolling gait so as
to keep his tail from being damaged--and hopped down to Merlyn's finger
with every sign of reluctance.

"Hold out your finger and put it behind his legs.  No, lift it up under
his train."

When the Wart had done this, Merlyn moved the owl gently backward, so
that the boy's finger pressed against its legs from behind, and it
either had to step back on the finger or get pushed off its balance
altogether.  It stepped back.  The Wart stood there delighted, while
the furry feet held tight on his finger and the sharp claws prickled
his skin.

"Say how d'you do properly," said Merlyn.

"I will not," said Archimedes, looking the other way and holding tight.

"Oh, he _is_ lovely," said the Wart again.  "Have you had him long?"

"Archimedes has stayed with me since he was small, indeed since he had
a tiny head like a chicken's."

"I wish he would talk to me."

"Perhaps if you were to give him this mouse here, politely, he might
learn to know you better."

Merlyn took a dead mouse out of his skull-cap--"I always keep them
there, and worms too, for fishing.  I find it most convenient"--and
handed it to the Wart, who held it out rather gingerly toward
Archimedes.  The nutty curved beak looked as if it were capable of
doing damage, but Archimedes looked closely at the mouse, blinked at
the Wart, moved nearer on the finger, closed his eyes and leaned
forward.  He stood there with closed eyes and an expression of rapture
on his face, as if he were saying Grace, and then, with the absurdest
sideways nibble, took the morsel so gently that he would not have
broken a soap bubble.  He remained leaning forward with closed eyes,
with the mouse suspended from his beak, as if he were not sure what to
do with it.  Then he lifted his right foot--he was right-handed, though
people say only men are--and took hold of the mouse.  He held it up
like a boy holding a stick of rock or a constable with his truncheon,
looked at it, nibbled its tail.  He turned it round so that it was head
first, for the Wart had offered it the wrong way round, and gave one
gulp.  He looked round at the company with the tail hanging out of the
corner of his mouth--as much as to say, "I wish you would not all stare
at me so"--turned his head away, politely swallowed the tail, scratched
his sailor's beard with his left toe, and began to ruffle out his
feathers.

"Let him alone," said Merlyn.  "Perhaps he does not want to be friends
with you until he knows what you are like.  With owls, it is never
easy-come and easy-go."

"Perhaps he will sit on my shoulder," said the Wart, and with that he
instinctively lowered his hand, so that the owl, who liked to be as
high as possible, ran up the slope and stood shyly beside his ear.

"Now breakfast," said Merlyn.

The Wart saw that the most perfect breakfast was laid out neatly for
two, on a table before the window.  There were peaches.  There were
also melons, strawberries and cream, rusks, brown trout piping hot,
grilled perch which were much nicer, chicken devilled enough to burn
one's mouth out, kidneys and mushrooms on toast, fricassee, curry, and
a choice of boiling coffee or best chocolate made with cream in large
cups.

"Have some mustard," said the magician, when they had got to the
kidneys.

The mustard-pot got up and walked over to his plate on thin silver legs
that waddled like the owl's.  Then it uncurled its handles and one
handle lifted its lid with exaggerated courtesy while the other helped
him to a generous spoonful.

"Oh, I love the mustard-pot!" cried the Wart.  "Wherever did you get
it?"

At this the pot beamed all over its face and began to strut a bit, but
Merlyn rapped it on the head with a teaspoon, so that it sat down and
shut up at once.

"It is not a bad pot," he said grudgingly.  "Only it is inclined to
give itself airs."

The Wart was so much impressed by the kindness of the old man, and
particularly by the lovely things which he possessed, that he hardly
liked to ask him personal questions.  It seemed politer to sit still
and to speak when he was spoken to.  But Merlyn did not speak much, and
when he did speak it was never in questions, so that the Wart had
little opportunity for conversation.  At last his curiosity got the
better of him, and he asked something which had been puzzling him for
some time.

"Would you mind if I ask you a question?"

"It is what I am for."

"How did you know to set breakfast for two?"

The old gentleman leaned back in his chair and lighted an enormous
meerschaum pipe--Good gracious, he breathes fire, thought the Wart, who
had never heard of tobacco--before he was ready to reply.  Then he
looked puzzled, took off his skullcap--three mice fell out--and
scratched in the middle of his bald head.

"Have you ever tried to draw in a looking-glass?" he asked.

"I don't think I have."

"Looking-glass," said Merlyn, holding out his hand.  Immediately there
was a tiny lady's vanity-glass in his hand.

"Not that kind, you fool," he said angrily.  "I want one big enough to
shave in."

The vanity-glass vanished, and in its place there was a shaving mirror
about a foot square.  He then demanded pencil and paper in quick
succession; got an unsharpened pencil and the _Morning Post_; sent them
back; got a fountain pen with no ink in it and six reams of brown paper
suitable for parcels; sent them back; flew into a passion in which he
said by-our-lady quite often, and ended up with a carbon pencil and
some cigarette papers which he said would have to do.

He put one of the papers in front of the glass and made five dots.
"Now," he said, "I want you to join those five dots up to make a W,
looking only in the glass."

The Wart took the pen and tried to do as he was bid.

"Well, it is not bad," said the magician doubtfully, "and in a way it
does look a bit like an M."

Then he fell into a reverie, stroking his beard, breathing fire, and
staring at the paper.

"About the breakfast?"

"Ah, yes.  How did I know to set breakfast for two?  That was why I
showed you the looking-glass.  Now ordinary people are born forwards in
Time, if you understand what I mean, and nearly everything in the world
goes forward too.  This makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to
live, just as it would be easy to join those five dots into a W if you
were allowed to look at them forwards, instead of backwards and inside
out.  But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of time, and I have
to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people
living forwards from behind.  Some people call it having second sight."

He stopped talking and looked at the Wart in an anxious way.

"Have I told you this before?"

"No, we only met about half an hour ago."

"So little time to pass?" said Merlyn, and a big tear ran down to the
end of his nose.  He wiped it off with his pyjamas and added anxiously,
"Am I going to tell it you again?"

"I do not know," said the Wart, "unless you have not finished telling
me yet."

"You see, one gets confused with Time, when it is like that.  All one's
tenses get muddled, for one thing.  If you know what is going to happen
to people, and not what _has_ happened to them, it makes it difficult
to prevent it happening, if you don't want it to have happened, if you
see what I mean?  Like drawing in a mirror."

The Wart did not quite see, but was just going to say that he was sorry
for Merlyn if these things made him unhappy, when he felt a curious
sensation at his ear.  "Don't jump," said the old man, just as he was
going to do so, and the Wart sat still.  Archimedes, who had been
standing forgotten on his shoulder all this time, was gently touching
himself against him.  His beak was right against the lobe of the ear,
which its bristles made to tickle, and suddenly a soft hoarse voice
whispered, "How d'you do," so that it sounded right inside his head.

"Oh, owl!" cried the Wart, forgetting about Merlyn's troubles
instantly.  "Look, he has decided to talk to me!"

The Wart gently leaned his head against the smooth feathers, and the
tawny owl, taking the rim of his ear in its beak, quickly nibbled right
round it with the smallest nibbles.

"I shall call him Archie!"

"I trust you will do nothing of the sort," exclaimed Merlyn instantly,
in a stern and angry voice, and the owl withdrew to the farthest corner
of his shoulder.

"Is it wrong?"

"You might as well call me Wol, or Olly," said the owl sourly, "and
have done with it.

"Or Bubbles," it added in a bitter voice.

Merlyn took the Wart's hand and said kindly, "You are young, and do not
understand these things.  But you will learn that owls are the most
courteous, single-hearted and faithful creatures living.  You must
never be familiar, rude or vulgar with them, or make them look
ridiculous.  Their mother is Athene, the goddess of wisdom, and,
although they are often ready to play the buffoon to amuse you, such
conduct is the prerogative of the truly wise.  No owl can possibly be
called Archie."

"I am sorry, owl," said the Wart.

"And I am sorry, boy," said the owl.  "I can see that you spoke in
ignorance, and I bitterly regret that I should have been so petty as to
take offence where none was intended."

The owl really did regret it, and looked so remorseful that Merlyn had
to put on a cheerful manner and change the conversation.

"Well," said he, "now that we have finished breakfast, I think it is
high time that we should all three find our way back to Sir Ector.

"Excuse me a moment," he added as an afterthought, and, turning round
to the breakfast things, he pointed a knobbly finger at them and said
in a stern voice, "Wash up."

At this all the china and cutlery scrambled down off the table, the
cloth emptied the crumbs out of the window, and the napkins folded
themselves up.  All ran off down the ladder, to where Merlyn had left
the bucket, and there was such a noise and yelling as if a lot of
children had been let out of school.  Merlyn went to the door and
shouted, "Mind, nobody is to get broken."  But his voice was entirely
drowned in shrill squeals, splashes, and cries of "My, it is cold," "I
shan't stay in long," "Look out, you'll break me," or "Come on, let's
duck the teapot."

"Are you really coming all the way home with me?" asked the Wart, who
could hardly believe the good news.

"Why not?  How else can I be your tutor?"

At this the Wart's eyes grew rounder and rounder, until they were about
as big as the owl's who was sitting on his shoulder, and his face got
redder and redder, and a breath seemed to gather itself beneath his
heart.

"My!" exclaimed the Wart, while his eyes sparkled with excitement at
the discovery.  "I must have been on a Quest!"




_Chapter IV_

The Wart started talking before he was half-way over the drawbridge.
"Look who I have brought," he said.  "Look!  I have been on a Quest!  I
was shot at with three arrows.  They had black and yellow stripes.  The
owl is called Archimedes.  I saw King Pellinore.  This is my tutor,
Merlyn.  I went on a Quest for him.  He was after the Questing Beast.
I mean King Pellinore.  It was terrible in the forest.  Merlyn made the
plates wash up.  Hallo, Hob.  Look, we have got Cully."

Hob just looked at the Wart, but so proudly that the Wart went quite
red.  It was such a pleasure to be back home again with all his
friends, and everything achieved.

Hob said gruffly, "Ah, master, us shall make an austringer of 'ee yet."

He came for Cully, as if he could not keep his hands off him longer,
but he patted the Wart too, fondling them both because he was not sure
which he was gladder to see back.  He took Cully on his own fist,
reassuming him like a lame man putting on his accustomed wooden leg,
after it had been lost.

"Merlyn caught him," said the Wart.  "He sent Archimedes to look for
him on the way home.  Then Archimedes told us that he had been and
killed a pigeon and was eating it.  We went and frightened him off.
After that, Merlyn stuck six of the tail feathers round the pigeon in a
circle, and made a loop in a long piece of string to go round the
feathers.  He tied one end to a stick in the ground, and we went away
behind a bush with the other end.  He said he would not use magic.  He
said you could not use magic in Great Arts, just as it would be unfair
to make a great statue by magic.  You have to cut it out with a chisel,
you see.  Then Cully came down to finish the pigeon, and we pulled the
string, and the loop slipped over the feathers and caught him round the
legs.  He was angry!  But we gave him the pigeon."

Hob made a duty to Merlyn, who returned it courteously.  They looked
upon one another with grave affection, knowing each other to be masters
of the same trade.  When they could be alone together they would talk
about falconry, although Hob was naturally a silent man.  Meanwhile
they must wait their time.

"Oh, Kay," cried the Wart, as the latter appeared with their nurse and
other delighted welcomers.  "Look, I have got a magician for our tutor.
He has a mustard-pot that walks."

"I am glad you are back," said Kay.

"Alas, where did you sleep, Master Art?" exclaimed the nurse.  "Look at
your clean jerkin all muddied and torn.  Such a turn as you gave us, I
really don't know.  But look at your poor hair with all them twigs in
it.  Oh, my own random, wicked little lamb."

Sir Ector came bustling out with his greaves on back to front, and
kissed the Wart on both cheeks.  "Well, well, well," he exclaimed
moistly.  "Here we are again, hey?  What the devil have we been doin',
hey?  Settin' the whole household upside down."

But inside himself he was proud of the Wart for staying out after a
hawk, and prouder still to see that he had got it, for all the while
Hob held the bird in the air for everybody to see.

"Oh, sir," said the Wart, "I have been on that quest you said for a
tutor, and I have found him.  Please, he is this gentleman here, and he
is called Merlyn.  He has got some badgers and hedgehogs and mice and
ants and things on this white donkey here, because we could not leave
them behind to starve.  He is a great magician, and can make things
come out of the air."

"Ah, a magician," said Sir Ector, putting on his glasses and looking
closely at Merlyn.  "White magic, I hope?"

"Assuredly," said Merlyn, who stood patiently among the throng with his
arms folded in his necromantic gown, while Archimedes sat very stiff
and elongated on the top of his head.

"Ought to have some testimonials," said Sir Ector doubtfully.  "It's
usual."

"Testimonials," said Merlyn, holding out his hand.

Instantly there were some heavy tablets in it, signed by Aristotle, a
parchment signed by Hecate, and some typewritten duplicates signed by
the Master of Trinity, who could not remember having met him.  All
these gave Merlyn an excellent character.

"He had 'em up his sleeve," said Sir Ector wisely.  "Can you do
anything else?"

"Tree," said Merlyn.  At once there was an enormous mulberry growing in
the middle of the courtyard, with its luscious blue fruits ready to
patter down.  This was all the more remarkable, since mulberries only
became popular in the days of Cromwell.

"They do it with mirrors," said Sir Ector.

"Snow," said Merlyn.  "And an umbrella," he added hastily.

Before they could turn round, the copper sky of summer had assumed a
cold and lowering bronze, while the biggest white flakes that ever were
seen were floating about them and settling on the battlements.  An inch
of snow had fallen before they could speak, and all were trembling with
the wintry blast.  Sir Ector's nose was blue, and had an icicle hanging
from the end of it, while all except Merlyn had a ledge of snow upon
their shoulders.  Merlyn stood in the middle, holding his umbrella high
because of the owl.

"It's done by hypnotism," said Sir Ector, with chattering teeth.  "Like
those wallahs from the Indies.

"But that'll do," he added hastily, "that'll do very well.  I'm sure
you'll make an excellent tutor for teachin' these boys."

The snow stopped immediately and the sun came out--"Enough to give a
body a pewmonia," said the nurse, "or to frighten the elastic
commissioners"--while Merlyn folded up his umbrella and handed it back
to the air, which received it.

"Imagine the boy doin' a quest like that by himself," exclaimed Sir
Ector.  "Well, well, well!  Wonders never cease."

"I do not think much of it as a quest," said Kay.  "He only went after
the hawk, after all."

"And got the hawk, Master Kay," said Hob reprovingly.

"Oh, well," said Kay, "I bet the old man caught it for him."

"Kay," said Merlyn, suddenly terrible, "thou wast ever a proud and
ill-tongued speaker, and a misfortunate one.  Thy sorrow will come from
thine own mouth."

At this everybody felt uncomfortable, and Kay, instead of flying into
his usual passion, hung his head.  He was not at all an unpleasant
person really, but clever, quick, proud, passionate and ambitious.  He
was one of those people who would be neither a follower nor a leader,
but only an aspiring heart, impatient in the failing body which
imprisoned it.  Merlyn repented of his rudeness at once.  He made a
little silver hunting-knife come out of the air, which he gave him to
put things right.  The knob of the handle was made of the skull of a
stoat, oiled and polished like ivory, and Kay loved it.




_Chapter V_

Sir Ector's home was called The Castle of the Forest Sauvage.  It was
more like a town or a village than any one man's home, and indeed it
was the village during times of danger: for this part of the story is
one which deals with troubled times.  Whenever there was a raid or an
invasion by some neighbouring tyrant, everybody on the estate hurried
into the castle, driving the beasts before them into the courts, and
there they remained until the danger was over.  The wattle and daub
cottages nearly always got burned, and had to be rebuilt afterwards
with much profanity.  For this reason it was not worth while to have a
village church, as it would constantly be having to be replaced.  The
villagers went to church in the chapel of the castle.  They wore their
best clothes and trooped up the street with their most respectable gait
on Sundays, looking with vague and dignified looks in all directions,
as if reluctant to disclose their destination, and on week-days they
came to Mass and vespers in their ordinary clothes, walking much more
cheerfully.  Everybody went to church in those days, and liked it.

The Castle of the Forest Sauvage is still standing, and you can see its
lovely ruined walls with ivy on them, standing broached to the sun and
wind.  Some lizards live there now, and the starving sparrows keep warm
on winter nights in the ivy, and a barn owl drives it methodically,
hovering outside the frightened congregations and beating the ivy with
its wings, to make them fly out.  Most of the curtain wall is down,
though you can trace the foundations of the twelve round towers which
guarded it.  They were round, and stuck out from the wall into the
moat, so that the archers could shoot in all directions and command
every part of the wall.  Inside the towers there are circular stairs.
These go round and round a central column, and this column is pierced
with holes for shooting arrows.  Even if the enemy had got inside the
curtain wall and fought their way into the bottom of the towers, the
defenders could retreat up the bends of the stairs and shoot at those
who followed them up, inside, through these slits.

The stone part of the drawbridge with its barbican and the bartizans of
the gatehouse are in good repair.  These have many ingenious
arrangements.  Even if enemies got over the wooden bridge, which was
pulled up so that they could not, there was a portcullis weighed with
an enormous log which would squash them flat and pin them down as well.
There was a large hidden trap-door in the floor of the barbican, which
would let them into the moat after all.  At the other end of the
barbican there was another portcullis, so that they could be trapped
between the two and annihilated from above, while the bartizans, or
hanging turrets, had holes in their floors through which the defenders
could drop things on their heads.  Finally, inside the gatehouse, there
was a neat little hole in the middle of the vaulted ceiling, which had
painted tracery and bosses.  This hole led to the room above, where
there was a big cauldrom, for boiling lead or oil.

So much for the outer defences.  Once you were inside the curtain wall,
you found yourself in a kind of wide alley-way, probably full of
frightened sheep, with another complete castle in front of you.  This
was the inner shell-keep, with its eight enormous round towers which
still stand.  It is lovely to climb the highest of them and to lie
there looking out toward the Marches, from which some of these old
dangers came, with nothing but the sun above you and the little
tourists trotting about below, quite regardless of arrows and boiling
oil.  Think for how many centuries that unconquerable tower has
withstood.  It has changed hands by secession often, by siege once, by
treachery twice, but never by assault.  On this tower the look-out
hoved.  From here he kept the guard over the blue woods towards Wales.
His clean old bones lie beneath the floor of the chapel now, so you
must keep it for him.

If you look down and are not frightened of heights (the Society for the
Preservation of This and That have put up some excellent railings to
preserve you from tumbling over), you can see the whole anatomy of the
inner court laid out beneath you like a map.  You can see the chapel,
now quite open to its god, and the windows of the great hall with the
solar over it.  You can see the shafts of the huge chimneys and how
cunningly the side flues were contrived to enter them, and the little
private closets now public, and the enormous kitchen.  If you are a
sensible person, you will spend days there, possibly weeks, working out
for yourself by detection which were the stables, which the mews, where
were the cow byres, the armoury, the lofts, the well, the smithy, the
kennel, the soldiers' quarters, the priest's room, and my lord's and
lady's chambers.  Then it will all grow about you again.  The little
people--they were smaller than we are, and it would be a job for most
of us to get inside the few bits of their armour and old gloves that
remain--will hurry about in the sunshine, the sheep will baa as they
always did, and perhaps from Wales there will come the ffff-putt of the
triple-feathered arrow which looks as if it had never moved.

This place was, of course, a paradise for a boy to be in.  The Wart ran
about it like a rabbit in its own complicated labyrinth.  He knew
everything, everywhere, all the special smells, good climbs, soft
lairs, secret hiding-places, jumps, slides, nooks, larders and blisses.
For every season he had the best place, like a cat, and he yelled and
ran and fought and upset people and snoozed and daydreamed and
pretended he was a Knight, without stopping.  Just now he was in the
kennel.

People in those days had rather different ideas about the training of
dogs to what we have today.  They did it more by love than strictness.
Imagine a modern M.F.H. going to bed with his hounds, and yet Flavius
Arrianus says that it is "Best of all if they can sleep with a person
because it makes them more human and because they rejoice in the
company of human beings: also if they have had a restless night or been
internally upset, you will know of it and will not use them to hunt
next day."  In Sir Ector's kennel there was a special boy, called the
Dog Boy, who lived with the hounds day and night.  He was a sort of
head hound, and it was his business to take them out every day for
walks, to pull thorns out of their feet, keep cankers out of their
ears, bind the smaller bones that got dislocated, dose them for worms,
isolate and nurse them in distemper, arbitrate in their quarrels and to
sleep curled up among them at night.  If one more learned quotation may
be excused, this is how, later on, the Duke of York who was killed at
Agincourt described such a boy in his Master of Game: "Also I will
teach the child to lead out the hounds to scombre twice in the day in
the morning and in the evening, so that the sun be up, especially in
winter.  Then should he let them run and play long in a meadow in the
sun, and then comb every hound after the other, and wipe them with a
great wisp of straw, and this he shall do every morning.  And then he
shall lead them into some fair place where tender grass grows as corn
and other things, that therewith they may feed themselves as it is
medicine for them."  Thus, since the boy's "heart and his business be
with the hounds," the hounds themselves become "goodly and kindly and
clean, glad and joyful and playful, and goodly to all manner of folks
save to the wild beasts to whom they should be fierce, eager and
spiteful."

Sir Ector's dog boy was none other than the one who had his nose bitten
off by the terrible Wat.  Not having a nose like a human, and being,
moreover, subjected to stone-throwing by the other village children, he
had become more comfortable with animals.  He talked to them, not in
baby-talk like a maiden lady, but correctly in their own growls and
barks.  They all loved him very much, and revered him for taking thorns
out of their toes, and came to him with their troubles at once.  He
always understood immediately what was wrong, and generally he could
put it right.  It was nice for the dogs to have their god with them, in
visible form.

The Wart was fond of the Dog Boy, and thought him very clever to be
able to do these things with animals--for he could make them do almost
anything just by moving his hands--while the Dog Boy loved the Wart in
much the same way as his dogs loved him, and thought the Wart was
almost holy because he could read and write.  They spent much of their
time together, rolling about with the dogs in the kennel.

The kennel was on the ground floor, near the mews, with a loft above
it, so that it should be cool in summer and warm in winter.  The hounds
were alaunts, gaze-hounds, lymers and braches.  They were called
Clumsy, Trowneer, Phoebe, Colle, Gerland, Talbot, Luath, Luffra,
Apollon, Orthros, Bran, Gelert, Bounce, Boy, Lion, Bungey, Toby, and
Diamond.  The Wart's own special one was called Cavall, and he happened
to be licking Cavall's nose--not the other way about--when Merlyn came
in and found him.

"That will come to be regarded as an insanitary habit," said Merlyn,
"though I cannot see it myself.  After all, God made the creature's
nose just as well as he made your tongue.

"If not better," added the philosopher pensively.

The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him
to talk.  He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the
ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along
in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words,
and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned.  He had the
glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.

"Shall we go out?" asked Merlyn.  "I think it is about time we began
lessons."

The Wart's heart sank at this.  His tutor had been there a month, and
it was now August, but they had done no lessons so far.  Now he
suddenly remembered that this was what Merlyn was for, and he thought
with dread of Summulae Logicales and the filthy astrolabe.  He knew
that it had to be borne, however, and got up obediently enough, after
giving Cavall a last reluctant pat.  He thought that it might not be so
bad with Merlyn, who might be able to make even the old Organon
interesting, particularly if he would do some magic.

They went into the courtyard, into a sun so burning that the heat of
hay-making seemed to have been nothing.  It was baking.  The
thunder-clouds which usually go with hot weather were there, high
columns of cumulus with glaring edges, but there was not going to be
any thunder.  It was too hot even for that.  "If only," thought the
Wart, "I did not have to go into a stuffy classroom, but could take off
my clothes and swim in the moat."

They crossed the courtyard, having almost to take deep breaths before
they darted across it, as if they were going quickly through an oven.
The shade of the gatehouse was cool, but the barbican, with its close
walls, was hottest of all.  In one last dash across the desert they had
reached the drawbridge--could Merlyn have guessed what he was
thinking?--and were staring down into the moat.

It was the season of water-lilies.  If Sir Ector had not kept one
section free of them for the boys' bathing, all the water would have
been covered.  As it was, about twenty yards on each side of the bridge
were cut each year, and one could dive in from the bridge itself.  The
moat was deep.  It was used as a stew, so that the inhabitants of the
castle could have fish on Fridays, and for this reason the architects
had been careful not to let the drains and sewers run into it.  It was
stocked with fish every year.

"I wish I was a fish," said the Wart.

"What sort of fish?"

It was almost too hot to think about this, but the Wart stared down
into the cool amber depths where a school of small perch were aimlessly
hanging about.

"I think I should like to be a perch," he said.  "They are braver than
the silly roach, and not quite so slaughterous as the pike are."

Merlyn took off his hat, raised his staff of lignum vitae politely in
the air, and said slowly, "Snylrem stnemilpmoc ot enutpen dna lliw eh
yldnik tpecca siht yob sa a hsif?"

Immediately there was a loud blowing of sea-shells, conches and so
forth, and a stout, jolly-looking gentleman appeared seated on a
well-blown-up cloud above the battlements.  He had an anchor tattooed
on his stomach and a handsome mermaid with Mabel written under her on
his chest.  He ejected a quid of tobacco, nodded affably to Merlyn and
pointed his trident at the Wart.  The Wart found he had no clothes on.
He found that he had tumbled off the drawbridge, landing with a smack
on his side in the water.  He found that the moat and the bridge had
grown hundreds of times bigger.  He knew that he was turning into a
fish.

"Oh, Merlyn," he cried, "please come too."

"For this once," said a large and solemn tench beside his ear, "I will
come.  But in future you will have to go by yourself.  Education is
experience, and the essence of experience is self-reliance."

The Wart found it difficult to be a new kind of creature.  It was no
good trying to swim like a human being, for it made him go corkscrew
and much too slowly.  He did not know how to swim like a fish.

"Not like that," said the tench in ponderous tones.  "Put your chin on
your left shoulder and do jack-knives.  Never mind about the fins to
begin with."

The Wart's legs had fused together into his backbone and his feet and
toes had become a tail fin.  His arms had become two more fins--of a
delicate pink--and he had sprouted some more somewhere about his
stomach.  His head faced over his shoulder, so that when he bent in the
middle his toes were moving toward his ear instead of toward his
forehead.  He was a beautiful olive-green, with rather scratchy
plate-armour all over him, and dark bands down his sides.  He was not
sure which were his sides and which were his back and front, but what
now appeared to be his belly had an attractive whitish colour, while
his back was armed with a splendid great fin that could be erected for
war and had spikes in it.  He did jack-knives as the tench directed and
found that he was swimming vertically downward into the mud.

"Use your feet to turn to left or right," said the tench, "and spread
those fins on your tummy to keep level.  You are living in two planes
now, not one."

The Wart found that he could keep more or less level by altering the
inclination of his arm fins and the ones on his stomach.  He swam
feebly off, enjoying himself very much.

"Come back," said the tench.  "You must learn to swim before you can
dart."

The Wart returned to his tutor in a series of zig-zags and remarked, "I
do not seem to keep quite straight."

"The trouble with you is that you do not swim from the shoulder.  You
swim as if you were a boy, bending at the hips.  Try doing your
jack-knives right from the neck downward, and move your body exactly
the same amount to the right as you are going to move it to the left.
Put your back into it."

Wart gave two terrific kicks and vanished altogether in a clump of
mare's tail several yards away.

"That's better," said the tench, now out of sight in the murky olive
water, and the Wart backed himself out of his tangle with infinite
trouble, by wriggling his arm fins.  He undulated back toward the voice
in one terrific shove, to show off.

"Good," said the tench, as they collided end to end.  "But direction is
the better part of valour.

"Try if you can do this one," it added.

Without apparent exertion of any kind it swam off backward under a
water-lily.  Without apparent exertion--but the Wart, who was an
enterprising learner, had been watching the slightest movement of its
fins.  He moved his own fins anti-clockwise, gave the tip of his tail a
cunning flick, and was lying alongside the tench.

"Splendid," said Merlyn.  "Let us go for a little swim."

The Wart was on an even keel now, and reasonably able to move about.
He had leisure to look at the extraordinary universe into which the
tattooed gentleman's trident had plunged him.  It was different from
the universe to which he had been accustomed.  For one thing, the
heaven or sky above him was now a perfect circle.  The horizon had
closed to this.  In order to imagine yourself into the Wart's position,
you would have to picture a round horizon, a few inches about your
head, instead of the flat horizon which you usually see.  Under this
horizon of air you would have to imagine another horizon of under
water, spherical and practically upside down--for the surface of the
water acted partly as a mirror to what was below it.  It is difficult
to imagine.  What makes it a great deal more difficult to imagine is
that everything which human beings would consider to be above the water
level was fringed with all the colours of the spectrum.  For instance,
if you had happened to be fishing for the Wart, he would have seen you,
at the rim of the tea saucer which was the upper air to him, not as one
person waving a fishing-rod, but as seven people, whose outlines were
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, all waving the
same rod whose colours were as varied.  In fact, you would have been a
rainbow man to him, a beacon of flashing and radiating colours, which
ran into one another and had rays all about.  You would have burned
upon the water like Cleopatra in the poem.

The next most lovely thing was that the Wart had no weight.  He was not
earth-bound any more and did not have to plod along on a flat surface,
pressed down by gravity and the weight of the atmosphere.  He could do
what men have always wanted to do, that is, fly.  There is practically
no difference between flying in the water and flying in the air.  The
best of it was that he did not have to fly in a machine, by pulling
levers and sitting still, but could do it with his own body.  It was
like the dreams people have.

Just as they were going to swim off on their tour of inspection, a
timid young roach appeared from between two waving bottle bushes of
mare's tail and hung about, looking pale with agitation.  It looked at
them with big, apprehensive eyes and evidently wanted something, but
could not make up its mind.

"Approach," said Merlyn gravely.

At this the roach rushed up like a hen, burst into tears, and began
stammering its message.

"If you p-p-p-please, doctor," stammered the poor creature, gabbling so
that they could scarcely understand what it said, "we have such a
d-dretful case of s-s-s-something or other in our family, and we
w-w-w-wondered if you could s-s-s-spare the time?  It's our d-d-d-dear
Mamma, who w-w-w-will swim a-a-all the time upside d-d-d-down, and she
d-d-d-does look so horrible and s-s-s-speaks so strange, that we
r-r-r-really thought she ought to have a d-d-d-doctor, if it
w-w-w-wouldn't be too much?  C-C-C-Clara says to say so.  Sir, if you
s-s-s-see w-w-w-what I m-m-m-mean?"

Here the poor roach began fizzing so much, what with its stammer and
its tearful disposition, that it became quite inarticulate and could
only stare at Merlyn with mournful eyes.

"Never mind, my little man," said Merlyn.  "There, there, lead me to
your dear Mamma, and we shall see what we can do."

They all three swam off into the murk under the drawbridge, upon their
errand of mercy.

"Neurotic, these roach," whispered Merlyn, behind his fin.  "It is
probably a case of nervous hysteria, a matter for the psychologist
rather than the physician."

The roach's Mamma was lying on her back as he had described.  She was
squinting, had folded her fins on her chest, and every now and then she
blew a bubble.  All her children were gathered round her in a circle,
and every time she blew they nudged each other and gasped.  She had a
seraphic smile on her face.

"Well, well, well," said Merlyn, putting on his best bed-side manner,
"and how is Mrs. Roach today?"

He patted the young roaches on the head and advanced with stately
motions toward his patient.  It should perhaps be mentioned that Merlyn
was a ponderous, deep-beamed fish of about five pounds, leather
coloured, with small scales, adipose in his fins, rather slimy, and
having a bright marigold eye--a respectable figure.

Mrs. Roach held out a languid fin, sighed emphatically and said, "Ah,
doctor, so you've come at last?"

"Hum," said the physician, in his deepest tone.

Then he told everybody to close their eyes--the Wart peeped--and began
to swim round the invalid in a slow and stately dance.  As he danced he
sang.  His song was this:

    Therapeutic,
    Elephantic,
    Diagnosis,
    Boom!
    Pancreatic,
    Microstatic,
    Anti-toxic,
    Doom!
  With a normal catabolism,
    Gabbleism and babbleism,
    Snip, Snap, Snorum,
    Cut out his abdonorum.
    Dyspepsia,
    Anaemia,
    Toxaemia.
    One, two, three,
    And out goes He,
  With a fol-de-rol-derido for the Five Guinea Fee.


At the end of the song he was swimming round his patient so close that
he actually touched her, stroking his brown smooth-scaled flanks
against her more rattly pale ones.  Perhaps he was healing her with his
slime--for all the fishes are said to go to the Tench for medicine--or
perhaps it was by touch or massage or hypnotism.  In any case, Mrs.
Roach suddenly stopped squinting, turned the right way up, and said,
"Oh, doctor, dear doctor, I feel I could eat a little lob-worm now."

"No lob-worm," said Merlyn, "not for two days.  I shall give you a
prescription for a strong broth of algae every two hours, Mrs. Roach.
We must build up your strength, you know.  After all, Rome was not
built in a day."

Then he patted all the little roaches once more, told them to grow up
into brave little fish, and swam off with an air of importance into the
gloom.  As he swam, he puffed his mouth in and out.

"What did you mean by that about Rome?" asked the Wart, when they were
out of earshot.

"Heaven knows."

They swam along, Merlyn occasionally advising him to put his back into
it when he forgot, and the strange under-water world began to dawn
about them, deliciously cool after the heat of the upper air.  The
great forests of weed were delicately traced, and in them there hung
motionless many schools of sticklebacks learning to do their physical
exercises in strict unison.  On the word One they all lay still; at Two
they faced about; at Three they all shot together into a cone, whose
apex was a bit of something to eat.  Water snails slowly ambled about
on the stems of the lilies or under their leaves, while fresh-water
mussels lay on the bottom doing nothing in particular.  Their flesh was
salmon pink, like a very good strawberry cream ice.  The small
congregations of perch--it was a strange thing, but all the bigger fish
seemed to have hidden themselves--had delicate circulations, so that
they blushed or grew pale as easily as a lady in a Victorian novel.
Only their blush was a deep olive colour, and it was the blush of rage.
Whenever Merlyn and his companion swam past them, they raised their
spiky dorsal fins in menace, and only lowered them when they saw that
Merlyn was a tench.  The black bars on their sides made them look as if
they had been grilled, and these also could become darker or lighter.
Once the two travellers passed under a swan.  The white creature
floated above like a Zeppelin, all indistinct except what was under the
water.  The latter part was quite clear and showed that the swan was
floating slightly on one side with one leg cocked over its back.

"Look," said the Wart, "it is the poor swan with the deformed leg.  It
can only paddle with one leg, and the other side of it is hunched."

"Nonsense," said the swan snappily, putting its head into the water and
giving them a frown with its black nares.  "Swans like to rest in this
position, and you can keep your fishy sympathy to yourself, so there."
It continued to glare at them from up above, like a white snake
suddenly let down through the ceiling, until they were out of sight.

"You swim along," said the tench, "as if there was nothing to be afraid
of in the world.  Don't you see that this place is exactly like the
forest which you had to come through to find me?"

"Is it?"

"Look over there."

The Wart looked, and at first saw nothing.  Then he saw a small
translucent shape hanging motionless near the surface.  It was just
outside the shadow of a water-lily and was evidently enjoying the sun.
It was a baby pike, absolutely rigid and probably asleep, and it looked
like a pipe stem or a sea-horse stretched out flat.  It would be a
brigand when it grew up.

"I am taking you to see one of those," said the tench, "the Emperor of
these purlieus.  As a doctor I have immunity, and I dare say he will
respect you as my companion as well--but you had better keep your tail
bent in case he is feeling tyrannical."

"Is he the King of the Moat?"

"He is.  Old Jack they call him, and some call him Black Peter, but for
the most part they do not mention him by name at all.  They just call
him Mr. P.  You will see what it is to be a king."

The Wart began to hang behind his conductor a little, and perhaps it
was as well that he did, for they were almost on top of their
destination before he noticed it.  When he did see the old despot he
started back in horror, for Mr. P. was four feet long, his weight
incalculable.  The great body, shadowy and almost invisible among the
stems, ended in a face which had been ravaged by all the passions of an
absolute monarch--by cruelty, sorrow, age, pride, selfishness,
loneliness and thoughts too strong for individual brains.  There he
hung or hoved, his vast ironic mouth permanently drawn downward in a
kind of melancholy, his lean clean-shaven chops giving him an American
expression, like that of Uncle Sam.  He was remorseless, disillusioned,
logical, predatory, fierce, pitiless--but his great jewel of an eye was
that of a stricken deer, large, fearful, sensitive and full of griefs.
He made no movement, but looked upon them with his bitter eye.

The Wart thought to himself that he did not care for Mr. P.

"Lord," said Merlyn, not paying attention to his nervousness, "I have
brought a young professor who would learn to profess."

"To profess what?" asked the King of the Moat slowly, hardly opening
his jaws and speaking through his nose.

"Power," said the tench.

"Let him speak for himself."

"Please," said the Wart, "I don't know what I ought to ask."

"There is nothing," said the monarch, "except the power which you
pretend to seek: power to grind and power to digest, power to seek and
power to find, power to await and power to claim, all power and
pitilessness springing from the nape of the neck."

"Thank you."

"Love is a trick played on us by the forces of evolution.  Pleasure is
the bait laid down by the same.  There is only power.  Power is of the
individual mind, but the mind's power is not enough.  Power of the body
decides everything in the end, and only Might is Right.

"Now I think it is time that you should go away, young master, for I
find this conversation uninteresting and exhausting.  I think you ought
to go away really almost at once, in case my disillusioned mouth should
suddenly determine to introduce you to my great gills, which have teeth
in them also.  Yes, I really think you might be wise to go away this
moment.  Indeed, I think you ought to put your back into it.  And so, a
long farewell to all my greatness."

The Wart had found himself almost hypnotized by the big words, and
hardly noticed that the tight mouth was coming closer and closer to
him.  It came imperceptibly, as the lecture distracted his attention,
and suddenly it was looming within an inch of his nose.  On the last
sentence it opened, horrible and vast, the skin stretching ravenously
from bone to bone and tooth to tooth.  Inside there seemed to be
nothing but teeth, sharp teeth like thorns in rows and ridges
everywhere, like the nails in labourers' boots, and it was only at the
last second that he was able to regain his own will, to pull himself
together, to recollect his instructions and to escape.  All those teeth
clashed behind him at the tip of his tail, as he gave the heartiest
jack-knife he had ever given.

In a second he was on dry land once again, standing beside Merlyn on
the piping drawbridge, panting in his stuffy clothes.




_Chapter VI_

One Thursday afternoon the boys were doing their archery as usual.
There were two straw targets fifty yards apart, and when they had shot
their arrows at one, they had only to go to it, collect them, and shoot
back at the other, after facing about.  It was still the loveliest
summer weather, and there had been chicken for dinner, so that Merlyn
had gone off to the edge of their shooting-ground and sat down under a
tree.  What with the warmth and the chicken and the cream he had poured
over his pudding and the continual repassing of the boys and the tock
of the arrows in the targets--which was as sleepy to listen to as the
noise of a lawn-mower or of a village cricket match--and what with the
dance of the egg-shaped sunspots between the leaves of his tree, the
aged man was soon fast asleep.

Archery was a serious occupation in those days.  It had not yet been
turned over to Indians and small boys.  When you were shooting badly
you got into a bad temper, just as the wealthy pheasant shooters do
today.  Kay was shooting badly.  He was trying too hard and plucking on
his loose, instead of leaving it to the bow.  "Oh, come on," he said.
"I am sick of these beastly targets.  Let's have a shot at the
popinjay."

They left the targets and had several shots at the popinjay--which was
a large, bright-coloured artificial bird stuck on the top of a stick,
like a parrot--and Kay missed these also.  First he had the feeling of,
"Well, I will hit the filthy thing, even if I have to go without my tea
until I do it."  Then he merely became bored.

The Wart said, "Let's play Rovers then.  We can come back in half an
hour and wake Merlyn up."

What they called Rovers, consisted in going for a walk with their bows
and shooting one arrow each at any agreed mark which they came across.
Sometimes it would be a molehill, sometimes a clump of rushes,
sometimes a big thistle almost at their feet.  They varied the distance
at which they chose these objects, sometimes picking a target as much
as 120 yards away--which was about as far as these boys' bows could
carry--and sometimes having to aim actually below a close thistle
because the arrow always leaps up a foot or two as it leaves the bow.
They counted five for a hit, and one if the arrow was within a bow's
length, and they added up their scores at the end.

On this Thursday they chose their targets wisely.  Besides, the grass
of the big field had been lately cut, so that they never had to search
for their arrows for long, which nearly always happens, as in golf, if
you shoot ill-advisedly near hedges or in rough places.  The result was
that they strayed further than usual and found themselves near the edge
of the savage forest where Cully had been lost.

"I vote," said Kay, "that we go to those buries in the chase, and see
if we can get a rabbit.  It would be more fun than shooting at these
hummocks."

They did this.  They chose two trees about a hundred yards apart, and
each boy stood under one of them waiting for the conies to come out
again.  They stood still, with their bows already raised and arrows
fitted, so that they would make the least possible movement to disturb
the creatures when they did appear.  It was not difficult for either of
them to stand thus, for the first test which they had had to pass in
archery was standing with the bow at arm's length for half an hour.
They had six arrows each and would be able to fire and mark them all
before they needed to frighten the rabbits back by walking about to
collect.  An arrow does not make enough noise to upset more than the
particular rabbit that it is shot at.

At the fifth shot Kay was lucky.  He allowed just the right amount for
wind and distance, and his point took a young coney square in the head.
It had been standing up on end to look at him, wondering what he was.

"Oh, well shot!" cried the Wart, as they ran to pick it up.  It was the
first rabbit they had ever hit, and luckily they had killed it dead.

When they had carefully gutted it with the hunting knife which Merlyn
had given--to keep it fresh--and passed one of its hind legs through
the other at the hock, for convenience in carrying, the two boys
prepared to go home with their prize.  But before they unstrung their
bows they used to observe a ceremony.  Every Thursday afternoon, after
the last serious arrow had been shot, they were allowed to fit one more
nock to their strings and to shoot the arrow straight up into the air.
It was partly a gesture of farewell, partly of triumph, and it was
beautiful.  They did it now as salute to their first prey.

The Wart watched his arrow go up.  The sun was already westing toward
evening, and the trees where they were had plunged them into a partial
shade.  So, as the arrow topped the trees and climbed into sunlight, it
began to burn against the evening like the sun itself.  Up and up it
went, not weaving as it would have done with a snatching loose, but
soaring, swimming, aspiring to heaven, steady, golden and superb.  Just
as it had spent its force, just as its ambition had been dimmed by
destiny and it was preparing to faint, to turn over, to pour back into
the bosom of its mother earth, a portent happened.  A gore-crow came
flapping wearily before the approaching night.  It came, it did not
waver, it took the arrow.  It flew away, heavy and hoisting, with the
arrow in its beak.

Kay was frightened by this, but the Wart was furious.  He had loved his
arrow's movement, its burning ambition in the sunlight, and, besides,
it was his best one.  It was the only one which was perfectly balanced,
sharp, tight-feathered, clean-nocked, and neither warped nor scraped.

"It was a witch," said Kay.




_Chapter VII_

Tilting and horsemanship had two afternoons a week, because they were
the most important branches of a gentleman's education in those days.
Merlyn grumbled about athletics, saying that nowadays people seemed to
think that you were an educated man if you could knock another man off
a horse and that the craze for games was the ruin of
scholarship--nobody got scholarships like they used to do when he was a
boy, and all the public schools had been forced to lower their
standards--but Sir Ector, who was an old tilting blue, said that the
battle of Crcy had been won upon the playing fields of Camelot.  This
made Merlyn so furious that he gave Sir Ector rheumatism two nights
running before he relented.

Tilting was a great art and needed practice.  When two knights jousted
they held their lances in their right hands, but they directed their
horses at one another so that each man had his opponent on his near
side.  The base of the lance, in fact, was held on the opposite side of
the body to the side at which the enemy was charging.  This seems
rather inside out to anybody who is in the habit, say, of opening gates
with a hunting-crop, but it had its reasons.  For one thing, it meant
that the shield was on the left arm, so that the opponents charged
shield to shield, fully covered.  It also meant that a man could be
unhorsed with the side or edge of the lance, in a kind of horizontal
swipe, if you did not feel sure of hitting him with your point.  This
was the humblest or least skilful blow in jousting.

A good jouster, like Lancelot or Tristram, always used the blow of the
point, because, although it was liable to miss in unskilful hands, it
made contact sooner.  If one knight charged with his lance held rigidly
sideways, to sweep his opponent out of the saddle, the other knight
with his lance held directly forward would knock him down a lance
length before the sweep came into effect.

Then there was how to hold the lance for the point stroke.  It was no
good crouching in the saddle and clutching it in a rigid grip
preparatory to the great shock, for if you held it inflexibly like this
its point bucked up and down to every movement of your thundering mount
and you were practically certain to miss the aim.  On the contrary, you
had to sit loosely in the saddle with the lance easy and balanced
against the horse's motion.  It was not until the actual moment of
striking that you clamped your knees into the horse's sides, threw your
weight forward in your seat, clutched the lance with the whole hand
instead of with the finger and thumb, and hugged your right elbow to
your side to support the butt.

There was the size of the spear.  Obviously a man with a spear one
hundred yards long would strike down an opponent with a spear of ten or
twelve feet before the latter came anywhere near him.  But it would
have been impossible to make a spear one hundred yards long and, if
made, impossible to carry it.  The jouster had to find out the greatest
length which he could manage with the greatest speed, and he had to
stick to that.  Sir Lancelot, who came some time after this part of the
story, had several sizes of spear and would call for his Great Spear or
his Lesser Spear as occasion demanded.

There were the places on which the enemy should be hit.  In the armoury
of The Castle of the Forest Sauvage there was a big picture of a knight
in armour with circles round his vulnerable points.  These varied with
the style of armour, so that you had to study your opponent before the
charge and select a point.  The good armourers--the best lived at
Warrington, and still live near there--were careful to make all the
forward or entering sides of their suits convex, so that the spear
point glanced off them.  Curiously enough, the shields of Gothic suits
were more inclined to be concave.  It was better that a spear point
should stay on the shield, rather than glance off upward or downward,
and perhaps hit a more vulnerable point of the body armour.  The best
place of all for hitting people was on the very crest of the tilting
helm, that is, if the person in question were vain enough to have a
large metal crest in whose folds and ornaments the point would find a
ready lodging.  Many were vain enough to have these armorial crests,
with bears and dragons or even ships or castles on them, but Sir
Lancelot always contented himself with a bare helmet, or a bunch of
feathers which would not hold spears, or, on one occasion, a soft
lady's sleeve.

It would take too long to go into all the interesting details of proper
tilting which the boys had to learn, for in those days you had to be a
master of your craft from the bottom upward.  You had to know what wood
was best for spears, and why, and even how to turn them so that they
would not splinter or warp.  There were a thousand disputed questions
about arms and armour, all of which had to be understood.

Just outside Sir Ector's castle there was a jousting field for
tournaments, although there had been no tournaments in it since Kay was
born.  It was a green meadow, kept short, with a broad grassy bank
raised round it on which pavilions could be erected.  There was an old
wooden grandstand at one side, lifted on stilts for the ladies.  At
present the field was only used as a practice-ground for tilting, so a
quintain had been erected at one end and a ring at the other.  The
quintain was a wooden saracen on a pole.  He was painted with a bright
blue face and red beard and glaring eyes.  He had a shield in his left
hand and a flat wooden sword in his right.  If you hit him in the
middle of his forehead all was well, but if your lance struck him on
the shield or on any part to left or right of the middle line, then he
spun round with great rapidity, and usually caught you a wallop with
his sword as you galloped by, ducking.  His paint was somewhat
scratched and the wood picked up over his right eye.  The ring was just
an ordinary iron ring tied to a kind of gallows by a thread.  If you
managed to put your point through the ring, the thread broke, and you
could canter off proudly with the ring round your spear.

The day was cooler than it had been for some time, for the autumn was
almost within sight, and the two boys were in the tilting yard with the
master armourer and Merlyn.  The master armourer, or sergeant-at-arms,
was a stiff, pale, bouncy gentleman with waxed moustaches.  He always
marched about with his chest stuck out like a pouter pigeon, and he
called out "On the word One--" on every possible occasion.  He took
great pains to keep his stomach in, and often tripped over his feet
because he could not see them over his chest.  He was generally making
his muscles ripple, which annoyed Merlyn.

Wart lay beside Merlyn in the shade of the grandstand and scratched
himself for harvest bugs.  The saw-like sickles had only lately been
put away, and the wheat stood in stooks of eight among the tall stubble
of those times.  The Wart still itched.  He was also sore about the
shoulders and had a burning ear, from making bosh shots at the
quintain--for, of course, practice tilting was done without armour.
Wart was pleased that it was Kay's turn to go through it now and he lay
drowsily in the shade, snoozing, scratching, twitching like a dog and
partly attending to the fun.

Merlyn, sitting with his back to all the athleticism, was practising a
spell which he had forgotten.  It was a spell to make the sergeant's
moustaches uncurl, but at present it only uncurled one of them, and the
sergeant had not noticed it.  He absent-mindedly curled it up again
every time Merlyn did the spell, and Merlyn said, "Drat it!" and began
again.  Once he made the sergeant's ears flap by mistake, and the
latter gave a startled look at the sky.

From far off at the other side of the tilting ground the sergeant's
voice came floating on the still air.

"Nah, Nah, Master Kay, that ain't it at all.  Has you were.  Has you
were.  The spear should be 'eld between the thumb and forefinger of the
right 'and, with the shield in line with the seam of the trahser
leg...."

The Wart rubbed his sore ear and sighed.

"What are you grieving about?"

"I was not grieving; I was thinking."

"What were you thinking?"

"Oh, it was not anything.  I was thinking about Kay learning to be a
knight."

"And well you may grieve," exclaimed Merlyn hotly.  "A lot of brainless
unicorns swaggering about and calling themselves educated just because
they can push each other off a horse with a bit of stick!  It makes me
tired.  Why, I believe Sir Ector would have been gladder to get a
by-our-lady tilting blue for your tutor, that swings himself along on
his knuckles like an anthropoid ape, rather than a magician of known
probity and international reputation with first-class honours from
every European university.  The trouble with the Norman Aristocracy is
that they are games-mad, that is what it is, games-mad."

He broke off indignantly and deliberately made the sergeant's ears flap
slowly twice, in unison.

"I was not thinking quite about that," said the Wart.  "As a matter of
fact, I was thinking how nice it would be to be a knight, like Kay."

"Well, you will be one soon enough, won't you?" asked the old man,
impatiently.

Wart did not answer.

"Won't you?"

Merlyn turned round and looked closely at the boy through his
spectacles.

"What is the matter now?" he enquired nastily.  His inspection had
shown him that his pupil was trying not to cry, and if he spoke in a
kind voice he would break down and do it.

"I shall not be a knight," replied the Wart coldly.  Merlyn's trick had
worked and he no longer wanted to weep: he wanted to kick Merlyn.  "I
shall not be a knight because I am not a proper son of Sir Ector's.
They will knight Kay, and I shall be his squire."

Merlyn's back was turned again, but his eyes were bright behind his
spectacles.  "Too bad," he said, without commiseration.

The Wart burst out with all his thoughts aloud.  "Oh," he cried, "but I
should have liked to be born with a proper father and mother, so that I
could be a knight errant."

"What would you have done?"

"I should have had a splendid suit of armour and dozens of spears and a
black horse standing eighteen hands, and I should have called myself
The Black Knight.  And I should have hoved at a well or a ford or
something and made all true knights that came that way to joust with me
for the honour of their ladies, and I should have spared them all after
I had given them a great fall.  And I should live out of doors all the
year round in a pavilion, and never do anything but joust and go on
quests and bear away the prize at tournaments, and I should not ever
tell anybody my name."

"Your wife will scarcely enjoy the life."

"Oh, I am not going to have a wife.  I think they are stupid.

"I shall have to have a lady-love, though," added the future knight
uncomfortably, "so that I can wear her favour in my helm, and do deeds
in her honour."

A humblebee came zooming between them, under the grandstand and out
into the sunlight.

"Would you like to see some real knights errant?" asked the magician
slowly.  "Now, for the sake of your education?"

"Oh, I would!  We have never even had a tournament since I was here."

"I suppose it could be managed."

"Oh, please do.  You could take me to some like you did to the fish."

"I suppose it is educational, in a way."

"It is very educational," said the Wart.  "I can't think of anything
more educational than to see some real knights fighting.  Oh, won't you
please do it?"

"Do you prefer any particular knight?"

"King Pellinore," he said immediately.  He had a weakness for this
gentleman since their strange encounter in the Forest.

Merlyn said, "That will do very well.  Put your hands to your sides and
relax your muscles.  _Cabricias arci thuram, catalamus, singulariter,
nominativa, haec musa_.  Shut your eyes and keep them shut.  _Bonus,
Bona, Bonum_.  Here we go.  _Deus Sanctus, est-ne oratio Latinas_?
_Etiam, oui, quare_?  _Pourquoi_?  _Quai substantive et adjectivum
concordat in generi, numerum et casus_.  Here we are."

While this incantation was going on, the patient felt some queer
sensations.  First he could hear the sergeant calling out to Kay, "Nah,
then, nah then, keep the 'eels dahn and swing the body from the 'ips."
Then the words got smaller and smaller, as if he were looking at his
feet through the wrong end of a telescope, and began to swirl round in
a cone, as if they were at the pointed bottom end of a whirlpool which
was sucking him into the air.  Then there was nothing but a loud
rotating roaring and hissing noise which rose to such a tornado that he
felt that he could not stand it any more.  Finally there was utter
silence and Merlyn saying, "Here we are."  All this happened in about
the time that it would take a sixpenny rocket to start off with its
fiery swish, bend down from its climax and disperse itself in thunder
and coloured stars.  He opened his eyes just at the moment when one
would have heard the invisible stick hitting the ground.

They were lying under a beech tree in the Forest Sauvage.

"Here we are," said Merlyn.  "Get up and dust your clothes.

"And there, I think," continued the magician, in a tone of satisfaction
because his spells had worked for once without a hitch, "is your
friend, King Pellinore, pricking toward us o'er the plain."

"Hallo, hallo," cried King Pellinore, popping his visor up and down.
"It's the young boy with the feather bed, isn't it, I say, what?"

"Yes, it is," said the Wart.  "And I am very glad to see you.  Did you
manage to catch the Beast?"

"No," said King Pellinore.  "Didn't catch the beast.  Oh, do come here,
you brachet, and leave that bush alone.  Tcha!  Tcha!  Naughty,
naughty!  She runs riot, you know, what.  Very keen on rabbits.  I tell
you there's nothing in it, you beastly dog.  Tcha!  Tcha!  Leave it,
leave it!  Oh, do come to heel, like I tell you.

"She never does come to heel," he added.

At this the dog put a cock pheasant out of the bush, which rocketed off
with a tremendous clatter, and the dog became so excited that it ran
round its master three or four times at the end of its rope, panting
hoarsely as if it had asthma.  King Pellinore's horse stood patiently
while the rope was wound round its legs, and Merlyn and the Wart had to
catch the brachet and unwind it before the conversation could go on.

"I say," said King Pellinore.  "Thank you very much, I must say.  Won't
you introduce me to your friend, what?"

"This is my tutor Merlyn, a great magician."

"How-de-do," said the King.  "Always like to meet magicians.  In fact I
always like to meet anybody.  It passes the time away, what, on a
quest."

"Hail," said Merlyn, in his most mysterious manner.

"Hail," replied the King, anxious to make a good impression.

They shook hands.

"Did you say Hail?" inquired the King, looking about him nervously.  "I
thought it was going to be fine, myself."

"He meant How-do-you-do," explained the Wart.

"Ah, yes, How-de-do?"

They shook hands again.

"Good afternoon," said King Pellinore.  "What do you think the weather
looks like now?"

"I think it looks like an anti-cyclone."

"Ah, yes," said the King.  "An anti-cyclone.  Well, I suppose I ought
to be getting along."

At this the King trembled very much, opened and shut his visor several
times, coughed, wove his reins into a knot, exclaimed, "I beg your
pardon?" and showed signs of cantering away.

"He is a white magician," said the Wart.  "You need not be afraid of
him.  He is my best friend, your majesty, and in any case he generally
gets his spells muddled up."

"Ah, yes," said King Pellinore.  "A white magician, what?  How small
the world is, is it not?  How-de-do?"

"Hail," said Merlyn.

"Hail," said King Pellinore.

They shook hands for the third time.

"I should not go away," said the wizard, "if I were you.  Sir Grummore
Grummursum is on the way to challenge you to a joust."

"No, you don't say?  Sir What-you-may-call-it coming here to challenge
me to a joust?"

"Assuredly."

"Good handicap man?"

"I should think it would be an even match."

"Well, I must say," exclaimed the King, "it never hails but it pours."

"Hail," said Merlyn.

"Hail," said King Pellinore.

"Hail," said the Wart.

"Now I really won't shake hands with anybody else," announced the
monarch.  "We must assume that we have all met before."

"Is Sir Grummore really coming," inquired the Wart, hastily changing
the subject, "to challenge King Pellinore to a battle?"

"Look yonder," said Merlyn, and both of them looked in the direction of
his outstretched finger.

Sir Grummore Grummursum was cantering up the clearing in full panoply
of war.  Instead of his ordinary helmet with a visor he was wearing the
proper tilting-helm, which looked like a large coal-scuttle, and as he
cantered he clanged.

He was singing his old school song:

  "We'll tilt together
  Steady from crupper to poll,
  And nothin' in life shall sever
  Our love for the dear old coll.
  Follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up
  Till the shield ring again and again
  With the clanks of the clanky true men."


"Goodness," exclaimed King Pellinore.  "It's about two months since I
had a proper tilt, and last winter they put me up to eighteen.  That
was when they had the new handicaps."

Sir Grummore had arrived while he was speaking, and had recognized the
Wart.

"Mornin'," said Sir Grummore.  "You're Sir Ector's boy, ain't you?  And
who's that chap in the comic hat?"

"That is my tutor," said the Wart hurriedly.  "Merlyn, the magician."

Sir Grummore looked at Merlyn--magicians were considered rather
middle-class by the true jousting set in those days--and said
distantly, "Ah, a magician.  How-de-do?"

"And this is King Pellinore," said the Wart.  "Sir Grummore
Grummursum--King Pellinore."

"How-de-do?" inquired Sir Grummore.

"Hail," said King Pellinore.  "No, I mean it won't hail, will it?"

"Nice day," said Sir Grummore.

"Yes, it is nice, isn't it, what?"

"Been questin' today?"

"Oh, yes, thank you.  Always am questing, you know.  After the Questing
Beast."

"Interestin' job, that, very."

"Yes, it is interesting.  Would you like to see some fewmets?"

"By Jove, yes.  Like to see some fewmets."

"I have some better ones at home, but these are quite good, really."

"Bless my soul.  So these are her fewmets."

"Yes, these are her fewmets."

"Interestin' fewmets."

"Yes, they are interesting, aren't they?  Only you get tired of them,"
added King Pellinore.

"Well, well.  It's a fine day, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is rather fine."

"Suppose we'd better have a joust, eh, what?"

"Yes, I suppose we had better," said King Pellinore, "really."

"What shall we have it for?"

"Oh, the usual thing, I suppose.  Would one of you kindly help me on
with my helm?"

They all three had to help him on eventually, for, what with the
unscrewing of screws and the easing of nuts and bolts which the King
had clumsily set on the wrong thread when getting up in a hurry that
morning, it was quite a feat of engineering to get him out of his
helmet and into his helm.  The helm was an enormous thing like an oil
drum, padded inside with two thicknesses of leather and three inches of
straw.

As soon as they were ready, the two knights stationed themselves at
each end of the clearing and then advanced to meet in the middle.

"Fair knight," said King Pellinore, "I pray thee tell me thy name."

"That me regards," replied Sir Grummore, using the proper formula.

"That is uncourteously said," said King Pellinore, "what?  For no
knight ne dreadeth for to speak his name openly, but for some reason of
shame."

"Be that as it may, I choose that thou shalt not know my name as at
this time, for no askin'."

"Then you must stay and joust with me, false knight."

"Haven't you got that wrong, Pellinore?" inquired Sir Grummore.  "I
believe it ought to be 'thou shalt'."

"Oh, I'm sorry, Sir Grummore.  Yes, so it should, of course.  Then thou
shalt stay and joust with me, false knight."

Without further words, the two gentlemen retreated to the opposite ends
of the clearing, fewtered their spears, and prepared to hurtle together
in the preliminary charge.

"I think we had better climb this tree," said Merlyn.  "You never know
what will happen in a joust like this."

They climbed up the big beech, which had easy branches sticking out in
all directions, and the Wart stationed himself toward the end of a
smooth bough about fifteen feet up, where he could get a good view.
Nothing is so comfortable to sit in as a beech.

To be able to picture the terrible battle which now took place, there
is one thing which ought to be known.  A knight in his full armour of
those days, or at any rate during the heaviest days of armour, was
generally carrying as much or more than his own weight in metal.  He
often weighed no less than twenty-two stone, and sometimes as much as
twenty-five.  This meant that his horse had to be a slow and enormous
weight-carrier, like the farm horse of today, and that his own
movements were so hampered by his burden of iron and padding that they
were toned down into slow motion, as on the cinema.

"They're off!" cried the Wart, holding his breath with excitement.

Slowly and majestically, the ponderous horses lumbered into a walk.
The spears, which had been pointing in the air, bowed to a horizontal
line and pointed at each other.  King Pellinore and Sir Grummore could
be seen to be thumping their horses' sides with their heels for all
they were worth, and in a few minutes the splendid animals had shambled
into an earth-shaking imitation of a trot.  Clank, rumble, thump-thump
went the horses, and now the two knights were flapping their elbows and
legs in unison, showing a good deal of daylight at their seats.  There
was a change in tempo, and Sir Grummore's horse could be definitely
seen to be cantering.  In another minute King Pellinore's was doing so
too.  It was a terrible spectacle.

"Oh, dear!" exclaimed the Wart, feeling ashamed that his
blood-thirstiness had been responsible for making these two knights
joust before him.  "Do you think they will kill each other?"

"Dangerous sport," said Merlyn, shaking his head.

"Now!" cried the Wart.

With a blood-curdling beat of iron hoofs the mighty equestrians came
together.  Their spears wavered for a moment within a few inches of
each other's helms--each had chosen the difficult point-stroke--and
then they were galloping off in opposite directions.  Sir Grummore
drove his spear deep into the beech tree where they were sitting, and
stopped dead.  King Pellinore, who had been run away with, vanished
altogether behind his back.

"Is it safe to look?" inquired the Wart, who had shut his eyes at the
critical moment.

"Quite safe," said Merlyn.  "It will take them some time to get back in
position."

"Whoa, whoa, I say!" cried King Pellinore in muffled and distant tones,
far away among the gorse bushes.

"Hi, Pellinore, hi!" shouted Sir Grummore.  "Come back, my dear fellah,
I'm over here."

There was a long pause, while the complicated stations of the two
knights readjusted themselves, and then King Pellinore was at the
opposite end from that at which he had started, while Sir Grummore
faced him from his original position.

"Traitor knight!" cried Sir Grummore.

"Yield, recreant, what?" cried King Pellinore.

They fewtered their spears again, and thundered into the charge.

"Oh," said the Wart, "I hope they don't hurt themselves."

But the two mounts were patiently blundering together, and the two
knights had simultaneously decided on the sweeping stroke.  Each held
his spear at right angles toward the left, and, before the Wart could
say anything further, there was a terrific yet melodious thump.  Clang!
went the armour, like a motor omnibus in collision with a smithy, and
the jousters were sitting side by side on the green sward, while their
horses cantered off in opposite directions.

"A splendid fall," said Merlyn.

The two horses pulled themselves up, their duty done, and began
resignedly to eat the sward.  King Pellinore and Sir Grummore sat
looking straight before them, each with the other's spear clasped
hopefully under his arm.

"Well!" said the Wart.  "What a bump!  They both seem to be all right,
so far."

Sir Grummore and King Pellinore laboriously got up.

"Defend thee," cried King Pellinore.

"God save thee," cried Sir Grummore.

With this they drew their swords and rushed together with such ferocity
that each, after dealing the other a dint on the helm, sat down
suddenly backwards.

"Bah!" cried King Pellinore.

"Booh!" cried Sir Grummore, also sitting down.

"Mercy," exclaimed the Wart.  "What a combat!"

The knights had now lost their tempers and the battle was joined in
earnest.  It did not matter much, however, for they were so encased in
metal that they could not do each other much damage.  It took them so
long to get up, and the dealing of a blow when you weighed the eighth
part of a ton was such a cumbrous business, that every stage of the
contest could be marked and pondered.

In the first stage King Pellinore and Sir Grummore stood opposite each
other for about half an hour, and walloped each other on the helm.
There was only opportunity for one blow at a time, so they more or less
took it in turns, King Pellinore striking while Sir Grummore was
recovering, and vice versa.  At first, if either of them dropped his
sword or got it stuck in the ground, the other put in two or three
extra blows while he was patiently fumbling for it or trying to tug it
out.  Later, they fell into the rhythm of the thing more perfectly,
like the toy mechanical people who saw wood on Christmas trees.
Eventually the exercise and the monotony restored their good humour and
they began to get bored.

The second stage was introduced as a change, by common consent.  Sir
Grummore stumped off to one end of the clearing, while King Pellinore
plodded off to the other.  Then they turned round and swayed backward
and forward once or twice, in order to get their weight on their toes.
When they leaned forward they had to run forward, to keep up with their
weight, and if they leaned too far backward they fell down.  So even
walking was complicated.  When they had got their weight properly
distributed in front of them, so that they were just off their balance,
each broke into a trot to keep up with himself.  They hurtled together
as it had been two boars.

They met in the middle, breast to breast, with a noise of shipwreck and
great bells tolling, and both, bouncing off, fell breathless on their
backs.  They lay thus for a few minutes, panting.  Then they slowly
began to heave themselves to their feet, and it was obvious that they
had lost their tempers once again.

King Pellinore had not only lost his temper but he seemed to have been
a bit astonished by the impact.  He got up facing the wrong way, and
could not find Sir Grummore.  There was some excuse for this, since he
had only a slit to peep through--and that was three inches away from
his eye owing to the padding of straw--but he looked muddled as well.
Perhaps he had broken his spectacles.  Sir Grummore was quick to seize
his advantage.

"Take that!" cried Sir Grummore, giving the unfortunate monarch a
two-handed swipe on the nob as he was slowly turning his head from side
to side, peering in the opposite direction.

King Pellinore turned round morosely, but his opponent had been too
quick for him.  He had ambled round so that he was still behind the
King, and now gave him another terrific blow in the same place.

"Where are you?" asked King Pellinore.

"Here," cried Sir Grummore, giving him another.

The poor King turned himself round as nimbly as possible, but Sir
Grummore had given him the slip again.

"Tally-ho back!" shouted Sir Grummore, with another wallop.

"I think you're a _cad_," said the King.

"Wallop!" replied Sir Grummore, doing it.

What with the preliminary crash, the repeated blows on the back of his
head, and the puzzling nature of his opponent, King Pellinore could now
be seen to be visibly troubled in his brains.  He swayed backward and
forward under the hail of blows which were administered, and feebly
wagged his arms.

"Poor King," said the Wart.  "I wish he would not hit him so."

As if in answer to his wish, Sir Grummore paused in his labours.

"Do you want Pax?" asked Sir Grummore.

King Pellinore made no answer.

Sir Grummore favoured him with another whack and said, "If you don't
say Pax, I shall cut your head off."

"I won't," said the King.

Whang! went the sword on the top of his head.

Whang! it went again.

Whang! for the third time.

"Pax," said King Pellinore, mumbling rather.

Then, just as Sir Grummore was relaxing with the fruits of victory, he
swung round upon him, shouted "Non!" at the top of his voice, and gave
him a good push in the middle of the chest.

Sir Grummore fell over backwards.

"Well!" exclaimed the Wart.  "What a cheat!  I would not have thought
it of him."

King Pellinore hurriedly sat on his victim's chest, thus increasing the
weight upon him to a quarter of a ton and making it quite impossible
for him to move, and began to undo Sir Grummore's helm.

"You said Pax!"

"I said Pax Non under my breath."

"It's a swindle."

"It's not."

"You're a cad."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"I said Pax Non."

"You said Pax."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

By this time Sir Grummore's helm was unlaced and they could see his
bare head glaring at King Pellinore, quite purple in the face.

"Yield thee, recreant," said the King.

"Shan't," said Sir Grummore.

"You have got to yield, or I shall cut off your head."

"Cut it off then."

"Oh, come on," said the King.  "You know you have to yield when your
helm is off."

"Feign I," said Sir Grummore.

"Well, I shall just cut your head off."

"I don't care."

The King waved his sword menacingly in the air.

"Go on," said Sir Grummore.  "I dare you to."

The King lowered his sword and said, "Oh, I say, do yield, please."

"You yield," said Sir Grummore.

"But I can't yield.  I am on top of you after all, am I not, what?"

"Well, I have feigned yieldin'."

"Oh, come on, Grummore.  I do think you are a cad not to yield.  You
know very well I can't cut your head off."

"I would not yield to a cheat who started fightin' after he said Pax."

"I am not a cheat."

"You are a cheat."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"Very well," said King Pellinore.  "You can jolly well get up and put
on your helm and we will have a fight.  I won't be called a cheat for
anybody."

"Cheat!" said Sir Grummore.

They stood up and fumbled together with the helm, hissing, "No, I'm
not"--"Yes, you are," until it was safely on.  Then they retreated to
opposite ends of the clearing, got their weight upon their toes, and
came rumbling and thundering together like two runaway trams.

Unfortunately they were now so cross that they had both ceased to be
vigilant, and in the fury of the moment they missed each other
altogether.  The momentum of their armour was too great for them to
stop till they had passed each other handsomely, and then they
manoeuvred about in such a manner that neither happened to come within
the other's range of vision.  It was funny watching them, because King
Pellinore, having already been caught from behind once, was continually
spinning round to look behind him, and Sir Grummore, having used the
stratagem himself, was doing the same thing.  Thus they wandered for
some five minutes, standing still, listening, clanking, crouching,
creeping, peering, walking on tiptoe, and occasionally making a chance
swipe behind their backs.  Once they were standing within a few feet of
each other, back to back, only to stalk off in opposite directions with
infinite precaution, and once King Pellinore did hit Sir Grummore with
one of his back strokes, but they both immediately spun round so often
that they became giddy and mislaid each other afresh.

After five minutes Sir Grummore said, "All right, Pellinore.  It is no
use hidin'.  I can see where you are."

"I am not hiding," exclaimed King Pellinore indignantly.  "Where am I?"

They discovered each other and went up close together, face to face.

"Cad," said Sir Grummore.

"Yah," said King Pellinore.

They turned round and marched off to their corners, seething with
indignation.

"Swindler," shouted Sir Grummore.

"Beastly bully," shouted King Pellinore.

With this they summoned all their energies together for one decisive
encounter, leaned forward, lowered their heads like two billy-goats,
and positively sprinted together for the final blow.  Alas, their aim
was poor.  They missed each other by about five yards, passed at full
steam doing at least eight knots, like ships that pass in the night but
speak not to each other in passing, and hurtled onward to their doom.
Both knights began waving their arms like windmills, anti-clockwise, in
the vain effort to slow up.  Both continued with undiminished speed.
Then Sir Grummore rammed his head against the beech in which the Wart
was sitting, and King Pellinore collided with a chestnut at the other
side of the clearing.  The trees shook, the forest rang.  Blackbirds
and squirrels cursed and wood-pigeons flew out of their leafy perches
half a mile away.  The two knights stood to attention while one could
count three.  Then, with a last unanimous melodious clang, they both
fell prostrate on the fatal sward.

"Stunned," said Merlyn, "I should think."

"Oh, dear," said the Wart.  "Ought we to get down and help them?"

"We could pour water on their heads," said Merlyn reflectively, "if
there was any water.  But I don't suppose they would thank us for
making their armour rusty.  They will be all right.  Besides, it is
time that we were home."

"But they might be dead!"

"They are not dead, I know.  In a minute or two they will come round
and go off home to dinner."

"Poor King Pellinore has not got a home."

"Then Sir Grummore will invite him to stay the night.  They will be the
best of friends when they come to.  They always are."

"Do you think so?"

"My dear boy, I know so.  Shut your eyes and we will be off."

The Wart gave in to Merlyn's superior knowledge.  "Do you think," he
asked with his eyes shut, "that Sir Grummore has a featherbed?"

"Probably."

"Good," said the Wart.  "That will be nice for King Pellinore, even if
he was stunned."

The Latin words were spoken and the secret passes made.  The funnel of
whistling noise and space received them.  In two seconds they were
lying under the grandstand, and the sergeant's voice was calling from
the opposite side of the tilting ground, "Nah then, Master Art, nah
then.  You've been a-snoozing there long enough.  Come aht into the
sunlight 'ere with Master Kay, one-two, one-two, and see some real
tilting."




_Chapter VIII_

It was a cold wet evening, such as may happen even toward the end of
August, and the Wart did not know how to bear himself indoors.  He
spent some time in the kennels talking to Cavall, then wandered off to
help them turn the spit in the kitchen.  But there it was too hot.  He
was not forced to stay indoors because of the rain, by his female
supervisors, as happens too frequently to the unhappy children of our
generation, but the mere wetness and dreariness in the open discouraged
him from going out.  He hated everybody.

"Confound the boy," said Sir Ector.  "For goodness' sake stop mopin' by
that window there, and go and find your tutor.  When I was a boy we
always used to study on wet days, yes, and eddicate our minds."

"Wart is stupid," said Kay.

"Ah, run along, my duck," said their old Nurse.  "I han't got time to
attend to thy mopseys now, what with all this sorbent washing."

"Now then, my young master," said Hob.  "Let thee run off to thy
quarters, and stop confusing they fowls."

"Nah, nah," said the sergeant.  "You 'op orf art of 'ere.  I got enough
to do a-polishing of this ber-lady harmour."

Even the Dog Boy barked at him when he went back to the kennels.

Wart draggled off to the tower room, where Merlyn was busy knitting
himself a woollen night-cap for the winter.

"I cast off two together at every other line," said the magician, "but
for some reason it seems to end too sharply.  Like an onion.  It is the
turning of the heel that does one, every time."

"I think I ought to have some eddication," said the Wart.  "I can't
think of anything to do."

"You think that education is something which ought to be done when all
else fails?" inquired Merlyn nastily, for he was in a bad mood too.

"Well," said the Wart, "some sorts of education."

"Mine?" asked the magician with flashing eyes.

"Oh, Merlyn," exclaimed the Wart without answering, "please give me
something to do, because I feel so miserable.  Nobody wants me for
anything today, and I just don't know how to be sensible.  It rains so."

"You should learn to knit."

"Could I go out and be something, a fish or anything like that?"

"You have been a fish," said Merlyn.  "Nobody with any go needs to do
their education twice."

"Well, could I be a bird?"

"If you knew anything at all," said Merlyn, "which you do not, you
would know that a bird does not like to fly in the rain because it wets
its feathers and makes them stick together.  They get bedraggled."

"I could be a hawk in Hob's mews," said the Wart stoutly.  "Then I
should be indoors and not get wet."

"That is pretty ambitious," said the old man, "to want to be a hawk."

"You know you will turn me into a hawk when you want to," shouted the
Wart, "but you like to plague me because it is wet.  I won't have it."

"Hoity-toity!"

"Please," said the Wart, "dear Merlyn, turn me into a hawk.  If you
don't do that I shall do something.  I don't know what."

Merlyn put down his knitting and looked at his pupil over the top of
his spectacles.  "My boy," he said, "you shall be everything in the
world, animal, vegetable, mineral, protista or virus, for all I
care--before I have done with you--but you will have to trust to my
superior backsight.  The time is not yet ripe for you to be a hawk--for
one thing Hob is still in the mews feeding them--so you may as well sit
down for the moment and learn to be a human being."

"Very well," said the Wart, "if that's a go."  And he sat down.

After several minutes he said, "Is one allowed to speak as a human
being, or does the thing about being seen and not heard have to apply?"

"Everybody can speak."

"That's good, because I wanted to mention that you have been knitting
your beard into the night-cap for three rows now."

"Well, I'll be...."

"I should think the best thing would be to cut off the end of your
beard.  Shall I fetch some scissors?"

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I wanted to see what would happen."

"You run a grave risk, my boy," said the magician, "of being turned
into a piece of bread, and toasted."

With this he slowly began to unpick his beard, muttering to himself
meanwhile and taking the greatest precautions not to drop a stitch.

"Will it be as difficult to fly," asked the Wart when he thought his
tutor had calmed down, "as it was to swim?"

"You will not need to fly.  I don't mean to turn you into a loose hawk,
but only to set you in the mews for the night, so that you can talk to
the others.  That is the way to learn, by listening to the experts."

"Will they talk?"

"They talk every night, deep into the darkness.  They say about how
they were taken, about what they can remember of their homes: about
their lineage and the great deeds of their ancestors, about their
training and what they have learned and will learn.  It is military
conversation really, like you might have in the mess of a crack cavalry
regiment: tactics, small arms, maintenance, betting, famous hunts,
wine, women and song.

"Another subject they have," he continued, "is food.  It is a
depressing thought, but of course they are mainly trained by hunger.
They are a hungry lot, poor chaps, thinking of the best restaurants
where they used to go, and how they had champagne and caviare and gypsy
music.  Of course, they all come of noble blood."

"What a shame that they should be kept prisoners and be hungry."

"Well, they do not really understand that they are prisoners, any more
than the cavalry officers do.  They look on themselves as being
dedicated to their profession, like an order of knighthood or something
of that sort.  You see, the membership of the mews is, after all,
restricted to the raptors--and that does help a lot.  They know that
none of the lower classes can get in.  Their screen perches don't carry
blackbirds or such trash as that.  And then, as to the hungry part,
they are far from starving or that kind of hunger.  They are in
training, you know, and like everybody in strict training, they think
about food."

"How soon can I begin?"

"You can begin now, if you want to.  My insight tells me that Hob has
this minute finished for the night.  But first of all you must choose
what kind of hawk you would prefer to be."

"I should like to be a merlin," said the Wart politely.

This answer flattered the magician.  "A very good choice," he said,
"and if you please we will proceed at once."

The Wart got up from his stool and stood in front of his tutor.  Merlyn
put down his knitting.

"First you go small," said he, pressing him on the top of his head
until he was a bit smaller than a pigeon.  "Then you stand on the ball
of your toes, bend at the knees, hold your elbows to your sides, lift
your hands to the level of your shoulders, and press your first and
second fingers together, as also your third and fourth.  Look, it is
like this."

With these words the ancient nigromant stood upon tiptoe and did as he
had explained.

The Wart copied him carefully and wondered what would happen next.
What did happen was that Merlyn, who had been saying the final spells
under his breath, suddenly turned himself into a condor, leaving the
Wart standing on tiptoe unchanged.  He stood there as if he were drying
himself in the sun, with a wingspread of about eleven feet, a bright
orange head and a magenta carbuncle.  He looked very surprised and
rather funny.

"Come back," said the Wart.  "You have changed the wrong one."

"It is this by-our-lady spring cleaning," exclaimed Merlyn, turning
back into himself.  "Once you let a woman into your study for half an
hour, you do not know where to lay your hands on the right spell, not
if it was ever so.  Stand up and we will try again."

This time the now tiny Wart felt his toes shooting out and scratching
on the floor.  He felt his heels rise and stick out behind and his
knees draw into his stomach.  His thighs became quite short.  A web of
skin grew from his wrists to his shoulders, while his primary feathers
burst out in soft blue quills from the ends of his fingers and quickly
grew.  His secondaries sprouted along his forearms, and a charming
little false primary sprang from the end of each thumb.

The dozen feathers of his tail, with the double deck-feathers in the
middle, grew out in the twinkling of an eye, and all the covert
feathers of his back and breast and shoulders slipped out of the skin
to hide the roots of the more important plumes.  Wart looked quickly at
Merlyn, ducked his head between his legs and had a look through there,
rattled his feathers into place, and began to scratch his chin with the
sharp talon of one toe.

"Good," said Merlyn.  "Now hop on my hand--ah, be careful and don't
gripe--and listen to what I have to tell you.  I shall take you into
the mews now that Hob has locked up for the night, and I shall put you
loose and unhooded beside Balin and Balan.  Now pay attention.  Don't
go close to anybody without speaking first.  You must remember that
most of them are hooded and might be startled into doing something
rash.  You can trust Balin and Balan, also the kestrel and the
spar-hawk.  Don't go within reach of the falcon unless she invites you
to.  On no account must you stand beside Cully's special enclosure, for
he is unhooded and will go for you through the mesh if he gets half a
chance.  He is not quite right in his brains, poor chap, and if he once
grips you, you will never leave his grip alive.  Remember that you are
visiting a kind of Spartan military mess.  These fellows are regulars.
As the junior subaltern your only business is to keep your mouth shut,
speak when you are spoken to, and not interrupt."

"I bet I am more than a subaltern," said the Wart, "if I am a merlin."

"Well, as a matter of fact, you are.  You will find that both the
kestrel and the spar-hawk will be polite to you, but for all sake's
sake don't interrupt the senior merlins or the falcon.  She is the
honorary colonel of the regiment.  And as for Cully, well, he is a
colonel too, even if he is infantry, so you must mind your p's and q's."

"I will be careful," said the Wart, who was beginning to feel rather
scared.

"Good.  I shall come for you in the morning, before Hob is up."

All the hawks were silent as Merlyn carried their new companion into
the mews, and silent for some time afterward when they had been left in
the dark.  The rain had given place to a full August moonlight, so
clear that you could see a woolly bear caterpillar fifteen yards away
out of doors, as it climbed up and up the knobbly sandstone of the
great keep, and it took the Wart only a few moments for his eyes to
become accustomed to the diffused brightness inside the mews.  The
darkness became watered with light, with silver radiance, and then it
was an eerie sight which dawned upon his vision.  Each hawk or falcon
stood in the silver upon one leg, the other tucked up inside the apron
of its panel, and each was a motionless statue of a knight in armour.
They stood gravely in their plumed helmets, spurred and armed.  The
canvas or sacking screens of their perches moved heavily in a breath of
wind, like banners in a chapel, and the rapt nobility of the air kept
their knight's vigil in knightly patience.  In those days they used to
hood everything they could, even the goshawk and the merlin, which are
no longer hooded according to modern practice.

Wart drew his breath at the sight of all these stately figures,
standing so still that they might have been cut of stone.  He was
overwhelmed by their magnificence, and felt no need of Merlyn's warning
that he was to be humble and behave himself.

Presently there was a gentle ringing of a bell.  The great peregrine
falcon had bestirred herself and now said, in a high nasal voice which
came from her aristocratic nose, "Gentlemen, you may converse."

There was dead silence.

Only, in the far corner of the room, which had been netted off for
Cully--loose there, unhooded and deep in moult--they could hear a faint
muttering from the choleric infantry colonel.

"Damned niggers," he was mumbling.  "Damned administration.  Damned
politicians.  Damned bolsheviks.  Is this a damned dagger that I see
before me, the handle toward my hand?  Damned spot.  Now, Cully, hast
thou but one brief hour to live, and then thou must be damned
perpetually."

"Colonel," said the peregrine coldly, "not before the younger officers."

"I beg your pardon, Mam," said the poor colonel at once.  "It is
something that gets into my head, you know.  Some deep demnation."

There was silence again, formal, terrible and calm.

"Who is the new officer?" inquired the first fierce and beautiful voice.

Nobody answered.

"Speak for yourself, sir," commanded the peregrine, looking straight
before her as if she were talking in her sleep.

They could not see him through their hoods.

"Please," began the Wart, "I am a merlin...."

And he stopped, scared in the stillness.

Balan, who was one of the real merlins standing beside him, leaned over
and whispered quite kindly in his ear, "Don't be afraid.  Call her
Madam."

"I am a merlin, Madam, an it please you."

"A Merlin.  That is good.  And what branch of the Merlins do you stoop
from?"

The Wart did not know in the least what branch he stooped from, but he
dared not be found out now in his lie.

"Madam," he said, "I am one of the Merlins of the Forest Sauvage."

There was silence at this again, the silver silence which he had begun
to fear.

"There are the Yorkshire Merlins," said the honorary colonel in her
slow voice at last, "and the Welsh Merlins, and the McMerlins of the
North.  Then there are the Salisbury ones, and several from the
neighbourhood of Exmoor, and the O'Merlins of Connaught.  I do not
think I have heard of any family in the Forest Sauvage."

"It would be a cadet branch, Madam," said Balan, "I dare say."

"Bless him," thought the Wart.  "I shall catch him a special sparrow
tomorrow and give it to him behind Hob's back."

"That will be the solution, Captain Balan, no doubt."

The silence fell again.

At last the peregrine rang her bell.  She said, "We will proceed with
the catechism, prior to swearing him in."

The Wart heard the spar-hawk on his left giving several nervous coughs
at this, but the peregrine paid no attention.

"Merlin of the Forest Sauvage," said the peregrine, "what is a Beast of
the Foot?"

"A Beast of the Foot," replied the Wart, blessing his stars that Sir
Ector had chosen to give him a First Rate Eddication, "is a horse, or a
hound, or a hawk."

"Why are these called beasts of the foot?"

"Because these beasts depend upon the powers of their feet, so that, by
law, any damage to the feet of hawk, hound or horse, is reckoned as
damage to its life.  A lamed horse is a murdered horse."

"Good," said the peregrine.  "What are your most important members?"

"My wings," said the Wart after a moment, guessing because he did not
know.

At this there was a simultaneous tintinnabulation of all the bells, as
each graven image lowered its raised foot in distress.  They stood on
both feet now, disturbed.

"Your what?" called the peregrine sharply.

"He said his damned wings," said Colonel Cully from his private
enclosure.  "And damned be he who first cries Hold, enough!"

"But even a thrush has wings!" cried the kestrel, speaking for the
first time in his sharp-beaked alarm.

"Think!" whispered Balan, under his breath.

The Wart thought feverishly.

A thrush had wings, tail, eyes, legs--apparently everything.

"My talons!"

"It will do," said the peregrine kindly, after one of her dreadful
pauses.  "The answer ought to be Feet, just as it is to all the other
questions, but Talons will do."

All the hawks, and of course we are using the term loosely, for some
were hawks and some were falcons, raised their belled feet again and
sat at ease.

"What is the first law of the foot?"

("Think," said friendly little Balan, behind his false primary.)

The Wart thought, and thought right.

"Never to let go," he said.

"Last question," said the peregrine.  "How would you, as a Merlin, kill
a pigeon bigger than yourself?"

Wart was lucky in this one, for he had heard Hob giving a description
of how Balan did it one afternoon, and he answered warily, "I should
strangle her with my foot."

"Good!" said the peregrine.

"Bravo!" cried the others, raising their feathers.

"Ninety per cent," said the spar-hawk after a quick sum.  "That is, if
you give him a half for the talons."

"The devil damn me black!"

"Colonel, please!"

Balan whispered to the Wart, "Colonel Cully is not quite right in his
wits.  It is his liver, we believe, but the kestrel says it is the
constant strain of living up to her ladyship's standard.  He says that
her ladyship spoke to him from her full social station once, cavalry to
infantry, you know, and that he just closed his eyes and got the
vertigo.  He has never been the same since."

"Captain Balan," said the peregrine, "it is rude to whisper.  We will
proceed to swear the new officer in.  Now, padre, if you please."

The poor spar-hawk, who had been getting more and more nervous for some
time, blushed deeply and began faltering out a complicated oath about
varvels, jesses and hoods.  "With this varvel," the Wart heard, "I thee
endow ... love, honour and obey ... till jess us do part."

But before the padre had got to the end of it, he broke down altogether
and sobbed out, "Oh, please your ladyship.  I beg your pardon, but I
have forgotten to keep my tirings."

("Tirings are bones and things," explained Balan, "and of course you
have to swear on bones.")

"Forgotten to keep any tirings?  But it is your duty to keep tirings."

"I--I know."

"What have you done with them?"

The spar-hawk's voice broke at the enormity of his confession.  "I--I
ate 'em," wept the unfortunate priest.

Nobody said anything.  The dereliction of duty was too terrible for
words.  All stood on two feet and turned their blind heads toward the
culprit.  Not a word of reproach was spoken.  Only, during an utter
silence of five minutes, they could hear the incontinent priest
snivelling and hiccoughing to himself.

"Well," said the peregrine at last, "the initiation will have to be put
off till tomorrow."

"If you will excuse me, Madam," said Balin, "perhaps we could manage
the ordeal tonight?  I believe the candidate is loose, for I did not
hear him being tied up."

At the mention of an ordeal the Wart trembled within himself and
privately determined that Balin should have not one feather of Balan's
sparrow next day.

"Thank you, Captain Balin.  I was reflecting upon that subject myself."

Balin shut up.

"Are you loose, candidate?"

"Oh, Madam, yes, I am, if you please: but I do not think I want an
ordeal."

"The ordeal is customary."

"Let me see," continued the honorary colonel reflectively.  "What was
the last ordeal we had?  Can you remember, Captain Balan?"

"My ordeal, Mam," said the friendly merlin, "was to hang by my jesses
during the third watch."

"If he is loose he cannot do that."

"You could strike him yourself, Mam," said the Kestrel, "judiciously,
you know."

"Send him over to stand by Colonel Cully while we ring three times,"
said the other merlin.

"Oh, no!" cried the crazy colonel in an agony out of his remoter
darkness.  "Oh no, your ladyship.  I beg of you not to do that.  I am
such a damned villain, your ladyship, that I do not answer for the
consequences.  Spare the poor boy, your ladyship, and lead us not into
temptation."

"Colonel, control yourself.  That ordeal will do very well."

"Oh, Madam, I was warned not to stand by Colonel Cully."

"Warned?  And by whom?"

The poor Wart realised that now he must choose between confessing
himself a human, and learning no more of their secrets, or going
through with this ordeal to earn his education.  He did not want to be
a coward.

"I will stand by the Colonel, Madam," he said, immediately noticing
that his voice sounded insulting.

The peregrine falcon paid no attention to the tone.

"It is well," she said.  "But first we must have the hymn.  Now, padre,
if you have not eaten your hymns as well as your tirings, will you be
so kind as to lead us in Ancient but not Modern No. 23?  The Ordeal
Hymn.

"And you, Mr. Kee," she added to the kestrel, "you had better keep
quiet, for you are always too high."

The hawks stood still in the moonlight, while the spar-hawk counted
"One, Two, Three."  Then all those curved or toothed beaks opened in
their hoods to a brazen unison, and this is what they chanted:

  Life is blood, shed and offered.
    The eagle's eye can face this dree.
  To beasts of chase the lie is proffered:
    _Timor Mortis Conturbat Me_.

  The beast of foot sings Holdfast only,
    For flesh is bruckle and foot is slee.
  Strength to the strong and the lordly and lonely.
    _Timor Mortis Exultat Me_.

  Shame to the slothful and woe to the weak one.
    Death to the dreadful who turn to flee.
  Blood to the tearing, the talon'd, the beaked one.
    _Timor Mortis_ are We.


"Very nice," said the peregrine.  "Captain Balan, I think you were a
little off on the top C.  And now, candidate, you will go over and
stand next to Colonel Cully's enclosure, while we ring our bells
thrice.  On the third ring you may move as quickly as you like."

"Very good, Madam," said the Wart, quite fearless with resentment.  He
flipped his wings and was sitting on the extreme end of the screen
perch, next to Cully's enclosure of string netting.

"Boy!" cried the Colonel in an unearthly voice, "don't come near me,
don't come near.  Ah, tempt not the foul fiend to his damnation."

"I do not fear you, sir," said the Wart.  "Do not vex yourself, for no
harm will come to either of us."

"No harm, quotha!  Ah, go, before it is too late.  I feel eternal
longings in me."

"Never fear, sir.  They have only to ring three times."

At this the knights lowered their raised legs and gave them a solemn
shake.  The first sweet tinkling filled the room.

"Madam, Madam!" cried the Colonel in torture.  "Have pity, have pity on
a damned man of blood.  Ring out the old, ring in the new.  I can't
hold off much longer."

"Be brave, sir," said the Wart softly.

"Be brave, sir!  Why, but two nights since, one met the duke 'bout
midnight in a lane behind Saint Mark's Church, with the leg of a man
upon his shoulder: and he howled fearfully."

"It is nothing," said the Wart.

"Nothing!  Said he was a wolf, only the difference was a wolf's skin
was hairy on the outside, his on the inside.  Rip up my flesh and try.
Ah, for quietus, with a bare bodkin!"

The bells rang for the second time.

The Wart's heart was thumping, and now the Colonel was sidling toward
him along the perch.  Stamp, stamp, he went, striking the wood he trod
on with a convulsive grip at every pace.  His poor, mad, brooding eyes
glared in the moonlight, shone against the persecuted darkness of his
scowling brow.  There was nothing cruel about him, no ignoble passion.
He was terrified of the Wart, not triumphing, and he must slay.

"If it were done when 'tis done," whispered the Colonel, "then 'twere
well it were done quickly.  Who would have thought the young man had so
much blood in him?"

"Colonel!" said the Wart, but held himself there.

"Boy!" cried the Colonel.  "Speak, stop me, mercy!"

"There is a cat behind you," said the Wart calmly, "or a pine-marten.
Look."

The Colonel turned, swift as a wasp's sting, and menaced into the
gloom.  There was nothing.  He swung his wild eyes again upon the Wart,
guessing the trick.  Then, in the cold voice of an adder, "The bell
invites me.  Hear it not, Merlin, for it is a knell that summons thee
to heaven or to hell."

The third bells were indeed ringing as he spoke, and honour was allowed
to move.  The ordeal was over and the Wart might fly.  But as he moved,
but as he flew, quicker than any movement or flight in the world, the
terrible sickles had shot from the Colonel's plated legs--not flashed
out, for they moved too quick for sight--and with a thump, with a
clutch, with an apprehension, like being arrested by a big policeman,
the great scimitars had fixed themselves in his retreating thumb.

They fixed themselves, and fixed irrevocably.  Gripe, gripe, the
enormous thigh muscles tautened in two convulsions.  Then the Wart was
two yards further down the screen, and Colonel Cully was standing on
one foot with a few meshes of string netting and the Wart's false
primary, with its covert-feathers, vice-fisted in the other.  Two or
three minor feathers drifted softly in a moonbeam toward the floor.

"Well stood!" cried Balan, delighted.

"A very gentlemanly exhibition," said the peregrine, not minding that
Captain Balan had spoken before her.

"Amen!" said the spar-hawk.

"Brave heart!" said the kestrel.

"Might we give him the Triumph Song?" asked Balin, relenting.

"Certainly," said the peregrine.

And they all sang together, led by Colonel Cully at the top of his
voice, all belling triumphantly in the terrible moonlight.

  The mountain birds are sweeter
    But the valley birds are fatter,
  And so we deemed it meeter
    To carry off the latter.
  We met a cowering coney
    And struck him through the vitals.
  The coney was like honey
    And squealed our requitals.
  Some struck the lark in feathers
    Whose puffing clouds were shed off.
  Some plucked the partridge's nethers,
    While others pulled his head off.
  But Wart the King of Merlins
    Struck foot most far before us.
        His birds and beasts
        Supply our feasts,
    And his feats our glorious chorus!


"Mark my words," cried the beautiful Balan, "we shall have a regular
king in that young candidate.  Now, boys, chorus altogether for the
last time":

  But Wart the King of Merlins
    Struck foot most far before us.
        His birds and beasts
        Supply our feasts,
    And his feats our glorious chorus!




_Chapter IX_

"Well!" said the Wart, as he woke up in his own bed next morning.
"What a horrible, grand crew!"

Kay sat up in bed and began scolding like a squirrel.  "Where were you
last night?" he cried, "I believe you climbed out.  I shall tell my
father and get you tanned.  You know we are not allowed out after
curfew.  What have you been doing?  I looked for you everywhere.  I
know you climbed out."

The boys had a way of sliding down a rain-water pipe into the moat,
which they could swim on secret occasions when it was necessary to be
out at night--to wait for a badger, for instance, or to catch tench,
which can only be taken just before dawn.

"Oh, shut up," said the Wart.  "I'm sleepy."

Kay said, "Wake up, wake up, you beast.  Where have you been?"

"I shan't tell you."

He was sure that Kay would not believe the story, but only call him a
liar and get angrier than ever.

"If you don't tell me I shall kill you."

"You will not, then."

"I will."

The Wart turned over on his other side.

"Beast," said Kay.  He took a fold of the Wart's arm between the nails
of first finger and thumb, and pinched for all he was worth.  Wart
kicked like a salmon which has been suddenly hooked, and hit him wildly
in the eye.  In a trice they were out of bed, pale and indignant,
looking rather like skinned rabbits--for in those days, nobody wore
clothes in bed--and whirling their arms like windmills in the effort to
do each other a mischief.

Kay was older and bigger than the Wart, so that he was bound to win in
the end, but he was more nervous and imaginative.  He could imagine the
effect of each blow that was aimed at him, and this weakened his
defence.  Wart was only an infuriated hurricane.

"Leave me alone, can't you?"  And all the while he did not leave Kay
alone, but with head down and swinging arms made it impossible for Kay
to do as he was bid.  They punched entirely at each other's faces.

Kay had a longer reach and a heavier fist.  He straightened his arm,
more in self-defence than in anything else, and the Wart smacked his
own eye upon the end of it.  The sky became a noisy and shocking black,
streaked outward with a blaze of meteors.  The Wart began to sob and
pant.  He managed to get in a blow upon his opponent's nose, and this
began to bleed.  Kay lowered his defence, turned his back on the Wart,
and said in a cold, snuffling, reproachful voice, "Now it's bleeding."
The battle was over.

Kay lay on the stone floor, bubbling blood out of his nose, and the
Wart, with a black eye, fetched the enormous key out of the door to put
under Kay's back.  Neither of them spoke.

Presently Kay turned over on his face and began to sob.  He said,
"Merlyn does everything for you, but he never does anything for me."

At this the Wart felt he had been a beast.  He dressed himself in
silence and hurried off to find the magician.

On the way he was caught by his nurse.

"Ah, you little helot," exclaimed she, shaking him by the arm, "you've
been a-battling again with that there Master Kay.  Look at your poor
eye, I do declare.  It's enough to baffle the college of sturgeons."

"It is all right," said the Wart.

"No, that it isn't, my poppet," cried his nurse, getting crosser and
showing signs of slapping him.  "Come now, how did you do it, before I
have you whipped?"

"I knocked it on the bedpost," said the Wart sullenly.

The old nurse immediately folded him to her broad bosom, patted him on
the back, and said, "There, there, my dowsabel.  It's the same story
Sir Ector told me when I caught him with a blue eye, gone forty years.
Nothing like a good family for sticking to a good lie.  There, my
innocent, you come along of me to the kitchen and we'll slap a nice bit
of steak across him in no time.  But you hadn't ought to fight with
people bigger than yourself."

"It is all right," said the Wart again, disgusted by the fuss, but fate
was bent on punishing him, and the old lady was inexorable.  It took
him half an hour to escape, and then only at the price of carrying with
him a juicy piece of raw beef which he was supposed to hold over his
eye.

"Nothing like a mealy rump for drawing out the humours," his nurse had
said, and the cook had answered:

"Us han't seen a sweeter bit of raw since Easter, no, nor a bloodier."

"I will keep the foul thing for Balan," thought the Wart, resuming his
search for his tutor.

He found him without trouble in the tower room which he had chosen when
he arrived.  All philosophers prefer to live in towers, as may be seen
by visiting the room which Erasmus chose in his college at Cambridge,
but Merlyn's tower was even more beautiful than this.  It was the
highest room in the castle, directly below the look-out of the great
keep, and from its window you could gaze across the open field--with
its rights of warren--across the park, and the chase, until your eye
finally wandered out over the distant blue tree-tops of the Forest
Sauvage.  This sea of leafy timber rolled away and away in knobs like
the surface of porridge, until it was finally lost in remote mountains
which nobody had ever visited, and the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous
palaces of heaven.

Merlyn's comments upon the black eye were of a medical nature.

"The discoloration," he said, "is caused by haemorrhage into the
tissues (ecchymosis) and passes from dark purple through green to
yellow before it disappears."

There seemed to be no sensible reply to this.

"I suppose you had it," continued Merlyn, "fighting with Kay?"

"Yes.  How did you know?"

"Ah, well, there it is."

"I came to ask you about Kay."

"Speak.  Demand.  I'll answer."

"Well, Kay thinks it is unfair that you are always turning me into
things and not him.  I have not told him about it but I think he
guesses.  I think it is unfair too."

"It is unfair."

"So will you turn us both next time that we are turned?"

Merlyn had finished his breakfast, and was puffing at the meerschaum
pipe which made his pupil believe that he breathed fire.  Now he took a
deep puff, looked at the Wart, opened his mouth to speak, changed his
mind, blew out the smoke and drew another lungful.

"Sometimes," he said, "life does seem to be unfair.  Do you know the
story of Elijah and the Rabbi Jachanan?"

"No," said the Wart.

He sat down resignedly upon the most comfortable part of the floor,
perceiving that he was in for something like the parable of the
looking-glass.

"This rabbi," said Merlyn, "went on a journey with the prophet Elijah.
They walked all day, and at nightfall they came to the humble cottage
of a poor man, whose only treasure was a cow.  The poor man ran out of
his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the
night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able
to give in straitened circumstances.  Elijah and the Rabbi were
entertained with plenty of the cow's milk, sustained by home-made bread
and butter, and they were put to sleep in the best bed while their
kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire.  But in the morning the
poor man's cow was dead."

"Go on."

"They walked all the next day, and came that evening to the house of a
very wealthy merchant, whose hospitality they craved.  The merchant was
cold and proud and rich, and all that he would do for the prophet and
his companion was to lodge them in a cowshed and feed them on bread and
water.  In the morning, however, Elijah thanked him very much for what
he had done, and sent for a mason to repair one of his walls, which
happened to be falling down, as a return for his kindness.

"The Rabbi Jachanan, unable to keep silence any longer, begged the holy
man to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings.

"'In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,' replied the
prophet, 'it was decreed that his wife was to die that night, but in
reward for his goodness God took the cow instead of the wife.  I
repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was
concealed near the place, and if the miser had repaired the wall
himself he would have discovered the treasure.  Say not therefore to
the Lord: What doest thou?  But say in thy heart: Must not the Lord of
all the earth do right?'"

"It is a nice sort of story," said the Wart, because it seemed to be
over.

"I am sorry," said Merlyn, "that you should be the only one to get my
extra tuition, but then, you see, I was only sent for that."

"I do not see that it would do any harm for Kay to come too."

"Nor do I.  But the Rabbi Jachanan did not see why the miser should
have had his wall repaired."

"I understand that," said the Wart doubtfully, "but I still think it
was a shame that the cow died.  Could I not have Kay with me just once?"

Merlyn said gently, "Perhaps what is good for you might be bad for him.
Besides, remember he has never asked to be turned into anything."

"He wants to be turned, for all that.  I like Kay, you know, and I
think people don't understand him.  He has to be proud because he is
frightened."

"You still do not follow what I mean.  Suppose he had gone as a merlin
last night, and failed in the ordeal, and lost his nerve?"

"How do you know about that ordeal?"

"Ah, well, there it is again."

"Very well," said the Wart obstinately.  "But suppose he had not failed
in the ordeal, and had not lost his nerve.  I don't see why you should
have to suppose that he would have."

"Oh, flout the boy!" cried the magician passionately.  "You don't seem
to see anything this morning.  What is it that you want me to do?"

"Turn me and Kay into snakes or something."

Merlyn took off his spectacles, dashed them on the floor and jumped on
them with both feet.

"Castor and Pollux blow me to Bermuda!" he exclaimed, and immediately
vanished with a frightful roar.

The Wart was still staring at his tutor's chair in some perplexity, a
few moments later, when Merlyn reappeared.  He had lost his hat and his
hair and beard were tangled up, as if by a hurricane.  He sat down
again, straightening his gown with trembling fingers.

"Why did you do that?" asked the Wart.

"I did not do it on purpose."

"Do you mean to say that Castor and Pollux did blow you to Bermuda?"

"Let this be a lesson to you," replied Merlyn, "not to swear.  I think
we had better change the subject."

"We were talking about Kay."

"Yes, and what I was going to say before my--ahem!--my visit to the
still vexed Bermoothes, was this.  I cannot change Kay into things.
The power was not deputed to me when I was sent.  Why this was so,
neither you nor I am able to say, but such remains the fact.  I have
tried to hint at some of the reasons for the fact, but you will not
take them, so you must just accept the fact in its naked reality.  Now
please stop talking until I have got my breath back, and my hat."

The Wart sat quiet while Merlyn closed his eyes and began to mutter to
himself.  Presently a curious black cylindrical hat appeared on his
head.  It was a topper.

Merlyn examined it with a look of disgust, said bitterly, "And they
call this service!" and handed it back to the air.  Finally he stood up
in a passion and exclaimed, "Come here!"

The Wart and Archimedes looked at each other, wondering which was
meant--Archimedes had been sitting all the while on the window-sill and
looking at the view, for, of course, he never left his master--but
Merlyn did not pay them any attention.

"Now," said Merlyn furiously, apparently to nobody, "do you think you
are being funny?

"Very well then, why do you do it?

"That is no excuse.  Naturally I meant the one I was wearing.

"But wearing now, of course, you fool.  I don't want a hat I was
wearing in 1890.  Have you no sense of time at all?"

Merlyn took off the sailor hat which had just appeared and held it out
to the air for inspection.

"This is an anachronism," he said severely.  "That is what it is, a
beastly anachronism."

Archimedes seemed to be accustomed to these scenes, for he now said in
a reasonable voice: "Why don't you ask for the hat by name, master?
Say, 'I want my magician's hat,' not 'I want the hat I was wearing.'
Perhaps the poor chap finds it as difficult to live backward as you do."

"I want my magician's hat," said Merlyn sulkily.

Instantly the long pointed cone was standing on his head.

The tension in the air relaxed.  Wart sat down again on the floor, and
Archimedes resumed his toilet, pulling his pinions and tail feathers
through his beak to smooth the barbs together.  Each barb had hundreds
of little hooks or barbules on it, by means of which the barbs of the
feather were held together.  He was stroking them into place.

Merlyn said, "I beg your pardon.  I am not having a very good day
today, and there it is."

"About Kay," said the Wart.  "Even if you can't change him into things,
could you not give us both an adventure without changing?"

Merlyn made a visible effort to control his temper, and to consider
this question dispassionately.  He was sick of the subject altogether.

"I cannot do any magic for Kay," he said slowly, "except my own magic
that I have anyway.  Backsight and insight and all that.  Do you mean
anything I could do with that?"

"What does your backsight do?"

"It tells me what you would say is going to happen, and the insight
sometimes says what is or was happening in other places."

"Is there anything happening just now, anything that Kay and I could go
to see?"

Merlyn immediately struck himself on the brow and exclaimed excitedly,
"Now I see it all.  Yes, of course there is, and you are going to see
it.  Yes, you must take Kay and hurry up about it.  You must go
immediately after Mass.  Have breakfast first and go immediately after
Mass.  Yes, that is it.  Go straight to Hob's strip of barley in the
open field and follow that line until you come to something.  That will
be splendid, yes, and I shall have a nap this afternoon instead of
those filthy Summulae Logicales.  Or have I had the nap?"

"You have not had it," said Archimedes.  "That is still in the future,
Master."

"Splendid, splendid.  And mind, Wart, don't forget to take Kay with you
so that I can have my nap."

"What shall we see?" asked the Wart.

"Ah, don't plague me about a little thing like that.  You run along
now, there's a good boy, and mind you don't forget to take Kay with
you.  Why ever didn't you mention it before?  Don't forget to follow
beyond the strip of barley.  Well, well, well!  This is the first
half-holiday I have had since I started this confounded tutorship.
First I think I shall have a little nap before luncheon, and then I
think I shall have a little nap before tea.  Then I shall have to think
of something I can do before dinner.  What shall I do before dinner,
Archimedes?"

"Have a little nap, I expect," said the owl coldly, turning his back
upon his master, because he, as well as the Wart, enjoyed to see life.




_Chapter X_

Wart knew that if he told the elder boy about his conversation with
Merlyn, Kay would refuse to be condescended to, and would not come.  So
he said nothing.  It was strange, but their battle had made them
friends again, and each could look the other in the eye, with a kind of
confused affection.  They went together unanimously though shyly,
without explanations, and found themselves standing at the end of Hob's
barley strip after Mass.  The Wart had no need to use ingenuity.  When
they were there it was easy.

"Come on," he said, "Merlyn told me to tell you that there was
something along here that was specially for you."

"What sort of thing?" asked Kay.

"An adventure."

"How do we get to it?"

"We ought to follow along the line which this strip makes, and I
suppose that would take us into the forest.  We should have to keep the
sun just there on our left, but allow for it moving."

"All right," said Kay.  "What is the adventure?"

"I don't know."

They went along the strip, and followed its imaginary line over the
park and over the chase, keeping their eyes skinned for some miraculous
happening.  They wondered whether half a dozen young pheasants they
started had anything curious about them, and Kay was ready to swear
that one of them was white.  If it had been white, and if a black eagle
had suddenly swooped down upon it from the sky, they would have known
quite well that wonders were afoot, and that all they had to do was to
follow the pheasant--or the eagle--until they reached the maiden in the
enchanted castle.  However, the pheasant was not white.

At the edge of the forest Kay said, "I suppose we shall have to go into
this?"

"Merlyn said to follow the line."

"Well," said Kay, "I am not afraid.  If the adventure was for me, it is
bound to be a good one."

They went in, and were surprised to find that the going was not bad.
It was about the same as a big wood might be nowadays, whereas the
common forest of those times was like a jungle on the Amazon.  There
were no pheasant-shooting proprietors then, to see that the undergrowth
was thinned, and not one thousandth part of the number of the
present-day timber merchants who prune judiciously at the few remaining
woods.  The most of the Forest Sauvage was almost impenetrable, an
enormous barrier of eternal trees, the dead ones fallen against the
live and held to them by ivy, the living struggling up in competition
with each other toward the sun which gave them life, the floor boggy
through lack of drainage, or tindery from old wood so that you might
suddenly tumble through a decayed tree trunk into an ants' nest, or
laced with brambles and bindweed and honeysuckle and convolvulus and
teazles and the stuff which country people call sweethearts, until you
would be torn to pieces in three yards.

This part was good.  Hob's line pointed down what seemed to be a
succession of glades, shady and murmuring places in which the wild
thyme was droning with bees.  The insect season was past its peak, for
it was really the time for wasps and fruit; but there were many
fritillaries still, with tortoise-shells and red admirals on the
flowering mint.  Wart pulled a leaf of this, and munched it like
chewing-gum as they walked.

"It is queer," he said, "but there have been people here.  Look, there
is a hoof-mark, and it was shod."

"You don't see much," said Kay, "for there is a man."

Sure enough, there was a man at the end of the next glade, sitting with
a wood-axe by the side of a tree which he had felled.  He was a
queer-looking, tiny man, with a hunchback and a face like mahogany, and
he was dressed in numerous pieces of old leather which he had secured
about his brawny legs and arms with pieces of cord.  He was eating a
lump of bread and sheep's-milk cheese with a knife which years of
sharpening had worn into a mere streak, leaning his back against one of
the highest trees they had ever seen.  The white flakes of wood lay all
about him.  The dressed stump of the felled tree looked very new.  His
eyes were bright like a fox's.

"I expect he will be the adventure," whispered Wart.

"Pooh," said Kay, "you have knights-in-armour, or dragons, or things
like that in an adventure, not dirty old men cutting wood."

"Well, I am going to ask him what happens along here, anyway."

They went up to the small munching woodman, who did not seem to have
seen them, and asked him where the glades were leading to.  They asked
two or three times before they discovered that the poor fellow was
either deaf or mad, or both.  He neither answered nor moved.

"Oh, come on," said Kay.  "He is probably loopy like Wat, and does not
know what he is at.  Let's go on and leave the old fool."

They went on for nearly a mile, and still the going was good.  There
were no paths exactly, and the glades were not continuous.  Anybody who
came there by chance would have thought that there was just the one
glade which he was in, a couple of hundred yards long, unless he went
to the end of it and discovered another one, screened by a few trees.
Now and then they found a stump with the marks of the axe on it, but
mostly these had been carefully covered with brambles or altogether
grubbed up.  The Wart considered that the glades must have been made.

Kay caught the Wart by the arm, at the edge of a clearing, and pointed
silently toward its further end.  There was a grassy bank there,
swelling gently to a gigantic sycamore, upward of ninety feet high,
which stood upon its top.  On the bank there was an equally gigantic
man lying at his ease, with a dog beside him.  This man was as notable
as the sycamore, for he stood or lay seven feet without his shoes, and
he was dressed in nothing but a kind of kilt made of Lincoln green
worsted.  He had a leather bracer on his left forearm.  His enormous
brown chest supported the dog's head--it had pricked its ears and was
watching the boys, but had made no other movement--which the muscles
gently lifted as they rose and fell.  The man appeared to be asleep.
There was a seven-foot bow beside him, with some arrows more than a
cloth-yard long.  He, like the woodman, was the colour of mahogany, and
the curled hairs on his chest made a golden haze where the sun caught
them.

"He is it," whispered Kay excitedly.

They went to the man cautiously, for fear of the dog.  But the dog only
followed them with its eyes, keeping its chin pressed firmly to the
chest of its beloved master, and giving them the least suspicion of a
wag from its tail.  It moved its tail without lifting it, two inches
sideways in the grass.  The man opened his eyes--obviously he had not
been asleep at all--smiled at the boys, and jerked his thumb in a
direction which pointed further up the glade.  Then he stopped smiling
and shut his eyes.

"Excuse me," said Kay, "what happens up there?"

The man made no answer and kept his eyes closed, but he lifted his hand
again and pointed onward with his thumb.

"He means us to go on," said Kay.

"It certainly is an adventure," said the Wart.  "I wonder if that dumb
woodman could have climbed up the big tree he was leaning against and
sent a message to this tree that we were coming?  He certainly seems to
have been expecting us."

At this the naked giant opened one eye and looked at Wart in some
surprise.  Then he opened both eyes, laughed all over his big twinkling
face, sat up, patted the dog, picked up his bow, and rose to his feet.

"Very well, then, young measters," he said, still laughing.  "Us will
come along of 'ee arter all.  Young heads still meake the sharpest,
they do say."

Kay looked at him in blank surprise.  "Who are you?" he asked.

"Naylor," said the giant, "John Naylor in the wide world it were, till
us come to be a man of the 'ood.  Then 'twere John Little for some
time, in the 'ood like, but mostly folk does put it back'ard now, and
calls us Little John."

"Oh!" cried the Wart in delight.  "I have heard of you, often, when
they tell Saxon stories in the evening, of you and Robin Hood."

"Not Hood," said Little John reprovingly.  "That bain't the way to name
'un, measter, not in the 'ood."

"But it is Robin Hood in the stories," said Kay.

"Ah, them book-learning chaps.  They don't know all.  How'm ever, 'tis
time us do be stepping along."

They fell in on either side of the enormous man, and had to run one
step in three to keep up with him; for, although he talked very slowly,
he walked on his bare feet very fast.  The dog trotted at heel.

"Please," asked the Wart, "where are you taking us?"

"Why, to Robin 'ood, seemingly.  An't you sharp enough to guess that
also, Measter Art?"

The giant gave him a sly peep out of the corner of his eye at this, for
he knew that he had set the boys two problems at once--first, what was
Robin's real name, and second, how did Little John come to know the
Wart's?

The Wart fixed on the second question first.

"How did you know my name?"

"Ah," said Little John.  "Us knowed."

"Does Robin 'ood know we are coming?"

"Nay, my duck, a young scholard like thee should speak his name
scholarly."

"Well, what is his name?" cried the boy, between exasperation and being
out of breath from running to keep up.  "You said 'ood."

"So it is 'ood, my duck.  Robin 'ood, like the 'oods you'm running
through.  And a grand fine name it is."

"Robin Wood!"

"Aye, Robin 'ood.  What else should un be, seeing as he rules 'em.
They'm free pleaces, the 'oods, and fine pleaces.  Let thee sleep in
'em, come summer, come winter, and hunt in 'em for thy commons lest
thee starve; and smell to 'em as they brings forward their comely
bright leaves, according to order, or loses of 'em by the same order
back'ards: let thee stand in 'em that thou be'st not seen, and move in
'em that thou be'st not heard, and warm thee with 'em as thou fall'st
on sleep--ah, they'm proper fine pleaces, the 'oods, for a free man of
hands and heart."

Kay said, "But I thought all Robin Wood's men wore hose and jerkins of
Lincoln green?"

"That us do in the winter like, when us needs 'em, or with leather
leggings at 'ood 'ork: but here by summer 'tis more seasonable thus for
the pickets, who have nought to do save watch."

"Were you a sentry then?"

"Aye, and so were wold Much, as you spoke to by the felled tree."

"And I think," exclaimed Kay triumphantly, "that this next big tree
which we are coming to will be the stronghold of Robin Wood!"

They were coming to the monarch of the forest.

It was a lime tree as great as that which used to grow at Moor Park in
Hertfordshire, no less than one hundred feet in height and seventeen
feet in girth, a yard above the ground.  Its beech-like trunk was
embellished with a beard of twigs at the bottom, and where each of the
great branches had sprung from the trunk the bark had split and was now
discoloured with rain water or sap.  The bees zoomed among its bright
and sticky leaves, higher and higher toward heaven, and a rope ladder
disappeared among the foliage.  Nobody could have climbed it without a
ladder, even with irons.

"You think well, Measter Kay," said Little John.  "And there be Measter
Robin, atween her roots."

The boys, who had been more interested in the look-out man perched in a
crow's nest at the top of that swaying and whispering pride of the
earth, lowered their eyes at once and clapped them on the great outlaw.

He was not, as they had expected, a romantic man--or not at
first--although he was nearly as tall as Little John.  These two, of
course, were the only people in the world who have ever shot an arrow
the distance of a mile, with the English long-bow.  He was a sinewy
fellow whose body did not carry fat.  He was not half-naked, like John,
but dressed discreetly in faded green with a silvery bugle at his side.
He was clean-shaven, sunburned, nervous, gnarled like the roots of the
trees; but gnarled and mature with weather and poetry rather than with
age, for he was scarcely thirty years old.  (Eventually he lived to be
eighty-seven, and attributed his long life to smelling the turpentine
in the pines.)  At the moment he was lying on his back and looking
upward, but not into the sky.

Robin Wood lay happily with his head in Marian's lap.  She sat between
the roots of the lime tree, clad in a one-piece smock of green girded
with a quiver of arrows, and her feet and arms were bare.  She had let
down the brown shining waterfall of her hair, which was usually kept
braided in pigtails for convenience in hunting and cookery, and with
the falling waves of this she framed his head.  She was singing a duet
with him softly, and tickling the end of his nose with the fine hairs.

  "Under the greenwood tree," sang Maid Marian,
  "Who loves to lie with me,
  And tune his merry note
  Unto the sweet bird's throat."


"Come hither, come hither, come hither," hummed Robin.

  "Here shall he see
  No enemy
  But winter and rough weather."

They laughed happily and began again, singing lines alternately:

  "Who doth ambition shun
  And loves to lie in the sun,
  Seeking the food he eats
  And pleased with what he gets,"

then, both together:

  "Come hither, come hither, come hither:
  Here shall he see
  No enemy
  But winter and rough weather."


The song ended in laughter.  Robin, who had been twisting his brown
fingers in the silk-fine threads which fell about his face, gave them a
shrewd tug and scrambled to his feet.

"Now, John," he said, seeing them at once.

"Now, Measter," said Little John.

"So you have brought the young squires?"

"They brought me."

"Welcome either way," said Robin.  "I never heard ill spoken of Sir
Ector, nor reason why his sounders should be pursued.  How are you, Kay
and Wart, and who put you into the forest at my glades, on this of all
days?"

"Robin," interrupted the lady, "you can't take them!"

"Why not, sweet heart?"

"They are children."

"Exactly what we want."

"It is inhuman," she said in a vexed way, and began to do her hair.

The outlaw evidently thought it would be safer not to argue, He turned
to the boys and asked them a question instead.

"Can you shoot?"

"Trust me," said the Wart.

"I can try," said Kay, more reserved, as they laughed at the Wart's
assurance.

"Come, Marian, let them have one of your bows."

She handed him a bow and half a dozen arrows twenty-eight inches long.

"Shoot the popinjay," said Robin, giving them to the Wart.

He looked and saw a popinjay five-score paces away.  He guessed that he
had been a fool and said cheerfully, "I am sorry, Robin Wood, but I am
afraid it is much too far for me."

"Never mind," said the outlaw.  "Have a shot at it.  I can tell by the
way you shoot."

The Wart fitted his arrow as quickly and neatly as he was able, set his
feet wide in the same line that he wished his arrow to go, squared his
shoulders, drew the bow to his chin, sighted on the mark, raised his
point through an angle of about twenty degrees, aimed two yards to the
right because he always pulled to the left in his loose, and sped his
arrow.  It missed, but not so badly.

"Now, Kay," said Robin.

Kay went through the same motions and also made a good shot.  Each of
them had held the bow the right way up, had quickly found the cock
feather and set it outward, each had taken hold of the string to draw
the bow--most boys who have not been taught are inclined to catch hold
of the nock of the arrow when they draw, between their finger and
thumb, but a proper archer pulls back the string with his first two or
three fingers and lets the arrow follow it--neither of them had allowed
the point to fall away to the left as they drew, nor struck their left
forearms with the bow-string--two common faults with people who do not
know--and each had loosed evenly without a pluck.

"Good," said the outlaw.  "No lute-players here."

"Robin," said Marian, sharply, "you can't take children into danger.
Send them home to their father."

"That I won't," he said, "unless they wish to go.  It is their quarrel
as much as mine."

"What is the quarrel?" asked Kay.

The outlaw threw down his bow and sat cross-legged on the ground,
drawing Maid Marian to sit beside him.  His face was puzzled.

"It is Morgan le Fay," he said.  "It is difficult to explain her."

"I should not try."

Robin turned on his mistress angrily.  "Marian," he said.  "Either we
must have their help, or else we have to leave the other three without
help.  I don't want to ask the boys to go there, but it is either that
or leaving Tuck to her."

The Wart thought it was time to ask a tactful question, so he made a
polite cough and said: "Please, who is Morgan the Fay?"

All three answered at once.

"She'm a bad 'un," said Little John.

"She is a fairy," said Robin.

"No, she is not," said Marian.  "She is an enchantress."

"The fact of the matter is," said Robin, "that nobody knows exactly
what she is.  In my opinion, she is a fairy.

"And that opinion," he added, staring at his wife, "I still hold."

Kay asked: "Do you mean she is one of those people with bluebells for
hats, who spend the time sitting on toadstools?"

There was a shout of laughter.

"Certainly not.  There are no such creatures.  The Queen is a real one,
and one of the worst of them."

"If the boys have got to be in it," said Marian, "you had better
explain from the beginning."

The outlaw took a deep breath, uncrossed his legs, and the puzzled look
came back to his face.

"Well," he said, "suppose that Morgan is the queen of the fairies, or
at any rate has to do with them, and that fairies are not the kind of
creatures your nurse has told you about.  Some people say they are the
Oldest Ones of All, who lived in England before the Romans came
here--before us Saxons, before the Old Ones themselves--and that they
have been driven underground.  Some say they look like humans, like
dwarfs, and others that they look ordinary, and others that they don't
look like anything at all, but put on various shapes as the fancy takes
them.  Whatever they look like, they have the knowledge of the ancient
Gaels.  They know things down there in their burrows which the human
race has forgotten about, and quite a lot of these things are not good
to hear."

"Whisper," said the golden lady, with a strange look, and the boys
noticed that the little circle had drawn closer together.

"Well now," said Robin, lowering his voice, "the thing about these
creatures that I am speaking of, and if you will excuse me I won't name
them again, is that they have no hearts.  It is not so much that they
wish to do evil, but that if you were to catch one and cut it open, you
would find no heart inside.  They are cold-blooded like fishes."

"They are everywhere, even while people are talking."

The boys looked about them.

"Be quiet," Robin said.  "I need not tell you any more.  It is unlucky
to talk about them.  The point is that I believe this Morgan is the
queen of the--well--of the Good Folk, and I know she sometimes lives in
a castle to the north of our forest called the Castle Chariot.  Marian
says that the queen is not a fairy herself, but only a necromancer who
is friendly with them.  Other people say she is a daughter of the Earl
of Cornwall.  Never mind about that.  The thing is that this morning,
by her enchantments, the Oldest People of All have taken prisoner one
of my servants and one of yours."

"Not Tuck?" cried Little John, who knew nothing of recent developments
because he had been on sentry.

Robin nodded.  "The news came from the northern trees, before your
message arrived about the boys."

"Alas, poor Friar!"

"Tell how it happened," said Marian.  "But perhaps you had better
explain about the names."

"One of the few things we know," said Robin, "about the Blessed Ones,
is that they go by the names of animals.  For instance, they may be
called Cow, or Goat, or Pig, and so forth.  So, if you happen to be
calling one of your own cows, you must always point to it when you
call.  Otherwise you may summon a fairy--a Little Person I ought to
have said--who goes by the same name, and, once you have summoned it,
it comes, and it can take you away."

"What seems to have happened," said Marian, taking up the story, "is
that your Dog Boy from the castle took his hounds to the edge of the
forest when they were going to scombre, and he happened to catch sight
of Friar Tuck, who was chatting with an old man called Wat that lives
hereabouts--"

"Excuse us," cried the two boys, "is that the old man who lived in our
village before he lost his wits?  He bit off the Dog Boy's nose, as a
matter of fact, and now he lives in the forest, a sort of ogre?"

"It is the same person," replied Robin, "but--poor thing--he is not
much of an ogre.  He lives on grass and roots and acorns, and would not
hurt a fly.  I am afraid you have got your story muddled."

"Fancy Wat living on acorns!"

"What happened," said Marian patiently, "was this.  The three of them
came together to pass the time of day, and one of the hounds (I think
it was the one called Cavall) began jumping up at poor Wat, to lick his
face.  This frightened the old man, and your Dog Boy called out, 'Come
here, Dog!' to make him stop.  He did not point with his finger.  You
see, he ought to have pointed."

"What happened?"

"Well, my man Scathelocke, or Scarlett, as they call him in the
ballads, happened to be woodcutting a little way off, and he says that
they vanished, just vanished, including the dog."

"My poor Cavall!"

"So the fairies have got them."

"You mean the People of Peace."

"I am sorry.

"But the point is, if Morgan is really the Queen of these creatures,
and if we want to get them away before they are enchanted--one of their
ancient Queens called Circe used to turn the ones she captured into
hogs--we shall have to look for them in her castle."

"Then we must go there."




_Chapter XI_

Robin smiled at the elder boy and patted him on the back, while the
Wart thought despairingly about his dog.  Then the outlaw cleared his
throat and began to speak again.

"You are right about going there," he said, "but I ought to tell you
the unpleasant part.  Nobody can get into the Castle Chariot, except a
boy or girl."

"Do you mean you can't get in?"

"You could get in."

"I suppose," explained the Wart, when he had thought this over, "it is
like the thing about unicorns."

"Right.  A unicorn is a magic animal, and only a maiden can catch it.
Fairies are magic too, and only innocent people can enter their
castles.  That is why they take away people's children out of cradles."

Kay and Wart sat in silence for a moment.  Then Kay said: "Well, I am
game.  It is my adventure after all."

The Wart said: "I want to go too.  I am fond of Cavall."

Robin looked at Marian.

"Very well," he said.  "We won't make a fuss about it, but we will talk
about plans.  I think it is good of you two to go, without really
knowing what you are in for, but it will not be so bad as you think."

"We shall come with you," said Marian.  "Our band will come with you to
the castle.  You will only have to do the going-in part at the end."

"Yes, and the band will probably be attacked by that griffin of hers
afterwards."

"Is there a griffin?"

"Indeed there is.  The Castle Chariot is guarded by a fierce one, like
a watch dog.  We shall have to get past it on the way there, or it will
give the alarm and you won't be able to get in.  It will be a terrific
stalk."

"We shall have to wait till night."

The boys passed the morning pleasantly, getting accustomed to two of
Maid Marian's bows.  Robin had insisted on this.  He said that no man
could shoot with another's bow any more than he could cut with
another's scythe.  For their midday meal they had cold venison pattie,
with mead, as did everybody else.  The outlaws drifted in for the meal
like a conjuring trick.  At one moment there would be nobody at the
edge of the clearing, at the next half a dozen right inside it--green
or sunburned men who had silently appeared out of the bracken or the
trees.  In the end there were about a hundred of them, eating merrily
and laughing.  They were not outlaws because they were murderers, or
for any reason like that.  They were Saxons who had revolted against
Uther Pendragon's conquest, and who refused to accept a foreign king.
The fens and wild woods of England were alive with them.  They were
like soldiers of the resistance in later occupations.  Their food was
dished out from a leafy bower, where Marian and her attendants cooked.

The partisans usually posted a sentry to take the tree messages, and
slept during the afternoon, partly because so much of their hunting had
to be done in the times when most workmen sleep, and partly because the
wild beasts take a nap in the afternoon and so should their hunters.
This afternoon, however, Robin called the boys to a council.

"Look," he said, "you had better know what we are going to do.  My band
of a hundred will march with you toward Queen Morgan's castle, in four
parties.  You two will be in Marian's party.  When we get to an oak
which was struck by lightning in the year of the great storm, we shall
be within a mile of the griffin guard.  We shall meet at a rendezvous
there, and afterward we shall have to move like shadows.  We must get
past the griffin without an alarm.  If we do get past it and if all
goes well, we shall halt at the castle at a distance of about four
hundred yards.  We can't come nearer, because of the iron in our
arrow-heads, and from that moment you will have to go alone.

"Now, Kay and Wart, I must explain about iron.  If our friends have
really been captured by--by the Good People--and if Queen Morgan the
Fay is really the queen of them, we have one advantage on our side.
None of the Good People can bear the closeness of iron.  The reason is
that the Oldest Ones of All began in the days of flint, before iron was
ever invented, and all their troubles have come from the new metal.
The people who conquered them had steel swords (which is even better
than iron) and that is how they succeeded in driving the Old Ones
underground.

"This is the reason why we must keep away tonight, for fear of giving
them the uncomfortable feeling.  But you two, with an iron knife-blade
hidden close in your hands, will be safe from the Queen, so long as you
do not let go of it.  A couple of small knives will not give them the
feeling without being shown.  All you will have to do is to walk the
last distance, keeping a good grip of your iron: enter the castle in
safety: and make your way to the cell where the prisoners are.  As soon
as the prisoners are protected by your metal they will be able to walk
out with you.  Do you understand this, Kay and Wart?"

"Yes, please," they said.  "We understand this perfectly."

"There is one more thing.  The most important is to hold your iron, but
the next most important is not to eat.  Anybody who eats in a
you-know-what stronghold has to stay there for ever, so, for all sake's
sake, don't eat anything whatever inside the castle, however tempting
it may look.  Will you remember?"

"We will."

After the staff lecture, Robin went to give his orders to the men.  He
made them a long speech, explaining about the griffin and the stalk and
what the boys were going to do.

When he had finished his speech, which was listened to in perfect
silence, an odd thing happened.  He began it again at the beginning and
spoke it from start to finish in the same words.  On finishing it for
the second time, he said, "Now, captains," and the hundred men split
into groups of twenty which went to different parts of the clearing and
stood round Marian, Little John, Much, Scarlett and Robin.  From each
of these groups a humming noise rose to the sky.

"What on earth are they doing?"

"Listen," said the Wart.

They were repeating the speech, word for word.  Probably none of them
could read or write, but they had learned to listen and remember.  This
was the way in which Robin kept touch with his night raiders, by
knowing that each man knew by heart all that the leader himself knew,
and why he was able to trust them, when necessary, each man to move by
himself.

When the men had repeated their instructions, and everyone was word
perfect in the speech, there was an issue of war arrows, a dozen to
each.  These arrows had bigger heads, ground to razor sharpness, and
they were heavily feathered in a square cut.  There was a bow
inspection, and two or three men were issued with new strings.  Then
all fell silent.

"Now then," cried Robin cheerfully.

He waved his arm, and the men, smiling, raised their bows in salute.
Then there was a sigh, a rustle, a snap of one incautious twig, and the
clearing of the giant lime tree was as empty as it had been before the
days of man.

"Come with me," said Marian, touching the boys on the shoulder.  Behind
them the bees hummed in the leaves.

It was a long march.  The artificial glades which led to the lime tree
in the form of a cross were no longer of use after the first half-hour.
After that they had to make their way through the virgin forest as best
they might.  It would not have been so bad if they had been able to
kick and slash their way, but they were supposed to move in silence.
Marian showed them how to go sideways, one side after the other; how to
stop at once when a bramble caught them, and take it patiently out; how
to put their feet down sensitively and roll their weight to that leg as
soon as they were certain that no twig was under the foot; how to
distinguish at a glance the places which gave most hope of an easy
passage; and how a kind of rhythm in their movements would help them in
spite of obstacles.  Although there were a hundred invisible men on
every side of them, moving toward the same goal, they heard no sounds
but their own.

The boys had felt disgruntled at first, at being put in a woman's band.
They would have preferred to have gone with Robin, and thought that
being put under Marian was like being trusted to a governess.  They
soon found their mistake.  She had objected to their coming, but, now
that their coming was ordered, she accepted them as companions.  It was
not easy to be a companion of hers.  In the first place, it was
impossible to keep up with her unless she waited for them--for she
could move on all fours or even wriggle like a snake almost as quickly
as they could walk--and in the second place she was an accomplished
soldier, which they were not.  She was a true Weyve--except for her
long hair, which most of the female outlaws of those days used to clip.
One of the bits of advice which she gave them before talking had to be
stopped was this: Aim high when you shoot in battle, rather than low.
A low arrow strikes the ground, a high one may kill in the second rank.

"If I am made to get married," thought the Wart, who had doubts on the
subject, "I will marry a girl like this: a kind of golden vixen."

As a matter of fact, though the boys did not know it, Marian could hoot
like an owl by blowing into her fists, or whistle a shrill blast
between tongue and teeth with the fingers in the corner of the mouth;
could bring all the birds to her by imitating their calls, and
understand much of their small language--such as when the tits exclaim
that a hawk is coming; could hit the popinjay twice for three times of
Robin's; and could turn cartwheels.  But none of these accomplishments
was necessary at the moment.

The twilight fell mistily--it was the first of the autumn mists--and in
the dimity the undispersed families of the tawny owl called to each
other, the young with keewick and the old with the proper hooroo,
hooroo.  The noise called Tu-Whit, Tu-Whoo, which is wished by poets on
the owl, is really a family noise, made by separate birds.
Proportionally as the brambles and obstacles became harder to see, so
did they become easier to feel.  It was odd, but in the deepening
silence the Wart found himself able to move more silently, instead of
less.  Being reduced to touch and sound, he found himself in better
sympathy with these, and could go quietly and quick.

It was about compline, or, as we should call it, at nine o'clock at
night--and they had covered at least seven miles of the toilsome
forest--when Marian touched Kay on the shoulder and pointed into the
blue darkness.  They could see in the dark now, as well as human beings
can see in it and much better than townspeople will ever manage to, and
there in front of them, struck through seven miles of trackless forest
by Marian's wood-craft, was the smitten oak.  They decided with one
accord, without even a whisper, to creep up to it so silently that even
the members of their own army, who might already be waiting there,
would not know of their arrival.

But a motionless man has the advantage of a man in motion, and they had
hardly reached the outskirts of the roots when friendly hands took hold
of them, patted their backs with pats as light as thistledown, and
guided them to seats.  The roots were crowded.  It was like being a
member of a band of starlings, or of roosting rooks.  In the night
mystery a hundred men breathed on every side of Wart, like the surge of
our own blood which we can hear when we are writing or reading in the
late and lonely hours.  They were in the dark and stilly womb of night.

Presently the Wart noticed that the grasshoppers were creaking their
shrill note, so tiny as to be almost extra-audible, like the creak of
the bat.  They creaked one after another.  They creaked, when Marian
had creaked three times to account for Kay and Wart as well as for
herself, one hundred times.  All the outlaws were present, and it was
time to go.

There was a rustle, as if the wind had moved in the last few leaves of
the nine-hundred-year-old oak.  Then an owl hooted softly, a field
mouse screamed, a rabbit thumped, a dog-fox barked his deep, single
lion's cough, and a bat twittered above their heads.  The leaves
rustled again more lengthily while you could count a hundred, and then
Maid Marian, who had done the rabbit's thump, was surrounded by her
band of twenty plus two.  The Wart felt a man on either side of him
take his hand, as they stood in a circle, and then he noticed that the
stridulation of the grasshoppers had begun again.  It was going round
in a circle, towards him, and, as the last grasshopper rubbed its legs
together, the man on his right squeezed his hand.  Wart stridulated.
Instantly the man on his left did the same, and pressed his hand also.
There were twenty-two grasshoppers before Maid Marian's band was ready
for its last stalk through the silence.

The last stalk might have been a nightmare, but to the Wart it was
heavenly.  Suddenly he found himself filled with an exaltation of
night, and felt that he was bodiless, silent, transported.  He felt
that he could have walked upon a feeding rabbit and caught her up by
the ears, furry and kicking, before she knew of his presence.  He felt
that he could have run between the legs of the men on either side of
him, or taken their bright daggers from their sheaths, while they still
moved on undreaming.  The passion of nocturnal secrecy was a wine in
his blood.  He really was small and young enough to move as secretly as
the warriors.  Their age and weight made them lumber, in spite of all
their woodcraft, and his youth and lightness made him mobile, in spite
of his lack of it.

It was an easy stalk, except for its danger.  The bushes thinned and
the sounding bracken grew rarely in the swampy earth, so that they
could move three times as fast.  They went in a dream, unguided by
owl's hoot or bat's squeak, but only kept together by the necessary
pace which the sleeping forest imposed upon them.  Some of them were
fearful, some revengeful for their comrade, some, as it were, disbodied
in the sleep-walk of their stealth.

They had hardly crept for twenty minutes when Maid Marian paused in her
tracks.  She pointed to the left.

Neither of the boys had read the book of Sir John de Mandeville, so
they did not know that a griffin was eight times larger than a lion.
Now, looking to the left in the silent gloom of night, they saw cut out
against the sky and against the stars something which they never would
have believed possible.  It was a young male griffin in its first
plumage.

The front end, and down to the forelegs and shoulders, was like a huge
falcon.  The Persian beak, the long wings in which the first primary
was the longest, and the mighty talons: all were the same, but, as
Mandeville observed, the whole eight times bigger than a lion.  Behind
the shoulders, a change began to take place.  Where an ordinary falcon
or eagle would content itself with the twelve feathers of its tail,
Falco leonis serpentis began to grow the leonine body and the hind legs
of the beast of Africa, and after that a snake's tail.  The boys saw,
twenty-four feet high in the mysterious night-light of the moon, and
with its sleeping head bowed upon its breast so that the wicked beak
lay on the breast feathers, an authentic griffin that was better worth
seeing than a hundred condors.  They drew their breath through their
teeth and for the moment hurried secretly on, storing the majestic
vision of terror in the chambers of remembrance.

They were close to the castle at last, and it was time for the outlaws
to halt.  Their captain touched hands silently with Kay and Wart, and
the two went forward through the thinning forest, towards a faint glow
which gleamed behind the trees.

They found themselves in a wide clearing or plain.  They stood stock
still with surprise at what they saw.  It was a castle made entirely
out of food, except that on the highest tower of all a carrion crow was
sitting, with an arrow in its beak.


The Oldest Ones of All were gluttons.  Probably it was because they
seldom had enough to eat.  You can read even nowadays a poem written by
one of them, which is known as the Vision of Mac Conglinne.  In this
Vision there is a description of a castle made out of different kinds
of food.  The English for part of the poem goes like this:

  A lake of new milk I beheld
  In the midst of a fair plain.
  I saw a well-appointed house
  Thatched with butter.

  Its two soft door-posts of custard.
  Its dais of curds and butter,
  Beds of glorious lard.
  Many shields of thin pressed cheese.

  Under the straps of those shields
  Were men of soft sweet smooth cheese,
  Men who knew not to wound a Gael,
  Spears of old butter had each of them.

  A huge cauldron full of meat
  (Methought I'd try to tackle it),
  Boiled, leafy kale, browny-white,
  A brimming vessel full of milk.

  A bacon house of two-score ribs,
  A wattling of tripe--support of clans--
  Of every food pleasant to man,
  Meseemed the whole was gathered there.

  Of chitterlings of pigs were made
  Its beautiful rafters,
  Splendid the beams and the pillars
  Of marvellous pork.


The boys stood there in wonder and nausea, before just such a
stronghold.  It rose from its lake of milk in a mystic light of its
own--in a greasy, buttery glow.  It was the fairy aspect of Castle
Chariot, which the Oldest Ones--sensing the hidden knife blades after
all--had thought would be tempting to the children.  It was to tempt
them to eat.

The place smelt like a grocer's, a butcher's, a dairy and a
fishmonger's, rolled into one.  It was horrible beyond belief--sweet,
sickly and pungent--so that they did not feel the least wish to swallow
a particle of it.  The real temptation was, to run away.

However, there were prisoners to rescue.

They plodded over the filthy drawbridge--a butter one, with cow hairs
still in it--sinking to their ankles.  They shuddered at the tripe and
the chitterlings.  They pointed their iron knives at the soldiers made
of soft, sweet, smooth cheese, and the latter shrank away.

In the end they came to the inner chamber, where Morgan le Fay herself
lay stretched upon her bed of glorious lard.

She was a fat, dowdy, middle-aged woman with black hair and a slight
moustache, but she was made of human flesh.  When she saw the knives,
she kept her eyes shut--as if she were in a trance.  Perhaps, when she
was outside this very strange castle, or when she was not doing that
kind of magic to tempt the appetite, she was able to assume more
beautiful forms.

The prisoners were tied to pillars of marvellous pork.

"I am sorry if this iron is hurting you," said Kay, "but we have come
to rescue our friends."

Queen Morgan shuddered.

"Will you tell your cheesy men to undo them?"

She would not.

"It is magic," said the Wart.  "Do you think we ought to go up and kiss
her, or something frightful like that?"

"Perhaps if we went and touched her with the iron?"

"You do it."

"No, you."

"We'll go together."

So they joined hands to approach the Queen.  She began to writhe in her
lard like a slug.  She was in agony from the metal.

At last, and just before they reached her, there was a sloshing rumble
or mumble--and the whole fairy appearance of Castle Chariot melted
together in collapse, leaving the five humans and one dog standing
together in the forest clearing--which still smelt faintly of dirty
milk.

"Gor-blimey!" said Friar Tuck.  "Gor blimey and coo!  Dash my vig if I
didn't think we was done for!"

"Master!" said Dog Boy.

Cavall contented himself with barking wildly, biting their toes, lying
on his back, trying to wag his tail in that position, and generally
behaving like an idiot.  Old Wat touched his forelock.

"Now then," said Kay, "this is my adventure, and we must get home
quick."




_Chapter XII_

But Morgan le Fay, although in her fairy shape she could not stand
iron, still had the griffin.  She had cast it loose from its golden
chain, by a spell, the moment her castle disappeared.

The outlaws were pleased with their success, and less careful than they
should have been.  They decided to take a detour round the place where
they had seen the monster tied up, and marched away through the
darksome trees without a thought of danger.

There was a noise like a railway train letting off its whistle, and,
answering to it--riding on it like the voice of the Arabian Bird--Robin
Wood's horn of silver began to blow.

"Tone, ton, tavon, tontavon, tantontavon, tontantontavon," went the
horn.  "Moot, troot, trourourout, troutourourout.  Troot, troot.  Tran,
tran, tran, tran."

Robin was blowing his hunting music and the ambushed archers swung
round as the griffin charged.  They set forward their left feet in the
same movement and let fly such a shower of arrows as it had been snow.

The Wart saw the creature stagger in its tracks, a clothyard shaft
sprouting from between the shoulder blades.  He saw his own arrow fly
wide, and eagerly bent to snatch another from his belt.  He saw the
rank of his companion archers sway as if by a preconcerted signal, when
each man stooped for a second shaft.  He heard the bowstrings twang
again, the purr of the feathers in the air.  He saw the phalanx of
arrows gleam like an eyeflick in the moonlight.  All his life up to
then he had been shooting into straw targets which made a noise like
Phutt!  He had often longed to hear the noise that these clean and
deadly missiles would make in solid flesh.  He heard it.

But the griffin's plates were as thick as a crocodile's and all but the
best placed arrows glanced off.  It still came on.  It squealed as it
came.  Men began to fall, swept to the left or right by the lashing
tail.

The Wart was fitting an arrow to his bow.  The cock feather would not
go right.  Everything was in slow motion.

He saw the huge body coming blackly through the moon-glare.  He felt
the claw which took him in the chest.  He felt himself turning
somersaults slowly, with a cruel weight on top of him.  He saw Kay's
face somewhere in the cartwheel of the universe, flushed with starlit
excitement, and Maid Marian's on the other side with its mouth open,
shouting.  He thought, before he slid into blackness, that it was
shouting at him.

They dragged him from under the dead griffin and found Kay's arrow
sticking in its eye.  It had died in its leap.

Then there was a time which made him feel sick--while Robin set his
collar-bone and made him a sling from the green cloth of his hood--and
after that the whole band lay down to sleep, dog-tired, beside the
body.  It was too late to return to Sir Ector's castle, or even to get
back to the outlaws' camp by the big tree.  The dangers of the
expedition were over and all that could be done that night was to make
fires, post sentries, and sleep where they were.

Wart did not sleep much.  He sat propped against a tree, watching the
red sentries passing to and fro in the firelight, hearing their quiet
passwords and thinking about the excitements of the day.  These went
round and round in his head, sometimes losing their proper order and
happening backwards or by bits.  He saw the leaping dragon, heard
Marian shouting "Good shot!", listened to the humming of the bees
muddled up with the stridulation of the grasshoppers, and shot and
shot, hundreds and thousands of times, at popinjays which turned into
griffins.  Kay and the liberated Dog Boy slept twitching beside him,
looking alien and incomprehensible as people do when they are asleep,
and Cavall, lying at his good shoulder, occasionally licked his hot
cheeks.  The dawn came slowly, so slowly and pausingly that it was
impossible to determine when it really had dawned, as it does during
the summer months.

"Well," said Robin, when they had wakened and eaten the breakfast of
bread and cold venison which they had brought with them, "you will have
to love us and leave us, Kay.  Otherwise I shall have Sir Ector fitting
out an expedition against me, to fetch you back.  Thank you for your
help.  Can I give you any little present as a reward?"

"It has been lovely," said Kay.  "Absolutely lovely.  May I have the
griffin I shot?"

"He will be too heavy to carry.  Why not take his head?"

"That would do," said Kay, "if somebody would not mind cutting it off.
It was my griffin."

"What are you going to do about old Wat?" asked the Wart.

"It depends on what he wants to do.  Perhaps he will like to run off by
himself and eat acorns, as he used to, or if he likes to join our band
we shall be glad to have him.  He ran away from your village in the
first place, so I don't suppose he will care to go back there.  What do
you think?"

"If you are going to give me a present," said the Wart, slowly, "I
would like to have him.  Do you think that would be right?"

"As a matter of fact," said Robin, "I don't.  I don't think you can
very well give people as presents: they might not like it.  That is
what we Saxons feel, at any rate.  What did you intend to do with him?"

"I don't want to keep him or anything like that.  You see, we have a
tutor who is a magician and I thought he might be able to restore him
to his wits."

"Good boy," said Robin.  "Have him by all means.  I am sorry I made a
mistake.  At least, we will ask him if he would like to go."

When somebody had gone off to fetch Wat, Robin said, "You had better
talk to him yourself."

They brought the poor old man, smiling, confused, hideous and very
dirty, and stood him before Robin.

"Go on," said Robin.

The Wart did not know quite how to put it, but he said, "I say, Wat,
would you like to come home with me, please, just for a little?"

"AhnaNanaWarraBaaBaa," said Wat, pulling his forelock, smiling, bowing
and gently waving his arms in various directions.

"Come with me?"

"WanaNanaWanawana."

"Dinner?" asked the Wart in desperation.

"R!" cried the poor creature affirmatively, and his eyes glowed with
pleasure at the prospect of being given something to eat.

"That way," said the Wart, pointing in the direction which he knew by
the sun to be that of his guardian's castle.  "Dinner.  Come with.  I
take."

"Measter," said Wat, suddenly remembering one word, the word which he
had always been accustomed to offer to the great people who made him a
present of food, his only livelihood.  It was decided.

"Well," said Robin, "it has been a good adventure and I am sorry you
are going.  I hope I shall see you again."

"Come any time," said Marian, "if you are feeling bored.  You only have
to follow the glades.  And you, Wart, be careful of that collar bone
for a few days."

"I will send some men with you to the edge of the chase," said Robin.
"After that you must go by yourselves.  I expect the Dog Boy can carry
the griffin's head."

"Good-bye," said Kay.

"Good-bye," said Robin.

"Good-bye," said Wart.

"Good-bye," said Marian, smiling.

"Good-bye," cried all the outlaws, waving their bows.

And Kay and the Wart and the Dog Boy and Wat and Cavall and their
escort set off on the long track home.


They had an immense reception.  The return on the previous day of all
the hounds, except Cavall and the Dog Boy, and in the evening the
failure to return of Kay and Wart, had set the household in an uproar.
Their nurse had gone into hysterics--Hob had stayed out till midnight
scouring the purlieus of the forest--the cooks had burnt the joint for
dinner--and the sergeant-at-arms had polished all the armour twice and
sharpened all the swords and axes to a razor blade in case of an
invasion.  At last somebody had thought of consulting Merlyn, whom they
had found in the middle of his third nap.  The magician, for the sake
of peace and quietness to go on with his rest, had used his insight to
tell Sir Ector exactly what the boys were doing, where they were, and
when they might be expected back.  He had prophesied their return to
the minute.

So, when the small procession of returning warriors came within sight
of the drawbridge, they were greeted by the whole household.  Sir Ector
was standing in the middle with a thick walking-stick with which he
proposed to whack them for going out of bounds and causing so much
trouble; the nurse had insisted on bringing out a banner which used to
be put up when Sir Ector came home for the holidays, as a small boy,
and this said Welcome Home; Hob had forgotten about his beloved hawks
and was standing on one side, shading his eagle eyes to get the first
view; the cooks and all the kitchen staff were banging pots and pans,
singing "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" or some such music, out of tune;
the kitchen cat was yowling; the hounds had escaped from the kennel
because there was nobody to look after them, and were preparing to
chase the kitchen cat; the sergeant-at-arms was blowing out his chest
with pleasure so far that he looked as if he might burst at any moment,
and was commanding everybody in an important voice to get ready to
cheer when he said, "One, Two!"

"One, Two!" cried the sergeant.

"Huzza!" cried everybody obediently, including Sir Ector.

"Look what I have got," shouted Kay.  "I have shot a griffin and the
Wart has been wounded."

"Yow-yow-yow!" barked all the hounds, and poured over the Dog Boy,
licking his face, scratching his chest, sniffing him all over to see
what he had been up to, and looking hopefully at the griffin's head
which the Dog Boy held high in the air so that they could not eat it.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed Sir Ector.

"Alas, the poor Phillip Sparrow," cried the nurse, dropping her banner.
"Pity his poor arm all to-brast in a green sling, God bless us!"

"It is all right," said the Wart.  "Ah, don't catch hold of me.  It
hurts."

"May I have it stuffed?" asked Kay.

"Well, I be dommed," said Hob.  "Be'nt thick wold chappie our Wat, that
erst run lunatical?"

"My dear, dear boys," said Sir Ector.  "I am so glad to see you back."

"Wold chuckle-head," exclaimed the nurse triumphantly.  "Where be thy
girt cudgel now?"

"Hem!" said Sir Ector.  "How dare you go out of bounds and put us all
to this anxiety?"

"It is a real griffin," said Kay, who knew there was nothing to be
afraid of.  "I shot dozens of them.  Wart broke his collar-bone.  We
rescued the Dog Boy and Wat."

"That comes of teaching the young Hidea 'ow to shoot," said the
sergeant proudly.

Sir Ector kissed both boys and commanded the griffin to be displayed
before him.

"Well!" he exclaimed.  "What a monster!  We'll have him stuffed in the
dinin'-hall.  What did you say his measurements were?"

"Eighty-two inches from ear to ear.  Robin said it might be a record."

"We shall have to get it chronicled."

"It is rather a good one, isn't it?" remarked Kay with studied calm.

"I shall have it set up by Sir Rowland Ward," Sir Ector went on in high
delight, "with a little ivory card with KAY'S FIRST GRIFFIN on it in
black letters, and the date."

"Arrah, leave thy childishness," exclaimed the nurse.  "Now, Master
Art, my innocent, be off with thee to thy bed upon the instant.  And
thou, Sir Ector, let thee think shame to be playing wi' monsters' heads
like a godwit when the poor child stays upon the point of death.  Now,
sergeant, leave puffing of thy chest.  Stir, man, and take horse to
Cardoyle for the chirurgeon."

She waved her apron at the sergeant, who collapsed his chest and
retreated like a shoo'd chicken.

"It is all right," said the Wart, "I tell you.  It is only a broken
collar-bone, and Robin set it for me last night.  It does not hurt a
bit."

"Leave the boy, nurse," commanded Sir Ector, taking sides with the men
against the women, anxious to re-establish his superiority after the
matter of the cudgel.  "Merlyn will see to him if he needs it, no
doubt.  Who is this Robin?"

"Robin Wood," cried the boys together.

"Never heard of him."

"You call him Robin Hood," explained Kay in a superior tone.  "But it
is Wood really, like the Wood that he is the spirit of."

"Well, well, well, so you've been foragin' with that rascal!  Come in
to breakfast, boys, and tell me all about him."

"We have had breakfast," said the Wart, "hours ago.  May I please take
Wat with me to see Merlyn?"

"Why, it's the old man who went wild and started rootin' in the forest.
Wherever did you get hold of him?"

"The Good People had captured him with the Dog Boy and Cavall."

"But we shot the griffin," Kay put in.  "I shot it myself."

"So now I want to see if Merlyn can restore him to his wits."

"Master Art," said the nurse sternly.  She had been breathless up to
now on account of Sir Ector's rebuke.  "Master Art, thy room and thy
bed is where thou art tending to, and that this instant.  Wold fools
may be wold fools, whether by yea or by nay, but I ha'nt served the
Family for fifty year without a-learning of my duty.  A
flibberty-gibbeting about wi' a lot of want-wits, when thy own arm may
be dropping to the floor!

"Yes, thou wold turkey-cock," she added, turning fiercely upon Sir
Ector, "and thou canst keep thy magician away from the poor mite's room
till he be rested, that thou canst!

"A-wantoning wi' monsters and lunaticals," continued the victor as she
led her helpless captive from the stricken field.  "I never heard the
like."

"Please someone to tell Merlyn to look after Wat," cried the victim
over his shoulder, in diminishing tones.


He woke up in his cool bed, feeling better.  The old fire-eater who
looked after him had covered the windows with a curtain, so that the
room was dark and comfortable, but he could tell by the one ray of
golden sunlight which shot across the floor that it was late afternoon.
He not only felt better.  He felt very well, so well that it was not
possible to stay in bed.  He moved quickly to throw back the sheet, but
stopped with a hiss at the creak or scratch of his shoulder, which he
had forgotten in his sleep.  Then he got out more carefully by sliding
down the bed and pushing himself upright with one hand, shoved his bare
feet into a pair of slippers, and managed to wrap a dressing-gown round
him more or less.  He padded off through the stone passages up the worn
circular stairs to find Merlyn.

When he reached the schoolroom, he found that Kay was continuing his
First Rate Eddication.  He was doing dictation, for as Wart opened the
door he heard Merlyn pronouncing in measured tones the famous mediaeval
mnemonic: "Barabara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris," and Kay saying,
"Wait a bit.  My pen has gone all squee-gee."

"You will catch it," remarked Kay, when they saw him.  "You are
supposed to be in bed, dying of gangrene or something."

"Merlyn," said the Wart.  "What have you done with Wat?"

"You should try to speak without assonances," said the wizard.  "For
instance, 'The beer is never clear near here, dear,' is unfortunate,
even as an assonance.  And then again, your sentence is ambiguous to
say the least of it.  'What what?' I might reply, taking it to be a
conundrum, or if I were King Pellinore, 'What what, what?'  Nobody can
be too careful about their habits of speech."

Kay had evidently been doing his dictation well and the old gentleman
was in a good humour.

"You know what I mean," said the Wart.  "What have you done with the
old man with no nose?"

"He has cured him," said Kay.

"Well," said Merlyn, "you might call it that, and then again you might
not.  Of course, when one has lived in the world as long as I have, and
backwards at that, one does learn to know a thing or two about
pathology.  The wonders of analytical psychology and plastic surgery
are, I am afraid, to this generation but a closed book."

"What did you do to him?"

"Oh, I just psycho-analysed him," replied the magician grandly.  "That,
and of course I sewed on a new nose on both of them."

"What kind of nose?" asked the Wart.

"It is too funny," said Kay.  "He wanted to have the griffin's nose for
one, but I would not let him.  So then he took the noses off the young
pigs which we are going to have for supper, and used those.  Personally
I think they will grunt."

"A ticklish operation," said Merlyn, "but a successful one."

"Well," said the Wart, doubtfully.  "I hope it will be all right.  What
did they do then?"

"They went off to the kennels.  Old Wat is very sorry for what he did
to the Dog Boy, but he says he can't remember having done it.  He says
that suddenly everything went black, when they were throwing stones
once, and he can't remember anything since.  The Dog Boy forgave him
and said he did not mind a bit.  They are going to work together in the
kennels in future, and not think of what is past any more.  The Dog Boy
says that the old man was good to him while they were prisoners of the
Fairy Queen, and that he knows he ought not to have thrown stones at
him in the first place.  He says he often thought about that when other
boys were throwing stones at him."

"Well," said the Wart, "I am glad it has all turned out for the best.
Do you think I could go and visit them?"

"For heaven's sake, don't do anything to annoy your nurse," exclaimed
Merlyn, looking about him anxiously.  "That old woman hit me with a
broom when I came to see you this forenoon, and broke my spectacles.
Could you not wait until tomorrow?"


On the morrow Wat and the Dog Boy were the firmest of friends.  Their
common experiences of being stoned by the mob and then tied to columns
of pork by Morgan le Fay served as a bond and a topic of reminiscence,
as they lay among the dogs at night, for the rest of their lives.
Also, by the morning, they had both pulled off the noses which Merlyn
had kindly given them.  They explained that they had got used to having
no noses, now, and anyway they preferred to live with the dogs.




_Chapter XIII_

In spite of his protests, the unhappy invalid was confined to his
chamber for three mortal days.  He was alone except at bedtime, when
Kay came, and Merlyn was reduced to shouting his eddication through the
key-hole, at times when the nurse was known to be busy with her washing.

The boy's only amusement was the ant-nests--the ones between glass
plates which had been brought when he first came from Merlyn's cottage
in the forest.

"Can't you," he howled miserably under the door, "turn me into
something while I'm locked up like this?"

"I can't get the spells through the key-hole."

"Through the what?"

"The KEY-HOLE."

"Oh!"

"Are you there?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"What?"

"Confusion take this shouting!" exclaimed the magician, stamping on his
hat.  "May Castor and Pollux----  No, not again.  God bless my blood
pressure...."

"Could you turn me into an ant?"

"A what?"

"An ANT!  It would be a small spell for ants, wouldn't it?  It would go
through the key-hole?"

"I don't think we ought to."

"Why?"

"They are dangerous."

"You could watch with your insight, and turn me back again if it got
too bad.  Please turn me into something, or I shall go weak in the
head."

"The ants are not our Norman ones, dear boy.  They come from the Afric
shore.  They are belligerent."

"I don't know what belligerent is."

There was a long silence behind the door.

"Well," said Merlyn eventually.  "It is far too soon in your education.
But you would have had to do it sometime.  Let me see.  Are there two
nests in that contraption?"

"There are two pairs of plates."

"Take a rush from the floor and lean it between the two nests, like a
bridge.  Have you done that?"

"Yes."


The place where he was seemed like a great field of boulders, with a
flattened fortress at one end of it--between the glass plates.  The
fortress was entered by tunnels in the rock, and, over the entrance to
each tunnel, there was a notice which said:

  --------------------------------------

  EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY

  --------------------------------------


He read the notice with dislike, though he did not understand its
meaning.  He thought to himself: I will explore a little, before going
in.  For some reason the notice gave him a reluctance to go, making the
rough tunnel look sinister.

He waved his antennae carefully, considering the notice, assuring
himself of his new senses, planting his feet squarely in the insect
world as if to brace himself in it.  He cleaned his antennae with his
forefeet, frisking and smoothing them so that he looked like a
Victorian villain twirling his moustachios.  He yawned--for ants do
yawn--and stretch themselves too, like human beings.  Then he became
conscious of something which had been waiting to be noticed--that there
was a noise in his head which was articulate.  It was either a noise or
a complicated smell, and the easiest way to explain it is to say that
it was like a wireless broadcast.  It came through his antennae.

The music had a monotonous rhythm like a pulse, and the words which
went with it were about June--moon--noon--spoon, or
Mammy--mammy--mammy--mammy, or Ever--never, or Blue--true--you.  He
liked them at first, especially the ones about Love--dove--above, until
he found that they did not vary.  As soon as they had been finished
once, they were begun again.  After an hour or two, they began to make
him feel sick inside.

There was a voice in his head also, during the pauses of the music,
which seemed to be giving directions.  "All two-day-olds will be moved
to the West Aisle" it would say, or "Number 210397/WD will report to
the soup squad, in replacement for 333105/WD who has fallen off the
nest."  It was a fruity voice, but it seemed to be somehow
impersonal--as if its charm were an accomplishment that had been
practised, like a circus trick.  It was dead.

The boy, or perhaps we ought to say the ant, walked away from the
fortress as soon as he was prepared to walk about.  He began exploring
the desert of boulders uneasily, reluctant to visit the place from
which the orders were coming, yet bored with the narrow view.  He found
small pathways among the boulders, wandering tracks both aimless and
purposeful, which led toward the grain store, and also in various other
directions which he could not understand.  One of these paths ended at
a clod with a natural hollow underneath it.  In the hollow--again with
the strange appearance of aimless purpose--he found two dead ants.
They were laid there tidily but yet untidily, as if a very tidy person
had taken them to the place, but had forgotten the reason when he got
there.  They were curled up, and did not seem to be either glad or
sorry to be dead.  They were there, like a couple of chairs.

While he was looking at the corpses, a live ant came down the pathway
carrying a third one.

It said: "Hail, Barbarus!"

The boy said Hail, politely.

In one respect, of which he knew nothing, he was lucky.  Merlyn had
remembered to give him the proper smell for the nest--for, if he had
smelled of any other nest, they would have killed him at once.  If Miss
Edith Cavell had been an ant, they would have had to write on her
statue: SMELL IS NOT ENOUGH.

The new ant put down the cadaver vaguely and began dragging the other
two in various directions.  It did not seem to know where to put them.
Or rather, it knew that a certain arrangement had to be made, but it
could not figure how to make it.  It was like a man with a tea-cup in
one hand and a sandwich in the other, who wants to light a cigarette
with a match.  But, where the man would invent the idea of putting down
the cup and sandwich--before picking up the cigarette and the
match--this ant would have put down the sandwich and picked up the
match, then it would have been down with the match and up with the
cigarette, then down with the cigarette and up with the sandwich, then
down with the cup and up with the cigarette, until finally it had put
down the sandwich and picked up the match.  It was inclined to rely on
a series of accidents to achieve its object.  It was patient, and did
not think.  When it had pulled the three dead ants into several
positions, they would fall into line under the clod eventually, and
that was its duty.

Wart watched the arrangements with a surprise which turned into
vexation and then into dislike.  He felt like asking why it did not
think things out in advance--the annoyed feeling which people have on
seeing a job being badly done.  Later he began to wish that he could
put several other questions, such as "Do you like being a sexton?" or
"Are you a slave?" or even "Are you happy?"

The extraordinary thing was that he could not ask these questions.  In
order to ask them, he would have had to put them into ant language
through his antennae--and he now discovered, with a helpless feeling,
that there were no words for the things he wanted to say.  There were
no words for happiness, for freedom, for liking, nor were there any
words for their opposites.  He felt like a dumb man trying to shout
"Fire!"  The nearest he could get to Right or Wrong, even, was to say
Done or Not Done.

The ant finished fiddling with its corpses and turned back down the
pathway, leaving them in the haphazard order.  It found that the Wart
was in its way, so it stopped, waving its wireless aerials at him as if
it were a tank.  With its mute, menacing helmet of a face, and its
hairiness, and the things like spurs on the front leg-joint, perhaps it
was more like a knight-in-armour on an armoured horse: or like a
combination of the two, a hairy centaur-in-armour.

It said "Hail, Barbarus!" again.

"Hail!"

"What are you doing?"

The boy answered truthfully: "I am not doing anything."

It was baffled by this for several seconds, as you would be if Einstein
had told you his latest ideas about space.  Then it extended the twelve
joints of its aerial and spoke past him into the blue.

It said: "105978/UDG reporting from square five.  There is an insane
ant on square five.  Over to you."

The word it used for insane was Not-Done.  Later on, the Wart
discovered that there were only two qualifications in the language,
Done and Not-Done--which applied to all questions of value.  If the
seeds which the collectors found were sweet, they were Done seeds.  If
somebody had doctored them with corrosive sublimate, they would have
been Not-Done seeds, and that was that.  Even the moons, mammies,
doves, etc., in the broadcasts were completely described when they were
stated to be done ones.

The broadcast stopped for a moment, and the fruity voice said: "G.H.Q.
replying to 105978/UDC.  What is its number?  Over."

The ant asked: "What is your number?"

"I don't know."

When this news had been exchanged with headquarters, a message came
back to ask whether he could give an account of himself.  The ant asked
him.  It used the same words as the broadcaster had used, and in the
same voice.  This made him feel uncomfortable and angry, two emotions
which he disliked.

"Yes," he said sarcastically, for it was obvious that the creature
could not detect sarcasm, "I have fallen on my head and can't remember
anything about it."

"105978/UDC reporting.  Not-Done ant has a black-out from falling off
the nest.  Over."

"G.H.Q. replying to 105978/UDC.  Not-Done ant is number 42436/WD, who
fell off the nest this morning while working with mash squad.  If it is
competent to continue its duties----"  Competent-to-continue-its-duties
was easier in the ant speech, for it was simply Done, like everything
else that was not Not Done.  But enough of the language question.  "If
it is competent to continue its duties, instruct 42436/WD to rejoin
mash squad, relieving 210021/WD, who was sent to replace it.  Over."

The creature repeated the message.

It seemed that he could not have made a better explanation than this
one about falling on his head, even if he had meant to--for the ants
did occasionally tumble off.  They were a species of ant called Messor
barbarus.

"Very well."

The sexton paid no further attention to him, but crawled off down the
path for another body, or for anything else that needed to be scavenged.

The Wart took himself away in the opposite direction, to join the mash
squad.  He memorized his own number and the number of the unit who had
to be relieved.


The mash squad were standing in one of the outer chambers of the
fortress like a circle of worshippers.  He joined the circle,
announcing that 210021/WD was to return to the main nest.  Then he
began filling himself with the sweet mash like the others.  They made
it by scraping the seeds which others had collected, chewing up the
scrapings till they made a kind of paste or soup, and then swallowing
it into their own crops.  At first it was delicious to him, so that he
ate greedily, but in a few seconds it began to be unsatisfactory.  He
could not understand why.  He chewed and swallowed busily, copying the
rest of the squad, but it was like eating a banquet of nothing, or like
a dinner-party on the stage.  In a way it was like a nightmare, in
which you might continue to consume huge masses of putty without being
able to stop.

There was a coming and going round the pile of seeds.  The ants who had
filled their crops to the brim were walking back to the inner fortress,
to be replaced by a procession of empty ants who were coming from the
same direction.  There were never any new ants in the procession, only
this same dozen going backward and forward, as they would do during all
their lives.

He realized suddenly that what he was eating was not going into his
stomach.  A small proportion of it had penetrated to his private self
at the beginning, and now the main mass was being stored in a kind of
upper stomach or crop, from which it could be removed.  It dawned on
him at the same time that when he joined the westward stream he would
have to disgorge the store, into a larder or something of that sort.

The mash squad conversed with each other while they worked.  He thought
this was a good sign at first, and listened, to pick up what he could.

"Oh Ark!" one of them would say.  "Ear comes that
Mammy-mammy--mammy--mammy song again.  I dew think that
Mammy--mammy--mammy--mammy song is loverly (done).  It is so high-class
(done)."

Another would remark, "I dew think our beloved Leader is wonderful,
don't yew?  They sigh she was stung three hundred times in the last
war, and was awarded the Ant Cross for Valour."

"How lucky we are to be born in the 'A' nest, don't yew think, and
wouldn't it be hawful to be one of those orrid 'B's."

"Wasn't it hawful about 310099/WD!  Of course e was hexecuted at once,
by special order of ar beloved Leader."

"Oh Ark!  Ear comes that Mammy--mammy--mammy--mammy song again.  I dew
think..."

He walked away to the nest with a full gorge, leaving them to do the
round again.  They had no news, no scandal, nothing to talk about.
Novelties did not happen to them.  Even the remarks about the
executions were in a formula, and only varied as to the registration
number of the criminal.  When they had finished with the
mammy--mammy--mammy--mammy, they had to go on to the beloved Leader,
and then to the filthy Barbarus B and to the latest execution.  It went
round in a circle.  Even the beloveds, wonderfuls, luckies and so on
were all Dones, and the awfuls were Not-Dones.

The boy found himself in the hall of the fortress, where hundreds and
hundreds of ants were licking or feeding in the nurseries, carrying
grubs to various aisles to get an even temperature, and opening or
closing the ventilation passages.  In the middle, the Leader sat
complacently, laying eggs, attending to the broadcasts, issuing
directions or commanding executions, surrounded by a sea of adulation.
(He learned from Merlyn later that the method of succession among these
Leaders was variable according to the different kind of ant.  In
Bothriomyrmex, for instance, the ambitious founder of a New Order would
invade a nest of Tapinoma and jump on the back of the older tyrant.
There, concealed by the smell of her host, she would slowly saw off the
latter's head, until she herself had achieved the right of leadership.)

There was no larder for his store of mash, after all.  When anybody
wanted a meal, they stopped him, got him to open his mouth, and fed
from it.  They did not treat him as a person, and indeed, they were
impersonal themselves.  He was a dumbwaiter from which dumb-diners fed.
Even his stomach was not his own.

But we need not go on about the ants in too much detail--they are not a
pleasant subject.  It is enough to say that the boy went on living
among them, conforming to their habits, watching them so as to
understand as much as he could, but unable to ask questions.  It was
not only that their language had not got the words in which humans are
interested--so that it would have been impossible to ask them whether
they believed in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness--but also
that it was dangerous to ask questions at all.  A question was a sign
of insanity to them.  Their life was not questionable: it was dictated.
He crawled from nest to seeds and back again, exclaimed that the Mammy
song was loverly, opened his jaws to regurgitate, and tried to
understand as well as he could:


Later in the afternoon a scouting ant wandered across the rush bridge
which Merlyn had commanded him to make.  It was an ant of exactly the
same species, but it came from the other nest.  It was met by one of
the scavenging ants and murdered.

The broadcasts changed after this news had been reported--or rather,
they changed as soon as it had been discovered by spies that the other
nest had a good store of seeds.

_Mammy--mammy--mammy_ gave place to _Antland, Antland Over All_, and
the stream of orders were discontinued in favour of lectures about war,
patriotism or the economic situation.  The fruity voice said that their
beloved Country was being encircled by a horde of filthy
Other-nesters--at which the wireless chorus sang:

  When Other blood spurts from the knife,
  Then everything is fine.

It also explained that Ant the Father had ordained in his wisdom that
Othernest pismires should always be the slaves of Thisnest ones.  Their
beloved country had only one feeding tray at present--a disgraceful
state of affairs which would have to be remedied if the dear race were
not to perish.  A third statement was that the national property of
Thisnest was being threatened.  Their boundaries were to be violated,
their domestic animals, the beetles, were to be kidnapped, and their
communal stomach would be starved.  The Wart listened to two of these
broadcasts carefully, so that he would be able to remember them
afterwards.

The first one was arranged as follows:

A. We are so numerous that we are starving.

B. Therefore we must encourage still larger families so as to become
yet more numerous and starving.

C. When we are so numerous and starving as all that, obviously we shall
have a right to take other people's stores of seed.  Besides, we shall
by then have a numerous and starving army.


It was only after this logical train of thought had been put into
practice, and the output of the nurseries trebled--both nests meanwhile
getting ample mash for all their needs from Merlyn--for it has to be
admitted that starving nations never seem to be quite so starving that
they cannot afford to have far more expensive armaments than anybody
else--it was only then that the second type of lecture was begun.

This is how the second kind went:

A.  We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to
their mash.

B.  They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly
trying to steal our mash.

C.  We are a mighty race and have a natural right to subjugate their
puny one.

D.  They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our
inoffensive one.

E.  We must attack them in self-defence.

F.  They are attacking us by defending themselves.

G.  If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.

H.  In any case we are not attacking them at all.  We are offering them
incalculable benefits.


After the second kind of address, the religious services began.  These
dated--the Wart discovered later--from a fabulous past so ancient that
one could scarcely find a date for it--a past in which the emmets had
not yet settled down to communism.  They came from a time when ants
were still like men, and very impressive some of the services were.

A psalm at one of them--beginning, if we allow for the difference of
language, with the well-known words, "The earth is the Sword's and all
that therein is, the compass of the bomber and they that bomb
therefrom"--ended with the terrific conclusion: "Blow up your heads, O
ye Gates, and be ye blown up, ye Everlasting Doors, that the King of
Glory may come in.  Who is the King of Glory?  Even the Lord of Ghosts,
He is the King of Glory."


A strange feature was that the ordinary ants were not excited by the
songs, nor interested by the lectures.  They accepted them as matters
of course.  They were rituals to them, like the Mammy songs or the
conversations about their Beloved Leader.  They did not look at these
things as good or bad, exciting, rational or terrible.  They did not
look at them at all, but accepted them as Done.


The time for the war came soon enough.  The preparations were in order,
the soldiers were drilled to the last ounce, the walls of the nest had
patriotic slogans written on them, such as "_Stings or Mash?_" or "_I
Vow to Thee, my Smell_," and the Wart was past hoping.  The repeating
voices in his head, which he could not shut off--the lack of privacy,
under which others ate from his stomach while others again sang in his
brain--the dreary blank which replaced feeling--the dearth of all but
two values--the total monotony more than the wickedness: these had
begun to kill the joy of life which belonged to his boyhood.

The horrible armies were on the point of joining battle, to dispute the
imaginary boundary between their glass trays when Merlyn came to his
rescue.  He magicked the sickened explorer of animals back to bed, and
glad enough he was to be there.




_Chapter XIV_

In the autumn everybody was preparing for the winter.  At night they
spent the time rescuing Daddy-long-legs from their candles and
rushlights.  In the daytime the cows were turned into the high stubble
and weeds which had been left by the harvest sickles.  The pigs were
driven into the purlieus of the forest, where boys beat the trees to
supply them with acorns.  Everybody was at a different job.  From the
granary there proceeded an invariable thumping of flails; in the strip
fields the slow and enormously heavy wooden ploughs sailed up and down
for the rye and the wheat, while the sowers swung rhythmically along,
with their hoffers round their necks, casting right hand for left foot
and vice versa.  Foraging parties came lumbering in with their
spike-wheeled carts full of bracken, remarking wisely that they must:

  Get whome with ee breakes ere all summer be gone
  For tethered up cattle to sit down upon,

while others dragged in timber for the castle fires.  The forest rang
in the sharp air with the sound of beetle and wedge.

Everybody was happy.  The Saxons were slaves to their Norman masters if
you chose to look at it in one way--but, if you chose to look at it in
another, they were the same farm labourers who get along on too few
shillings a week today.  Only neither the villein nor the farm labourer
starved, when the master was a man like Sir Ector.  It has never been
an economic proposition for an owner of cattle to starve his cows, so
why should an owner of slaves starve them?  The truth is that even
nowadays the farm labourer accepts so little money because he does not
have to throw his soul in with the bargain--as he would have to do in a
town--and the same freedom of spirit has obtained in the country since
the earliest times.  The villeins were labourers.  They lived in the
same one-roomed hut with their families, few chickens, litter of pigs,
or with a cow possibly called Crumbocke--most dreadful and insanitary!
But they liked it.  They were healthy, free of an air with no factory
smoke in it, and, which was most of all to them, their heart's interest
was bound up with their skill in labour.  They knew that Sir Ector was
proud of them.  They were more valuable to him than his cattle even,
and, as he valued his cattle more than anything else except his
children, this was saying a good deal.  He walked and worked among his
villagers, thought of their welfare, and could tell the good workman
from the bad.  He was the eternal farmer, in fact--one of those people
who seem to be employing labour at so many shillings a week, but who
are actually paying half as much again in voluntary overtime, providing
a cottage free, and possibly making an extra present of milk and eggs
and home-brewed beer into the bargain.

In other parts of Gramarye, of course, there did exist wicked and
despotic masters--feudal gangsters whom it was to be King Arthur's
destiny to chasten--but the evil was in the bad people who abused it,
not in the feudal system.

Sir Ector was moving through these activities with a brow of thunder.
When an old lady who was sitting in a hedge by one of the strips of
wheat, to scare away the rooks and pigeons, suddenly rose up beside him
with an unearthly screech, he jumped nearly a foot in the air.  He was
in a nervous condition.

"Dang it," said Sir Ector.  Then, considering the subject more
attentively, he added in a loud, indignant voice, "Splendour of God!"
He took the letter out of his pocket and read it again.

The Overlord of The Castle of Forest Sauvage was more than a farmer.
He was a military captain, who was ready to organize and lead the
defence of his estate against the gangsters, and he was a sportsman who
sometimes took a day's joustin' when he could spare the time.  But he
was not only these.  Sir Ector was an M.F.H.--or rather a Master of
stag and other hounds--and he hunted his own pack himself.  Clumsy,
Trowneer, Phoebe, Colle, Gerland, Talbot, Luath, Luffra, Apollon,
Orthros, Bran, Gelert, Bounce, Boy, Lion, Bungey, Toby, Diamond and
Cavall were not pet dogs.  They were the Forest Sauvage Hounds, no
subscription, two days a week, huntsman the Master.

This is what the letter said, if we translate it from Latin:


   The King to Sir Ector, etc.

   We send you William Twyti, our huntsman, and his fellows
   to hunt in the Forest Sauvage with our boar-hounds (canibus
   nostris porkericis) in order that they may capture two or three
   boars.  You are to cause the flesh they capture to be salted and
   kept in good condition, but the skins you are to cause to be
   bleached which they give you, as the said William shall tell you.
   And we command you to provide necessaries for them as long
   as they shall be with you by our command, and the cost, etc.,
   shall be accounted, etc.

   Witnessed at the Tower of London, 20 November, in the
   twelfth year of our reign.

   UTHER PENDRAGON
   12 Uther.


Now the forest belonged to the King, and he had every right to send his
hounds to hunt in it.  Also he maintained a number of hungry
mouths--what with his court and his army--so that it was natural that
he should want as many dead boars, bucks, roes, etc., to be salted down
as possible.

He was in the right.  This did not take away the fact that Sir Ector
regarded the forest as _his_ forest, and resented the intrusion of the
royal hounds--as if his own would not do just as well!  The King had
only to send for a couple of boars and he would have been delighted to
supply them himself.  He feared that his coverts would be disturbed by
a lot of wild royal retainers--never know what these city chaps will be
up to next--and that the King's huntsman, this fellow Twyti, would
sneer at his humble hunting establishment, unsettle the hunt servants
and perhaps even try to interfere with his own kennel management.  In
fact, Sir Ector was shy.  Then there was another thing.  Where the
devil were the royal hounds to be kept?  Was he, Sir Ector, to turn his
own hounds into the street, so as to put the King's hounds in his
kennels?  "Splendour of God!" repeated the unhappy master.  It was as
bad as paying tithes.

Sir Ector put the accursed letter in his pocket and stumped off the
ploughing.  The villeins, seeing him go, remarked cheerfully, "Our wold
measter be on the gad again seemingly."

It was a confounded piece of tyranny, that was what it was.  It
happened every year, but it was still that.  He always solved the
kennel problem in the same way, but it still worried him.  He would
have to invite his neighbours to the meet specially, to look as
impressive as possible under the royal huntsman's eye, and this would
mean sendin' messengers through the forest to Sir Grummore, etc.  Then
he would have to show sport.  The King had written early, so that
evidently he intended to send the fellow at the very beginnin' of the
season.  The season did not begin till the 25th of December.  Probably
the chap would insist on one of these damned Boxin' Day meets--all
show-off and no business--with hundreds of foot people all hollerin'
and headin' the boar and trampin' down the seeds and spoilin' sport
generally.  How the devil was he to know in November where the best
boars would be on Boxin' Day?  What with sounders and gorgeaunts and
hogsteers, you never knew where you were.  And another thing.  A hound
that was going to be used next summer for the proper Hart huntin' was
always entered at Christmas to the boar.  It was the very beginnin' of
his eddication--which led up through hares and what-nots to its real
quarry--and this meant that the fellow Twyti would be bringin' down a
lot of raw puppies which would be nothin' but a plague to everybody.
"Dang it!" said Sir Ector, and stamped upon a piece of mud.

He stood gloomily for a moment, watching his two boys trying to catch
the last leaves in the chase.  They had not gone out with that
intention, and did not really, even in those distant days, believe that
every leaf you caught would mean a happy month next year.  Only, as the
west wind tore the golden rags away, they looked fascinating and
difficult to catch.  For the mere sport of catching them, of shouting
and laughing and feeling giddy as they looked up, and of darting about
to trap the creatures, which were certainly alive in the cunning with
which they slipped away, the two boys were prancing about like young
fauns in the ruin of the year.  Wart's shoulder was well again.

The only chap, reflected Sir Ector, who could be really useful in
showin' the King's huntsman proper sport was that fellow Robin Hood.
Robin Wood, they seemed to be callin' him now--some new-fangled idea,
no doubt.  But Wood or Hood, he was the chap to know where a fine tush
was to be found.  Been feastin' on the creatures for months now, he
would not be surprised, even if they were out of season.

But you could hardly ask a fellow to hunt up a few beasts of venery for
you, and then not invite him to the meet.  While, if you did invite him
to the meet, what would the King's huntsman and the neighbours say at
havin' a partisan for a fellow guest?  Not that this Robin Wood was not
a good fellow: he was a good chap, and a good neighbour too.  He had
often tipped Sir Ector the wink when a raiding party was on its way
from the Marches, and he never molested the knight or his farming in
any way.  What did it matter if he did chase himself a bit of venison
now and then?  There was four hundred square miles of forest, so they
said, and enough for all.  Leave well alone, that was Sir Ector's
motto.  But that did not alter the neighbours.

Another thing was the riot.  It was all very well for the crack hunts
in practically artificial forests like those at Windsor, where the King
hunted, but it was a different thing in the Forest Sauvage.  Suppose
His Majesty's famous hounds were to go runnin' riot after a unicorn or
something?  Everybody knew that you could never catch a unicorn without
a young virgin for bait (in which case the unicorn meekly laid its
white head and mother-of-pearl horn in her lap) and so the puppies
would go chargin' off into the forest for leagues and leagues, and
never catch it, and get lost, and then what would Sir Ector say to his
sovereign?  It was not only unicorns.  There was the Beast Glatisant
that everybody had heard so much about.  If you had the head of a
serpent, the body of a leopard, the haunches of a lion, and were footed
like a hart, and especially if you made a noise like thirty couple of
hounds questin', it stood to reason that you would account for an
excessive number of royal puppies before they pulled you down.  Serve
them right too.  And what would King Pellinore say if Master William
Twyti did succeed in killing his beast?  Then there were the small
dragons which lived under stones and hissed like kettles--dangerous
varmints, very.  Or suppose they were to come across one of the really
big dragons?  Suppose they was to run into a griffin?

Sir Ector considered the prospect moodily for some time, then began to
feel better.  It would be a jolly good thing, he concluded, if Master
Twyti and his beastly dogs did meet the Questing Beast, yes, and get
eaten up by it too, every one.

Cheered by this vision, he turned round at the edge of the ploughing
and stumped off home.  At the hedge where the old lady lay waiting to
scare rooks he was lucky enough to spot some approaching pigeons before
she was aware of him or them, which gave him a chance to let out such a
screech that he felt amply repaid for his own jump by seeing hers.  It
was going to be a good evening after all.  "Good night to you," said
Sir Ector affably, when the old lady recovered herself enough to drop
him a curtsey.

He felt so much restored by this that he called on the parish priest,
half-way up the village street, and invited him to dinner.  Then he
climbed to the solar, which was his special chamber, and sat down
heavily to write a submissive message to King Uther in the two or three
hours which remained to him before the meal.  It would take him quite
that time, what with sharpening pens, using too much sand to blot with,
going to the top of the stairs to ask the butler how to spell things,
and starting again if he had made a mess.

Sir Ector sat in the solar, while the wintering sunlight threw broad
orange beams across his bald head.  He scratched and pluttered away,
and laboriously bit the end of his pen, and the castle room darkened
about him.  It was a room as big as the main hall over which it stood,
and it could afford to have large southern windows because it was on
the second story.  There were two fireplaces, in which the ashy logs of
wood turned from grey to red as the sunlight retreated.  Round these,
some favourite hounds lay snuffling in their dreams, or scratching
themselves for fleas, or gnawing mutton bones which they had scrounged
from the kitchens.  The peregrine falcon stood hooded on a perch in the
corner, a motionless idol dreaming of other skies.

If you were to go now to view the solar of Castle Sauvage, you would
find it empty of furniture.  But the sun would still stream in at those
stone windows two feet thick, and, as it barred the mullions, it would
catch a warmth of sandstone from them--the amber light of age.  If you
went to the nearest curiosity shop you might find some clever copies of
the furniture which it was supposed to contain.  These would be oak
chests and cupboards with Gothic panelling and strange faces of men or
angels--or devils--carved darkly upon them, black, bees-waxed,
worm-eaten and shiny--gloomy testimonies to the old life in their
coffin-like solidity.  But the furniture in the solar was not like
that.  The devil's heads were there and the linen-fold panelling, but
the wood was six or seven or eight centuries younger.  So, in the
warm-looking light of sunset, it was not only the mullions which had an
amber glow.  All the spare, strong chests in the room (they were
converted for sitting by laying bright carpets on them) were the young,
the golden oak, and the cheeks of the devils and cherubim shone as if
they had been given a good soaping.




_Chapter XV_

It was Christmas night, the eve of the Boxing Day Meet.  You must
remember that this was in the old Merry England of Gramarye, when the
rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them
with all their tail feathers streaming, or boars' heads with the tusks
stuck in again--when there was no unemployment because there were too
few people to be unemployed--when the forests rang with knights
walloping each other on the helm, and the unicorns in the wintry
moonlight stamped with their silver feet and snorted their noble
breaths of blue upon the frozen air.  Such marvels were great and
comfortable ones.  But in the Old England there was a greater marvel
still.  The weather behaved itself.

In the spring, the little flowers came out obediently in the meads, and
the dew sparkled, and the birds sang.  In the summer it was beautifully
hot for no less than four months, and, if it did rain just enough for
agricultural purposes, they managed to arrange it so that it rained
while you were in bed.  In the autumn the leaves flamed and rattled
before the west winds, tempering their sad adieu with glory.  And in
the winter, which was confined by statute to two months, the snow lay
evenly, three feet thick, but never turned into slush.

It was Christmas night in the Castle of the Forest Sauvage, and all
around the castle the snow lay as it ought to lie.  It hung heavily on
the battlements, like thick icing on a very good cake, and in a few
convenient places it modestly turned itself into the clearest icicles
of the greatest possible length.  It hung on the boughs of the forest
trees in rounded lumps, even better than apple-blossom, and
occasionally slid off the roofs of the village when it saw the chance
of falling on some amusing character and giving pleasure to all.  The
boys made snowballs with it, but never put stones in them to hurt each
other, and the dogs, when they were taken out to scombre, bit it and
rolled in it, and looked surprised but delighted when they vanished
into the bigger drifts.  There was skating on the moat, which roared
with the gliding bones which they used for skates, while hot chestnuts
and spiced mead were served on the bank to all and sundry.  The owls
hooted.  The cooks put out plenty of crumbs for the small birds.  The
villagers brought out their red mufflers.  Sir Ector's face shone
redder even than these.  And reddest of all shone the cottage fires
down the main street of an evening, while the winds howled outside and
the old English wolves wandered about slavering in an appropriate
manner, or sometimes peeping in at the key-holes with their blood-red
eyes.

It was Christmas night and the proper things had been done.  The whole
village had come to dinner in hall.  There had been boar's head and
venison and pork and beef and mutton and capons--but no turkey, because
this bird had not yet been invented.  There had been plum pudding and
snap-dragon, with blue fire on the tips of one's fingers, and as much
mead as anybody could drink.  Sir Ector's health had been drunk with
"Best respects, Measter," or "Best compliments of the Season, my lords
and ladies, and many of them."  There had been mummers to play an
exciting dramatic presentation of a story in which St. George and a
Saracen and a funny Doctor did surprising things, also carol-singers
who rendered "Adeste Fideles" and "I Sing of a Maiden," in high, clear,
tenor voices.  After that, those children who had not been sick from
their dinner played Hoodman Blind and other appropriate games, while
the young men and maidens danced morris dances in the middle, the
tables having been cleared away.  The old folks sat round the walls
holding glasses of mead in their hands and feeling thankful that they
were past such capers, hoppings and skippings, while those children who
had not been sick sat with them, and soon went to sleep, the small
heads leaning against their shoulders.  At the high table Sir Ector sat
with his knightly guests, who had come for the morrow's hunting,
smiling and nodding and drinking burgundy or sherries sack or malmsey
wine.

After a bit, silence was prayed for Sir Grummore.  He stood up and sang
his old school song, amid great applause--but forgot most of it and had
to make a humming noise in his moustache.  Then King Pellinore was
nudged to his feet and sang bashfully:

  Oh, I was born a Pellinore in famous Lincolnshire.
  Full well I chased the Questing Beast for more than seventeen year.
  Till I took up with Sir Grummore here
  In the season of the year.
  (Since when) 'tis my delight
  On a feather-bed night
  To sleep at home, my dear.


"You see," explained King Pellinore blushing, as he sat down with
everybody whacking him on the back, "old Grummore invited me home,
what, after we had been having a pleasant joust together, and since
then I've been letting my beastly Beast go and hang itself on the wall,
what?"

"Well done," they told him.  "You live your own life while you've got
it."

William Twyti was called for, who had arrived on the previous evening,
and the famous huntsman stood up with a perfectly straight face, and
his crooked eye fixed upon Sir Ector, to sing:

  D'ye ken William Twyti
    With his jerkin so dagged?
  D'ye ken William Twyti
    Who never yet lagged?
  Yes, I ken William Twyti,
    And he ought to be gagged
  With his hounds and his horn in the morning.


"Bravo!" cried Sir Ector.  "Did you hear that, eh?  Said he ought to be
gagged, my dear feller.  Blest if I didn't think he was going to boast
when he began.  Splendid chaps, these huntsmen, eh?  Pass Master Twyti
the malmsey, with my compliments."

The boys lay curled up under the benches near the fire, Wart with
Cavall in his arms.  Cavall did not like the heat and the shouting and
the smell of mead, and wanted to go away, but Wart held him tightly
because he needed something to hug, and Cavall had to stay with him
perforce, panting over a long pink tongue.

"Now Ralph Passelewe."  "Good wold Ralph."  "Who killed the cow,
Ralph?"  "Pray silence for Master Passelewe that couldn't help it."

At this the most lovely old man got up at the furthest and humblest end
of the hall, as he had got up on all similar occasions for the past
half-century.  He was no less than eighty-five years of age, almost
blind, almost deaf, but still able and willing and happy to quaver out
the same song which he had sung for the pleasure of the Forest Sauvage
since before Sir Ector was bound up in a kind of tight linen puttee in
his cradle.  They could not hear him at the high table--he was too far
away in Time to be able to reach across the room--but everybody knew
what the cracked voice was singing, and everybody loved it.  This is
what he sang:

  Whe-an /Wold King-Cole /was a /wakkin doon-t'street,
  H-e /saw a-lovely laid-y a /steppin-in-a-puddle. /
  She-a /lifted hup-er-skeat /
  For to /
    Hop acrorst ter middle, /
  An ee /saw her /an-kel.
  Wasn't that a fuddle?/
  Ee could'ernt elp it, /ee Ad to.


There were about twenty verses of this song, in which Wold King Cole
helplessly saw more and more things that he ought not to have seen, and
everybody cheered at the end of each verse until, at the conclusion,
old Ralph was overwhelmed with congratulations and sat down smiling
dimly to a replenished mug of mead.

It was now Sir Ector's turn to wind up the proceedings.  He stood up
importantly and delivered the following speech:

"Friends, tenants and otherwise.  Unaccustomed as I am to public
speakin'--"

There was a faint cheer at this, for everybody recognized the speech
which Sir Ector had made for the last twenty years, and welcomed it
like a brother.

"--unaccustomed as I am to public speakin', it is my pleasant duty--I
might say my very pleasant duty--to welcome all and sundry to this our
homely feast.  It has been a good year, and I say it without fear of
contradiction, in pasture and plow.  We all know how Crumbocke of
Forest Sauvage won the first prize at Cardoyle Cattle Show for the
second time, and one more year will win the cup outright.  More power
to the Forest Sauvage.  As we sit down tonight, I notice some faces now
gone from among us and some which have added to the family circle.
Such matters are in the hands of an almighty Providence, to which we
all feel thankful.  We ourselves have been first created and then
spared to enjoy the rejoicin's of this pleasant evening.  I think we
are all grateful for the blessin's which have been showered upon us.
Tonight we welcome in our midst the famous King Pellinore, whose
labours in riddin' our forest of the redoubtable Questin' Beast are
known to all.  God bless King Pellinore.  (Hear, hear!)  Also Sir
Grummore Grummursum, a sportsman, though I say it to his face, who will
stick to his mount as long as his Quest will stand up in front of him.
(Hooray!)  Finally, last but not least, we are honoured by a visit from
His Majesty's most famous huntsman, Master William Twyti, who will, I
feel sure, show us such sport tomorrow that we will rub our eyes and
wish that a royal pack of hounds could always be huntin' in the Forest
which we all love so well.  (View-halloo and several recheats blown in
imitation.)  Thank you, my dear friends, for your spontaneous welcome
to these gentlemen.  They will, I know, accept it in the true and
warm-hearted spirit in which it is offered.  And now it is time that I
should bring my brief remarks to a close.  Another year has almost sped
and it is time that we should be lookin' forward to the challengin'
future.  What about the Cattle Show next year?  Friends, I can only
wish you a very Merry Christmas, and, after Father Sidebottom has said
our Grace for us, we shall conclude with a singin' of the National
Anthem."

The cheers which broke out at the end of Sir Ector's speech were only
just prevented, by several hush-es, from drowning the last part of the
vicar's Grace in Latin, and then everybody stood up loyally in the
firelight and sang:

  God save King Pendragon,
  May his reign long drag on,
    God save the King.
  Send him most gorious,
  Great and uproarious,
  Horrible and Hoarious,
    God save our King.


The last notes died away, the hall emptied of its rejoicing humanity.
Lanterns flickered outside, in the village street, as everybody went
home in bands for fear of the moonlit wolves, and The Castle of the
Forest Sauvage slept peacefully and lightless, in the strange silence
of the holy snow.




_Chapter XVI_

The Wart got up early next morning.  He made a determined effort the
moment he woke, threw off the great bearskin rug under which he slept,
and plunged his body into the biting air.  He dressed furiously,
trembling, skipping about to keep warm, and hissing blue breaths to
himself as if he were grooming a horse.  He broke the ice in a basin
and dipped his face in it with a grimace like eating something sour,
said A-a-ah, and rubbed his stinging cheeks vigorously with a towel.
Then he felt quite warm again and scampered off to the emergency
kennels, to watch the King's huntsman making his last arrangements.

Master William Twyti turned out in daylight to be a shrivelled,
harassed-looking man, with an expression of melancholy on his face.
All his life he had been forced to pursue various animals for the royal
table, and, when he had caught them, to cut them up into proper joints.
He was more than half a butcher.  He had to know what parts the hounds
should eat, and what parts should be given to his assistants.  He had
to cut everything up handsomely, leaving two vertebrae on the tail to
make the chine look attractive, and almost ever since he could remember
he had been either pursuing a hart or cutting it up into helpings.

He was not particularly fond of doing this.  The harts and hinds in
their herds, the boars in their singulars, the skulks of foxes, the
richesses of martens, the bevies of roes, the cetes of badgers and the
routs of wolves--all came to him more or less as something which you
either skinned or flayed and then took home to cook.  You could talk to
him about os and argos, suet and grease, croteys, fewmets and fiants,
but he only looked polite.  He knew that you were showing off your
knowledge of these words, which were to him a business.  You could talk
about a mighty boar which had nearly slashed you last winter, but he
only stared at you with his distant eyes.  He had been slashed sixteen
times by mighty boars, and his legs had white weals of shiny flesh that
stretched right up to his ribs.  While you talked, he got on with
whatever part of his profession he had in hand.  There was only one
thing which could move Master William Twyti.  Summer or winter, snow or
shine, he was running or galloping after boars and harts, and all the
time his soul was somewhere else.  Mention a hare to Master Twyti and,
although he would still go on galloping after the wretched hart which
seemed to be his destiny, he would gallop with one eye over his
shoulder yearning for puss.  It was the only thing he ever talked
about.  He was always being sent to one castle or another, all over
England, and when he was there the local servants would fte him and
keep his glass filled and ask him about his greatest hunts.  He would
answer distractedly in monosyllables.  But if anybody mentioned a huske
of hares he was all attention, and then he would thump his glass upon
the table and discourse upon the marvels of this astonishing beast,
declaring that you could never blow a menee for it, because the same
hare could at one time be male and another time female, while it
carried grease and croteyed and gnawed, which things no beast in the
earth did except it.

Wart watched the great man in silence for some time, then went indoors
to see if there was any hope of breakfast.  He found that there was,
for the whole castle was suffering from the same sort of nervous
excitement which had got him out of bed so early, and even Merlyn had
dressed himself in a pair of breeches which had been fashionable some
centuries later with the University Beagles.

Boar-hunting was fun.  It was nothing like badger-digging or
covert-shooting or fox-hunting today.  Perhaps the nearest thing to it
would be ferreting for rabbits--except that you used dogs instead of
ferrets, had a boar that easily might kill you, instead of a rabbit,
and carried a boar-spear upon which your life depended instead of a
gun.  They did not usually hunt the boar on horseback.  Perhaps the
reason for this was that the boar season happened in the two winter
months, when the old English snow would be liable to ball in your
horse's hoofs and render galloping too dangerous.  The result was that
you were yourself on foot, armed only with steel, against an adversary
who weighed a good deal more than you did and who could unseam you from
the nave to the chaps, and set your head upon his battlements.  There
was only one rule in boar-hunting.  It was: Hold on.  If the boar
charged, you had to drop on one knee and present your boar-spear in his
direction.  You held the butt of it with your right hand on the ground
to take the shock, while you stretched your left arm to its fullest
extent and kept the point toward the charging boar.  The spear was as
sharp as a razor, and it had a cross-piece about eighteen inches away
from the point.  This cross-piece or horizontal bar prevented the spear
from going more than eighteen inches into his chest.  Without the
cross-piece, a charging boar would have been capable of rushing right
up the spear, even if it did go through him, and getting at the hunter
like that.  But with the cross-piece he was held away from you at a
spear's length, with eighteen inches of steel inside him.  It was in
this situation that you had to hold on.

He weighed between ten and twenty score, and his one object in life was
to heave and weave and sidestep, until he could get at his assailant
and champ him into chops, while the assailant's one object was not to
let go of the spear, clasped tight under his arm, until somebody had
come to finish him off.  If he could keep hold of his end of the
weapon, while the other end was stuck in the boar, he knew that there
was at least a spear's length between them, however much the boar ran
him round the forest.  You may be able to understand, if you think this
over, why all the sportsmen of the castle got up early for the Boxing
Day Meet, and ate their breakfast with a certain amount of suppressed
feeling.

"Ah," said Sir Grummore, gnawing a pork chop which he held in his
fingers, "down in time for breakfast, hey?"

"Yes, I am," said the Wart.

"Fine huntin' mornin'," said Sir Grummore.  "Got your spear sharp, hey?"

"Yes, I have, thank you," said the Wart.  He went over to the sideboard
to get a chop for himself.

"Come on, Pellinore," said Sir Ector.  "Have a few of these chickens.
You're eatin' nothin' this mornin'."

King Pellinore said, "I don't think I will, thank you all the same, I
don't think I feel quite the thing, this morning, what?"

Sir Grummore took his nose out of his chop and inquired sharply.
"Nerves?"

"Oh, no," cried King Pellinore.  "Oh, no, really not that, what?  I
think I must have taken something last night that disagreed with me."

"Nonsense, my dear fellah," said Sir Ector, "here you are, just you
have a few chickens to keep your strength up."

He helped the unfortunate King to two or three capons, and the latter
sat down miserably at the end of the table, trying to swallow a few
bits of them.

"Need them," said Sir Grummore meaningly, "by the end of the day, I
dare say."

"Do you think so?"

"Know so," said Sir Grummore, and winked at his host.

The Wart noticed that Sir Ector and Sir, Grummore were eating with
rather exaggerated gusto.  He did not feel that he could manage more
than one chop himself, and, as for Kay, he had stayed away from the
breakfast-room altogether.

When breakfast was over, and Master Twyti had been consulted, the
Boxing Day cavalcade moved off to the Meet.  Perhaps the hounds would
have seemed rather a mixed pack to a master of hounds today.  There
were half a dozen black and white alaunts, which looked like greyhounds
with the heads of bull-terriers or worse.  These, which were the proper
hounds for boars, wore muzzles because of their ferocity.  The
gaze-hounds, of which there were two taken just in case, were in
reality nothing but greyhounds according to modern language, while the
lymers were a sort of mixture between the bloodhound and the red setter
of today.  The latter had collars on, and were led with straps.  The
braches were like beagles, and trotted along with the master in the way
that beagles always have trotted, and a charming way it is.

With the hounds went the foot-people.  Merlyn, in his running breeches,
looked rather like Lord Baden-Powell, except, of course, that the
latter did not wear a beard.  Sir Ector was dressed in "sensible"
leather clothes--it was not considered sporting to hunt in armour--and
he walked beside Master Twyti with that bothered and important
expression which has always been worn by masters of hounds.  Sir
Grummore, just behind, was puffing and asking everybody whether they
had sharpened their spears.  King Pellinore had dropped back among the
villagers, feeling that there was safety in numbers.  All the villagers
were there, every male soul on the estate from Hob the austringer down
to old Wat with no nose, every man carrying a spear or a pitchfork or a
worn scythe blade on a stout pole.  Even some of the young women who
were courting had come out, with baskets of provisions for the men.  It
was a regular Boxing Day Meet.

At the edge of the forest the last follower joined up.  He was a tall,
distinguished-looking person dressed in green, and he carried a
seven-foot bow.

"Good morning, Master," he said pleasantly to Sir Ector.

"Ah, yes," said Sir Ector.  "Yes, yes, good mornin', eh?  Yes, good
mornin'."

He led the gentleman in green aside and said in a loud whisper that
could be heard by everybody, "For heaven's sake, my dear fellow, do be
careful.  This is the King's own huntsman, and those two other chaps
are King Pellinore and Sir Grummore.  Now do be a good chap, my dear
fellow, and don't say anything controversial, will you, old boy,
there's a good chap?"

"Certainly I won't," said the green man reassuringly, "but I think you
had better introduce me to them."

Sir Ector blushed deeply and called out: "Ah, Grummore, come over here
a minute, will you?  I want to introduce a friend of mine, old chap, a
chap called Wood, old chap--Wood with a W, you know, not an H.  Yes,
and this is King Pellinore.  Master Wood--King Pellinore."

"Hail," said King Pellinore, who had not quite got out of the habit
when nervous.

"How do?" said Sir Grummore.  "No relation to Robin Hood I suppose?"

"Oh, not in the least," interrupted Sir Ector hastily.  "Double you,
double owe, dee, you know, like the stuff they make furniture out
of--furniture, you know, and spears, and--well--spears, you know, and
furniture."

"How do you do?" said Robin.

"Hail," said King Pellinore.

"Well," said Sir Grummore, "it is funny you should both wear green."

"Yes, it is funny, isn't it?" said Sir Ector anxiously.  "He wears it
in mournin' for an aunt of his, who died by fallin' out of a tree."

"Beg pardon, I'm sure," said Sir Grummore, grieved at having touched
upon this tender subject--and all was well.

"Now, then, Mr. Wood," said Sir Ector when he had recovered.  "Where
shall we go for our first draw?"

As soon as this question had been put, Master Twyti was fetched into
the conversation, and a brief confabulation followed in which all sorts
of technical terms like "lesses" were bandied about.  Then there was a
long walk in the wintry forest, and the fun began.

Wart had lost the panicky feeling which had taken hold of his stomach
when he was breaking his fast.  The exercise and the snow-wind had
breathed him, so that his eyes sparkled almost as brilliantly as the
frost crystals in the white winter sunlight, and his blood raced with
the excitement of the chase.  He watched the lymerer who held the two
bloodhound dogs on their leashes, and saw the dogs straining more and
more as the boar's lair was approached.  He saw how, one by one and
ending with the gazehounds--who did not hunt by scent--the various
hounds became uneasy and began to whimper with desire.  He noticed
Robin pause and pick up some lesses, which he handed to Master Twyti,
and then the whole cavalcade came to a halt.  They had reached the
dangerous spot.

Boar-hunting was like cub-hunting to this extent, that the boar was
attempted to be held up.  The object of the hunt was to kill him as
quickly as possible.  Wart took up his position in the circle round the
monster's lair, and knelt down on one knee in the snow, with the handle
of his spear couched on the ground, ready for emergencies.  He felt the
hush which fell upon the company, and saw Master Twyti wave silently to
the lymerer to uncouple his hounds.  The two lymers plunged immediately
into the covert which the hunters surrounded.  They ran mute.

There were five long minutes during which nothing happened.  The hearts
beat thunderously in the circle, and a small vein on the side of each
neck throbbed in harmony with each heart.  The heads turned quickly
from side to side, as each man assured himself of his neighbours, and
the breath of life steamed away on the north wind sweetly, as each
realized how beautiful life was, which a reeking tusk might, in a few
seconds, rape away from one or another of them if things went wrong.

The boar did not express his fury with his voice.  There was no uproar
in the covert or yelping from the lymers.  Only, about a hundred yards
away from the Wart, there was suddenly a black creature standing on the
edge of the clearing.  It did not seem to be a boar particularly, not
in the first seconds that it stood there.  It had come too quickly to
seem to be anything.  It was charging Sir Grummore before the Wart had
recognized what it was.

The black thing rushed over the white snow, throwing up little puffs of
it.  Sir Grummore--also looking black against the snow--turned a quick
somersault in a larger puff.  A kind of grunt, but no noise of falling,
came clearly on the north wind, and then the boar was gone.  When it
was gone, but not before, the Wart knew certain things about it--things
which he had not had time to notice while the boar was there.  He
remembered the rank mane of bristles standing upright on its razor
back, one flash of a sour tush, the staring ribs, the head held low,
and the red flame from a piggy eye.

Sir Grummore got up, dusting snow out of himself unhurt, blaming his
spear.  A few drops of blood were to be seen frothing on the white
earth.  Master Twyti put his horn to his lips.  The alaunts were
uncoupled as the exciting notes of the menee began to ring through the
forest, and then the whole scene began to move.  The lymers which had
reared the boar--the proper word for dislodging--were allowed to pursue
him to make them keen on their work.  The braches gave musical tongue.
The alaunts galloped baying through the drifts.  Everybody began to
shout and run.

"Avoy, avoy!" cried the foot-people.  "Shahou, shahou!  Avaunt, sire,
avaunt!"

"Swef, swef!" cried Master Twyti anxiously.  "Now, now, gentlemen, give
the hounds room, if you please."

"I say, I say!" cried King Pellinore.  "Did anybody see which way he
went?  What an exciting day, what?  Sa sa cy avaunt, cy sa avaunt, sa
cy avaunt!"

"Hold hard, Pellinore!" cried Sir Ector.  "'Ware, hounds, man, 'ware
hounds.  Can't catch him yourself, you know.  Il est hault.  Il est
hault!"

And "Til est ho," echoed the foot-people.  "Tilly-ho," sang the trees.
"Tally-ho," murmured the distant snow-drifts as the heavy branches,
disturbed by the vibrations, slid noiseless puffs of sparkling powder
to the muffled earth.

The Wart found himself running with Master Twyti.

It was like beagling in a way, except that it was beagling in a forest
where it was sometimes difficult even to move.  Everything depended on
the music of the hounds and the various notes which the huntsman could
blow to tell where he was and what he was doing.  Without these the
whole field would have been lost in two minutes--and even with them
about half of it was lost in three.

Wart stuck to Twyti like a burr.  He could move as quickly as the
huntsman because, although the latter had the experience of a
life-time, he himself was smaller to get through obstacles and had,
moreover, been taught by Maid Marian.  He noticed that Robin kept up
too, but soon the grunting of Sir Ector and the baa-ing of King
Pellinore were left behind.  Sir Grummore had given in early, having
had most of the breath knocked out of him by the boar, and stood far in
the rear declaring that his spear could no longer be quite sharp.  Kay
had stayed with him, so that he should not get lost.  The foot-people
had been early mislaid because they did not understand the notes of the
horn.  Merlyn had torn his breeches and stopped to mend them up by
magic.

The sergeant had thrown out his chest so far in crying Tally-ho and
telling everybody which way they ought to run that he had lost all
sense of place, and was leading a disconsolate party of villagers, in
Indian file, at the double, with knees up, in the wrong direction.  Hob
was still in the running.

"Swef, swef," panted the huntsman, addressing the Wart as if he had
been a hound.  "Not so fast, master, they are going off the line."

Even as he spoke, Wart noticed that the hound music was weaker and more
querulous.

"Stop," said Robin, "or we may tumble over him."

The music died away.

"Swef, swef!" shouted Master Twyti at the top of his voice.  "Sto
arere, so howe, so howe!"  He swung his baldrick in front of him, and,
lifting the horn to his lips, began to blow a recheat.

There was a single note from one of the lymers.

"Hoo arere," cried the huntsman.

The lymer's note grew in confidence, faltered, then rose to the full
bay.

"Hoo arere!  Here how, amy.  Hark to Beaumont the valiant!  Ho moy, ho
moy, hole, hole, hole, hole."

The lymer was taken up by the tenor bells of the braches.  The noises
grew to a crescendo of excitement as the blood-thirsty thunder of the
alaunts pealed through the lesser notes.

"They have him," said Twyti briefly, and the three humans began to run
again, while the huntsman blew encouragement with Trou-rou-root.

In a small bushment the grimly boar stood at bay.  He had got his
hindquarters into the nook of a tree blown down by a gale, in an
impregnable position.  He stood on the defensive with his upper lip
writhed back in a snarl.  The blood of Sir Grummore's gash welled fatly
among the bristles of his shoulder and down his leg, while the foam of
his chops dropped on the blushing snow and melted it.  His small eyes
darted in every direction.  The hounds stood round, yelling at his
mask, and Beaumont, with his back broken, writhed at his feet.  He paid
no further attention to the living hound, which could do him no harm.
He was black, flaming and bloody.

"So-ho," said the huntsman.

He advanced with his spear held in front of him, and the hounds,
encouraged by their master, stepped forward with him pace by pace.

The scene changed as suddenly as a house of cards falling down.  The
boar was not at bay any more, but charging Master Twyti.  As it
charged, the alaunts closed in, seizing it fiercely by the shoulder or
throat or leg, so that what surged down on the huntsman was not one
boar but a bundle of animals.  He dared not use his spear for fear of
hurting the dogs.  The bundle rolled forward unchecked, as if the
hounds did not impede it at all.  Twyti began to reverse his spear, to
keep the charge off with its butt end, but even as he reversed it the
tussle was upon him.  He sprang back, tripped over a root, and the
battle closed on top.  The Wart pranced round the edge, waving his own
spear in an agony, but there was nowhere where he dared to thrust it
in.  Robin dropped his spear, drew his falchion in the same movement,
stepped into the huddle of snarls, and calmly picked an alaunt up by
the leg.  The dog did not let go, but there was space where its body
had been.  Into this space the falchion went slowly, once, twice,
thrice.  The whole superstructure stumbled, recovered itself, stumbled
again, and sank down ponderously on its left side.  The hunt was over.

Master Twyti drew one leg slowly from under the boar, stood up, took
hold of his knee with his right hand, moved it inquiringly in various
directions, nodded to himself and stretched his back straight.  Then he
picked up his spear without saying anything and limped over to
Beaumont.  He knelt down beside him and took his head on his lap.  He
stroked Beaumont's head and said, "Hark to Beaumont.  Softly, Beaumont,
mon amy.  Oyez a Beaumont the valiant.  Swef, le douce Beaumont, swef,
swef."  Beaumont licked his hand but could not wag his tail.  The
huntsman nodded to Robin, who was standing behind, and held the hound's
eyes with his own.  He said, "Good dog, Beaumont the valiant, sleep
now, old friend Beaumont, good old dog."  Then Robin's falchion let
Beaumont out of this world, to run free with Orion and roll among the
stars.

The Wart did not like to watch Master Twyti for a moment.  The strange,
leathery man stood up without saying anything and whipped the hounds
off the corpse of the boar as he was accustomed to do.  He put his horn
to his lips and blew the four long notes of the mort without a quaver.
But he was blowing the notes for a different reason, and he startled
the Wart because he seemed to be crying.


The mort brought most of the stragglers up in due time.  Hob was there
already and Sir Ector came next, whacking the brambles aside with his
boar-spear, puffing importantly and shouting, "Well done, Twyti.
Splendid hunt, very.  That's the way to chase a beast of venery, I will
say.  What does he weigh?"  The others dribbled in by batches, King
Pellinore bounding along and crying out, "Tally-ho!  Tally-ho!
Tally-ho!" in ignorance that the hunt was done.  When informed of this,
he stopped and said "Tally-ho, what?" in a feeble voice, then relapsed
into silence.  Even the sergeant's Indian file arrived in the end,
still doubling with knees up, and were halted in the clearing while the
sergeant explained to them with great satisfaction that if it had not
been for him, all would have been lost.  Merlyn appeared holding up his
running shorts, having failed in his magic.  Sir Grummore came stumping
along with Kay, saying that it had been one of the finest points he had
ever seen run, although he had not seen it, and then the butcher's
business of the "undoing" was proceeded with apace.

Over this there was a bit of excitement.  King Pellinore, who had
really been scarcely himself all day, made the fatal mistake of asking
when the hounds were going to be given their quarry.  Now, as everybody
knows, a quarry is a reward of entrails, etc., which is given to the
hounds on the hide of the dead beast (sur le quir), and, as everybody
else knows, a slain boar is not skinned.  It is disembowelled without
the hide being taken off, and, since there can be no hide, there can be
no quarry.  We all know that the hounds are rewarded with a fouail, or
mixture of bowels and bread cooked over a fire, and, of course, poor
King Pellinore had used the wrong word.

So King Pellinore was bent over the dead beast amid loud huzzas, and
the protesting monarch was given a hearty smack with a sword blade by
Sir Ector.  The King then said, "I think you are all a lot of beastly
cads," and wandered off mumbling into the forest.

The boar was undone, the hounds rewarded, and the foot-people, standing
about in chattering groups because they would have got wet if they had
sat down in the snow, ate the provisions which the young women had
brought in baskets.  A small barrel of wine which had been thoughtfully
provided by Sir Ector was broached, and a good drink was had by all.
The boar's feet were tied together, a pole was slipped between his
legs, and two men hoisted it upon their shoulders.  William Twyti stood
back, and courteously blew the prise.

It was at this moment that King Pellinore reappeared.  Even before he
came into view they could hear him crashing in the undergrowth and
calling out, "I say, I say!  Come here at once!  A most dreadful thing
has happened!"  He appeared dramatically upon the edge of the clearing,
just as a disturbed branch, whose burden was too heavy, emptied a
couple of hundredweight of snow on his head.  King Pellinore paid no
attention.  He climbed out of the snow heap as if he had not noticed
it, still calling out, "I say.  I say!"

"What is it, Pellinore?" shouted Sir Ector.

"Oh, come quick!" cried the King, and, turning round distracted, he
vanished again into the forest.

"Is he all right," inquired Sir Ector, "do you suppose?"

"Excitable character," said Sir Grummore.  "Very."

"Better follow up and see what he's doin'."

The procession moved off sedately in King Pellinore's direction,
following his erratic course by the fresh tracks in the snow.

The spectacle which they came across was one for which they were not
prepared.  In the middle of a dead gorse bush King Pellinore was
sitting, with the tears streaming down his face.  In his lap there was
an enormous snake's head, which he was patting.  At the other end of
the snake's head there was a long, lean, yellow body with spots on it.
At the end of the body there were some lion's legs which ended in the
slots of a hart.

"There, there," the King was saying.  "I did not mean to leave you
altogether.  It was only because I wanted to sleep in a feather bed,
just for a bit.  I was coming back, honestly I was.  Oh please don't
die, Beast, and leave me without any fewmets!"

When he saw Sir Ector, the King took command of the situation.
Desperation had given him authority.

"Now, then, Ector," he exclaimed.  "Don't stand there like a ninny.
Fetch that barrel of wine along at once."

They brought the barrel and poured out a generous tot for the Questing
Beast.

"Poor creature," said King Pellinore indignantly.  "It has pined away,
positively pined away, just because there was nobody to take an
interest in it.  How I could have stayed all that while with Sir
Grummore and never given my old Beast a thought I really don't know.
Look at its ribs, I ask you.  Like the hoops of a barrel.  And lying
out in the snow all by itself, almost without the will to live.  Come
on, Beast, you see if you can't get down another gulp of this.  It will
do you good.

"Mollocking about in a feather bed," added the remorseful monarch,
glaring at Sir Grummore, "like a--like a kidney!"

"But how did you--how did you find it?" faltered Sir Grummore.

"I happened on it.  And small thanks to you.  Running about like a lot
of nincompoops and smacking each other with swords.  I happened on it
in this gorse bush here, with snow all over its poor back and tears in
its eyes and nobody to care for it in the wide world.  It's what comes
of not leading a regular life.  Before, it was all right.  We got up at
the same time, and quested for regular hours, and went to bed at half
past ten.  Now look at it.  It has gone to pieces altogether, and it
will be your fault if it dies.  You and your bed."

"But, Pellinore!" said Sir Grummore....

"Shut your mouth," replied the King at once.  "Don't stand there
bleating like a fool, man.  Do something.  Fetch another pole so that
we can carry old Glatisant home.  Now, then, Ector, haven't you got any
sense?  We must just carry him home and put him in front of the kitchen
fire.  Send somebody on to make some bread and milk.  And you, Twyti,
or whatever you choose to call yourself, stop fiddling with that
trumpet of yours and run ahead to get some blankets warmed.

"When we get home," concluded King Pellinore, "the first thing will be
to give it a nourishing meal, and then, if it is all right in the
morning, I will give it a couple of hours' start and then hey-ho for
the old life once again.  What about that, Glatisant, hey?  You'll tak'
the high road and I'll tak' the low road, what?  Come along, Robin
Hood, or whoever you are--you may think I don't know, but I do--stop
leaning on your bow with that look of negligent woodcraft.  Pull
yourself together, man, and get that muscle-bound sergeant to help you
carry her.  Now then, lift her easy.  Come along, you chuckle-heads,
and mind you don't trip.  Feather beds and quarry, indeed; a lot of
childish nonsense.  Go on, advance, proceed, step forward, march!
Feather brains, I call it, that's what I do.

"And as for you, Grummore," added the King, even after he had
concluded, "you can just roll yourself up in your bed and stifle in it."




_Chapter XVII_

"I think it must be time," said Merlyn, looking at him over the top of
his spectacles one afternoon, "that you had another dose of education.
That is, as Time goes."

It was an afternoon in early spring and everything outside the window
looked beautiful.  The winter mantle had gone, taking with it Sir
Grummore, Master Twyti, King Pellinore and the Questing Beast--the
latter having revived under the influence of kindliness and bread and
milk.  It had bounded off into the snow with every sign of gratitude,
to be followed two hours later by the excited King, and the watchers
from the battlements had observed it confusing its snowy footprints
most ingeniously, as it reached the edge of the chase.  It was running
backward, bounding twenty foot sideways, rubbing out its marks with its
tail, climbing along horizontal branches, and performing many other
tricks with evident enjoyment.  They had also seen King Pellinore--who
had dutifully kept his eyes shut and counted ten thousand while this
was going on--becoming quite confused when he arrived at the difficult
spot, and finally galloping off in the wrong direction with his brachet
trailing behind him.

It was a lovely afternoon.  Outside the schoolroom window the larches
of the distant forest had already taken on the fullness of their
dazzling green, the earth twinkled and swelled with a million drops,
and every bird in the world had come home to court and sing.  The
village folk were forth in their gardens every evening, planting garden
beans, and it seemed that, what with these emergencies and those of the
slugs (coincidentally with the beans), the buds, the lambs, and the
birds, every living thing had conspired to come out.

"What would you like to be?" asked Merlyn.

Wart looked out of the window, listening to the thrush's twice-done
song of dew.

He said, "I have been a bird once, but it was only in the mews at
night, and I never got a chance to fly.  Even if one ought not to do
one's education twice, do you think I could be a bird so as to learn
about that?"

He had been bitten with the craze for birds which bites all sensible
people in the spring, and which sometimes even leads to excesses like
birds' nesting.

"I can see no reason why you should not," said the magician.  "Why not
try it at night?"

"But they will be asleep at night."

"All the better chance of seeing them, without their flying away.  You
could go with Archimedes this evening, and he would tell you about
them."

"Would you do that, Archimedes?"

"I should love to," said the owl.  "I was feeling like a little saunter
myself."

"Do you know," asked the Wart, thinking of the thrush, "why birds sing,
or how?  Is it a language?"

"Of course it is a language.  It is not a big language like human
speech, but it is large."

"Gilbert White," said Merlyn, "remarks, or will remark, however you
like to put it, that 'the language of birds is very ancient, and, like
other ancient modes of speech, little is said, but much is intended.'
He also says somewhere that 'the rooks, in the breeding season, attempt
sometimes, in the gaiety of their hearts, to sing--but with no great
success.'"

"I love rooks," said the Wart.  "It is funny, but I think they are my
favourite bird."

"Why?" asked Archimedes.

"Well, I like them.  I like their sauce."

"Neglectful parents," quoted Merlyn, who was in a scholarly mood, "and
saucy, perverse children."

"It is true," said Archimedes reflectively, "that all the corvidae have
a distorted sense of humour."

Wart explained.

"I love the way they enjoy flying.  They don't just fly, like other
birds, but they fly for fun.  It is lovely when they hoist home to bed
in a flock at night, all cheering and making rude remarks and pouncing
on each other in a vulgar way.  They turn over on their backs sometimes
and tumble out of the air, just to be ridiculous, or else because they
have forgotten they are flying and have coarsely began to scratch
themselves for fleas, without thinking about it."

"They are intelligent birds," said Archimedes, "in spite of their low
humour.  They are one of the birds that have parliaments, you know, and
a social system."

"Do you mean they have laws?"

"Certainly they have laws.  They meet in the autumn, in a field, to
talk them over."

"What sort of laws?"

"Oh, well, laws about the defence of the rookery, and marriage, and so
forth.  You are not allowed to marry outside the rookery, and, if you
do become quite lost to all sense of decency, and bring back a sable
virgin from a neighbouring settlement, then everybody pulls your nest
to pieces as fast as you can build it up.  They make you go into the
suburbs, you know, and that is why every rookery has out-lying nests
all round it, several trees away."

"Another thing I like about them," said the Wart, "is their Go.  They
may be thieves and practical jokers, and they do quarrel and bully each
other in a squawky way, but they have got the courage to mob their
enemies.  I should think it takes some courage to mob a hawk, even if
there is a pack of you.  And even while they are doing it they clown."

"They are mobs," said Archimedes, loftily.  "You have said the word."

"Well, they are larky mobs, anyway," said the Wart, "and I like them."

"What is your favourite bird?" asked Merlyn politely, to keep the peace.

Archimedes thought this over for some time, and then said, "Well, it is
a large question.  It is rather like asking you what is your favourite
book.  On the whole, however, I think that I must prefer the pigeon."

"To eat?"

"I was leaving that side of it out," said the owl in civilized tones.
"Actually the pigeon is the favourite dish of all raptors, if they are
big enough to take her, but I was thinking of nothing but domestic
habits."

"Describe them."

"The pigeon," said Archimedes, "is a kind of Quaker.  She dresses in
grey.  A dutiful child, a constant lover, and a wise parent, she knows,
like all philosophers, that the hand of every man is against her.  She
has learned throughout the centuries to specialize in escape.  No
pigeon has ever committed an act of aggression nor turned upon her
persecutors: but no bird, likewise, is so skilful in eluding them.  She
has learned to drop out of a tree on the opposite side to man, and to
fly low so that there is a hedge between them.  No other bird can
estimate a range so well.  Vigilant, powdery, odorous and
loose-feathered--so that dogs object to take them in their
mouths--armoured against pellets by the padding of these feathers, the
pigeons coo to one another with true love, nourish their cunningly
hidden children with true solicitude, and flee from the aggressor with
true philosophy--a race of peace lovers continually caravaning away
from the destructive Indian in covered wagons.  They are loving
individualists surviving against the forces of massacre only by wisdom
in escape.

"Did you know," added Archimedes, "that a pair of pigeons always roosts
head to tail, so that they can keep a look-out in both directions?"

"I know our tame pigeons do," said the Wart.  "I suppose the reason why
people are always trying to kill them is because they are so greedy.
What I like about wood-pigeons is the clap of their wings, and how they
soar up and close their wings and sink, during their courting flights,
so that they fly rather like woodpeckers."

"It is not very like woodpeckers," said Merlyn.

"No, it is not," admitted the Wart.

"And what is your favourite bird?" asked Archimedes, feeling that his
master ought to be allowed a say.

Merlyn put his fingers together like Sherlock Holmes and replied
immediately, "I prefer the chaffinch.  My friend Linnaeus calls him
coelebs or bachelor bird.  The flocks have the sense to separate during
the winter, so that all the males are in one flock and all the females
in the other.  For the winter months, at any rate, there is perfect
peace."

"The conversation," observed Archimedes, "arose out of whether birds
could talk."

"Another friend of mine," said Merlyn immediately, in his most learned
voice, "maintains, or will maintain, that the question of the language
of birds arises out of imitation.  Aristotle, you know, also attributes
tragedy to imitation."

Archimedes sighed heavily, and remarked in prophetic tones, "You had
better get it off your chest."

"It is like this," said Merlyn.  "The kestrel drops upon a mouse, and
the poor mouse, transfixed with those needle talons, cries out in agony
his one squeal of K-e-e-e!  Next time the kestrel sees a mouse, his own
soul cries out Kee in imitation.  Another kestrel, perhaps his mate,
comes to that cry, and after a few million years all the kestrels are
calling each other with their individual note of Kee-kee-kee."

"You can't make the whole story out of one bird," said the Wart.

"I don't want to.  The hawks scream like their prey.  The mallards
croak like the frogs they eat, the shrikes also, like these creatures
in distress.  The blackbirds and thrushes click like the snail shells
they hammer to pieces.  The various finches make the noise of cracking
seeds, and the woodpecker imitates the tapping on wood which he makes
to get the insects that he eats."

"But all birds don't give a single note!"

"No, of course not.  The call note arises out of imitation and then the
various bird songs are developed by repeating the call note and
descanting upon it."

"I see," said Archimedes coldly.  "And what about me?"

"Well, you know quite well," said Merlyn, "that the shrew-mouse you
pounce upon squeals out Kweek!  That is why the young of your species
call Kee-wick."

"And the old?" inquired Archimedes sarcastically.

"Hooroo, Hooroo," cried Merlyn, refusing to be damped.  "It is obvious,
my dear fellow.  After their first winter, that is the wind in the
hollow trees where they prefer to sleep."

"I see," said Archimedes, more coolly than ever.  "This time, we note,
it is not a question of prey at all."

"Oh, come along," replied Merlyn.  "There are other things besides the
things you eat.  Even a bird drinks sometimes, for instance, or bathes
itself in water.  It is the liquid notes of a river that we hear in a
robin's song."

"It seems now," said Archimedes, "that it is no longer a question of
what we eat, but also what we drink or hear."

"And why not?"

The owl said resignedly, "Oh, well."

"I think it is an interesting idea," said the Wart, to encourage his
tutor.  "But how does a language come out of these imitations?"

"They repeat them at first," said Merlyn, "and then they vary them.
You don't seem to realize what a lot of meaning there resides in the
tone and the speed of voice.  Suppose I were to say 'What a nice day,'
just like that.  You would answer, 'Yes, so it is.'  But if I were to
say, 'What a _nice_ day,' in caressing tones, you might think I was a
nice person.  But then again, if I were to say, 'What a nice day,'
quite breathless, you might look about you to see what had put me in a
fright.  It is like this that the birds have developed their language."

"Would you mind telling us," said Archimedes, "since you know so much
about it, how many various things we birds are able to express by
altering the tempo and emphasis of the elaborations of our call-notes?"

"But a large number of things.  You can cry Kee-wick in tender accents,
if you are in love, or Kee-wick angrily in challenge or in hate: you
can cry it on a rising scale as a call-note, if you do not know where
your partner is, or to attract their attention away if strangers are
straying near your nest: if you go near the old nest in the winter-time
you may cry Kee-wick lovingly, a conditioned reflex from the pleasures
which you once enjoyed within it, and if I come near to you in a
startling way you may cry out Keewick-keewick-keewick, in loud alarm."

"When we come to conditioned reflexes," remarked Archimedes sourly, "I
prefer to look for a mouse."

"So you may.  And when you find it I dare say you will make another
sound characteristic of owls, though not often mentioned in books of
ornithology.  I refer to the sound 'Tock' or 'Tck' which human beings
call a smacking of the lips."

"And what sound is that supposed to imitate?"

"Obviously, the breaking of mousy bones."

"You are a cunning master," said Archimedes, "and as far as a poor owl
is concerned you will just have to get away with it.  All I can tell
you from my personal experience is that it is not like that at all.  A
tit can tell you not only that it is in danger, but what kind of danger
it is in.  It can say, 'Look out for the cat,' or 'Look out for the
hawk', or 'Look out for the tawny owl,' as plainly as A.B.C."

"I don't deny it," said Merlyn.  "I am only telling you the beginnings
of the language.  Suppose you try to tell me the song of any single
bird which I can't attribute originally to imitation?"

"The night-jar," said the Wart.

"The buzzing of the wings of beetles," replied his tutor at once.

"The nightingale," cried Archimedes desperately.

"Ah," said Merlyn, leaning back in his comfortable chair.  "Now we are
to imitate the soul-song of our beloved Proserpine, as she stirs to
wake in all her liquid self."

"Tereu," said the Wart softly.

"Pieu," added the owl quietly.

"Music!" concluded the necromancer in ecstasy, unable to make the
smallest beginnings of an imitation.

"Hallo," said Kay, opening the door of the afternoon school room.  "I'm
sorry I am late for the geography lesson.  I was trying to get a few
small birds with my cross-bow.  Look, I have killed a thrush."




_Chapter XVIII_

The Wart lay awake as he had been told to do.  He was to wait until Kay
was asleep, and then Archimedes would come for him with Merlyn's magic.
He lay under the great bearskin and stared out of the window at the
stars of spring, no longer frosty and metallic, but as if they had been
new washed and had swollen with the moisture.  It was a lovely evening,
without rain or cloud.  The sky between the stars was of the deepest
and fullest velvet.  Framed in the thick western window, Alderbaran and
Betelgeuse were racing Sirius over the horizon, the hunting dog-star
looking back to his master Orion, who had not yet heaved himself above
the rim.  In at the window came also the unfolding scent of benighted
flowers, for the currants, the wild cherries, the plums and the
hawthorn were already in bloom, and no less than five nightingales
within earshot were holding a contest of beauty among the bowery, the
looming trees.

Wart lay on his back with his bearskin half off him and his hands
clasped behind his head.  It was too beautiful to sleep, too temperate
for the rug.  He watched out at the stars in a kind of trance.  Soon it
would be the summer again, when he could sleep on the battlements and
watch these stars hovering as close as moths above his face--and, in
the Milky Way at least, with something of the mothy pollen.  They would
be at the same time so distant that unutterable thoughts of space and
eternity would baffle themselves in his sighing breast, and he would
imagine to himself how he was falling upward higher and higher among
them, never reaching, never ending, leaving and losing everything in
the tranquil speed of space.

He was fast asleep when Archimedes came for him.

"Eat this," said the owl, and handed him a dead mouse.

The Wart felt so strange that he took the furry atomy without protest,
and popped it into his mouth without any feelings that it was going to
be nasty.  So he was not surprised when it turned out to be excellent,
with a fruity taste like eating a peach with the skin on, though
naturally the skin was not so nice as the mouse.

"Now, we had better fly," said the owl.  "Just flip to the window-sill
here, to get accustomed to yourself before we take off."

Wart jumped for the sill and automatically gave himself an extra kick
with his wings, just as a high jumper swings his arms.  He landed on
the sill with a thump, as owls are apt to do, did not stop himself in
time, and toppled straight out of the window.  "This," he thought to
himself, cheerfully, "is where I break my neck."  It was curious, but
he was not taking life seriously.  He felt the castle walls streaking
past him, and the ground and the moat swimming up.  He kicked with his
wings, and the ground sank again, like water in a leaking well.  In a
second that kick of his wings had lost its effect, and the ground was
welling up.  He kicked again.  It was strange, going forward with the
earth ebbing and flowing beneath him, in the utter silence of his
down-fringed feathers.

"For heaven's sake," panted Archimedes, bobbing in the dark air beside
him, "stop flying like a woodpecker.  Anybody would take you for a
Little Owl, if the creatures had been imported.  What you are doing is
to give yourself flying speed with one flick of your wings.  You then
rise on that flick until you have lost flying speed and begin to stall.
Then you give another just as you are beginning to drop out of the air,
and do a switch-back.  It is confusing to keep up with you."

"Well," said the Wart recklessly, "if I stop doing this I shall go bump
altogether."

"Idiot," said the owl.  "Waver your wings all the time, like me,
instead of doing these jumps with them."

The Wart did what he was told, and was surprised to find that the earth
became stable and moved underneath him without tilting, in a regular
pour.  He did not feel himself to be moving at all.

"That's better."

"How curious everything looks," observed the boy with some wonder, now
that he had time to look about him.

And, indeed, the world did look curious.  In some ways the best
description of it would be to say that it looked like a photographer's
negative, for he was seeing one ray beyond the spectrum which is
visible to human beings.  An infra-red camera will take photographs in
the dark, when we cannot see, and it will also take photographs in
daylight.  The owls are the same, for it is untrue that they can only
see at night.  They see in the day just as well, only they happen to
possess the advantage of seeing pretty well at night also.  So
naturally they prefer to do their hunting then, when other creatures
are more at their mercy.  To the Wart the green trees would have looked
whitish in the daytime, as if they were covered with apple blossom, and
now, at night, everything had the same kind of different look.  It was
like flying in a twilight which had reduced everything to shades of the
same colour, and, as in the twilight, there was a considerable amount
of gloom.

"Do you like it?" asked the owl.

"I like it very much.  Do you know, when I was a fish there were parts
of the water which were colder or warmer than the other parts, and now
it is the same in the air."

"The temperature," said Archimedes, "depends on the vegetation of the
bottom.  Woods or weeds, they make it warm above them."

"Well," said the Wart, "I can see why the reptiles who had given up
being fishes decided to become birds.  It certainly is fun."

"You are beginning to fit things together," remarked Archimedes.  "Do
you mind if we sit down?"

"How does one?"

"You must stall.  That means you must drive yourself up until you lose
flying speed, and then, just as you feel yourself beginning to
tumble--why, you sit down.  Have you never noticed how birds fly upward
to perch?  They don't come straight down on the branch, but dive below
it and then rise.  At the top of their rise they stall and sit down."

"But birds land on the ground too.  And what about mallards on the
water?  They can't rise to sit on that."

"Well, it is perfectly possible to land on flat things, but more
difficult.  You have to glide in at stalling speed all the way, and
then increase your wind resistance by cupping your wings, dropping your
feet, tail, etc.  You may have noticed that few birds do it gracefully.
Look how a crow thumps down and how the mallard splashes.  The
spoon-winged birds like heron and plover seem to do it best.  As a
matter of fact, we owls are not so bad at it ourselves."

"And the long-winged birds like swifts, I suppose they are the worst,
for they can't rise from a flat surface at all?"

"The reasons are different," said Archimedes, "yet the fact is true.
But need we talk on the wing?  I am getting tired."

"So am I."

"Owls usually prefer to sit down every hundred yards."

The Wart copied Archimedes in zooming up toward the branch which they
had chosen.  He began to fall just as they were above it, clutched it
with his furry feet at the last moment, swayed backward and forward
twice, and found that he had landed successfully.  He folded up his
wings.

While the Wart sat still and admired the view, his friend proceeded to
give him a lecture about flight in birds.  He told how, although the
swift was so fine a flyer that he could sleep on the wing all night,
and although the Wart himself had claimed to admire the way in which
rooks enjoyed their flights, the real aeronaut of the lower
strata--which cut out the swift--was the plover.  He explained how
plovers indulged in aerobatics, and would actually do such stunts as
spins, stall turns and even rolls for the mere grace of the thing.
They were the only birds which made a practice of slipping off height
to land--except occasionally the oldest, gayest and most beautiful of
all the conscious aeronauts, the raven.  Wart paid little or no
attention to the lecture, but got his eyes accustomed to the strange
tones of light instead, and watched Archimedes from the corner of one
of them.  For Archimedes, while he was talking, was absent-mindedly
spying for his dinner.  This spying was an odd performance.

A spinning top which is beginning to lose its spin slowly describes
circles with its highest point before falling down.  The leg of the top
remains in the same place, but the apex makes circles which get bigger
and bigger toward the end.  This is what Archimedes was absent-mindedly
doing.  His feet remained stationary, but he moved the upper part of
his body round and round, like somebody trying to see from behind a fat
lady at a cinema, and uncertain which side of her gave the best view.
As he could also turn his head almost completely round on his
shoulders, you may imagine that his antics were worth watching.

"What are you doing?" asked the Wart.

Even as he asked, Archimedes was gone.  First there had been an owl
talking about plover, and then there was no owl.  Only, far below the
Wart, there was a thump and a rattle of leaves, as the aerial torpedo
went smack into the middle of a bush, regardless of obstructions.

In a minute the owl was sitting beside him again on the branch,
thoughtfully breaking up a dead sparrow.

"May I do that?" asked the Wart, inclined to be blood-thirsty.

"As a matter of fact," said Archimedes, after waiting to crop his
mouthful, "you may not.  The magic mouse which turned you into an owl
will be enough for you--after all, you have been eating as a human all
day--and no owl kills for pleasure.  Besides, I am supposed to be
taking you for education, and, as soon as I have finished my snack
here, that is what we shall have to do."

"Where are you going to take me?"

Archimedes finished his sparrow, wiped his beak politely on the bough,
and turned his eyes full on the Wart.  These great, round eyes had, as
a famous writer has expressed it, a bloom of light upon them like the
purple bloom of powder on a grape.

"Now that you have learned to fly," he said, "Merlyn wants you to try
the Wild Geese."


The place in which he found himself was absolutely flat.  In the human
world we seldom see flatness, for the trees and houses and hedges give
a serrated edge to the landscape.  Even the grass sticks up with its
myriad blades.  But here, in the belly of the night, the illimitable,
flat, wet mud was as featureless as a dark junket.  If it had been wet
sand, even, it would have had those little wave marks, like the palate
of your mouth.

In this enormous flatness, there lived one element--the wind.  For it
was an element.  It was a dimension, a power of darkness.  In the human
world, the wind comes from somewhere, and goes somewhere, and, as it
goes, it passes through somewhere--through trees or streets or
hedgerows.  This wind came from nowhere.  It was going through the
flatness of nowhere, to no place.  Horizontal, soundless except for a
peculiar boom, tangible, infinite, the astounding dimensional weight of
it streamed across the mud.  You could have ruled it with a
straight-edge.  The titanic grey line of it was unwavering and solid.
You could have hooked the crook of your umbrella over it, and it would
have hung there.

The Wart, facing into this wind, felt that he was uncreated.  Except
for the wet solidity under his webbed feet, he was living in nothing--a
solid nothing, like chaos.  His were the feelings of a point in
geometry, existing mysteriously on the shortest distance between two
points: or of a line, drawn on a plane surface which had length,
breadth but no magnitude.  No magnitude!  It was the very self of
magnitude.  It was power, current, force, direction, a pulseless
world-stream steady in limbo.

Bounds had been set to this unhallowed purgatory.  Far away to the
east, perhaps a mile distant, there was an unbroken wall of sound.  It
surged a little, seeming to expand and contract, but it was solid.  It
was menacing, being desirous for victims--for it was the huge,
remorseless sea.

Two miles to the west, there were three spots of light in a triangle.
They were the weak wicks from fishermen's cottages, who had risen early
to catch a tide in the complicated creeks of the salt marsh.  Its
waters sometimes ran contrary to the ocean.  These were the total
features of his world--the sea sound and the three small lights:
darkness, flatness, vastness, wetness: and, in the gulf of night, the
gulf-stream of the wind.


When daylight began to come, by premonition, the boy found that he was
standing among a crowd of people like himself.  They were seated on the
mud, which now began to be disturbed by the angry, thin, returning sea,
or else were already riding on the water, wakened by it, outside the
annoyance of the surf.  The seated ones were large teapots, their
spouts tucked under their wings.  The swimming ones sometimes ducked
their heads and shook them.  Some, waking on the mud, stood up and
wagged their wings vigorously.  Their profound silence became broken by
a conversational gabble.  There were about four hundred of them in the
grey vicinity--very beautiful creatures, the wild White-fronted Geese,
whom, once he has seen them close, no man ever forgets.

Long before the sun came, they were making ready for flight.  Family
parties of the previous year's breeding were coming together in
batches, and these batches were themselves inclined to join with
others, possibly under the command of a grandfather, or else of a
great-grandfather, or else of some noted leader in the host.  When the
drafts were complete, there came a faint tone of excitement into their
speech.  They began moving their heads from side to side in jerks.  And
then, turning into the wind, suddenly they would all be in the air
together, fourteen or forty at a time, with wide wings scooping the
blackness and a cry of triumph in their throats.  They would wheel
round, climbing rapidly, and be gone from sight.  Twenty yards up, they
were invisible in the dark.  The earlier departures were not vocal.
They were inclined to be taciturn before the sun came, only making
occasional remarks, or crying their single warning-note if danger
threatened.  Then, at the warning, they would all rise vertically to
the sky.

The Wart began to feel an uneasiness in himself.  The dim squadrons
about him, setting out minute by minute, infected him with a tendency.
He became restless to embrace their example, but he was shy.  Perhaps
their family groups, he thought, would resent his intrusion.  Yet he
wanted not to be lonely.  He wanted to join in, and to enjoy the
exercise of morning flight, which was so evidently a pleasure.  They
had a comradeship, free discipline and _joie de vivre_.

When the goose next to the boy spread her wings and leaped, he did so
automatically.  Some eight of those nearby had been jerking their
bills, which he had imitated as if the act were catching, and now, with
these same eight, he found himself on pinion in the horizontal air.
The moment he had left the earth, the wind had vanished.  Its
restlessness and brutality had dropped away as if cut off by a knife.
He was in it, and at peace.

The eight geese spread out in line astern, evenly spaced, with him
behind.  They made for the east, where the poor lights had been, and
now, before them, the bold sun began to rise.  A crack of
orange-vermilion broke the black cloud-bank far beyond the land.  The
glory spread, the salt marsh growing visible below.  He saw it like a
featureless moor or bogland, which had become maritime by accident--its
heather, still looking like heather, having mated with the seaweed
until it was a salt wet heather, with slippery fronds.  The burns which
should have run through the moorland were of sea-water on blueish mud.
There were long nets here and there, erected on poles, into which
unwary geese might fly.  These, he now guessed, had been the occasions
for those warning-notes.  Two or three widgeon hung in one of them,
and, far away to the eastward, a fly-like man was plodding over the
slob in tiny persistence, to collect his bag.

The sun, as it rose, tinged the quick-silver of the creeks and the
gleaming slime itself with flame.  The curlew, who had been piping
their mournful plaints since long before the light, flew now from
weed-bank to weed-bank.  The widgeon, who had slept on water, came
whistling their double notes, like whistles from a Christmas cracker.
The mallard toiled from land, against the wind.  The redshanks scuttled
and prodded like mice.  A cloud of tiny dunlin, more compact than
starlings, turned in the air with the noise of a train.  The
black-guard of crows rose from the pine trees on the dunes with merry
cheers.  Shore birds of every sort populated the tide line, filling it
with business and beauty.

The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such
intense beauty that the boy was moved to sing.  He wanted to cry a
chorus to life, and, since a thousand geese were on the wing about him,
he had not long to wait.  The lines of these creatures, wavering like
smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in
music and in laughter.  Each squadron of them was in different voice,
some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee.  The vault of
daybreak filled itself with heralds, and this is what they sang:

  You turning world, pouring beneath our pinions,
  Hoist the hoar sun to welcome morning's minions.

  See, on each breast the scarlet and vermilion,
  Hear, from each throat the clarion and carillion.

  Hark, the wild wandering lines in black battalions,
  Heaven's horns and hunters, dawn-bright hounds and stallions.

  Free, free: far, far: and fair on wavering wings
  Comes Anser albifrons, and sounds, and sings.


He was in a coarse field, in daylight.  His companions of the flight
were grazing round him, plucking the grass with sideways wrenches of
their soft small bills, bending their necks into abrupt loops, unlike
the graceful curves of the swan.  Always, as they fed, one of their
number was on guard, its head erect and snakelike.  They had mated
during the winter months, or else in previous winters, so that they
tended to feed in pairs within the family and squadron.  The young
female, his neighbour of the mud-flats, was in her first year.  She
kept an intelligent eye upon him.

The boy, watching her cautiously, noted her plump compacted frame and a
set of neat furrows on her neck.  These furrows, he saw out of the
corner of his eye, were caused by a difference in the feathering.  The
feathers were concave, which separated them from one another, making a
texture of ridges which he considered graceful.

Presently the young goose gave him a shove with her bill.  She had been
acting sentry.

"You next," she said.

She lowered her head without waiting for an answer, and began to graze
in the same movement.  Her feeding took her from his side.

He stood sentry.  He did not know what he was watching for, nor could
he see any enemy, except the tussocks and his nibbling mates.  But he
was not sorry to be a trusted sentinel for them.

"What are you doing?" she asked, passing him after half an hour.

"I was on guard."

"Go on with you," she said with a giggle, or should it be a gaggle?
"You are a silly!"

"Why?"

"You know."

"Honestly," he said, "I don't.  Am I doing it wrong?  I don't
understand."

"Peck the next one.  You have been on for twice your time, at least."

He did as she told him, at which the grazer next to them took over, and
then he walked along to feed beside her.  They nibbled, noting one
another out of beady eyes.

"You think I am stupid," he said shyly, confessing the secret of his
real species for the first time to an animal, "but it is because I am
not a goose.  I was born as a human.  This is my first flight really."

She was mildly surprised.

"It is unusual," she said.  "The humans generally try the swans.  The
last lot we had were the Children of Lir.  However, I suppose we're all
anseriformes together."

"I have heard of the Children of Lir."

"They didn't enjoy it.  They were hopelessly nationalistic and
religious, always hanging about round one of the chapels in Ireland.
You could say that they hardly noticed the other swans at all."

"I am enjoying it."

"I thought you were.  What were you sent for?"

"To learn my education."

They grazed in silence, until his own words reminded him of something
he had wanted to ask.

"The sentries," he asked.  "Are we at war?"

She did not understand the word.

"War?"

"Are we fighting people?"

"Fighting?" she asked doubtfully.  "The men fight sometimes, about
their wives and that.  Of course there is no bloodshed--only scuffling,
to find the better man.  Is that what you mean?"

"No.  I meant fighting against armies--against other geese, for
instance."

She was amused.

"How ridiculous!  You mean a lot of geese all scuffling at the same
time.  It would be fun to watch."

Her tone surprised him, for his heart was still a kind one, being a
boy's.

"Fun to watch them kill each other?"

"To kill each other?  An army of geese to kill each other?"

She began to understand this idea slowly and doubtfully, an expression
of distaste coming over her face.  When it had sank in, she left him.
She went away to another part of the field in silence.  He followed,
but she turned her back.  Moving round to get a glimpse of her eyes, he
was startled by their dislike--a look as if he had made some obscene
suggestion.

He said lamely: "I am sorry.  I don't understand."

"Leave talking about it."

"I am sorry."

Later he added, with annoyance, "A person can ask, I suppose.  It seems
a natural question, with the sentries."

But she was thoroughly angry.

"Will you stop about it at once!  What a horrible mind you must have!
You have no right to say such things.  And of course there are
sentries.  There are the jer-falcons and the peregrines, aren't there:
the foxes and the ermines and the humans with their nets?  These are
natural enemies.  But what creature could be so low as to go about in
bands, to murder others of its own blood?"

"Ants do," he said obstinately.  "And I was only trying to learn."

She relented with an effort to be good-natured.  She wanted to be
broad-minded if she could, for she was rather a blue-stocking.

"My name is Lyo-lyok.  You had better call yourself Kee-kwa, and then
the rest will think you came from Hungary."

"Do you all come here from different places?"

"Well, in parties, of course.  There are some here from Siberia, some
from Lapland and I can see one or two from Iceland."

"But don't they fight each other for the pasture?"

"Dear me, you are a silly," she said.  "There are no boundaries among
the geese."

"What are boundaries, please?"

"Imaginary lines on the earth, I suppose.  How can you have boundaries
if you fly?  Those ants of yours--and the humans too--would have to
stop fighting in the end, if they took to the air."

"I like fighting," said the Wart.  "It is knightly."

"Because you're a baby."




_Chapter XIX_

There was something magical about the time and space commanded by
Merlyn, for the Wart seemed to be passing many days and nights among
the grey people, during the one spring night when he had left his body
asleep under the bearskin.

He grew to be fond of Lyo-lyok, in spite of her being a girl.  He was
always asking her questions about the geese.  She taught him what she
knew with gentle kindness, and the more he learned, the more he came to
love her brave, noble, quiet and intelligent relations.  She told him
how every White-front was an individual--not governed by laws or
leaders, except when they came about spontaneously.  They had no Kings
like Uther, no laws like the bitter Norman ones.  They did not own
things in common.  Any goose who found something nice to eat considered
it his own, and would peck any other one who tried to thieve it.  At
the same time, no goose claimed any exclusive territorial right in any
part of the world--except its nest, and that was private property.  She
told him a great deal about migration.

"The first goose," she said, "I suppose, who made the flight from
Siberia to Lincolnshire and back again must have brought up a family in
Siberia.  Then, when the winter came and it was necessary to find new
food, he must have groped his way over the same route, being the only
one who knew it.  He will have been followed by his growing family,
year after year, their pilot and their admiral.  When the time came for
him to die, obviously the next best pilots would have been his eldest
sons, who would have covered the route more often than the others.
Naturally the younger sons and fledglings would have been uncertain
about it, and therefore would have been glad to follow somebody who
knew.  Perhaps, among the eldest sons, there would have been some who
were famous for being muddle-headed, and the family would hardly care
to trust to them.

"This," she said, "is how an admiral is elected.  Perhaps Wink-wink
will come to our family in the autumn, and he will say: 'Excuse me, but
have you by any chance got a reliable pilot in your lot?  Poor old
grand-dad died at cloud-berry time, and Uncle Onk is inefficient.  We
were looking for somebody to follow.'  Then we will say: 'Great-uncle
will be delighted if you care to hitch up with us; but mind, we cannot
take responsibility if things go wrong.'  'Thank you very much,' he
will say.  'I am sure your great-uncle can be relied on.  Do you mind
if I mention this matter to the Honks, who are, I happen to know, in
the same difficulty?'  'Not at all.'

"And that," she explained, "is how Great-uncle became an admiral."

"It is a good way."

"Look at his bars," she said respectfully, and they both glanced at the
portly patriarch, whose breast was indeed barred with black stripes,
like the gold rings on an admiral's sleeve.


There was a growing excitement among the host.  The young geese flirted
outrageously, or collected in parties to discuss their pilots.  They
played games, too, like children excited at the prospect of a party.
One of these games was to stand in a circle, while the junior ganders,
one after another, walked into the middle of it with their heads
stretched out, pretending to hiss.  When they were half-way across the
circle they would run the last part, flapping their wings.  This was to
show how brave they were, and what excellent admirals they would make,
when they grew up.  Also the strange habit of shaking their bills
sideways, which was usual before flight, began to grow upon them.  The
elders and sages, who knew the migration routes, became uneasy also.
They kept a wise eye on the cloud formations, summing up the wind, and
the strength of it, and what airt it was coming from.  The admirals,
heavy with responsibility, paced their quarter-decks with ponderous
tread.

"Why am I restless?" he asked.  "Why do I have this feeling in my
blood?"

"Wait and see," she said mysteriously.  "Tomorrow, perhaps, or the day
after...."


When the day came, there was a difference about the salt marsh and the
slob.  The ant-like man, who had walked out so patiently every sunrise
to his long nets, with the tides fixed firmly in his head--because to
make a mistake in them was certain death--heard a far bugle in the sky.
He saw no thousands on the mud flats, and there were none in the
pastures from which he had come.  He was a nice man in his way--for he
stood still solemnly, and took off his leather hat.  He did this every
spring religiously, when the wild geese left him, and every autumn,
when he saw the first returning gaggle.


In a steamer it takes two or three days to cross the North Sea--so many
hours of slobbering through the viscous water.  But for the geese, for
the sailors of the air, for the angled wedges tearing clouds to
tatters, for the singers of the sky with the gale behind them--seventy
miles an hour behind another seventy--for those mysterious
geographers--three miles up, they say--with cumulus for their floor
instead of water--for them it was a different matter.

The songs they sang were full of it.  Some were vulgar, some were
sagas, some were light-hearted to a degree.  One silly one which amused
the Wart was as follows:

  We wander the sky with many a Gronk
  And land in the pasture fields with a Plonk.
    Hank-hank, Hink-hink, Honk-honk.

  Then we bend our necks with a curious kink
  Like the bend which the plumber puts under the sink.
    Honk-honk, Hank-hank, Hink-hink.

  And we feed away in a sociable rank
  Tearing the grass with a sideways yank.
    Hink-hink, Honk-honk, Hank-hank.

  But Hink or Honk we relish the Plonk,
  And Honk or Hank we relish the Rank,
  And Hank or Hink we think it a jink
    To Honk or Hank or Hink!


A sentimental one was:

  Wild and free, wild and free,
  Bring back my gander to me, to me.


And once, while they were passing over a rocky island populated by
barnacle geese, who looked like spinsters in black leather gloves, grey
toques and jet beads, the entire squadron burst out derisively with:

  Branta bernicla sits a-slumming in the slob,
  Branta bernicla sits a-slumming in the slob,
  Branta bernicla sits a-slumming in the slob,
      While we go sauntering along.
  Glory, glory, here we go, dear.
  Glory, glory, here we go, dear.
  Glory, glory, here we go, dear.
      To the North Pole sauntering along.


One of the more Scandinavian songs was called "The Boon of Life":

  Ky-yow replied: The boon of life is health.
  Paddle-foot, Feather-straight, Supple-neck, Button-eye:
  These have the world's wealth.

  Aged Ank answered: Honour is our all.
  Path-finder, People-feeder, Plan-provider, Sage-commander:
  These hear the call.

  Lyo-lyok the lightsome said: Love I had liefer.
  Douce-down, Tender-tread, Warm-nest and Walk-in-line:
  These live for ever.

  Aahng-ung was for Appetite.  Ah, he said, Eating!
  Gander-gobble, Tear-grass, Stubble-stalk, Stuff-crop:
  These take some beating.

  Wink-wink praised Comrades, the fair free fraternity.
  Line-astern, Echelon, Arrow-head, Over-cloud:
  These learn Eternity.

  But I, Lyow, choose Lay-making, of loud lilts which linger.
  Horn-music, Laughter song, Epic-heart, Ape-the-world:
  These Lyow, the singer.


Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better
wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus--huge
towers of modelled vapour, looking as white as Monday's washing and as
solid as meringues.  Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky,
these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them
several miles away.  They would set their course toward it, seeing it
grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth--and then,
when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a
shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim.  Wraiths of
mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for
a second.  Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny,
would fade away.  The wings next to their own wings would shade into
vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a
presence after uncreation.  And there they would hang in chartless
nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom,
until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents
writhed.  Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jewelled
world once more--a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous
palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry.

One of the peaks of the migration came when they passed a rock-cliff of
the ocean.  There were other peaks, when, for instance, their line of
flight was crossed by an Indian file of Bewick Swans who were off to
Abisko, making a noise as they went like little dogs barking through
handkerchiefs, or when they overtook a horned owl plodding manfully
along--among the warm feathers of whose back, _so they said_, a tiny
wren was taking her free ride.  But the lonely island was the best.

It was a town of birds.  They were all hatching, all quarrelling, all
friendly nevertheless.  On top of the cliff, where the short turf was,
there were myriads of puffins busy with their burrows.  Below them, in
Razorbill Street, the birds were packed so close, and on such narrow
ledges, that they had to stand with their backs to the sea, holding
tight with long toes.  In Guillemot Street, below that, the guillemots
held their sharp, toy-like faces upward, as thrushes do when hatching.
Lowest of all, there were the Kittiwake Slums.  And all the birds--who,
like humans, only laid one egg each--were jammed so tight that their
heads were interlaced--had so little of this famous living-space of
ours that, when a new bird insisted on landing at a ledge which was
already full, one of the other birds had to tumble off.  Yet they were
in good humour, so cheerful and cockneyfied and teasing one another.
They were like an innumerable crowd of fish-wives on the largest
grandstand in the world, breaking out into private disputes, eating out
of paper bags, chipping the referee, singing comic songs, admonishing
their children and complaining of their husbands.  "Move over a bit,
Auntie," they said, or "Shove along, Grandma"; "There's that Flossie
gone and sat on the shrimps"; "Put the toffee in your pocket, dearie,
and blow your nose"; "Lawks, if it isn't Uncle Albert with the beer";
"Any room for a little 'un?"; "There goes Aunt Emma, fallen off the
ledge"; "Is me hat on straight?"; "Crikey, this isn't arf a do!"

They kept more or less to their own kind, but they were not mean about
it.  Here and there, in Guillemot Street, there would be an obstinate
Kittiwake sitting on a projection and determined to have her rights.
Perhaps there were ten thousand of them, and the noise they made was
deafening.


Then there were the fiords and islands of Norway.  It was about one of
these islands, by the way, that the great W. H. Hudson related a true
goose-story which ought to make people think.  There was a coastal
farmer, he tells us, whose islands suffered under a nuisance of
foxes--so he set up a fox-trap on one of them.  When he visited the
trap next day, he found that an old wild goose had been caught in it,
obviously a Grand Admiral, because of his toughness and his heavy bars.
This farmer took the goose home alive, pinioned it, bound up its leg,
and turned it out with his own ducks and poultry in the farmyard.  Now
one of the effects of the fox plague was that the farmer had to lock
his hen-house at night.  He used to go round in the evening to drive
them in, and then he would lock the door.  After a time, he began to
notice a curious circumstance, which was that the hens, instead of
having to be collected, would be found waiting for him in the hut.  He
watched the process one evening, and discovered that the captive
potentate had taken on himself the responsibility, which he had with
his own intelligence observed.  Every night at locking-up time, the
sagacious old admiral would round up his domestic comrades, whose
leadership he had assumed, and would prudently assemble them in the
proper place by his own efforts, as if he had fully understood the
situation.  Nor did the free wild geese, his sometime followers, ever
again settle on the other island--previously a haunt of theirs--from
which their captain had been spirited away.


Last of all, beyond the islands, there was the landing at their first
day's destination.  Oh, the whiffling of delight and
self-congratulation!  They tumbled out of the sky, side-slipping,
stunting, even doing spinning nose-dives.  They were proud of
themselves and of their pilot, agog for the family pleasures which were
in store.

They planed for the last part on down-curved wings.  At the last moment
they scooped the wind with them, flapping them vigorously.
Next--bump--they were on the ground.  They held their wings above their
heads for a moment, then folded them with a quick and pretty neatness.
They had crossed the North Sea.


"Well, Wart," said Kay in an exasperated voice, "do you want all the
rug?  And why do you heave and mutter so?  You were snoring, too."

"I don't snore," replied the Wart indignantly.

"You do."

"I don't."

"You do.  You honk like a goose."

"I don't."

"You do."

"I don't.  And you snore worse."

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do."

"How can I snore worse if you don't snore at all?"

By the time they had thrashed this out, they were late for breakfast.
They dressed hurriedly and ran out into the spring.




_Chapter XX_

It was hay-making again, and Merlyn had been with them a year.  The
wind had visited them, and the snow, and the rain, and the sun once
more.  The boys looked longer in the leg, but otherwise everything was
the same.

Six other years passed by.

Sometimes Sir Grummore came on a visit.  Sometimes King Pellinore could
be descried galloping over the purlieus after the Beast, or with the
Beast after him if they happened to have got muddled up.  Cully lost
the vertical stripes of his first year's plumage and became greyer,
grimmer, madder, and distinguished by smart horizontal bars where the
long stripes had been.  The merlins were released every winter and new
ones caught again next year.  Hob's hair went white.  The
sergeant-at-arms developed a pot-belly and nearly died of shame, but
continued to cry out One-Two, in a huskier voice, on every possible
occasion.  Nobody else seemed to change at all, except the boys.

These grew longer.  They ran like wild colts as before, and went to see
Robin when they had a mind to, and had innumerable adventures too
lengthy to be recorded.

Merlyn's extra tuition went on just the same--for in those days even
the grown-up people were so childish that they saw nothing
uninteresting in being turned into owls.  The Wart was changed into
countless different animals.  The only difference was that now, in
their fencing lessons, Kay and his companion were an easy match for the
pot-bellied sergeant, and paid him back accidentally for many of the
buffets which he had once given them.  They had more and more proper
weapons as presents, when they had reached their 'teens, until in the
end they had full suits of armour and bows nearly six feet long, which
would shoot the clothyard shaft.  You were not supposed to use a bow
longer than your own height, for it was considered that by doing so you
were expending unnecessary energy, rather like using an elephant-gun to
shoot an _ovis ammon_ with.  At any rate, modest men were careful not
to over-bow themselves.  It was a form of boasting.

As the years went by, Kay became more difficult.  He always used a bow
too big for him, and did not shoot very accurately with it either.  He
lost his temper and challenged nearly everybody to have a fight, and in
those few cases where he did actually have the fight he was invariably
beaten.  Also he became sarcastic.  He made the sergeant miserable by
nagging about his stomach, and went on at the Wart about his father and
mother when Sir Ector was not about.  He did not seem to want to do
this.  It was as if he disliked it, but could not help it.

The Wart continued to be stupid, fond of Kay, and interested in birds.

Merlyn looked younger every year--which was only natural, because he
was.

Archimedes was married, and brought up several handsome families of
quilly youngsters in the tower room.

Sir Ector got sciatica.  Three trees were struck by lightning.  Master
Twyti came every Christmas without altering a hair.  Master Passelewe
remembered a new verse about King Cole.

The years passed regularly and the Old English snow lay as it was
expected to lie--sometimes with a Robin Redbreast in one corner of the
picture, a church bell or lighted window in the other--and in the end
it was nearly time for Kay's initiation as a full-blown knight.
Proportionately as the day became nearer, the two boys drifted
apart--for Kay did not care to associate with the Wart any longer on
the same terms, because he would need to be more dignified as a knight,
and could not afford to have his squire on intimate terms with him.
The Wart, who would have to be the squire, followed him about
disconsolately as long as he was allowed to do so, and then went off
full miserably to amuse himself alone, as best he might.

He went to the kitchen.

"Well, I am a Cinderella now," he said to himself.  "Even if I have had
the best of it for some mysterious reason, up to the present time--in
our education--now I must pay for my past pleasures and for seeing all
those delightful dragons, witches, fishes, cameleopards, pismires, wild
geese and such like, by being a second-rate squire and holding Kay's
extra spears for him, while he hoves by some well or other and jousts
with all comers.  Never mind, I have had a good time while it lasted,
and it is not such bad fun being a Cinderella, when you can do it in a
kitchen which has a fireplace big enough to roast an ox."

And the Wart looked round the busy kitchen, which was coloured by the
flames till it looked like hell, with sorrowful affection.

The education of any civilized gentleman in those days used to go
through three stages, page, squire, knight, and at any rate the Wart
had been through the first two of these.  It was rather like being the
son of a modern gentleman who has made his money out of trade, for your
father started you on the bottom rung even then, in your education of
manners.  As a page, Wart had learned to lay the tables with three
cloths and a carpet, and to bring meat from the kitchen, and to serve
Sir Ector or his guests on bended knee, with one clean towel over his
shoulder, one for each visitor, and one to wipe the basins.  He had
been taught all the noble arts of servility, and, from the earliest
time that he could remember, there had lain pleasantly in the end of
his nose the various scents of mint--used to freshen the water in the
ewers--or of basil, camomile, fennel, hysop and lavender--which he had
been taught to strew on the rushy floors--or of the angelica, saffron,
aniseed, and tarragon, which were used to spice the savouries which he
had to carry.  So he was accustomed to the kitchen, quite apart from
the fact that everybody who lived in the castle was a friend of his,
who might be visited on any occasion.

Wart sat in the enormous firelight and looked about him with pleasure.
He looked upon the long spits which he had often turned when he was
smaller, sitting behind an old straw target soaked in water, so that he
would not be roasted himself, and upon the ladles and spoons whose
handles could be measured in yards, with which he had been accustomed
to baste the meat.  He watched with water in his mouth the arrangements
for the evening meal--a boar's head with a lemon in its jaws and split
almond whiskers, which would be served with a fanfare of trumpets--a
kind of pork pie with sour apple juice, peppered custard, and several
birds' legs, or spiced leaves sticking out of the top to show what was
in it--and a most luscious-looking frumenty.  He said to himself with a
sigh, "It is not so bad being a servant after all."

"Still sighing?" asked Merlyn, who had turned up from somewhere.  "As
you were that day when we went to watch King Pellinore's joust?"

"Oh, no," said the Wart.  "Or rather, oh yes, and for the same reason.
But I don't really mind.  I am sure I shall make a better squire than
old Kay would.  Look at the saffron going into that frumenty.  It just
matches the fire-light on the hams in the chimney."

"It is lovely," said the magician.  "Only fools want to be great."

"Kay won't tell me," said the Wart, "what happens when you are made a
knight.  He says it is too sacred.  What does happen?"

"Only a lot of fuss.  You will have to undress him and put him into a
bath hung with rich hangings, and then two experienced knights will
turn up--probably Sir Ector will get hold of old Grummore and King
Pellinore--and they will both sit on the edge of the bath and give him
a long lecture about the ideals of chivalry such as they are.  When
they have done, they will pour some of the bath water over him and sign
him with the cross, and then you will have to conduct him into a clean
bed to get dry.  Then you dress him up as a hermit and take him off to
the chapel, and there he stays awake all night, watching his armour and
saying prayers.  People say it is lonely and terrible for him in this
vigil, but it is not at all lonely really, because the vicar and the
man who sees to the candles and an armed guard, and probably you as
well, as his esquire, will have to sit up with him at the same time.
In the morning you lead him off to bed to have a good sleep--as soon as
he has confessed and heard mass and offered a candle with a piece of
money stuck into it as near the lighted end as possible--and then, when
all are rested, you dress him up again in his very best clothes for
dinner.  Before dinner you lead him into the hall, with his spurs and
sword all ready, and King Pellinore puts on the first spur, and Sir
Grummore puts on the second, and then Sir Ector girds on the sword and
kisses him and smacks him on the shoulder and says, 'Be thou a good
knight'."

"Is that all?"

"No.  You go to the chapel again then, and Kay offers his sword to the
vicar, and the vicar gives it back to him, and after that our good cook
over there meets him at the door and claims his spurs as a reward, and
says, 'I shall keep these spurs for you, and if at any time you don't
behave as a true knight should do, why, I shall pop them in the soup.'"

"That is the end?"

"Yes, except for the dinner."

"If I were to be made a knight," said the Wart, staring dreamily into
the fire, "I should insist on doing my vigil by myself, as Hob does
with his hawks, and I should pray to God to let me encounter all the
evil in the world in my own person, so that if I conquered there would
be none left, and, if I were defeated, I would be the one to suffer for
it."

"That would be extremely presumptuous of you," said Merlyn, "and you
would be conquered, and you would suffer for it."

"I shouldn't mind."

"Wouldn't you?  Wait till it happens and see."

"Why do people not think, when they are grown up, as I do when I am
young?"

"Oh dear," said Merlyn.  "You are making me feel confused.  Suppose you
wait till you are grown up and know the reason?"

"I don't think that is an answer at all," replied the Wart, justly.

Merlyn wrung his hands.

"Well, anyway," he said, "suppose they did not let you stand against
all the evil in the world?"

"I could ask," said the Wart.

"You could ask," repeated Merlyn.

He thrust the end of his beard into his mouth, stared tragically at the
fire, and began to munch it fiercely.




_Chapter XXI_

The day for the ceremony drew near, the invitations to King Pellinore
and Sir Grummore were sent out, and the Wart withdrew himself more and
more into the kitchen.

"Come on, Wart, old boy," said Sir Ector ruefully.  "I didn't think you
would take it so bad.  It doesn't become you to do this sulkin'."

"I am not sulking," said the Wart.  "I don't mind a bit and I am very
glad that Kay is going to be a knight.  Please don't think I am
sulking."

"You are a good boy," said Sir Ector.  "I know you're not sulkin'
really, but do cheer up.  Kay isn't such a bad stick, you know, in his
way."

"Kay is a splendid chap," said the Wart.  "Only I was not happy because
he did not seem to want to go hawking or anything, with me, any more."

"It is his youthfulness," said Sir Ector.  "It will all clear up."

"I am sure it will," said the Wart.  "It is only that he does not want
me to go with him, just at the moment.  And so, of course, I don't go.

"But I will go," added the Wart.  "As soon as he commands me, I will do
exactly what he says.  Honestly, I think Kay is a good person, and I
was not sulking a bit."

"You have a glass of this canary," said Sir Ector, "and go and see if
old Merlyn can't cheer you up."

"Sir Ector has given me a glass of canary," said the Wart, "and sent me
to see if you can't cheer me up."

"Sir Ector," said Merlyn, "is a wise man."

"Well," said the Wart, "what about it?"

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and
blow, "is to learn something.  That is the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds.  There is only
one thing for it then--to learn.  Learn why the world wags and what
wags it.  That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
dream of regretting.  Learning is the thing for you.  Look at what a
lot of things there are to learn--pure science, the only purity there
is.  You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three,
literature in six.  And then, after you have exhausted a milliard
lifetimes in biology and medicine and theo-criticism and geography and
history and economics--why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of
the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn
to beat your adversary at fencing.  After that you can start again on
mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough."

"Apart from all these things," said the Wart, "what do you suggest for
me just now?"

"Let me see," said the magician, considering.  "We have had a short six
years of this, and in that time I think I am right in saying that you
have been many kinds of animal, vegetable, mineral, etc.--many things
in earth, air, fire and water?"

"I don't know much," said the Wart, "about the animals and earth."

"Then you had better meet my friend the badger."

"I have never met a badger."

"Good," said Merlyn.  "Except for Archimedes, he is the most learned
creature I know.  You will like him.

"By the way," added the magician, stopping in the middle of his spell,
"there is one thing I ought to tell you.  This is the last time I shall
be able to turn you into anything.  All the magic for that sort of
thing has been used up, and this will be the end of your education.
When Kay has been knighted my labours will be over.  You will have to
go away then, to be his squire in the wide world, and I shall go
elsewhere.  Do you think you have learned anything?"

"I have learned, and been happy."

"That's right, then," said Merlyn.  "Try to remember what you learned."

He proceeded with the spell, pointed his wand of lignum vitae at the
Little Bear, which had just begun to glow in the dimity as it hung by
its tail from the North Star, and called out cheerfully, "Have a good
time for the last visit.  Give love to Badger."

The call sounded from far away, and Wart found himself standing by the
side of an ancient tumulus, like an enormous mole hill, with a black
hole in front of him.

"Badger lives in there," he said to himself, "and I am supposed to go
and talk to him.  But I won't.  It was bad enough never to be a knight,
but now my own dear tutor that I found on the only Quest I shall ever
have is to be taken from me also, and there will be no more natural
history.  Very well, I will have one more night of joy before I am
condemned, and, as I am a wild beast now, I will be a wild beast, and
there it is."

So he trundled off fiercely over the twilight snow, for it was winter.

If you are feeling desperate, a badger is a good thing to be.  A
relation of the bears, otters and weasels, you are the nearest thing to
a bear now left in England, and your skin is so thick that it makes no
difference who bites you.  So far as your own bite is concerned, there
is something about the formation of your jaw which makes it almost
impossible to be dislocated--and so, however much the thing you are
biting twists about, there is no reason why you should ever let go.
Badgers are one of the few creatures which can munch up hedgehogs
unconcernedly, just as they can munch up everything else from wasps'
nests and roots to baby rabbits.

It so happened that a sleeping hedgehog was the first thing which came
in the Wart's way.

"Hedge-pig," said the Wart, peering at his victim with blurred,
short-sighted eyes, "I am going to munch you up."

The hedgehog, which had hidden its bright little eye-buttons and long
sensitive nose inside its curl, and which had ornamented its spikes
with a not very tasteful arrangement of dead leaves before going to bed
for the winter in its grassy nest, woke up at this and squealed most
lamentably.

"The more you squeal," said the Wart, "the more I shall gnash.  It
makes my blood boil within me."

"Ah, Measter Brock," cried the hedgehog, holding himself tight shut.
"Good Measter Brock, show mercy to a poor urchin and don't 'ee be
tyrannical.  Us be'nt no common tiggy, measter, for to be munched and
mumbled.  Have mercy, kind sir, on a harmless, flea-bitten crofter
which can't tell his left hand nor his right."

"Hedge-pig," said the Wart remorselessly, "forbear to whine, neither
thrice nor once."

"Alas, my poor wife and childer!"

"I bet you have not got any.  Come out of that, thou tramp.  Prepare to
meet thy doom."

"Measter Brock," implored the unfortunate pig, "come now, doan't 'ee be
okkerd, sweet Measter Brock, my duck.  Hearken to an urchin's prayer!
Grant the dear boon of life to this most uncommon tiggy, lordly
measter, and he shall sing to thee in numbers sweet or teach 'ee how to
suck cow's milk in the pearly dew."

"Sing?" asked the Wart, quite taken aback.

"Aye, sing," cried the hedgehog.  And it began hurriedly to sing in a
very placating way, but rather muffled because it dared not uncurl.

"Oh, Genevieve," it sang most mournfully into its stomach, "Sweet
Genevieve,

  Ther days may come,
  Ther days may go,
  But still the light of Mem'ry weaves
  Those gentle dreams
  Of long ago."


It also sang, without pausing for a moment between the songs, _Home
Sweet Home_ and _The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill_.  Then, because it
had finished its repertoire, it drew a hurried but quavering breath,
and began again on Genevieve.  After that, it sang _Home Sweet Home_
and _The Old Rustic Bridge by the Mill_.

"Come," said the Wart, "you can stop that.  I won't bite you."

"Clementious measter," whispered the hedge-pig humbly.  "Us shall bless
the saints and board of governors for thee and for thy most kindly
chops, so long as fleas skip nor urchins climb up chimbleys."

Then, for fear that its brief relapse into prose might have hardened
the tyrant's heart, it launched out breathlessly into Genevieve, for
the third time.

"Stop singing," said the Wart, "for heaven's sake.  Uncurl.  I won't do
you any harm.  Come, you silly little urchin, and tell me where you
learned these songs."

"Uncurl is one word," answered the porpentine tremblingly--it did not
feel in the least fretful at the moment--"but curling up is still
another.  If 'ee was to see my liddle naked nose, measter, at this
dispicuous moment, 'ee might feel a twitching in thy white toothsomes;
and all's fear in love and war, that we do know.  Let us sing to 'ee
again, sweet Measter Brock, concerning thic there rustic mill?"

"I don't want to hear it any more.  You sing it very well, but I don't
want it again.  Uncurl, you idiot, and tell me where you learned to
sing."

"Us be'nt no common urchin," quavered the poor creature, staying curled
up as tight as ever.  "Us wor a-teuk when liddle by one of them there
gentry, like, as it might be from the mother's breast.  Ah, doan't 'ee
nip our tender vitals, lovely Measter Brock, for ee wor a proper
gennelman, ee wor, and brought us up full comely on cow's milk an'
that, all supped out from a lordly dish.  Ah, there be'nt many urchins
what a drunken water outer porcelain, that there be'nt."

"I don't know what you are talking about," said the Wart.

"Ee wor a gennelman," cried the hedgehog desperately, "like I tell 'ee.
Ee teuk un when us wor liddle, and fed un when us ha'nt no more.  Ee
wor a proper gennelman what fed un in ter parlour, like what no urchins
ha'nt been afore nor since; fed out from gennelman's porcelain, aye,
and a dreary day it wor whenever us left un for nought but wilfulness,
that thou may'st be sure."

"What was the name of this gentleman?"

"Ee wor a gennelman, ee wor.  Ee hadden no proper neame like, not like
you may remember, but ee wor a gennelman, that ee wor, and fed un out a
porcelain."

"Was he called Merlyn?" asked the Wart curiously.

"Ah, that wor is neame.  A proper fine neame it wor, but us never lay
tongue to it by nary means.  Ah, Mearn ee called to iself, and fed un
out a porcelain, like a proper fine gennelman."

"Oh, do uncurl," exclaimed the Wart.  "I know the man who kept you, and
I think I saw you, yourself, when you were a baby in cotton wool at his
cottage.  Come on, urchin, I am sorry I frightened you.  We are friends
here, and I want to see your little grey wet twitching nose, just for
old time's sake."

"Twitching noase be one neame," answered the hedgehog obstinately, "and
a-twitching of that noase be another, measter.  Now you move along,
kind Measter Brock, and leave a poor crofter to teak 'is winter drowse.
Let you think of beetles or honey, sweet baron, and flights of angels
sing thee to thy rest."

"Nonsense," exclaimed the Wart.  "I won't do you any harm, because I
knew you when you were little."

"Ah, them badgers," said the poor thing to its stomach, "they go
a-barrowing about with no harm in their hearts, Lor bless 'em, but
doan't they fair give you a nip without a-noticing of it, and Lor bless
'ee what is a retired mun to do?  It's that there skin of theirs,
that's what it be, which from earliest childer they've been a-nipping
of among each other, and also of their ma's, without a-feeling of
anything among theirselves, so natural they nips elsewhere like the
seame.  Now my poor gennelman, Measter Mearn, they was allars a-rushing
arter his ankels, with their yik-yik-yik, when they wanted to be fed
like, those what ee kept from liddles--and, holy church, how ee would
scream!  Aye, 'tis a mollocky thing to deal with they badgers, that us
may be sure.

"Doan't see nothing," added the hedgehog, before the Wart could
protest.  "Blunder along like one of they ambling hearth rugs, on the
outsides of their girt feet.  Get in their way for a moment, just out
of fortune like, without nary wicked intention and 'tis snip-snap, just
like that, out of self-defence for the hungry blind, and then where are
you?

"On'y pleace us can do for un," continued the urchin, "is to hit un on
ter noase.  A killee's heel they neame un on ter scriptures.  Hit one
of they girt trollops on ter noase, bim-bam, like that 'ere, and the
sharp life is fair outer him ere ee can snuffle.  'Tis a fair
knock-out, that it is.

"But how can a pore urchin dump un on ter noase?  When ee ha'nt got
nothing to dump with, nor way to hold 'un?  And then they comes about
'ee and asks 'ee for to uncurl!"

"You need not uncurl," said the Wart resignedly.  "I am sorry I woke
you up, chap, and I am sorry I frightened you.  I think you are a
charming hedgehog, and meeting you has made me feel more cheerful
again.  You just go off to sleep like you were when I met you, and I
shall go to look for my friend badger, as I was told to do.  Good
night, urchin, and good luck in the snow."

"Good night it may be," muttered the pig grumpily.  "And then again it
mayern't.  First it's uncurl and then it's curl.  One thing one moment,
and another thing ter next.  Hey-ho, 'tis a turvey world.  But Good
night, Ladies, is my motter, come hail, come snow, and so us shall be
continued in our next."

With these words the humble animal curled himself up still more snugly
than before, gave several squeaky grunts, and was far away in a
dream-world so much deeper than our human dreams as a whole winter's
sleep is longer than the quiet of a single night.

"Well," thought the Wart, "he certainly gets over his troubles pretty
quickly.  Fancy going to sleep again as quick as that.  I dare say he
was never more than half-awake all the time, and will think it was only
a dream when he gets up properly in the spring."

He watched the dirty little ball of leaves and grass and fleas for a
moment, curled up tightly inside its hole, then grunted and moved off
toward the badger's sett, following his own oblong footmarks backward
in the snow.


"So Merlyn sent you to me," said the badger, "to finish your education.
Well, I can only teach you two things--to dig, and love your home.
These are the true end of philosophy."

"Would you show me your home?"

"Certainly," said the badger, "though, of course, I don't use it all.
It is a rambling old place, much too big for a single man.  I suppose
some parts of it may be a thousand years old.  There are about four
families of us in it, here and there, take it by and large, from cellar
to attics, and sometimes we don't meet for months.  A crazy old place,
I suppose it must seem to you modern people--but there, it's cosy."

He went ambling down the corridors of the enchanted sett, rolling from
leg to leg with the queer badger paddle, his white mask with its black
stripes looking ghostly in the gloom.

"It's along that passage," he said, "if you want to wash your hands."

Badgers are not like foxes.  They have a special midden where they put
out their used bones and rubbish, proper earth closets, and bedrooms
whose bedding they turn out frequently, to keep it clean.  The Wart was
charmed with what he saw.  He admired the Great Hall most, for this was
the central room of the tumulus--it was difficult to know whether to
think of it as a college or as a castle--and the various suites and
bolt holes radiated outward from it.  It was a bit cobwebby, owing to
being a sort of common-room instead of being looked after by one
particular family, but it was decidedly solemn.  Badger called it the
Combination Room.  All round the panelled walls there were ancient
paintings of departed badgers, famous in their day for scholarship or
godliness, lit from above by shaded glow-worms.  There were stately
chairs with the badger arms stamped in gold on their Spanish leather
seats--the leather was coming off--and a portrait of the Founder over
the fireplace.  The chairs were arranged in a semi-circle round the
fire, and there were mahogany fans with which everybody could shield
their faces from the flames, and a kind of tilting board by means of
which the decanters could be slid back from the bottom of the
semi-circle to the top.  Some black gowns hung in the passage outside,
and all was extremely ancient.

"I am a bachelor at the moment," said the badger apologetically, when
they got back to his own snug room with the flowered wallpaper, "so I
am afraid there is only one chair.  You will have to sit on the bed.
Make yourself at home, my dear, while I brew some punch, and tell me
how things are going in the wide world."

"Oh, they go on much the same.  Merlyn is well, and Kay is to be made a
knight next week."

"An interesting ceremony."

"What enormous arms you have," remarked the Wart, watching him stir the
spirits with a spoon.  "So have I, for that matter."  And he looked
down at his own bandy-legged muscles.  He was mainly a tight chest
holding together a pair of forearms, mighty as thighs.

"It is to dig with," said the learned creature complacently.  "Mole and
I, I suppose you would have to dig pretty quick to match with us."

"I met a hedgehog outside."

"Did you now?  They say nowadays that hedgehogs can carry swine fever
and foot-and-mouth disease."

"I thought he was rather nice."

"They do have a sort of pathetic appeal," said the badger sadly, "but
I'm afraid I generally just munch them up.  There is something
irresistible about pork crackling.

"The Egyptians," he added, and by this he meant the gypsies, "are fond
of them for eating, too."

"Mine would not uncurl."

"You should have pushed him into some water, and then he'd have shown
you his poor legs quick enough.  Come, the punch is ready.  Sit down by
the fire and take your ease."

"It is nice to sit here with the snow and wind outside."

"It is nice.  Let us drink good luck to Kay in his knighthood."

"Good luck to Kay, then."

"Good luck."

"Well," said the badger, setting down his glass again with a sigh.
"Now what could have possessed Merlyn to send you to me?"

"He was talking about learning," said the Wart.

"Ah, well, if it is learning you are after, you have come to the right
shop.  But don't you find it rather dull?"

"Sometimes I do," said the Wart, "and sometimes I don't.  On the whole
I can bear a good deal of learning if it is about natural history."

"I am writing a treatise just now," said the badger, coughing
diffidently to show that he was absolutely set on explaining it, "which
is to point out why Man has become the master of the animals.  Perhaps
you would like to hear it?

"It's for my doctor's degree, you know," he added hastily, before the
Wart could protest.  He got few chances of reading his treatises to
anybody, so he could not bear to let the opportunity slip by.

"Thank you very much," said the Wart.

"It will be good for you, dear boy.  It is just the thing to top off an
education.  Study birds and fish and animals: then finish off with Man.
How fortunate that you came!  Now where the devil did I put that
manuscript?"

The old gentleman scratched about with his great claws until he had
turned up a dirty bundle of papers, one corner of which had been used
for lighting something.  Then he sat down in his leather armchair,
which had a deep depression in the middle of it; put on his velvet
smoking-cap with the tassel; and produced a pair of tarantula
spectacles, which he balanced on the end of his nose.

"Hem," said the badger.

He immediately became paralysed with shyness, and sat blushing at his
papers, unable to begin.

"Go on," said the Wart.

"It is not very good," he explained coyly.  "It is just a rough draft,
you know.  I shall alter a lot before I send it in."

"I am sure it must be interesting."

"Oh no, it is not a bit interesting.  It is just an odd thing I threw
off in an odd half-hour, just to pass the time.  But still, this is how
it begins.

"Hem!" said the badger.  Then he put on an impossibly high falsetto
voice and began to read as fast as possible.

"People often ask, as an idle question, whether the process of
evolution began with the chicken or the egg.  Was there an egg out of
which the first chicken came, or did a chicken lay the first egg?  I am
in a position to say that the first thing created was the egg.

"When God had manufactured all the eggs out of which the fishes and the
serpents and the birds and the mammals and even the duck-billed
platypus would eventually emerge, he called the embryos before Him, and
saw that they were good.

"Perhaps I ought to explain," added the badger, lowering his papers
nervously and looking at the Wart over the top of them, "_that all
embryos look very much the same_.  They are what you are before you are
born--and, whether you are going to be a tadpole or a peacock or a
cameleopard or a man, when you are an embryo you just look like a
peculiarly repulsive and helpless human being.  I continue as follows:

"The embryos stood in front of God, with their feeble hands clasped
politely over their stomachs and their heavy heads hanging down
respectfully, and God addressed them.

"He said: 'Now, you embryos, here you are, all looking exactly the
same, and We are going to give you the choice of what you want to be.
When you grow up you will get bigger anyway, but We are pleased to
grant you another gift as well.  You may alter any parts of yourselves
into anything which you think would be useful to you in later life.
For instance, at the moment you cannot dig.  Anybody who would like to
turn his hands into a pair of spades or garden forks is allowed to do
so.  Or, to put it another way, at present you can only use your mouths
for eating.  Anybody who would like to use his mouth as an offensive
weapon, can change it by asking, and be a corkindrill or a
sabre-toothed tiger.  Now then, step up and choose your tools, but
remember that what you choose you will grow into, and will have to
stick to.'

"All the embryos thought the matter over politely, and then, one by
one, they stepped up before the eternal throne.  They were allowed two
or three specializations, so that some chose to use their arms as
flying machines and their mouths as weapons, or crackers, or drillers,
or spoons, while others selected to use their bodies as boats and their
hands as oars.  We badgers thought very hard and decided to ask three
boons.  We wanted to change our skins for shields, our mouths for
weapons, and our arms for garden forks.  These boons were granted.
Everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of us in very
queer ones.  For instance, one of the desert lizards decided to swap
his whole body for blotting-paper, and one of the toads who lived in
the drouthy antipodes decided simply to be a water-bottle.

"The asking and granting took up two long days--they were the fifth and
sixth, so far as I remember--and at the very end of the sixth day, just
before it was time to knock off for Sunday, they had got through all
the little embryos except one.  This embryo was Man.

"'Well, Our little man,' said God.  'You have waited till the last, and
slept on your decision, and We are sure you have been thinking hard all
the time.  What can We do for you?'

"'Please God,' said the embryo, 'I think that You made me in the shape
which I now have for reasons best known to Yourselves, and that it
would be rude to change.  If I am to have my choice I will stay as I
am.  I will not alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and
doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenceless embryo all my
life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the
wood, iron and the other materials which You have seen fit to put
before me.  If I want a boat I will try to construct it out of trees,
and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me.
Probably I have been very silly in refusing to take advantage of Your
kind offer, but I have done my very best to think it over carefully,
and now hope that the feeble decision of this small innocent will find
favour with Yourselves.'

"'Well done,' exclaimed the Creator in delighted tones.  'Here, all you
embryos, come here with your beaks and whatnots to look upon Our first
Man.  He is the only one who has guessed Our riddle, out of all of you,
and We have great pleasure in conferring upon him the Order of Dominion
over the Fowls of the Air, and the Beasts of the Earth, and the Fishes
of the Sea.  Now let the rest of you get along, and love and multiply,
for it is time to knock off for the week-end.  As for you, Man, you
will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools.  You will
look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be
embryos before your might.  Eternally undeveloped, you will always
remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to
feel some of Our joys.  We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly
hopeful.  Run along then, and do your best.  And listen, Man, before
you go...'

"'Well?' asked Adam, turning back from his dismissal.

"'We were only going to say,' said God shyly, twisting Their hands
together.  'Well, We were just going to say, God bless you'."


"It's a good story," said the Wart doubtfully "I like it better than
Merlyn's one about the Rabbi.  And it is interesting, too."

The badger was covered with confusion.

"No, no, dear boy.  You exaggerate.  A minor parable at most.  Besides,
I fear it is a trifle optimistic."

"How?"

"Well, it is true that man has the Order of Dominion and is the
mightiest of the animals--if you mean the most terrible one--but I have
sometimes doubted lately whether he is the most blessed."

"I don't think Sir Ector is very terrible."

"All the same, if even Sir Ector was to go for a walk beside a river,
not only would the birds fly from him and the beasts run away from him,
but the very fish would dart to the other side.  They don't do this for
each other."

"Man is the king of the animals."

"Perhaps.  Or ought one to say the tyrant?  And then again we do have
to admit that he has a quantity of vices."

"King Pellinore has not got many."

"He would go to war, if King Uther declared one.  Do you know that Homo
sapiens is almost the only animal which wages war?"

"Ants do."

"Don't say 'Ants do' in that sweeping way, dear boy.  There are more
than four thousand different sorts of them, and from all those kinds I
can only think of five which are belligerent.  There are the five ants,
one termite that I know of, and Man."

"But the packs of wolves from the Forest Sauvage attack our flocks of
sheep every winter."

"Wolves and sheep belong to different species, my friend.  True warfare
is what happens between bands of the same species.  Out of the hundreds
of thousands of species, I can only think of seven which are
belligerent.  Even Man has a few varieties like the Esquimaux and the
Gypsies and the Lapps and certain Nomads in Arabia, who do not do it,
because they do not claim boundaries.  True warfare is rarer in Nature
than cannibalism.  Don't you think that is a little unfortunate?"

"Personally," said the Wart, "I should have liked to go to war, if I
could have been made a knight.  I should have liked the banners and the
trumpets, the flashing armour and the glorious charges.  And oh, I
should have liked to do great deeds, and be brave, and conquer my own
fears.  Don't you have courage in warfare, Badger, and endurance, and
comrades whom you love?"

The learned animal thought for a long time, gazing into the fire.

In the end, he seemed to change the subject.

"Which did you like best," he asked, "the ants or the wild geese?"




_Chapter XXII_

King Pellinore arrived for the important week-end in a high state of
flurry.

"I say," he exclaimed, "do you know?  Have you heard?  Is it a secret,
what?"

"Is what a secret, what?" they asked him.

"Why, the King," cried his majesty.  "You know, about the King?"

"What's the matter with the King?" inquired Sir Ector.  "You don't say
he's comin' down to hunt with those demned hounds of his or anythin'
like that?"

"He's dead," cried King Pellinore tragically.  "He's dead, poor fellah,
and can't hunt any more."

Sir Grummore stood up respectfully and took off his cap of maintenance.

"The King is dead," he said.  "Long live the King."

Everybody else felt they ought to stand up too, and the boys' nurse
burst into tears.

"There, there," she sobbed.  "His loyal highness dead and gone, and him
such a respectful gentleman.  Many's the illuminated picture I've cut
out of him, from the Illustrated Missals, aye, and stuck up over the
mantel.  From the time when he was in swaddling bands, right through
them world towers till he was a-visiting the dispersed areas as the
world's Prince Charming, there wasn't a picture of 'im but I had it
out, aye, and give 'im a last thought o' nights."

"Compose yourself, Nannie," said Sir Ector.

"It is solemn, isn't it?" said King Pellinore, "what?  Uther the
Conqueror, 1066 to 1216."

"A solemn moment," said Sir Grummore.  "The King is dead.  Long live
the King."

"We ought to pull down the curtains," said Kay, who was always a
stickler for good form, "or half-mast the banners."

"That's right," said Sir Ector.  "Somebody go and tell the
sergeant-at-arms."

It was obviously the Wart's duty to execute this command, for he was
now the junior nobleman present, so he ran out cheerfully to find the
sergeant.  Soon those who were left in the solar could hear a voice
crying out, "Nah then, one-two, special mourning fer 'is lite majesty,
lower awai on the command Two!" and then the flapping of all the
standards, banners, pennons, pennoncells, banderolls, guidons,
streamers and cognizances which made gay the snowy turrets of the
Forest Sauvage.

"How did you hear?" asked Sir Ector.

"I was pricking through the purlieus of the forest after that Beast,
you know, when I met with a solemn friar of orders grey, and he told
me.  It's the very latest news."

"Poor old Pendragon," said Sir Ector.

"The King is dead," said Sir Grummore solemnly.  "Long live the King."

"It is all very well for you to keep on mentioning that, my dear
Grummore," exclaimed King Pellinore petulantly, "but who is this King,
what, that is to live so long, what, accordin' to you?"

"Well, his heir," said Sir Grummore, rather taken aback.

"Our blessed monarch," said the Nurse tearfully, "never had no hair.
Anybody that studied the loyal family knowed that."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Sir Ector.  "But he must have had a
next-of-kin?"

"That's just it," cried King Pellinore in high excitement.  "That's the
excitin' part of it, what?  No hair and no next of skin, and who's to
succeed to the throne?  That's what my friar was so excited about,
what, and why he was asking who could succeed to what, what?  What?"

"Do you mean to tell me," exclaimed Sir Grummore indignantly, "that
there ain't no King of Gramarye?"

"Not a scrap of one," cried King Pellinore, feeling important.  "And
there have been signs and wonders of no mean might."

"I think it's a scandal," said Sir Grummore.  "God knows what the dear
old country is comin' to.  Due to these lollards and communists, no
doubt."

"What sort of signs and wonders?" asked Sir Ector.

"Well, there has appeared a sort of sword in a stone, what, in a sort
of a church.  Not in the church, if you see what I mean, and not in the
stone, but that sort of thing, what, like you might say."

"I don't know what the Church is coming to," said Sir Grummore.

"It's in an anvil," explained the King.

"The Church?"

"No, the sword."

"But I thought you said the sword was in the stone?"

"No," said King Pellinore.  "The stone is outside the church."

"Look here, Pellinore," said Sir Ector.  "You have a bit of a rest, old
boy, and start again.  Here, drink up this horn of mead and take it
easy."

"The sword," said King Pellinore, "is stuck through an anvil which
stands on a stone.  It goes right through the anvil and into the stone.
The anvil is stuck to the stone.  The stone stands outside a church.
Give me some more mead."

"I don't think that's much of a wonder," remarked Sir Grummore.  "What
I wonder at is that they should allow such things to happen.  But you
can't tell nowadays, what with all these Saxon agitators."

"My dear fellah," cried Pellinore, getting excited again, "it's not
where the stone is, what, that I'm trying to tell you, but what is
written on it, what, where it is."

"What?"

"Why, on its pommel."

"Come on, Pellinore," said Sir Ector.  "You just sit quite still with
your face to the wall for a minute, and then tell us what you are
talkin' about.  Take it easy, old boy.  No need for hurryin'.  You sit
still and look at the wall, there's a good chap, and talk as slow as
you can."

"There are words written on this sword in this stone outside this
church," cried King Pellinore piteously, "and these words are as
follows.  Oh, do try to listen to me, you two, instead of interruptin'
all the time about nothin', for it makes a man's head go ever so."

"What are these words?" asked Kay.

"These words say this," said King Pellinore, "so far as I can
understand from that old friar of orders grey."

"Go on, do," said Kay, for the King had come to a halt.

"Go on," said Sir Ector, "what do these words on this sword in this
anvil in this stone outside this church, say?"

"Some red propaganda, no doubt," remarked Sir Grummore.

King Pellinore closed his eyes tight, extended his arms in both
directions, and announced in capital letters, "Whoso Pulleth Out This
Sword of this Stone and Anvil, is Rightwise King Born of All England."

"Who said that?" asked Sir Grummore.

"But the sword said it, like I tell you."

"Talkative weapon," remarked Sir Grummore sceptically.

"It was written on it," cried the King angrily.  "Written on it in
letters of gold."

"Why didn't you pull it out then?" asked Sir Grummore.

"But I tell you that I wasn't there.  All this that I am telling you
was told to me by that friar I was telling you of, like I tell you."

"Has this sword with this inscription been pulled out?" inquired Sir
Ector.

"No," whispered King Pellinore dramatically.  "That's where the whole
excitement comes in.  They can't pull this sword out at all, although
they have all been tryin' like fun, and so they have had to proclaim a
tournament all over England, for New Year's Day, so that the man who
comes to the tournament and pulls out the sword can be King of all
England for ever, what, I say?"

"Oh, father," cried Kay.  "The man who pulls that sword out of the
stone will be the King of England.  Can't we go to the tournament,
father, and have a shot?"

"Couldn't think of it," said Sir Ector.

"Long way to London," said Sir Grummore, shaking his head.

"My father went there once," said King Pellinore.

Kay said, "Oh, surely we could go?  When I am knighted I shall have to
go to a tournament somewhere, and this one happens at just the right
date.  All the best people will be there, and we should see the famous
knights and great kings.  It does not matter about the sword, of
course, but think of the tournament, probably the greatest there has
ever been in Gramarye, and all the things we should see and do.  Dear
father, let me go to this tourney, if you love me, so that I may bear
away the prize of all, in my maiden fight."

"But, Kay," said Sir Ector, "I have never been to London."

"All the more reason to go.  I believe that anybody who does not go for
a tournament like this will be proving that he has no noble blood in
his veins.  Think what people will say about us, if we do not go and
have a shot at that sword.  They will say that Sir Ector's family was
too vulgar and knew it had no chance."

"We all know the family has no chance," said Sir Ector, "that is, for
the sword."

"Lot of people in London," remarked Sir Grummore, with a wild surmise.
"So they say."

He took a deep breath and goggled at his host with eyes like marbles.

"And shops," added King Pellinore suddenly, also beginning to breathe
heavily.

"Dang it!" cried Sir Ector, bumping his horn mug on the table so that
it spilled.  "Let's all go to London, then, and see the new King!"

They rose up as one man.

"Why shouldn't I be as good a man as my father?" exclaimed King
Pellinore.

"Dash it all," cried Sir Grummore.  "After all, damn it all, it is the
capital!"

"Hurray!" shouted Kay.

"Lord have mercy," said the nurse.

At this moment the Wart came in with Merlyn, and everybody was too
excited to notice that, if he had not been grown up now, he would have
been on the verge of tears.

"Oh, Wart," cried Kay, forgetting for the moment that he was only
addressing his squire, and slipping back into the familiarity of their
boyhood.  "What do you think?  We are all going to London for a great
tournament on New Year's Day!"

"Are we?"

"Yes, and you will carry my shield and spears for the jousts, and I
shall win the palm of everybody and be a great knight!"

"Well, I am glad we are going," said the Wart, "for Merlyn is leaving
us too."

"Oh, we shan't need Merlyn."

"He is leaving us," repeated the Wart.

"Leavin' us?" asked Sir Ector.  "I thought it was we that were leavin'?"

"He is going away from the Forest Sauvage."

Sir Ector said, "Come now, Merlyn, what's all this about?  I don't
understand all this a bit."

"I have come to say Good-bye, Sir Ector," said the old magician.
"Tomorrow my pupil Kay will be knighted, and the next week my other
pupil will go away as his squire.  I have outlived my usefulness here,
and it is time to go."

"Now, now, don't say that," said Sir Ector.  "I think you're a jolly
useful chap whatever happens.  You just stay and teach me, or be the
librarian or something.  Don't you leave an old man alone, after the
children have flown."

"We shall all meet again," said Merlyn.  "There is no cause to be sad."

"Don't go," said Kay.

"I must go," replied their tutor.  "We have had a good time while we
were young, but it is in the nature of Time to fly.  There are many
things in other parts of the kingdom which I ought to be attending to
just now, and it is a specially busy time for me.  Come, Archimedes,
say Good-bye to the company."

"Good-bye," said Archimedes tenderly to the Wart.

"Good-bye," said the Wart without looking up at all.

"But you can't go," cried Sir Ector, "not without a month's notice."

"Can't I?" replied Merlyn, taking up the position always used by
philosophers who propose to dematerialize.  He stood on his toes, while
Archimedes held tight to his shoulder--began to spin on them slowly
like a top--spun faster and faster till he was only a blur of greyish
light--and in a few seconds there was no one there at all.

"Good-bye, Wart," cried two faint voices outside the solar window.

"Good-bye," said the Wart for the last time--and the poor fellow went
quickly out of the room.




_Chapter XXIII_

The knighting took place in a whirl of preparations.  Kay's sumptuous
bath had to be set up in the box-room, between two towel-horses and an
old box of selected games which contained a worn-out straw
dart-board--it was called flchette in those days--because all the
other rooms were full of packing.  The nurse spent the whole time
constructing new warm pants for everybody, on the principle that the
climate of any place outside the Forest Sauvage must be treacherous to
the extreme, and, as for the sergeant, he polished all the armour till
it was quite brittle and sharpened the swords till they were almost
worn away.

At last it was time to set out.

Perhaps, if you happen not to have lived in the Old England of the
twelfth century, or whenever it was, and in a remote castle on the
borders of the Marches at that, you will find it difficult to imagine
the wonders of their journey.

The road, or track, ran most of the time along the high ridges of the
hills or downs, and they could look down on either side of them upon
the desolate marshes where the snowy reeds sighed, and the ice
crackled, and the duck in the red sunsets quacked loud on the winter
air.  The whole country was like that.  Perhaps there would be a moory
marsh on one side of the ridge, and a forest of a hundred thousand
acres on the other, with all the great branches weighted in white.
They could sometimes see a wisp of smoke among the trees, or a huddle
of buildings far out among the impassable reeds, and twice they came to
quite respectable towns which had several inns to boast of, but on the
whole it was an England without civilization.  The better roads were
cleared of cover for a bow-shot on either side of them, lest the
traveller should be slain by hidden thieves.

They slept where they could, sometimes in the hut of some cottager who
was prepared to welcome them, sometimes in the castle of a brother
knight who invited them to refresh themselves, sometimes in the
firelight and fleas of a dirty little hovel with a bush tied to a pole
outside it--this was the sign-board used at that time by inns--and once
or twice on the open ground, all huddled together for warmth between
their grazing chargers.  Wherever they went and wherever they slept,
the east wind whistled in the reeds, and the geese went over high in
the starlight, honking at the stars.


London was full to the brim.  If Sir Ector had not been lucky enough to
own a little land in Pie Street, on which there stood a respectable
inn, they would have been hard put to it to find a lodging.  But he did
own it, and as a matter of fact drew most of his dividends from that
source, so they were able to get three beds between the five of them.
They thought themselves fortunate.

On the first day of the tournament, Sir Kay managed to get them on the
way to the lists at least an hour before the jousts could possibly
begin.  He had lain awake all night, imagining how he was going to beat
the best barons in England, and he had not been able to eat his
breakfast.  Now he rode at the front of the cavalcade, with pale
cheeks, and Wart wished there was something he could do to calm him
down.

For country people, who only knew the dismantled tilting ground of Sir
Ector's castle, the scene which met their eyes was ravishing.  It was a
huge green pit in the earth, about as big as the arena at a football
match.  It lay ten feet lower than the surrounding country, with
sloping banks, and the snow had been swept off it.  It had been kept
warm with straw, which had been cleared off that morning, and now the
close-worn grass sparkled green in the white landscape.  Round the
arena there was a world of colour so dazzling and moving and twinkling
as to make one blink one's eyes.  The wooden grandstands were painted
in scarlet and white.  The silk pavilions of famous people, pitched on
every side, were azure and green and saffron and chequered.  The
pennons and pennoncells which floated everywhere in the sharp wind were
flapping with every colour of the rainbow, as they strained and slapped
at their flag-poles, and the barrier down the middle of the arena
itself was done in chessboard squares of black and white.  Most of the
combatants and their friends had not yet arrived, but one could see
from those few who had come how the very people would turn the scene
into a bank of flowers, and how the armour would flash, and the
scalloped sleeves of the heralds jig in the wind, as they raised their
brazen trumpets to their lips to shake the fleecy clouds of winter with
joyances and fanfares.

"Good heavens!" cried Sir Kay.  "I have left my sword at home."

"Can't joust without a sword," said Sir Grummore.  "Quite irregular."

"Better go and fetch it," said Sir Ector.  "You have time."

"My squire will do," said Sir Kay.  "What a damned mistake to make!
Here, squire, ride hard back to the inn and fetch my sword.  You shall
have a shilling if you fetch it in time."

The Wart went as pale as Sir Kay was, and looked as if he were going to
strike him.  Then he said, "It shall be done, master," and turned his
ambling palfrey against the stream of newcomers.  He began to push his
way toward their hostelry as best he might.

"To offer me money!" cried the Wart to himself.  "To look down at this
beastly little donkey-affair off his great charger and to call me
Squire!  Oh, Merlyn, give me patience with the brute, and stop me from
throwing his filthy shilling in his face."

When he got to the inn it was closed.  Everybody had thronged to see
the famous tournament, and the entire household had followed after the
mob.  Those were lawless days and it was not safe to leave your
house--or even to go to sleep in it--unless you were certain that it
was impregnable.  The wooden shutters bolted over the downstairs
windows were two inches thick, and the doors were double-barred.

"Now what do I do," asked the Wart, "to earn my shilling?"

He looked ruefully at the blind little inn, and began to laugh.

"Poor Kay," he said.  "All that shilling stuff was only because he was
scared and miserable, and now he has good cause to be.  Well, he shall
have a sword of some sort if I have to break into the Tower of London.

"How does one get hold of a sword?" he continued.  "Where can I steal
one?  Could I waylay some knight, even if I am mounted on an ambling
pad, and take his weapons by force?  There must be some swordsmith or
armourer in a great town like this, whose shop would be still open."

He turned his mount and cantered off along the street.  There was a
quiet churchyard at the end of it, with a kind of square in front of
the church door.  In the middle of the square there was a heavy stone
with an anvil on it, and a fine new sword was stuck through the anvil.

"Well," said the Wart, "I suppose it is some sort of war memorial, but
it will have to do.  I am sure nobody would grudge Kay a war memorial,
if they knew his desperate straits."

He tied his reins round a post of the lych-gate, strode up the gravel
path, and took hold of the sword.

"Come, sword," he said.  "I must cry your mercy and take you for a
better cause.

"This is extraordinary," said the Wart.  "I feel strange when I have
hold of this sword, and I notice everything much more clearly.  Look at
the beautiful gargoyles of the church, and of the monastery which it
belongs to.  See how splendidly all the famous banners in the aisle are
waving.  How nobly that yew holds up the red flakes of its timbers to
worship God.  How clean the snow is.  I can smell something like
fetherfew and sweet briar--and is it music that I hear?"

It was music, whether of pan-pipes or of recorders, and the light in
the churchyard was so clear, without being dazzling, that one could
have picked a pin out twenty yards away.

"There is something in this place," said the Wart.  "There are people.
Oh, people, what do you want?"

Nobody answered him, but the music was loud and the light beautiful.

"People," cried the Wart, "I must take this sword.  It is not for me,
but for Kay.  I will bring it back."

There was still no answer, and Wart turned back to the anvil.  He saw
the golden letters, which he did not read, and the jewels on the
pommel, flashing in the lovely light.

"Come, sword," said the Wart.

He took hold of the handles with both hands, and strained against the
stone.  There was a melodious consort on the recorders, but nothing
moved.

The Wart let go of the handles, when they were beginning to bite into
the palms of his hands, and stepped back, seeing stars.

"It is well fixed," he said.

He took hold of it again and pulled with all his might.  The music
played more strongly, and the light all about the churchyard glowed
like amethysts; but the sword still stuck.

"Oh, Merlyn," cried the Wart, "help me to get this weapon."

There was a kind of rushing noise, and a long chord played along with
it.  All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends.  They
rose over the church wall all together, like the Punch and Judy ghosts
of remembered days, and there were badgers and nightingales and vulgar
crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and
dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkindrills and hedgehogs and
griffins and the thousand other animals he had met.  They loomed round
the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke
solemnly in turn.  Some of them had come from the banners in the
church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and
the sky and the fields about--but all, down to the smallest shrew
mouse, had come to help on account of love.  Wart felt his power grow.

"Put your back into it," said a Luce (or pike) off one of the heraldic
banners, "as you once did when I was going to snap you up.  Remember
that power springs from the nape of the neck."

"What about those forearms," asked a Badger gravely, "that are held
together by a chest?  Come along, my dear embryo, and find your tool."

A Merlin sitting at the top of the yew tree cried out, "Now then,
Captain Wart, what is the first law of the foot?  I thought I once
heard something about never letting go?"

"Don't work like a stalling woodpecker," urged a Tawny Owl
affectionately.  "Keep up a steady effort, my duck, and you will have
it yet."

A white-front said, "Now, Wart, if you were once able to fly the great
North Sea, surely you can co-ordinate a few little wing-muscles here
and there?  Fold your powers together, with the spirit of your mind,
and it will come out like butter.  Come along, Homo sapiens, for all we
humble friends of yours are waiting here to cheer."

The Wart walked up to the great sword for the third time.  He put out
his right hand softly and drew it out as gently as from a scabbard.


There was a lot of cheering, a noise like a hurdy-gurdy which went on
and on.  In the middle of this noise, after a long time, he saw Kay and
gave him the sword.  The people at the tournament were making a
frightful row.

"But this is not my sword," said Sir Kay.

"It was the only one I could get," said the Wart.  "The inn was locked."

"It is a nice-looking sword.  Where did you get it?"

"I found it stuck in a stone, outside a church."

Sir Kay had been watching the tilting nervously, waiting for his turn.
He had not paid much attention to his squire.

"That is a funny place to find one," he said.

"Yes, it was stuck through an anvil."

"What?" cried Sir Kay, suddenly rounding upon him.  "Did you just say
this sword was stuck in a stone?"

"It was," said the Wart.  "It was a sort of war memorial."

Sir Kay stared at him for several seconds in amazement, opened his
mouth, shut it again, licked his lips, then turned his back and plunged
through the crowd.  He was looking for Sir Ector, and the Wart followed
after him.

"Father," cried Sir Kay, "come here a moment."

"Yes, my boy," said Sir Ector.  "Splendid falls these professional
chaps do manage.  Why, what's the matter, Kay?  You look as white as a
sheet."

"Do you remember that sword which the King of England would pull out?"

"Yes."

"Well, here it is.  I have it.  It is in my hand.  I pulled it out."


Sir Ector did not say anything silly.  He looked at Kay and he looked
at the Wart.  Then he stared at Kay again, long and lovingly, and said,
"We will go back to the church."

"Now then, Kay," he said, when they were at the church door.  He looked
at his first-born kindly, but straight between the eyes.  "Here is the
stone, and you have the sword.  It will make you the King of England.
You are my son that I am proud of, and always will be, whatever you do.
Will you promise me that you took it out by your own might?"

Kay looked at his father.  He also looked at the Wart and at the sword.

Then he handed the sword to the Wart quite quietly.

He said, "I am a liar.  Wart pulled it out."

As far as the Wart was concerned, there was a time after this in which
Sir Ector kept telling him to put the sword back into the stone--which
he did--and in which Sir Ector and Kay then vainly tried to take it
out.  The Wart took it out for them, and stuck it back again once or
twice.  After this, there was another time which was more painful.

He saw that his dear guardian was looking quite old and powerless, and
that he was kneeling down with difficulty on a gouty knee.

"Sir," said Sir Ector, without looking up, although he was speaking to
his own boy.

"Please do not do this, father," said the Wart, kneeling down also.
"Let me help you up, Sir Ector, because you are making me unhappy."

"Nay, nay, my lord," said Sir Ector, with some very feeble old tears.
"I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote well ye are of
an higher blood than I wend ye were."

"Plenty of people have told me you are not my father," said the Wart,
"but it does not matter a bit."

"Sir," said Sir Ector humbly, "will ye be my good and gracious lord
when ye are King?"

"Don't!" said the Wart.

"Sir," said Sir Ector, "I will ask no more of you but that you will
make my son, your foster-brother, Sir Kay, seneschal of all your lands?"

Kay was kneeling down too, and it was more than the Wart could bear.

"Oh, do stop," he cried.  "Of course he can be seneschal, if I have got
to be this King, and, oh, father, don't kneel down like that, because
it breaks my heart.  Please get up, Sir Ector, and don't make
everything so horrible.  Oh, dear, oh, dear, I wish I had never seen
that filthy sword at all."

And the Wart also burst into tears.




_Chapter XXIV_

Perhaps there ought to be a chapter about the coronation.  The barons
naturally kicked up a fuss, but, as the Wart was prepared to go on
putting the sword into the stone and pulling it out again till
Doomsday, and as there was nobody else who could do the thing at all,
in the end they had to give in.  A few of the Gaelic ones revolted, who
were quelled later, but in the main the people of England and the
partizans like Robin were glad to settle down.  They were sick of the
anarchy which had been their portion under Uther Pendragon: sick of
overlords and feudal giants, of knights who did what they pleased, of
racial discrimination, and of the rule of Might as Right.

The coronation was a splendid ceremony.  What was still more splendid,
it was like a birthday or Christmas Day.  Everybody sent presents to
the Wart, for his prowess in having learned to pull swords out of
stones, and several burghers of the City of London asked him to help
them in taking stoppers out of unruly bottles, unscrewing taps which
had got stuck, and in other household emergencies which had got beyond
their control.  The Dog Boy and Wat clubbed together and sent him a
mixture for the distemper, which contained quinine and was absolutely
priceless.  Lyo-lyok sent him some arrows made with her own feathers.
Cavall came simply, and gave him his heart and soul.  The Nurse of the
Forest Sauvage sent a cough mixture, thirty dozen handkerchiefs all
marked, and a pair of combinations with a double chest.  The sergeant
sent him his crusading medals, to be preserved by the nation.  Hob lay
awake in agony all night, and sent off Cully with brand-new white
leather jesses, silver varvels and silver bell.  Robin and Marian went
on an expedition which took them six weeks, and sent a whole gown made
out of the skins of pine martens.  Little John added a yew bow, seven
feet long, which he was quite unable to draw.  An anonymous hedgehog
sent four or five dirty leaves with fleas on them.  The Questing Beast
and King Pellinore put their heads together and sent some of their most
perfect fewmets, wrapped up in the green leaves of spring, in a golden
horn with a red velvet baldrick.  Sir Grummore sent a gross of spears,
with the old school crest on all of them.  The cooks, tenants, villeins
and retainers of The Castle of the Forest Sauvage, who were given an
angel each and sent up for the ceremony in an ox-drawn char-a-banc at
Sir Ector's charge, brought an enormous silver model of cow Crumbrocke,
who had won the championship for the third time, and Ralph Passelewe to
sing at the coronation banquet.  Archimedes sent his own
great-great-grandson, so that he could sit on the back of the King's
throne at dinner, and make messes on the floor.  The Lord Mayor and
Aldermen of the City of London subscribed for a spacious
aquarium-mews-cum-menagerie at the Tower in which all the creatures
were starved one day a week for the good of their stomachs--and here,
for the fresh food, good bedding, constant attention, and every modern
convenience, the Wart's friends resorted in their old age, on wing and
foot and fin, for the sunset of their happy lives.  The citizens of
London sent fifty million pounds, to keep the menagerie up, and the
Ladies of Britain constructed a pair of black velvet carpet slippers
with the Wart's initials embroidered in gold.  Kay sent his own record
griffin, with honest love.  There were many other tasteful presents,
from various barons, archbishops, princes, landgraves, tributary kings,
corporations, popes, sultans, royal commissions, urban district
councils, czars, beys, mahatmas, and so forth, but the nicest present
of all was sent most affectionately by his own guardian, old Sir Ector.
This present was a dunce's cap, rather like a pharaoh's serpent, which
you lit at the top end.  The Wart lit it, and watched it grow.  When
the flame had quite gone out, Merlyn was standing before him in his
magic hat.

"Well, Wart," said Merlyn, "here we are--or were--again.  How nice you
look in your crown.  I was not allowed to tell you before, or since,
but your father was, or will be, King Uther Pendragon, and it was I
myself, disguised as a beggar, who first carried you to Sir Ector's
castle, in your golden swaddling bands.  I know all about your birth
and parentage and who gave you your real name.  I know the sorrows
before you, and the joys, and how there will never again be anybody who
dares to call you by the friendly name of Wart.  In future it will be
your glorious doom to take up the burden and to enjoy the nobility of
your proper title: so now I shall crave the privilege of being the very
first of your subjects to address you with it--as my dear liege lord,
King Arthur."

"Will you stay with me for a long time?" asked the Wart, not
understanding much of this.

"Yes, Wart," said Merlyn.  "Or rather, as I should say (or is it have
said?), Yes, King Arthur."



EXPLICIT LIBER PRIMUS




_Incipit Liber Secundus_

THE QUEEN OF AIR AND DARKNESS



  "When shall I be dead and rid
  Of the wrong my father did?
  How long, how long, till spade and hearse
  Put to sleep my mother's curse?"




_Chapter I_

There was a round tower with a weather-cock on it.  The weather-cock
was a carrion crow, with an arrow in its beak to point to the wind.

There was a circular room at the top of the tower, curiously
uncomfortable.  It was draughty.  There was a closet on the east side
which had a hole in the floor.  This hole commanded the outer doors of
the tower, of which there were two, and people could drop stones
through it when they were besieged.  Unfortunately the wind used to
come up through the hole and go pouring out of the unglazed
shot-windows or up the chimney--unless it happened to be blowing the
other way, in which case it went downward.  It was like a wind tunnel.
A second nuisance was that the room was full of peat-smoke, not from
its own fire but from the fire in the room below.  The complicated
system of draughts sucked the smoke down the chimney.  The stone walls
sweated in damp weather.  The furniture itself was uncomfortable.  It
consisted solely of heaps of stones--which were handy for throwing down
the hole--together with a few rusty Genoese cross-bows with their bolts
and a pile of turfs for the unlit fire.  The four children had no bed.
If it had been a square room, they might have had a cupboard bed, but,
as it was, they had to sleep on the floor--where they covered
themselves with straw and plaids as best they could.

The children had erected an amateur tent over their heads, out of the
plaids, and under this they were lying close together, telling a story.
They could hear their mother stoking the fire in the room below, which
made them whisper for fear that she could hear.  It was not exactly
that they were afraid of being beaten if she came up.  They adored her
dumbly and uncritically, because her character was stronger than
theirs.  Nor had they been forbidden to talk after bedtime.  It was
more as if she had brought them up--perhaps through indifference or
through laziness or even through some kind of possessive cruelty--with
an imperfect sense of right and wrong.  It was as if they could never
know when they were being good or when they were being bad.

They were whispering in Gaelic.  Or rather, they were whispering in a
strange mixture of Gaelic and of the Old Language of chivalry--which
had been taught to them because they would need it when they were
grown.  They had little English.  In later years, when they became
famous knights at the court of the great king, they were to speak
English perfectly--all of them except Gawaine, who, as the head of the
clan, was to cling to a Scots accent on purpose, to show that he was
not ashamed of his birth.

Gawaine was telling the story, because he was the eldest.  They lay
together, like thin, strange, secret frogs, their bodies well-boned and
ready to fill out into toughness as soon as they might be given decent
nourishment.  They were fair-haired.  Gawaine's was bright red and
Gareth's whiter than hay.  They ranged from ten years old to fourteen,
and Gareth was the youngest of the four.  Gaheris was a stolid child.
Agravaine, the next after Gawaine, was the bully of the family--he was
shifty, inclined to cry, and frightened of pain.  It was because he had
a good imagination and used his head more than the others.

"Long time past, my heroes," Gawaine was saying, "before ourselves were
born or thought of, there was a beautiful grandmother at us, called
Igraine."

"She is the Countess of Cornwall," said Agravaine.

"Our grandmother is the Countess of Cornwall," agreed Gawaine, "and the
bloody King of England fell in love with her."

"His name was Uther Pendragon," said Agravaine.

"Who is at telling this story?" asked Gareth angrily.  "Close your
mouth."

"King Uther Pendragon," continued Gawaine, "let send for the Earl and
Countess of Cornwall----"

"Our Grandfather and Granny," said Gaheris.

"--and he proclaimed to them that they must stay with him at his house
in the Tower of London.  Then, when they were at staying with him
therein, he asked our Granny that she would become the wife of himself,
instead of being with our Grandfather at all.  But the chaste and
beautiful Countess of Cornwall----"

"Granny," said Gaheris.

Gareth exclaimed: "Sorrow take it, will you give us peace?"  There was
a muffled argument, punctuated by squeaks, bumps and complaining
remarks.

"The chaste and beautiful Countess of Cornwall," resumed Gawaine,
"spurned the advances of King Uther Pendragon, and she told our
Grandfather about it.  She said: 'I suppose we were sent for that I
should be dishonoured.  Wherefore, husband, I counsel you that we
depart from hence suddenly, that we may ride all night to our own
castle.'  So they went out of the King's rath in the middle night----"

"At dead of night," Gareth corrected.

"--when all the people of the house had gone on sleep, and there they
saddled their prancing, fire-eyed, swift-footed, symmetrical,
large-lipped, small-headed, vehement steeds, by the light of a dark
lantern, and they rode away into Cornwall, as fast as they could go."

"It was a terrible ride," said Gaheris.

"They killed the horses underneath them," said Agravaine.

"So they did not, then," said Gareth.  "Our Grandfather and Granny
would not have ridden any horses to kill them."

"Did they?" asked Gaheris.

"No, they did not," said Gawaine, after considering.  "But they nearly
did so."

He went on with the story.

"When King Uther Pendragon learned what had happened in the morning, he
was wonderly wroth."

"Wood wroth," suggested Gareth.

"Wonderly wroth," said Gawaine.  "King Uther Pendragon was wonderly
wroth.  He said, 'I will have that Earl of Cornwall's head in a
pie-dish, by my halidome!'  So he sent our Grandfather a letter which
bid him to stuff him and garnish him, for within forty days he would
fetch him out of the strongest castle that he had!"

"There were two castles at him," said Agravaine haughtily.  "They were
the Castle Tintagil and the Castle Terrabil."

"So the Earl of Cornwall put our Granny in Tintagil, and he himself
went into Terrabil, and King Uther Pendragon came to lay them siege."

"And there," cried Gareth, unable to contain himself, "the king pight
many pavilions, and there was great war made on both parties, and much
people slain!"

"A thousand?" suggested Gaheris.

"Two thousand at least," said Agravaine.  "We of the Gael would not
have slain less than two thousand.  In truth, it was a million
probably."

"So when our Grandfather and Granny were winning the sieges, and it
looked as if King Uther would be utterly defeated, there came along a
wicked magician called Merlyn----"

"A nigromancer," said Gareth.

"And this nigromancer, would you believe it, by means of his infernal
arts, succeeded in putting the treacherous Uther Pendragon inside our
Granny's Castle.  Granda immediately made a sortie out of Terrabil, but
he was slain in the battle----"

"Treacherously."

"And the poor Countess of Cornwall----"

"The chaste and beautiful Igraine----"

"Our Granny----"

"----was captured prisoner by the blackhearted, southron, faithless
King of the Dragon, and then, in spite of it that she had three
beautiful daughters already whatever----"

"The lovely Cornwall Sisters."

"Aunt Elaine."

"Aunt Morgan."

"And Mammy."

"And if she had these lovely daughters, she was forced into marrying
the King of England--the man who had slain her husband!"

They considered the enormous English wickedness in silence, overwhelmed
by its _dnouement_.  It was their mother's favourite story, on the
rare occasions when she troubled to tell them one, and they had learned
it by heart.  Finally Agravaine quoted a Gaelic proverb, which she had
also taught them.

"Four things," he whispered, "that a Lothian cannot trust--a cow's
horn, a horse's hoof, a dog's snarl, and an Englishman's laugh."

They moved in the straw uneasily, listening to some secret movements in
the room below.


The room underneath the story-tellers was lit by a single candle and by
the saffron light of its peat fire.  It was a poor room for a royal
one, but at least it had a bed in it--the great four-poster which was
used as a throne during the daytime.  An iron cauldron with three legs
was boiling over the fire.  The candle stood in front of a sheet of
polished brass, which served as a mirror.  There were two living beings
in the chamber, a Queen and a cat.  Both of them had black hair and
blue eyes.

The black cat lay on its side in the firelight as if it were dead.
This was because its legs were tied together, like the legs of a roe
deer which is to be carried home from the hunt.  It had given up
struggling and now lay gazing into the fire with slit eyes and heaving
sides, curiously resigned.  Or else it was exhausted--for animals know
when they have come to the end.  Most of them have a dignity about
dying, denied to human beings.  This cat, with the small flames dancing
in its oblique eyes, was perhaps seeing the pageant of its past eight
lives, reviewing them with an animal's stoicism, beyond hope or fear.

The Queen picked up the cat.  She was trying a well-known piseog to
amuse herself, or at any rate to pass the time while the men were away
at the war.  It was a method of becoming invisible.  She was not a
serious witch like her sister Morgan le Fay--for her head was too empty
to take any great art seriously, even if it were the Black one.  She
was doing it because the little magics ran in her blood--as they did
with all the women of her race.

In the boiling water, the cat gave some horrible convulsions and a
dreadful cry.  Its wet fur bobbed in the steam, gleaming like the side
of a speared whale, as it tried to leap or to swim with its bound feet.
Its mouth opened hideously, showing the whole of its pink gullet, and
the sharp, white cat-teeth, like thorns.  After the first shriek it was
not able to articulate, but only to stretch its jaws.  Later it was
dead.

Queen Morgause of Lothian and Orkney sat beside the cauldron and
waited.  Occasionally she stirred the cat with a wooden spoon.  The
stench of boiling fur began to fill the room.  A watcher would have
seen, in the flattering peat light, what an exquisite creature she was
tonight: her deep, big eyes, her hair glinting with dark lustre, her
full body, and her faint air of watchfulness as she listened for the
whispering in the room above.


Gawaine said: "Revenge!"

"They had done no harm to King Pendragon."

"They had only asked to be left in peace."

It was the unfairness of the rape of their Cornish grandmother which
was hurting Gareth--the picture of weak and innocent people victimized
by a resistless tyranny--the old tyranny of the Gall--which was felt
like a personal wrong by every crofter of the Islands.  Gareth was a
generous boy.  He hated the idea of strength against weakness.  It made
his heart swell, as if he were going to suffocate.  Gawaine, on the
other hand, was angry because it had been against his family.  He did
not think it was wrong for strength to have its way, but only that it
was intensely wrong for anything to succeed against his own clan.  He
was neither clever nor sensitive, but he was loyal--stubbornly
sometimes, and even annoyingly and stupidly so in later life.  For him
it was then as it was always to be: Up Orkney, Right or Wrong.  The
third brother, Agravaine, was moved because it was a matter which
concerned his mother.  He had curious feelings about her, which he kept
to himself.  As for Gaheris, he did and felt what the others did.


The cat had come to pieces.  The long boiling had shredded its meat
away until there was nothing in the cauldron except a deep scum of hair
and grease and gobbets.  Underneath, the white bones revolved in the
eddies of the water, the heavy ones lying still and the airy membranes
lifting gracefully, like leaves in an autumn wind.  The Queen,
wrinkling her nose slightly in the thick stench of unsalted broth,
strained the liquid into a second pot.  On top of the flannel strainer
there was left a sediment of cat, a sodden mass of matted hair and meat
shreds and the delicate bone.  She blew on the sediment and began
turning it over with the handle of the spoon, prodding it to let the
heat out.  Later, she was able to sort it with her fingers.

The Queen knew that every pure black cat had a certain bone in it,
which, if it were held in the mouth after boiling the cat alive, was
able to make you invisible.  But nobody knew precisely, even in those
days, which the bone was.  This was why the magic had to be done in
front of a mirror, so that the right one could be found by practice.

It was not that Morgause courted invisibility--indeed, she would have
detested it, because she was beautiful.  But the men were away.  It was
something to do, an easy and well-known charm.  Besides, it was an
excuse for lingering with the mirror.

The Queen scraped the remains of her cat into two heaps, one of them a
neat pile of warm bones, the other a miscellaneous lump which softly
steamed.  Then she chose one of the bones and lifted it to her red
lips, cocking the little finger.  She held it between her teeth and
stood in front of the polished brass, looking at herself with sleepy
pleasure.  She threw the bone into the fire and fetched another.

There was nobody to see her.  It was strange, in these circumstances,
the way in which she turned and turned, from mirror to bone-pile,
always putting a bone in her mouth, and looking at herself to see if
she had vanished, and throwing the bone away.  She moved so gracefully,
as if she were dancing, as if there really was somebody to see her, or
as if it were enough that she should see herself.

Finally, but before she had tested all the bones, she lost interest.
She threw the last ones down impatiently and tipped the mess out of the
window, not caring where it fell.  Then she smoored the fire, stretched
herself on the big bed with a strange motion, and lay there in the
darkness for a long time without sleeping--her body moving
discontentedly.


"And this, my heroes," concluded Gawaine, "is the reason why we of
Cornwall and Orkney must be against the Kings of England ever more, and
most of all against the clan Mac Pendragon."

"It is why our Da has gone away to fight against King Arthur whatever,
for Arthur is a Pendragon.  Our Mammy said so."

"And we must keep the feud living forever," said Agravaine, "because
Mammy is a Cornwall.  Dame Igraine is our Granny."

"We must avenge our family."

"Because our Mammy is the most beautiful woman in the high-ridged,
extensive, ponderous, pleasantly-turning world."

"And because we love her."

Indeed, they did love her.  Perhaps we all give the best of our hearts
uncritically--to those who hardly think about us in return.




_Chapter II_

On the battlements of their castle at Camelot, during an interval of
peace between the two Gaelic Wars, the young king of England was
standing with his tutor, looking across the purple wastes of evening.
A soft light flooded the land below them, and the slow river wound
between venerable abbey and stately castle, while the flaming water of
sunset reflected spires and turrets and pennoncells hanging motionless
in the calm air.

The world was laid out before the two watchers like a toy, for they
were on a high keep which dominated the town.  At their feet they could
see the grass of the outer bailey--it was horrible looking down on
it--and a small foreshortened man, with two buckets on a yoke, making
his way across to the menagerie.  They could see, further off at the
gatehouse, which was not so horrible to look at because it was not
vertically below, the night guard taking over from the sergeant.  They
were clicking their heels and saluting and presenting pikes and
exchanging passwords as merrily as a marriage bell--but it was done in
silence for the two, because it was so far below.  They looked like
lead soldiers, the little gallow-glasses, and their footsteps could not
sound upon the luscious sheep-nibbled green.  Then, outside the curtain
wall, there was the distant noise of old wives bargaining, and brats
bawling, and corporals quaffing, and a few goats mixed with it, and two
or three lepers in white hoods ringing bells as they walked, and the
swishing robes of nuns who were kindly visiting the poor, two by two,
and a fight going on between some gentlemen who were interested in
horses.  On the other side of the river, which ran directly beneath the
castle wall, there was a man ploughing in the fields, with his plough
tied to the horse's tail.  The wooden plough squeaked.  There was a
silent person near him, fishing for salmon with worms--the rivers were
not polluted in those days--and further off, there was a donkey giving
his musical concert to the coming night.  All these noises came up to
the two on the tower smally, as though they were listening through the
wrong end of a megaphone.

Arthur was a young man, just on the threshold of life.  He had fair
hair and a stupid face, or at any rate there was a lack of cunning in
it.  It was an open face, with kind eyes and a reliable or faithful
expression, as though he were a good learner who enjoyed being alive
and did not believe in original sin.  He had never been unjustly
treated, for one thing, so he was kind to other people.

The King was dressed in a robe of velvet which had belonged to Uther
the Conqueror, his father, trimmed with the beards of fourteen kings
who had been vanquished in the olden days.  Unfortunately some of these
kings had had red hair, some black, some pepper-and-salt, while their
growth of beard had been uneven.  The trimming looked like a feather
boa.  The moustaches were stuck on round the buttons.

Merlyn had a white beard which reached to his middle, horn-rimmed
spectacles, and a conical hat.  He wore it in compliment to the Saxon
serfs of the country, whose national headgear was either a kind of
diving-cap, or the Phrygian cap, or else this cone of straw.

The two of them were speaking sometimes, as the words came to them,
between spells of listening to the evening.

"Well," said Arthur, "I must say it is nice to be a king.  It was a
splendid battle."

"Do you think so?"

"Of course it was splendid.  Look at the way Lot of Orkney ran, after I
had begun to use Excalibur."

"He got you down first."

"That was nothing.  It was because I was not using Excalibur.  As soon
as I drew my trusty sword they ran like rabbits."

"They will come again," said the magician, "all six.  The Kings of
Orkney, Garloth, Gore, Scotland, The Tower, and the Hundred Knights
have started already--in fact, the Gaelic Confederation.  You must
remember that your claim to the throne is hardly a conventional one."

"Let them come," replied the King.  "I don't mind.  I will beat them
properly this time, and then we will see who is master."

The old man crammed his beard in his mouth and began to chew it, as he
generally did when he was put about.  He bit through one of the hairs,
which stuck between two teeth.  He tried to lick it off, then took it
out with his fingers.  Finally he began curling it into two points.

"I suppose you will learn some day," he said, "but God knows it is
heartbreaking, uphill work."

"Oh?"

"Yes," cried Merlyn passionately.  "Oh? oh? oh?  That is all you can
say.  Oh? oh? oh?  Like a schoolboy."

"I shall cut off your head if you are not careful."

"Cut it off.  It would be a good thing if you did.  I should not have
to keep on tutoring, at any rate."

Arthur shifted his elbow on the battlement and looked at his ancient
friend.

"What is the matter, Merlyn?" he asked.  "Have I been doing something
wrong?  I am sorry if I have."

The magician uncurled his beard and blew his nose.

"It is not so much what you are doing," he said.  "It is how you are
thinking.  If there is one thing I can't stand, it is stupidity.  I
always say that stupidity is the Sin against the Holy Ghost."

"I know you do."

"Now you are being sarcastic."

The King took him by the shoulder and turned him round.  "Look," he
said, "what is wrong?  Are you in a bad temper?  If I have done
something stupid, tell me.  Don't be in a bad temper."

It had the effect of making the aged nigromant angrier than before.

"Tell you!" he exclaimed.  "And what is going to happen when there is
nobody to tell you?  Are you never going to think for yourself?  What
is going to happen when I am locked up in this wretched tumulus of
mine, I should like to know?"

"I didn't know there was a tumulus in it."

"Oh, hang the tumulus!  What tumulus?  What am I supposed to be talking
about?"

"Stupidity," said Arthur.  "It was stupidity when we started."

"Exactly."

"Well, it's no good saying Exactly.  You were going to say something
about it."

"I don't know what I was going to say about it.  You put one in such a
passion with all your this and that, that I am sure nobody would know
what they were talking about for two minutes together.  How did it
begin?"

"It began about the battle."

"Now I remember," said Merlyn.  "That is exactly where it did begin."

"I said it was a good battle."

"So I recollect."

"Well, it was a good battle," he repeated defensively.  "It was a jolly
battle, and I won it myself, and it was fun."

The magician's eyes veiled themselves like a vulture's, as he vanished
inside his mind.  There was silence on the battlements for several
minutes, while a pair of peregrines that were being hacked in a nearby
field flew over their heads in a playful chase, crying out Kik-kik-kik,
their bells ringing.  Merlyn looked out of his eyes once more.

"It was clever of you," he said slowly, "to win the battle."

Arthur had been taught that he ought to be modest, and he was too
simple to notice that the vulture was going to pounce.

"Oh, well.  It was luck."

"Very clever," repeated Merlyn.  "How many of your kerns were killed?"

"I don't remember."

"No."

"Kay said----"

The King stopped in the middle of the sentence, and looked at him.

"Well," he said.  "It was not fun, then.  I had not thought."

"The tally was more than seven hundred.  They were all kerns, of
course.  None of the knights were injured, except the one who broke his
leg falling off the horse."

When he saw that Arthur was not going to answer, the old fellow went on
in a bitter voice.

"I was forgetting," he added, "that you had some really nasty bruises."

Arthur glared at his finger-nails.

"I hate you when you are a prig."

Merlyn was charmed.

"That's the spirit," he said, putting his arm through the King's and
smiling cheerfully.  "That's more like it.  Stand up for yourself,
that's the ticket.  Asking advice is the fatal thing.  Besides, I won't
be here to advise you, fairly soon."

"What is this you keep talking about, about not being here, and the
tumulus and so on?"

"It is nothing.  I am due to fall in love with a girl called Nimue in a
short time, and then she learns my spells and locks me up in a cave for
several centuries.  It is one of those things which are going to
happen."

"But, Merlyn, how horrible!  To be stuck in a cave for centuries like a
toad in a hole!  We must do something about it."

"Nonsense," said the magician.  "What was I talking about?"

"About this maiden...."

"I was talking about advice, and how you must never take it.  Well, I
am going to give you some now.  I advise you to think about battles,
and about your realm of Gramarye, and about the sort of things a king
has to do.  Will you do that?"

"I will.  Of course I will.  But about this girl who learns your
spells...."

"You see, it is a question of the people, as well as of the kings.
When you said about the battle being a lovely one, you were thinking
like your father.  I want you to think like yourself, so that you will
be a credit to all this education I have been giving you--afterwards,
when I am only an old man locked up in a hole."

"Merlyn!"

"There, there!  I was playing for sympathy.  Never mind.  I said it for
effect.  As a matter of fact, it will be charming to have a rest for a
few hundred years, and, as for Nimue, I am looking backward to her a
good deal.  No, no, the important thing is this thinking-for-yourself
business and the matter of battles.  Have you ever thought seriously
about the state of your country, for instance, or are you going to go
on all your life being like Uther Pendragon?  After all, you are the
King of the place."

"I have not thought very much."

"No.  Then let me do some thinking with you.  Suppose we think about
your Gaelic friend, Sir Bruce Sans Piti."

"That fellow!"

"Exactly.  And why do you say it like that?"

"He is a swine.  He goes murdering maidens--and, as soon as a real
knight turns up to rescue them, he gallops off for all he is worth.  He
breeds special fast horses so that nobody can catch him, and he stabs
people in the back.  He's a marauder.  I would kill him at once if I
could catch him."

"Well," said Merlyn, "I don't think he is very different from the
others.  What is all this chivalry, anyway?  It simply means being rich
enough to have a castle and a suit of armour, and then, when you have
them, you make the Saxon people do what you like.  The only risk you
run is of getting a few bruises if you happen to come across another
knight.  Look at that tilt you saw between Pellinore and Grummore, when
you were small.  It is this armour that does it.  All the barons can
slice the poor people about as much as they want, and it is a day's
work to hurt each other, and the result is that the country is
devastated.  Might is Right, that's the motto.  Bruce Sans Piti is
only an example of the general situation.  Look at Lot and Nentres and
Uriens and all that Gaelic crew, fighting against you for the Kingdom.
Pulling swords out of stones is not a legal proof of paternity, I
admit, but the kings of the Old Ones are not fighting you about that.
They have rebelled, although you are their feudal sovereign, simply
because the throne is insecure.  England's difficulty, we used to say,
is Ireland's opportunity.  This is their chance to pay off racial
scores, and to have some blood-letting as sport, and to make a bit of
money in ransoms.  Their turbulence does not cost them anything
themselves because they are dressed in armour--and you seem to enjoy it
too.  But look at the country.  Look at the barns burnt, and dead men's
legs sticking out of ponds, and horses with swelled bellies by the
roadside, and mills falling down, and money buried, and nobody daring
to walk abroad with gold or ornaments on their clothes.  That is
chivalry nowadays.  That is the Uther Pendragon touch.  And then you
talk about a battle being fun!"

"I was thinking of myself."

"I know."

"I ought to have thought of the people who had no armour."

"Quite."

"Might isn't Right, is it, Merlyn?"

"Aha!" replied the magician, beaming.  "Aha!  You are a cunning lad,
Arthur, but you won't catch your old tutor like that.  You are trying
to put me in a passion by making me do the thinking.  But I am not to
be caught.  I am too old a fox for that.  You will have to think the
rest yourself.  Is might right--and if not, why not, give reasons and
draw a plan.  Besides, what are you going to do about it?"

"What..." began the King, but he saw the gathering frown.

"Very well," he said.  "I will think about it."

And he began thinking, stroking his upper lip, where the moustache was
going to be.

There was a small incident before they left the keep.  The man who had
been carrying the two buckets to the menagerie came back with his
buckets empty.  He passed directly under them, looking small, on his
way to the kitchen door.  Arthur, who had been playing with a loose
stone which he had dislodged from one of the machicolations, got tired
of thinking and leaned over with the stone in his hand.

"How small Curselaine looks."

"He is tiny."

"I wonder what would happen if I dropped this stone on his head?"

Merlyn measured the distance.

"At thirty-two feet per second," he said, "I think it would kill him
dead.  Four hundred _g_ is enough to shatter the skull."

"I have never killed anybody like that," said the boy, in an
inquisitive tone.

Merlyn was watching.

"You are the King," he said.

Then he added, "Nobody can say anything to you if you try."

Arthur stayed motionless, leaning out with the stone in his hand.
Then, without his body moving, his eyes slid sideways to meet his
tutor's.

The stone knocked Merlyn's hat off as clean as a whistle, and the old
gentleman chased him featly down the stairs, waving his wand of lignum
vitae.

Arthur was happy.  Like the man in Eden before the fall, he was
enjoying his innocence and fortune.  Instead of being a poor squire, he
was a king.  Instead of being an orphan, he was loved by nearly
everybody except the Gaels, and he loved everybody in return.

So far as he was concerned, as yet, there might never have been such a
thing as a single particle of sorrow on the gay, sweet surface of the
dew-glittering world.




_Chapter III_

Sir Kay had heard stories about the Queen of Orkney, and he was
inquisitive about her.

"Who is Queen Morgause?" he asked one day.  "I was told that she is
beautiful.  What did these Old Ones want to fight us about?  And what
is her husband like, King Lot?  What is his proper name?  I heard
somebody calling him the King of the Out Isles, and then there are
others who call him the King of Lothian and Orkney.  Where is Lothian?
Is it near Hy Brazil?  I can't understand what the revolt was about.
Everybody knows that the King of England is their feudal overlord.  I
heard that she has four sons.  Is it true that she doesn't get on with
her husband?"

They were riding back from a day on the mountain, where they had been
hunting grouse with the peregrines, and Merlyn had gone with them for
the sake of the ride.  He had become a vegetarian lately--an opponent
of blood-sports on principle--although he had gone through most of them
during his thoughtless youth--and even now he secretly adored to watch
the falcons for themselves.  Their masterly circles, as they waited
on--mere specks in the sky--and the bur-r-r with which they scythed on
the grouse, and the way in which the wretched quarry, killed
instantaneously, went end-over tip into the heather--these were a
temptation to which he yielded in the uncomfortable knowledge that it
was sin.  He consoled himself by saying that the grouse were for the
pot.  But it was a shallow excuse, for he did not believe in eating
meat either.

Arthur, who was riding watchfully like a sensible young monarch,
withdrew his eye from a clump of whins which might have held an ambush
in those early days of anarchy, and cocked one eyebrow at his tutor.
He was wondering with half his mind which of Kay's questions the
magician would choose to answer, but the other half was still upon the
martial possibilities of the landscape.  He knew how far the falconers
were behind them--the cadger carrying the hooded hawks on a square
framework slung from his shoulders, with a man-at-arms on either
side--and how far in front was the next likely place for a William
Rufus arrow.

Merlyn chose the second question.

"Wars are never fought for one reason," he said.  "They are fought for
dozens of reasons, in a muddle.  It is the same with revolts."

"But there must have been a main reason," said Kay.

"Not necessarily."

Arthur observed: "We might have a trot now.  It is clear going for two
miles since those whins, and we can have a canter back again, to keep
with the men.  It would breathe the horses."

Merlyn's hat blew off.  They had to stop to pick it up.  Afterwards
they walked their horses sedately in a row.

"One reason," said the magician, "is the immortal feud of Gael and
Gall.  The Gaelic Confederation are representatives of an ancient race
which has been harried out of England by several races which are
represented by you.  Naturally they want to be as nasty as possible to
you when they can."

"Racial history is beyond me," said Kay.  "Nobody knows which race is
which.  They are all serfs, in any case."

The old man looked at him with something like amusement.

"One of the startling things about the Norman," he said, "is that he
really does not know a single thing about anybody except himself.  And
you, Kay, as a Norman gentleman, carry the peculiarity to its limit.  I
wonder if you even know what a Gael is?  Some people call them Celts."

"A celt is a kind of battle-axe," said Arthur, surprising the magician
with this piece of information more than he had been surprised for
several generations.  For it was true, in one of the meanings of the
word, although Arthur ought not to have known it.

"Not that kind of celt.  I am talking about the people.  Let's stick to
calling them Gaels.  I mean the Old Ones who live in Brittany and
Cornwall and Wales and Ireland and Scotland.  Picts and that."

"Picts?" asked Kay.  "I think I have heard about Picts.  Pictures.
They were painted blue."

"And I am supposed to have managed your education!"

The King said thoughtfully: "Would you mind telling me about the races,
Merlyn?  I suppose I ought to understand the situation, if there has to
be a second war."

This time it was Kay who looked surprised.

"Is there to be a war?" he asked.  "This is the first I've heard of it.
I thought the revolt was crushed last year?"

"They have made a new confederation since they went home, with five new
kings, which makes them eleven altogether.  The new ones belong to the
old blood too.  They are Clariance of North Humberland, Idres of
Cornwall, Cradelmas of North Wales, Brandegoris of Stranggore and
Anguish of Ireland.  It will be a proper war, I'm afraid."

"And all about races," said his foster-brother in disgust.  "Still, it
may be fun."

The King ignored him.

"Go on," he said to Merlyn.  "I want you to explain.

"Only," he added quickly, as the magician opened his mouth, "not too
many details."

Merlyn opened his mouth and shut it twice, before he was able to comply
with this restriction.

"About three thousand years ago," he said, "the country you are riding
through belonged to a Gaelic race who fought with copper hatchets.  Two
thousand years ago they were hunted west by another Gaelic race with
bronze swords.  A thousand years ago there was a Teuton invasion by
people who had iron weapons, but it didn't reach the whole of the
Pictish Isles because the Romans arrived in the middle and got mixed up
with it.  The Romans went away about eight hundred years ago, and then
another Teuton invasion--of people mainly called Saxons--drove the
whole rag-bag west as usual.  The Saxons were just beginning to settle
down when your father the Conqueror arrived with his pack of Normans,
and that is where we are today.  Robin Wood was a Saxon partizan."

"I thought we were called the British Isles."

"So we are.  People have got the B's and P's muddled up.  Nothing like
the Teuton race for confusing its consonants.  In Ireland they are
still chattering away about some people called Fomorians, who were
really Pomeranians, while..."

Arthur interrupted him at the critical moment.

"So it comes to this," he said, "that we Normans have the Saxons for
serfs, while the Saxons once had a sort of under-serfs, who were called
the Gaels--the Old Ones.  In that case I don't see why the Gaelic
Confederation should want to fight against me--as a Norman king--when
it was really the Saxons who hunted them, and when it was hundreds of
years ago in any case."

"You are under-rating the Gaelic memory, dear boy.  They don't
distinguish between you.  The Normans are a Teuton race, like the
Saxons whom your father conquered.  So far as the ancient Gaels are
concerned, they just regard both your races as branches of the same
alien people, who have driven them north and west."

Kay said definitely: "I can't stand any more history.  After all, we
are supposed to be grown up.  If we go on, we shall be doing dictation."

Arthur grinned and began in the well-remembered sing-song voice:
Barbara Celarent Darii Ferioque Prioris, while Kay sang the next four
lines with him antiphonically.

Merlyn said: "You asked for it."

"And now we have it."

"The main thing is that the war is going to happen because the Teutons
or the Galls or whatever you call them upset the Gaels long ago."

"Certainly not," exclaimed the magician.  "I never said anything of the
sort."

They gaped.

"I said the war will happen for dozens of reasons, not for one.
Another of the reasons for this particular war is because Queen
Morgause wears the trousers.  Perhaps I ought to say the trews."

Arthur asked painstakingly: "Let me get this clear.  First I was given
to understand that Lot and the rest had rebelled because they were
Gaels and we were Galls, but now I am told that it deals with the Queen
of Orkney's trousers.  Could you be more definite?"

"There is the feud of Gael and Gall which we have been talking about,
but there are other feuds too.  Surely you have not forgotten that your
father killed the Earl of Cornwall before you were born?  Queen
Morgause was one of the daughters of that Earl."

"The Lovely Cornwall Sisters," observed Kay.

"Exactly.  You met one of them yourselves--Queen Morgan le Fay.  That
was when you were friends with Robin Wood, and you found her on a bed
of lard.  The third sister was Elaine.  All three of them are witches
of one sort or another, though Morgan is the only one who takes it
seriously."

"If my father," said the King, "killed the Queen of Orkney's father,
then I think she has a good reason for wanting her husband to rebel
against me."

"It is only a personal reason.  Personal reasons are no excuse for war."

"And furthermore," the King continued, "if my race has driven out the
Gaelic race, then I think the Queen of Orkney's subjects have a good
reason too."

Merlyn scratched his chin in the middle of the beard, with the hand
which held the reins, and pondered.

"Uther," he said at length, "your lamented father, was an aggressor.
So were his predecessors the Saxons, who drove the Old Ones away.  But
if we go on living backward like that, we shall never come to the end
of it.  The Old Ones themselves were aggressors, against the earlier
race of the copper hatchets, and even the hatchet fellows were
aggressors, against some earlier crew of exquimaux who lived on shells.
You simply go on and on, until you get to Cain and Abel.  But the point
is that the Saxon Conquest did succeed, and so did the Norman Conquest
of the Saxons.  Your father settled the unfortunate Saxons long ago,
however brutally he did it, and when a great many years have passed one
ought to be ready to accept a _status quo_.  Also I would like to point
out that the Norman Conquest was a process of welding small units into
bigger ones--while the present revolt of the Gaelic Confederation is a
process of disintegration.  They want to smash up what we may call the
United Kingdom into a lot of piffling little kingdoms of their own.
That is why their reason is not what you might call a good one."

He scratched his chin again, and became wrathful.

"I never could stomach these nationalists," he exclaimed.  "The destiny
of Man is to unite, not to divide.  If you keep on dividing you end up
as a collection of monkeys throwing nuts at each other out of separate
trees."

"All the same," said the King, "there seems to have been a good deal of
provocation.  Perhaps I ought not to fight?"

"And give in?" asked Kay, more in amusement than dismay.

"I could abdicate."

They looked at Merlyn, who refused to meet their eyes.  He rode on,
staring straight in front of him, munching his beard.

"Ought I to give in?"

"You are the King," said the old man stubbornly.  "Nobody can say
anything if you do."

Later on, he began to speak in a gentler tone.

"Did you know," he asked rather wistfully, "that I was one of the Old
Ones myself?  My father was a demon, they say, but my mother was a
Gael.  The only human blood I have comes from the Old Ones.  Yet here I
am denouncing their ideas of nationalism, being what their politicians
would call a traitor--because, by calling names, they can score the
cheap debating points.  And do you know another thing, Arthur?  Life is
too bitter already, without territories and wars and noble feuds."




_Chapter IV_

The hay was safe and the corn would be ripe in a week.  They sat in the
shade at the edge of a cornfield, watching the dark brown people with
their white teeth who were aimlessly busy in the sunlight, rehanging
their scythes, sharpening their sickles and generally getting ready for
the end of farm year.  It was peaceful in the fields which were close
to the castle, and no arrows needed to be apprehended.  While they
watched the harvesters, they stripped the half-ripe heads of corn with
their fingers and bit the grain daintily, tasting the furry milkiness
of the wheat, and the husky, less generous flesh of the oats.  The
pearly taste of barley would have been strange to them, for it had not
yet come to Gramarye.

Merlyn was still explaining.

"When I was a young man," he said, "there was a general idea that it
was wrong to fight in wars of any sort.  Quite a lot of people in those
days declared that they would never fight for anything whatever."

"Perhaps they were right," said the king.

"No.  There is one fairly good reason for fighting--and that is, if the
other man starts it.  You see, wars are a wickedness, perhaps the
greatest wickedness of a wicked species.  They are so wicked that they
must not be allowed.  When you can be perfectly certain that the other
man started them, then is the time when you might have a sort of duty
to stop him."

"But both sides always say that the other side started them."

"Of course they do, and it is a good thing that it should be so.  At
least, it shows that both sides are conscious, inside themselves, that
the wicked thing about a war is its beginning."

"But the reasons," protested Arthur.  "If one side was starving the
other by some means or other--some peaceful, economic means which were
not actually warlike--then the starving side might have to fight its
way out--if you see what I mean?"

"I see what you think you mean," said the magician, "but you are wrong.
There is no excuse for war, none whatever, and whatever the wrong which
your nation might be doing to mine--short of war--my nation would be in
the wrong if it _started_ a war so as to redress it.  A murderer, for
instance, is not allowed to plead that his victim was rich and
oppressing him--so why should a nation be allowed to?  Wrongs have to
be redressed by reason, not by force."

Kay said: "Suppose King Lot of Orkney was to draw up his army all along
the northern border, what could our King here do except send his own
army to stand on the same line?  Then supposing all Lot's men drew
their swords, what could we do except draw ours?  The situation could
be more complicated than that.  It seems to me that aggression is a
difficult thing to be sure about."

Merlyn was annoyed.

"Only because you want it to seem so," he said.  "Obviously Lot would
be the aggressor, for making the threat of force.  You can always spot
the villain, if you keep a fair mind.  In the last resort, it is
ultimately the man who strikes the first blow."

Kay persisted with his argument.

"Let it be two men," he said, "instead of two armies.  They stand
opposite each other--they draw their swords, pretending it is for some
other reason--they move about, so as to get to the weak side of one
another--they even make feints with their swords, pretending to strike,
but not doing so.  Do you mean to tell me that the aggressor is the one
who actually hits first?"

"Yes, if there is nothing else to decide by.  But in your case it is
obviously the man who first took his army to the frontier."

"This first blow business brings it down to a matter of nothing.
Suppose they both struck at once, or suppose you could not see which
one gave the first blow, because there were so many facing each other?"

"But there nearly always is something else to decide by," exclaimed the
old man.  "Use your common sense.  Look at this Gaelic revolt, for
example.  What reason has the King here for being an aggressor?  He is
their feudal overlord already.  It isn't sensible to pretend that he is
making the attack.  People don't attack their own possessions."

"I certainly don't feel," said Arthur, "as if I had started it.
Indeed, I didn't know it was going to start, until it had.  I suppose
that was due to my having been brought up in the country."

"Any reasoning man," continued his tutor, ignoring the interruption,
"who keeps a steady mind, can tell which side is the aggressor in
ninety wars out of a hundred.  He can see which side is likely to
benefit by going to war in the first place, and that is a strong reason
for suspicion.  He can see which side began to make the threat of force
or was the first to arm itself.  And finally he can often put his
finger on the one who struck the first blow."

"But supposing," said Kay, "that one side was the one to make the
threat, while the other side was the one to strike the first blow?"

"Oh, go and put your head in a bucket.  I'm not suggesting that all of
them can be decided.  I was saying, from the start of the argument,
that there are many wars in which the aggression is as plain as a
pike-staff, and that in those wars at any rate it might be the duty of
decent men to fight the criminal.  If you aren't sure that he is the
criminal--and you must sum it up for yourself with every ounce of
fairness you can muster--then go and be a pacifist by all means.  I
recollect that I was a fervent pacifist myself once, in the Boer War,
when my own country was the aggressor, and a young woman blew a
squeaker at me on Mafeking Night."

"Tell us about Mafeking Night," said Kay.  "One gets sick of these
discussions about right and wrong."

"Mafeking Night..." began the magician, who was prepared to tell
anybody about anything.  But the King prevented him.

"Tell us about Lot," he said.  "I want to know about him, if I have to
fight him.  Personally I am beginning to be interested in right and
wrong."

"King Lot..." began Merlyn in the same tone of voice, only to be
interrupted by Kay.

"No," said Kay.  "Talk about the Queen.  She sounds more interesting."

"Queen Morgause...."

Arthur assumed the right of veto for the first time in his life.
Merlyn, catching the lifted eyebrow, reverted to the King of Orkney
with unexpected humility.

"King Lot," said he, "is simply a member of your peerage and landed
royalty.  He's a cipher.  You don't have to think about him at all."

"Why not?"

"In the first place, he is what we used to call in my young days a
Gentleman of the Ascendancy.  His subjects are Gaels and so is his
wife, but he himself is an import from Norway.  He is a Gall like
yourself, a member of the ruling class who conquered the Islands long
ago.  This means that his attitude to the war is the same as your
father's would have been.  He doesn't care a fig about Gaels or Galls,
but he goes in for wars in the same way as my Victorian friends used to
go in for foxhunting or else for profit in ransoms.  Besides, his wife
makes him."

"Sometimes," said the King, "I wish you had been born forwards like
other people.  What with Victorians and Mafeking Night...."

Merlyn was indignant.

"The link between Norman warfare and Victorian foxhunting is perfect.
Leave your father and King Lot outside the question for the moment, and
look at literature.  Look at the Norman myths about legendary figures
like the Angevin kings.  From William the Conqueror to Henry the Third,
they indulged in warfare seasonally.  The season came round, and off
they went to the meet in splendid armour which reduced the risk of
injury to a foxhunter's minimum.  Look at the decisive battle of
Brenneville in which a field of nine hundred knights took part, and
only three were killed.  Look at Henry the Second borrowing money from
Stephen, to pay his own troops in fighting Stephen.  Look at the
sporting etiquette, according to which Henry had to withdraw from a
siege as soon as his enemy Louis joined the defenders inside the town,
because Louis was his feudal overlord.  Look at the siege of Mont St.
Michel, at which it was considered unsporting to win through the
defenders' lack of water.  Look at the battle of Malmesbury, which was
given up on account of bad weather.  That is the inheritance to which
you have succeeded, Arthur.  You have become the king of a domain in
which the popular agitators hate each other for racial reasons, while
the nobility fight each other for fun, and neither the racial maniac
nor the overlord stops to consider the lot of the common soldier, who
is the one person that gets hurt.  Unless you can make the world wag
better than it does at present, King, your reign will be an endless
series of petty battles, in which the aggressions will either be from
spiteful reasons or from sporting ones, and in which the poor man will
be the only one who dies.  That is why I have been asking you to think.
That is why...."

"I think," said Kay, "that Dinadan is waving to us, to say that dinner
is ready."




_Chapter V_

Mother Morlan's house in the Out Isles was hardly bigger than a large
dog kennel--but it was comfortable and full of interesting things.
There were two horseshoes nailed on the door--five statues bought from
pilgrims, with the used-up rosaries wound round them--for beads break,
if one is a good prayer--several bunches of fairy-flax laid on top of
the salt-box--some scapulars wound round the poker--twenty bottles of
mountain dew, all empty but one--about a bushel of withered palm, relic
of Palm Sundays for the past seventy years--and plenty of woollen
thread for tying round the cow's tail when she was calving.  There was
also a large scythe blade which the old lady hoped to use on a
burglar--if ever one was foolish enough to come that way--and, in the
chimney, there were hung some ash-rungs which her deceased husband had
been intending to use for flails, together with eel skins and strips of
horse leather as hangings to them.  Under the eel skins was an enormous
bottle of holy water, and in front of the turf fire sat one of the
Irish Saints who lived in the beehive cells of the outer islands, with
a glass of water-of-life in his hand.  He was a relapsed saint, who had
fallen into the Pelagian heresy of Celestius, and he believed that the
soul was capable of its own salvation.  He was busy saving it with
Mother Morlan and the usquebaugh.

"God and Mary to you, Mother Morlan," said Gawaine.  "We have come for
a story, ma'am, about the shee."

"God and Mary and Andrew to you," exclaimed the beldame.  "And you
asking me for a story, whateffer, with his reverence here among the
ashes!"

"Good evening, St. Toirdealbhach, we did not notice you because of the
dark."

"The blessing of God to you."

"The same blessing to you yourself."

"It must be about murders," said Agravaine.  "About murders and some
corbies which peck out your eyes."

"No, no," cried Gareth.  "It must be about a mysterious girl who
marries a man because he has stolen the giant's magic horse."

"Glory be to God," remarked St. Toirdealbhach.  "It does be a strange
story yer after wanting entirely."

"Come now, St. Toirdealbhach, tell us one yourself."

"Tell us about Ireland."

"Tell us about Queen Maeve, who desired the bull."

"Or dance us one of the jigs."

"Maircy on the puir bairns, to think of his holiness dancing a jig!"

The four representatives of the upper classes sat down wherever they
could--there were only two stools--and stared at the holy man in
receptive silence.

"Is it a moral tale yer after?"

"No, no.  No morals.  We like a story about fighting.  Come, St.
Toirdealbhach, what about the time you broke the Bishop's head?"

The saint drank a big gulp of his white whisky and spat in the fire.

"There was a king in it one time," said he, and the whole audience made
a rustling noise with their rumps, as they settled down.

"There was a king in it, one time," said St. Toirdealbhach, "and this
king, what do you think, was called King Conor Mac Nessa.  He was a
whale of a man who lived with his relations at a place called Tara of
the Kings.  It was not long before this king had to go out to battle
against thim bloody O'Haras, and he got shot in the conflict with a
magic ball.  You are to understand that the ancient heroes were after
making themselves bullets out of the brains of their adversaries--which
they would roll between the palms of their hands in little pieces, and
leave them to dry in the sun.  I suppose they must have shot them out
of the arquebus, you know, as if they were sling-shot or bolts.  Well,
and if they did, this old King was shot in the temples with one of thim
same bullets, and it lodging against the bone of the skull, at the
critical point whatever.  'I'm a fine man now,' says the King, and he
sends for the brehons and those to advise with them about the
obstetrics.  The first brehon says, 'You're a dead man, King Conor.
This ball is at the lobe of the brain.'  So said all the medical
gintlemen, widout respect of person nor creed.  'Oh, what'll I do at
all,' cries the King of Ireland.  'It's a hard fortune evidently, when
a man can't be fighting a little bit unless he comes to the end of his
days.'  'None of yer prate, now,' say the surgeons, 'there's wan thing
which can be done, and that same thing is to keep from all unnatural
excitement from this time forward.'  'For that matter,' says they, 'ye
must keep from all natural excitement also, or otherwise the bullet
will cause a rupture, and the rupture rising to a flux, and the flux to
a conflammation, will occasion an absolute abruption in the vital
functions at all.  It's yer only hope, King Conor, or otherwise ye will
lie compunctually as the worms made ye.'  Well, begor, it was a fine
state of business, as you may imagine.  There was that poor Conor in
his castle, and he not able to laugh nor fight nor take any small sup
of spirited water nor to look upon a white colleen anyhow, for fear
that his brains would burst.  The ball stood in his temples, half in,
half out, and that was the sorrow with him, from that day forward."

"Wurra the doctors," said Mother Morlan.  "Hoots, but they're na canny."

"What happened him?" asked Gawaine.  "Did he live long in this dark
room?"

"What happened him?  I was now coming to that.  Wan day there was a
slashing thunderstorm in it, and the castle walls shook like a
long-net, and great part of the bailey fell upon them.  It was the
worst storm that was known in those parts for whiles, and King Conor
rushed out into the element to seek advice.  He found wan of his
brehons standing there whatever, and axed him what could it be.  This
brehon was a learned man, and he told King Conor.  He said how our
Saviour had been hanged on a tree in Jewry that day, and how the storm
was broken on account of it, and he spoke to King Conor about the
gospel of God.  Then, what do you think, King Conor of Ireland ran back
into his palace for to seek his sword in righteous passion, and he ran
out with it throughout the tempest to defend his Saviour--and that was
how he died."

"He was dead?"

"Yes."

"Well!"

"What a nice way to do it," said Gareth.  "It was no good to him, but
it was grand!"

Agravaine said, "If I was told by my doctors to be careful, I would not
lose my temper over nothing.  I should think what was happening,
whatever."

"But it was chivalrous?"

Gawaine began to fidget with his toes.

"It was silly," he said eventually.  "It did no good."

"But he was trying to do the good."

"It was not for his family," said Gawaine.  "I do not know why he was
so excited at all."

"Of course it was for his family.  It was for God, who is the family of
every person.  King Conor went out on the side of right, and gave his
life to help it."

Agravaine moved his stern in the soft, rusty ashes of the turf
impatiently.  He considered that Gareth was a fool.

"Tell us the story," he said, to change the subject, "about how pigs
were made."

"Or the one," said Gawaine, "about the great Conan who was enchanted to
a chair.  He was stuck on it, whatever, and they could not get him off.
So they pulled him from it by force, and then there was a necessity on
them to graft a piece of skin on his bottom--but it was sheepskin, and
from thenceforth the stockings worn by the Fianna were made from the
wool which grew on Conan!"

"No, do not," said Gareth.  "Let there be no stories.  Let us sit and
talk wisely, my heroes, on deep matters.  Let us talk about our father,
who is away to the wars."

St. Toirdealbhach took a deep draught of his mountain dew, and spat in
the fire.

"Isn't war the grand thing?" he observed reminiscently.  "I did be
going to wars a great deal wan time, before I was sainted.  Only I got
tired on them."

Gawaine said: "I cannot see how people ever get tired of wars.  I am
sure I will not.  After all, it is a gentleman's occupation.  I mean,
it would be like getting tired of hunting, or of hawks."

"War," said Toirdealbhach, "be's a good thing if there doesn't be too
many in it.  When there's too many fighting, how would you know what
you are fighting about at all?  There did be fine wars in Old Ireland,
but it would be about a bull or something, and every man had his heart
in it from the start."

"Why did you get tired of wars?"

"'Twas thim same numbers had thim destroyed altogether.  Who would want
to be killing a mortal for what he didn't understand, or for nothing?
I took up with the single combats instead."

"That must have been a long time ago."

"Aye," said the saint regretfully.  "Thim bullets I was telling ye
about, now: the brains didn't be much good widout they were taken in
single combat.  It was the virtue of them."

"I incline my agreement with Toirdealbhach," said Gareth.  "After all,
what is the good of killing poor kerns who do not know anything?  It
would be much better for the people who are angry to fight each other
themselves, knight against knight."

"But you could not have any wars at all, like that," exclaimed Gaheris.

"It would be absurd," said Gawaine.  "You must have people, galore of
people, in a war."

"Otherwise you could not kill them," explained Agravaine.

The saint helped himself to a fresh dose of whisky, hummed a few bars
of _Poteen, Good Luck to Ye, Dear_, and glanced at Mother Morlan.  He
was feeling a new heresy coming over him, possibly as a result of the
spirits, and it had something to do with the celibacy of the clergy.
He had one already about the shape of his tonsure, and the usual one
about the date of Easter, as well as his own Pelagian business--but the
latest was beginning to make him feel as if the presence of children
was unnecessary.

"Wars," he said with disgust.  "And how would kids like you be talking
about them, will ye tell me, and you no bigger than sitting hens?  Be
off now, before I beget an ill wish toward ye."

Saints, as the Old Ones knew very well, were a bad class of people to
cross, so the children stood up hastily.

"Och, now," they said.  "Your Holiness, no offence, we are sure.  We
were only at wishing to make an exchange of ideas."

"Ideas!" he exclaimed, reaching for the poker--and they were outside
the low door in the twinkling of an eye, standing in the level rays of
sunset on the sandy street, while his anathemas or whatever they may
have been rumbled behind them from the dark interior.


In the street, there were two moth-eaten donkeys searching for weeds in
the cracks of a stone wall.  Their legs were tied together so that they
could hardly hobble, and their hoofs were cruelly overgrown, so that
they looked like rams' horns or curly skates.  The boys commandeered
them at once, a new idea springing fully armed from their heads as soon
as they had seen the animals.  They would stop hearing stories or
discussing warfare, and they would take the donkeys to the little
harbour beyond the sand-dunes, in case the men who had been out in
their currachs should have made a catch.  The donkeys would be useful
for carrying the fish.

Gawaine and Gareth took turns with the fat ass, one of them whacking it
while the other rode bareback.  The ass gave a hop occasionally, but
refused to trot.  Agravaine and Gaheris both sat on the thin one, the
former being mounted back to front so that he faced the creature's
behind--which he thrashed furiously with a thick root of sea-weed.  He
beat it round the vent, to hurt it more.

It was a strange scene which they presented when they reached the
sea--the thin children whose sharp noses had a drop on the end of each,
and their bony wrists which had outgrown their coats--the donkeys
scampering round in small circles, with an occasional frisk as the
tangle bit into their grey quarters.  It was strange because it was
circumscribed, because it was concentrated on a single intention.  They
might have been a solar system of their own, with nothing else in
space, as they went round and round among the dunes and coarse grass of
the estuary.  Probably the planets have few ideas in their heads,
either.

The idea which the children had was to hurt the donkeys.  Nobody had
told them that it was cruel to hurt them, but then, nobody had told the
donkeys either.  On the rim of the world they knew too much about
cruelty to be surprised by it.  So the small circus was a unity--the
beasts reluctant to move and the children vigorous to move them, the
two parties bound together by the link of pain to which they both
agreed without question.  The pain itself was so much a matter of
course that it had vanished out of the picture, as if by a process of
cancellation.  The animals did not seem to be suffering, and the
children did not seem to be enjoying the suffering.  The only
difference was that the boys were violently animated while the donkeys
were as static as possible.


Into this Eden-like scene, and almost before the memory of Mother
Morlan's interior had faded from their minds, there came a magic barge
from over the water, a barge draped with white samite, mystic,
wonderful, and it made a music of its own accord as its keel passed
through the waves.  Inside it there were three knights and a seasick
brachet.  Anything less suitable than these to the tradition of the
Gaelic world, it would have been impossible to imagine.

"I say," said the voice of one of the knights in the barge, while they
were still far out, "there is a castle, isn't it, what?  I say, isn't
it a pretty one!"

"Stop joggin' the boat, my dear fellow," said the second, "or you will
have us in the sea."

King Pellinore's enthusiasm evaporated at the rebuke, and he startled
the petrified children by bursting into tears.  They could hear his
sobs, mingling with the lapping of the waves and with the music of the
boat, as it drew near.

"Oh, sea!" he said.  "I wish I was in you, what?  I wish I was full of
five fathoms, that I do.  Woe, woe, oh, woe!"

"It is no good saying Whoa, old boy.  The thing will whoa when it wants
to.  It is a magic 'un."

"I was not saying Whoa," retorted the King.  "I was saying Woe."

"Well, it won't whoa."

"I don't care if it does or if it don't.  I said Woe!"

"Well, whoa, then."

And the magic barge whoaed, just where the currachs were usually drawn
up.  The three knights got out, and it could be seen that the third was
a black man.  He was a learned paynim or saracen, called Sir Palomides.

"Happy landing," said Sir Palomides, "by golly!"


The people came from everywhere, silently, vaguely.  When they were
near the knights, they walked slowly, but in the remoter distance they
were running.  Men, women and children were scuttling over the dunes or
down from the castle cliff, only to break into the crawling pace as
soon as they were near.  At a distance of twenty yards, they halted
altogether.  They made a ring, staring at the newcomers mutely, like
people staring at pictures in the Uffizzi.  They studied them.  There
was no hurry now, no need to dash off to the next picture.  Indeed,
there were no other pictures--had been no others, except for the
accustomed scenes of Lothian, since they were born.  Their stare was
not exactly an offensive one, nor was it friendly.  Pictures exist to
be absorbed.  It began at the feet, especially as the strangers were
dressed in outlandish clothes like knights-in-armour, and it mastered
the texture, the construction, the articulation and the probable price
of their sabathons.  Then it went on to the greaves, the cuisses, and
so up.  It might take half an hour to reach the face, which was to be
examined last of all.

The Gaels stood round the Galls with their mouths open, while the
village children shouted the news in the distance and Mother Morlan
came jogging with her skirts tucked up and the currachs at sea came
rowing madly home.  The young princelings of Lothian got off their
donkeys as if in a trance, and joined the circle.  The circle itself
began to press inward on its focus, moving as slowly and as silently as
the minute hand of a clock, except for the suppressed shouts from the
late arrivals who fell silent themselves as soon as they were within
the influence.  The circle was contracting because it wanted to touch
the knights--not now, not for half an hour or so, not until the
examination was over, perhaps never.  But it would have liked to touch
them in the end, partly to be sure that they were real, partly to sum
up the price of their clothes.  And, as the pricing was continued,
three things began to happen.  Mother Morlan and the auld wives started
to say the rosary, while the young women pinched each other and
giggled--the men, having doffed their caps in deference to the praying,
began to exchange in Gaelic such remarks as "Look at the black man, God
between us and harm," or "Do they be naked at bed-time, or how do they
get the iron pots off them whatever?"--and, in the minds of both women
and men, irrespective of age or circumstance, there began to grow,
almost visibly, almost tangibly, the enormous, the incalculable miasma
which is the leading feature of the Gaelic brain.

These were Knights of the Sassenach, they were thinking--for they could
tell by the armour--and, if so, knights of that very King Arthur
against whom their own king had for the second time revolted.  Had they
come, with typical Sassenach cunning, so as to take King Lot in the
rear?  Had they come, as representatives of the feudal overlord--the
Landlord--so as to make an assessment for the next scutage?  Were they
Fifth Columnists?  More complicated even than this--for surely no
Sassenach could be so simple as to come in the garb of the
Sassenach--were they perhaps not representatives of King Arthur at all?
Were they, for some purpose almost too cunning for belief, only
disguised as themselves?  Where was the catch?  There always was one in
everything.

The people of the circle closed in, their jaws dropping even further,
their crooked bodies hunching into the shapes of sacks and scarecrows,
their small eyes glinting in every direction with unfathomable
subtlety, their faces assuming an expression of dogged stupidity even
more vacant than they actually were.

The knights drew closer for protection.  In point of fact, they did not
know that England was at war with Orkney.  They had been involved in a
Quest, which had kept them away from the latest news.  Nobody in Orkney
was likely to tell them.

"Don't look just now," said King Pellinore, "but there are some people.
Do you think they are all right?"




_Chapter VI_

In Carlion everything was at sixes and sevens in preparation for the
second campaign.  Merlyn had made suggestions about the way to win it,
but, as these involved an ambush with secret aid from abroad, they had
had to be kept dark.  Lot's slowly approaching army was so much more
numerous than the King's forces that it had been necessary to resort to
stratagems.  The way in which the battle was to be fought was a secret
only known to four people.

The common citizens, who were in ignorance of the higher policy, had a
great deal to do.  There were pikes to be ground to a fine edge, so
that the grindstones in the town were roaring day and night--there were
thousands of arrows to be dressed, so that there were lights in the
fletchers' houses at all hours--and the unfortunate geese on the
commons were continually being chased by excited yeomen who wanted
feathers.  The royal peacocks were as bare as an old broom--most of the
crack shots liked to have what Chaucer calls pecock arwes, because they
were more classy--and the smell of boiling glue rose to high heaven.
The armourers, accomplishing the knights, hammered away with musical
clinks, working double shifts at it, and the blacksmiths shod the
chargers, and the nuns never stopped knitting comforters for the
soldiers or making the kind of bandages which were called tents.  King
Lot had already named a rendezvous for the battle, at Bedegraine.

The King of England painfully climbed the two hundred and eight steps
which led to Merlyn's tower room, and knocked on the door.  The
magician was inside, with Archimedes sitting on the back of his chair,
busily trying to find the square root of minus one.  He had forgotten
how to do it.

"Merlyn," said the King, panting, "I want to talk to you."

He closed his book with a bang, leaped to his feet, seized his wand of
lignum vitae, and rushed at Arthur as if he were trying to shoo away a
stray chicken.

"Go away!" he shouted.  "What are you doing here?  What do you mean by
it?  Aren't you the King of England?  Go away and send for me!  Get out
of my room!  I never heard of such a thing!  Go away at once and send
for me!"

"But I am here."

"No, you're not," retorted the old man resourcefully.  And he pushed
the King out of the door, slamming it in his face.

"Well!" said Arthur, and he went off sadly down the two hundred and
eight stairs.

An hour later, Merlyn presented himself in the Royal Chamber, in answer
to a summons which had been delivered by a page.

"That's better," he said, and sat down comfortably on a carpet chest.

"Stand up," said Arthur, and he clapped his hands for a page to take
away the seat.

Merlyn stood up, boiling with indignation.  The whites of his knuckles
blanched as he clenched them.

"About our conversation on the subject of chivalry," began the King in
an airy tone....

"I don't recollect such a conversation."

"No?"

"I have never been so insulted in my life!"

"But I am the King," said Arthur.  "You can't sit down in front of the
King."

"Rubbish!"

Arthur began to laugh more than was seemly, and his foster-brother, Sir
Kay, and his old guardian, Sir Ector, came out from behind the throne,
where they had been hiding.  Kay took off Merlyn's hat and put it on
Sir Ector, and Sir Ector said, "Well, bless my soul, now I am a
nigromancer.  Hocus-Pocus."  Then everybody began laughing, including
Merlyn eventually, and seats were sent for so that they could sit down,
and bottles of wine were opened so that it should not be a dry meeting.

"You see," he said proudly, "I have summoned a council."

There was a pause, for it was the first time that Arthur had made a
speech, and he wanted to collect his wits for it.

"Well," said the King.  "It is about chivalry.  I want to talk about
that."

Merlyn was immediately watching him with a sharp eye.  His knobbed
fingers fluttered among the stars and secret signs of his gown, but he
would not help the speaker.  You might say that this moment was the
critical one in his career--the moment towards which he had been living
backward for heaven knows how many centuries, and now he was to see for
certain whether he had lived in vain.

"I have been thinking," said Arthur, "about Might and Right.  I don't
think things ought to be done because you are _able_ to do them.  I
think they should be done because you _ought_ to do them.  After all, a
penny is a penny in any case, however much Might is exerted on either
side, to prove that it is or is not.  Is that plain?"

Nobody answered.

"Well, I was talking to Merlyn on the battlements one day, and he
mentioned that the last battle we had--in which seven hundred kerns
were killed--was not so much fun as I had thought it was.  Of course,
battles are not fun when you come to think about them.  I mean, people
ought not to be killed, ought they?  It is better to be alive.

"Very well.  But the funny thing is that Merlyn was helping me to win
battles.  He is still helping me, for that matter, and we hope to win
the battle of Bedegraine together, when it comes off."

"We will," said Sir Ector, who was in the secret.

"That seems to me to be inconsistent.  Why does he help me to fight
wars, if they are bad things?"

There was no answer from anybody, and the King began to speak with
agitation.

"I could only think," said he, beginning to blush, "I could only think
that I--that we--that he--that he wanted me to win them for a reason."

He paused and looked at Merlyn, who turned his head away.

"The reason was--was it?--the reason was that if I could be the master
of my kingdom by winning these two battles, I could stop them
afterwards and then do something about the business of Might.  Have I
guessed?  Was I right?"

The magician did not turn his head, and his hands lay still in his lap.

"I was!" exclaimed Arthur.

And he began talking so quickly that he could hardly keep up with
himself.

"You see," he said, "Might is not Right.  But there is a lot of Might
knocking about in this world, and something has to be done about it.
It is as if people were half horrible and half nice.  Perhaps they are
even more than half horrible, and when they are left to themselves they
run wild.  You get the average baron that we see nowadays, people like
Sir Bruce Sans Piti, who simply go clod-hopping round the country
dressed in steel, and doing exactly what they please, for sport.  It is
our Norman idea about the upper classes having a monopoly of power,
without reference to justice.  Then the horrible side gets uppermost,
and there is thieving and rape and plunder and torture.  The people
become beasts.

"But, you see, Merlyn is helping me to win my two battles so that I can
stop this.  He wants me to put things right.

"Lot and Uriens and Anguish and those--they are the old world, the
old-fashioned order who want to have their private will.  I have got to
vanquish them with their own weapons--they force it upon me, because
they live by force--and then the real work will begin.  This battle at
Bedegraine is the preliminary, you see.  It is _after_ the battle that
Merlyn is wanting me to think about."

Arthur paused again for comment or encouragement, but the magician's
face was turned away.  It was only Sir Ector, sitting next to him, who
could see his eyes.

"Now what I have thought," said Arthur, "is this.  Why can't you
harness Might so that it works for Right?  I know it sounds nonsense,
but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing.  The Might is
there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it.  You can't
cut it out, but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean,
so that it was useful instead of bad."

The audience was interested.  They leaned forward to listen, except
Merlyn.

"My idea is that if we can win this battle in front of us, and get a
firm hold of the country, then I will institute a sort of order of
chivalry.  I will not punish the bad knights, or hang Lot, but I will
try to get them into our Order.  We shall have to make it a great
honour, you see, and make it fashionable and all that.  Everybody must
want to be in.  And then I shall make the oath of the order that Might
is only to be used for Right.  Do you follow?  The knights in my order
will ride all over the world, still dressed in steel and whacking away
with their swords--that will give an outlet for wanting to whack, you
understand, an outlet for what Merlyn calls the foxhunting spirit--but
they will be bound to strike only on behalf of what is good, to defend
virgins against Sir Bruce and to restore what has been done wrong in
the past and to help the oppressed and so forth.  Do you see the idea?
It will be using the Might instead of fighting against it, and turning
a bad thing into a good.  There, Merlyn, that is all I can think of.  I
have thought as hard as I could, and I suppose I am wrong, as usual.
But I did think.  I can't do any better.  Please say something!"

The magician stood up as straight as a pillar, stretched out his arms
in both directions, looked at the ceiling, and said the first few words
of the Nunc Dimittis.




_Chapter VII_

The situation at Dunlothian was complicated.  Nearly every situation
tended to be when it was connected with King Pellinore, even in the
wildest North.  In the first place, he was in love--that was why he had
been weeping in the boat.  He explained it to Queen Morgause on the
first opportunity--because he was lovesick, not seasick.

What had happened was this.  The King had been hunting the Questing
Beast a few months earlier, on the south coast of Gramarye, when the
animal had taken to the sea.  She had swam away, her serpentine head
undulating on the surface like a swimming grass-snake, and the King had
hailed a passing ship which looked as if it were off to the Crusades.
Sir Grummore and Sir Palomides had been in the ship, and they had
kindly turned it round to pursue the Beast.  The three of them had
arrived on the coast of Flanders, where the Beast had disappeared in a
forest, and there, while they were staying at a hospitable castle,
Pellinore had fallen in love with the Queen of Flanders' daughter.
This was fine so far as it went--for the lady of his choice was a
managing, middle-aged, stout-hearted creature, who could cook, ride a
straight line, and make beds--but the hopes of all parties had been
dashed at the start by the arrival of the magic barge.  The three
knights had got into it, and sat down to see what would happen, because
knights were never supposed to refuse an adventure.  But the barge had
promptly sailed away of its own accord, leaving the Queen of Flanders'
daughter anxiously waving her pocket handkerchief.  The Questing Beast
had thrust her head out of the forest before they lost sight of land,
looking, so far as they could see at the distance, even more surprised
than the lady.  After that, they had gone on sailing till they arrived
in the Out Isles, and the further they went the more lovesick the King
had become, which made his company intolerable.  He spent the time
writing poems and letters, which could never be posted, or telling his
companions about the princess, whose nickname in her family circle was
Piggy.

A state of affairs like this might have been bearable in England, where
people like the Pellinores did sometimes turn up, and even won a sort
of tolerance from their fellow men.  But in Lothian and Orkney, where
Englishmen were tyrants, it achieved an almost supernatural
impossibility.  None of the islanders could understand what King
Pellinore was trying to cheat them out of--by pretending to be
himself--and it was thought wiser and safer not to acquaint any of the
visiting knights with the facts about the war against Arthur.  It was
better to wait until their plots had been penetrated.

On top of this, there was a trouble which distressed the children in
particular.  Queen Morgause had set her cap at the visitors.

"What was our mother at doing," asked Gawaine, as they made their way
toward St. Toirdealbhach's cell one morning, "with the knights on the
mountain?"

Gaheris answered with some difficulty, after a long pause: "They were
at hunting a unicorn."

"How do you do that?"

"There must be a virgin to attract it."

"Our mother," said Agravaine, who also knew the details, "went on a
unicorn hunt, and she was the virgin for them."

His voice sounded strange as he made this announcement.

Gareth protested: "I did not know she was wanting a unicorn.  She has
never said so."

Agravaine looked at him sideways, cleared his throat and quoted: "Half
a word is sufficient to the wise man."

"How do you know this?" asked Gawaine.

"We listened."

They had a way of listening on the spiral stairs, during the times when
they were excluded from their mother's interest.

Gaheris explained, with unusual freedom since he was a taciturn boy:

"She told Sir Grummore that this King's lovesick melancholy could be
dispelled by interesting him in his old pursuits.  They were at saying
that this King is in the habit of hunting a Beast which has become
lost.  So she said that they were to hunt a unicorn instead, and she
would be the virgin for them.  They were surprised, I think."

They walked in silence, until Gawaine suggested, almost as if it were a
question: "I was hearing it told that the King is in love with a woman
out of Flanders, and that Sir Grummore is married already?  Also the
Saracen is black in his skin?"

No answer.

"It was a long hunt," said Gareth.  "I heard they did not catch one."

"Do these knights enjoy to be playing this game with our mother?"

Gaheris explained for the second time.  Even if he were silent, he was
not unobservant.

"I do not think they would be understanding at all."

They plodded on, reluctant to disclose their thoughts.


St. Toirdealbhach's cell was like an old-fashioned straw beehive,
except that it was bigger and made of stone.  It had no windows and
only one door, through which you had to crawl.

"Your Holiness," they shouted when they got there, kicking the heavy
unmortared stones.  "Your Holiness, we have come to hear a story."

He was a source of mental nourishment to them--a sort of guru, as
Merlyn had been to Arthur, who gave them what little culture they were
ever to get.  They resorted to him like hungry puppies anxious for any
kind of eatable, when their mother had cast them out.  He had taught
them to read and write.

"Ah, now," said the saint, sticking his head out of the door.  "The
prosperity of God on you this morning."

"The selfsame prosperity on you."

"Is there any news at you?"

"There is not," said Gawaine, suppressing the unicorn.

St. Toirdealbhach heaved a deep sigh.

"There is none at me either," he said.

"Could you tell us a story?"

"Thim stories, now.  There doesn't be any good in them.  What would I
be wanting to tell you a story for, and me in my heresies?  'Tis forty
years since I fought a natural battle, and not a one of me looking upon
a white colleen all that time--so how would I be telling stories?"

"You could tell us a story without any colleens or battles in it."

"And what would be the good of that, now?" he exclaimed indignantly,
coming out into the sunlight.

"If you were to fight a battle," said Gawaine, but he left out about
the colleens, "you might feel better."

"My sorrow!" cried Toirdealbhach.  "What do I want to be a saint for at
all, is my puzzle!  If I could fetch one crack at somebody with me ould
shillelagh"--here he produced a frightful-looking weapon from under his
gown--"wouldn't it be better than all the saints in Ireland?"

"Tell us about the shillelagh."

They examined the club carefully, while his holiness told them how a
good one should be made.  He told them that only a root growth was any
good, as common branches were apt to break, especially if they were of
crab-tree, and how to smear the club with lard, and wrap it up, and
bury it in a dunghill while it was being straightened, and polish it
with black-lead and grease.  He showed the hole where the lead was
poured in, and the nails through the end, and the notches near the
handle which stood for ancient scalps.  Then he kissed it reverently
and replaced it under his gown with a heartfelt sigh.  He was
play-acting, and putting on the accent.

"Tell us the story about the black arm which came down the chimney."

"Ah, the heart isn't in me," said the saint.  "I haven't the heart of a
hare.  It's bewitched I am entirely."

"I think we are bewitched too," said Gareth.  "Everything seems to go
wrong."

"There was this one in it," began Toirdealbhach, "and she was a woman.
There was a husband living in Malainn Vig with this woman.  There was
only one little girl that they had between them.  One day the man went
out to cut in the bog, and when it was the time for his dinner, this
woman sent the little girl out with his bit of dinner.  When the father
was sitting to his dinner, the little girl suddenly made a cry, 'Look
now, father, do you see the large ship out yonder under the horizon?  I
could make it come in to the shore beneath the coast.'  'You could not
do that,' said the father.  'I am bigger than you are, and I could not
do it myself.'  'Well, look at me now,' said the little girl.  And she
went to the well that was near there, and made a stirring in the water.
The ship came in at the coast."

"She was a witch," explained Gaheris.

"It was the mother was the witch," said the saint, and continued with
his story.

"'Now,' says she, 'I could make the ship be struck against the coast.'
'You could not do that,' says the father.  'Well, look at me now,' says
the little girl, and she jumped into the well.  The ship was dashed
against the coast and broken into a thousand pieces.  'Who has taught
you to do these things?' asked the father.  'My mother.  And when you
do be at working she teaches me to do things with the Tub at home.'"

"Why did she jump into the well?" asked Agravaine.  "Was she wet?"

"Hush."

"When this man got home to his wife, he set down his turf-cutter and
put himself in his sitting.  Then he said, 'What have you been teaching
to the little girl?  I do not like to have this piseog in my house, and
I will not stay with you any longer.'  So he went away, and they never
saw a one of him again.  I do not know how they went on after that."

"It must be dreadful to have a witch for a mother," said Gareth when he
had finished.

"Or for a wife," said Gawaine.

"It's worse not to be having a wife at all," said the saint, and he
vanished into his beehive with startling suddenness, like the man in
the Swiss weather clock who retires into a hole when it is going to be
fine.

The boys sat round the door without surprise, waiting for something
else to happen.  They considered in their minds the questions of wells,
witches, unicorns and the practices of mothers.

"I make this proposition," said Gareth unexpectedly, "my heroes, that
we have a unicorn hunt of our own!"

They looked at him.

"It would be better than not having anything.  We have not seen our
Mammy for one week."

"She has forgotten us," said Agravaine bitterly.

"She has not so.  You are not to speak in that way of our mother."

"It is true.  We have not been to serve at dinner even."

"It is because she has a necessity to be hospitable to these knights."

"No, it is not."

"What is it, then?"

"I will not say."

"If we could do a unicorn hunt," said Gareth, "and bring this unicorn
which she requires, perhaps we would be allowed to serve?"

They considered the idea with a beginning of hope.

"St. Toirdealbhach," they shouted, "come out again!  We want to catch a
unicorn."

The saint put his head out of the hole and examined them suspiciously.

"What is a unicorn?  What are they like?  How do you catch them?"

He nodded the head solemnly and vanished for the second time, to return
on all fours in a few moments with a learned volume, the only secular
work in his possession.  Like most saints, he made his living by
copying manuscripts and drawing pictures for them.

"You need a maid for bait," they told him.

"We have goleor of maids," said Gareth.  "We could take any of the
maids, or cook."

"They would not come."

"We could take the kitchenmaid.  We could make her to come."

"And then, when we have caught the unicorn which is wanted, we will
bring it home in triumph and give it to our mother!  We will serve at
supper every night!"

"She will be pleased."

"Perhaps after supper, whatever the event."

"And Sir Grummore will knight us.  He will say, 'Never has such a
doughty deed been done, by my halidome!'"

St. Toirdealbhach laid the precious book on the grass outside his hole.
The grass was sandy and had empty snail shells scattered over it, small
yellowish shells with a purple spiral.  He opened the book, which was a
Bestiary called _Liber de Natura Quorundam Animalium_, and showed that
it had pictures on every page.

They made him turn the vellum quickly, with its lovely Gothic
manuscript, skipping the enchanting Griffins, Bonnacons, Cocodrills,
Manticores, Chaladrii, Cinomulgi, Sirens, Peridexions, Dragons, and
Aspidochelones.  In vain for their eager glances did the Antalop rub
its complicated horns against the tamarisk tree--thus, entangled,
becoming a prey to its hunters--in vain did the Bonnacon emit its
flatulence in order to baffle the pursuers.  The Peridexions, sitting
on trees which made them immune to dragons, sat unnoticed.  The Panther
blew out his fragrant breath, which attracted his prey, without
interest for them.  The Tigris, who could be deceived by throwing down
a glass ball at its feet, in which, seeing itself reflected, it thought
to see its own cubs--the Lion, who spared prostrate men or captives,
was afraid of white cocks, and brushed out his own tracks with a
foliated tail--the Ibex, who could bound down from mountains unharmed
because he bounced upon his curly horns--the Yale, who could move his
horns like ears--the She-Bear who was accustomed to bear her young as
lumps of matter and lick them into whatever shape she fancied
afterwards--the Chaladrius bird who, if facing you when it sat on your
bedrail, showed that you were going to die--the Hedgehogs who collected
grapes for their progeny by rolling on them, and brought them back on
the end of their prickles--even the Aspidochelone, who was a large
whale-like creature with seven fins and a sheepish expression, to whom
you were liable to moor your boat in mistake for an island if you were
not careful: even the Aspidochelone scarcely detained them.  At last he
found them the place at the Unicorn, called by the Greeks, Rhinoceros.

It seemed that the Unicorn was as swift and timid as the Antalop, and
could only be captured in one way.  You had to have a maid for bait,
and, when the Unicorn perceived her alone, he would immediately come to
lay his horn in her lap.  There was a picture of an unreliable-looking
virgin, holding the poor creature's horn in one hand, while she
beckoned to some spearmen with the other.  Her expression of duplicity
was balanced by the fatuous confidence with which the Unicorn regarded
her.

Gawaine hurried off, as soon as the instructions had been read and the
picture digested, to fetch the kitchenmaid without delay.

"Now then," he said, "you have to come with us on the mountain, to
catch a unicorn."

"Oh, Master Gawaine," cried the maid he had caught hold of, whose name
was Meg.

"Yes, you have.  You are to be the bait whatever.  It will come and put
its head in your lap."

Meg began to weep.

"Now then, do not be silly."

"Oh, Master Gawaine, I do not want a unicorn.  I have been a decent
girl, I have, and there is all the washing up to do, and if Mistress
Truelove do catch me playing at truant I shall get stick, Master
Gawaine, that I will."

He took her firmly by the plaits and led her out.

In the clean bog-wind of the high tops, they discussed the hunt.  Meg,
who cried incessantly, was held by the hair to prevent her from running
away, and occasionally passed from one boy to the other, if the one who
was holding her happened to want both hands for gestures.

"Now then," said Gawaine.  "I am the captain.  I am the oldest, so I am
the captain."

"I thought of it," said Gareth.

"The question is, it says in the book that the bait must be left alone."

"She will run away."

"Will you run away, Meg?"

"Yes, please, Master Gawaine."

"There."

"Then she must be tied."

"Oh, Master Gaheris, if it is your will, need I be tied?"

"Close your mouth.  You are only a girl."

"There is nothing to tie her with."

"I am the captain, my heroes, and I command that Gareth runs back home
to fetch some rope."

"That I will not."

"But you will destroy everything, if you do not do so."

"I do not see why I should have to go.  I thought of it."

"Then I command our Agravaine to go."

"Not I."

"Let Gaheris go."

"I will not."

"Meg, you wicked girl, you are not to run away, do you hear?"

"Yes, Master Gawaine.  But, oh, Master Gawaine..."

"If we could find a strong heather root," said Agravaine, "we could tie
her pigtails together, round the other side of it."

"We will do that."

"Oh, oh!"

After they had secured the virgin, the four boys stood round her,
discussing the next stage.  They had abstracted real boar-spears from
the armoury, so they were properly armed.

"This girl," said Agravaine, "is my mother.  This is what our Mammy was
at doing yesterday.  And I am going to be Sir Grummore."

"I will be Pellinore."

"Agravaine can be Grummore if he wants to be, but the bait has got to
be left alone.  It says so in the book."

"Oh, Master Gawaine, oh, Master Agravaine!"

"Stop howling.  You will frighten the unicorn."

"And then we must go away and hide.  That is why our mother did not
catch it, because the knights stayed with her."

"I am going to be Finn MacCoul."

"I shall be Sir Palomides."

"Oh, Master Gawaine, pray do not leave me alone."

"Hold in your noise," said Gawaine.  "You are silly.  You ought to be
proud to be the bait.  Our mother was, yesterday."

Gareth said, "Never mind, Meg, do not cry.  We will not let it hurt
you."

"After all, it can only kill you," said Agravaine brutally.

At this the unfortunate girl began to weep more than ever.

"Why did you say that?" asked Gawaine angrily.  "You always try to
frighten people.  Now she is at howling more than before."

"Look," said Gareth.  "Look, Meg.  Poor Meg, do not cry.  It will be
with me to let you have some shots with my catapult, when we go home."

"Oh, Master Gareth!"

"Ach, come your ways.  We cannot bother with her."

"There, there!"

"Oh, oh!"

"Meg," said Gawaine, making a frightful face, "if you do not stop
squealing, I will look at you like this."

She dried her tears at once.

"Now," he said, "when the unicorn comes, we must all rush out and stick
it.  Do you understand?"

"Must it be killed?"

"Yes, it must be killed dead."

"I see."

"I hope it will not hurt it," said Gareth.

"That is the sort of foolish hope you would have," said Agravaine.

"But I do not see why it should be killed."

"So that we may take it home to our mother, you amadan."

"Could we catch it," asked Gareth, "and lead it to our mother, do you
think?  I mean, we could get Meg to lead it, if it was tame."

Gawaine and Gaheris agreed to this.

"If it is tame," they said, "it would be better to bring it back alive.
That is the best kind of Big Game Hunting."

"We could drive it," said Agravaine.  "We could hit it along with
sticks."

"We could hit Meg, too," he added, as an afterthought.

Then they hid themselves in their ambush, and decided to keep silence.
There was nothing to be heard except the gentle wind, the heather bees,
the skylarks very high, and a few distant snuffles from Meg.


When the unicorn came, things were different from what had been
expected.  He was such a noble animal, to begin with, that he carried a
beauty with him.  It held all spellbound who were within sight.

The unicorn was white, with hoofs of silver and a graceful horn of
pearl.  He stepped daintily over the heather, scarcely seeming to press
it with his airy trot, and the wind made waves in his long mane, which
had been freshly combed.  The glorious thing about him was his eye.
There was a faint bluish furrow down each side of his nose, and this
led up to the eye-sockets, and surrounded them in a pensive shade.  The
eyes, circled by this sad and beautiful darkness, were so sorrowful,
lonely, gentle and nobly tragic, that they killed all other emotion
except love.

The unicorn went up to Meg the kitchenmaid, and bowed his head in front
of her.  He arched his neck beautifully to do this, and the pearl horn
pointed to the ground at her feet, and he scratched in the heather with
his silver hoof to make a salute.  Meg had forgotten her tears.  She
made a royal gesture of acknowledgment, and held her hand out to the
animal.

"Come, unicorn," she said.  "Lay your head in my lap, if you like."

The unicorn made a whinny, and pawed again with his hoof.  Then, very
carefully, he went down first on one knee and then on the other, till
he was bowing in front of her.  He looked up at her from this position,
with his melting eyes, and at last laid his head upon her knee.  He
stroked his flat, white cheek against the smoothness of her dress,
looking at her beseechingly.  The whites of his eyes rolled with an
upward flash.  He settled his hind quarters coyly, and lay still,
looking up.  His eyes brimmed with trustfulness, and he lifted his near
fore in a gesture of pawing.  It was a movement in the air only, which
said, "Now attend to me.  Give me some love.  Stroke my mane, will you,
please?"

There was a choking noise from Agravaine in the ambush, and at once he
was rushing toward the unicorn, with the sharp boar-spear in his hands.
The other boys squatted upright on their heels, watching him.

Agravaine came to the unicorn, and began jabbing his spear into its
quarters, into its slim belly, into its ribs.  He squealed as he
jabbed, and the unicorn looked to Meg in anguish.  It leaped and moved
suddenly, still looking at her reproachfully, and Meg took its horn in
one hand.  She seemed entranced, unable to help it.  The unicorn did
not seem able to move from the soft grip of her hand on its horn.  The
blood, caused by Agravaine's spear, spurted out upon the blue-white
coat of hair.

Gareth began running, with Gawaine close after him.  Gaheris came last,
stupid and not knowing what to do.

"Don't!" cried Gareth.  "Leave him alone.  Don't!  Don't!"

Gawaine came up, just as Agravaine's spear went in under the fifth rib.
The unicorn shuddered.  He trembled in all his body, and stretched his
hind legs out behind.  They went out almost straight, as if he were
doing his greatest leap--and then quivered, trembling in the agony of
death.  All the time his eyes were fixed on Meg's eyes, and she still
looked down at his.

"What are you doing?" shouted Gawaine.  "Leave him alone.  No harm at
him."

"Oh, Unicorn," whispered Meg.

The unicorn's legs stretched out horizontally behind him, and stopped
trembling.  His head dropped in Meg's lap.  After a last kick they
became rigid, and the blue lids rose half over the eye.  The creature
lay still.

"What have you done?" cried Gareth.  "You have killed him.  He was
beautiful."

Agravaine bawled, "This girl is my mother.  He put his head in her lap.
He had to die."

"We said we would keep him," yelled Gawaine.  "We said we would take
him home, and be allowed to supper."

"Poor unicorn," said Meg.

"Look," said Gaheris, "I am afraid he is dead."

Gareth stood square in front of Agravaine, who was three years older
than he was and could have knocked him down quite easily.  "Why did you
do it?" he demanded.  "You are a murderer.  It was a lovely unicorn.
Why did you kill it?"

"His head was in our mother's lap."

"It did not mean any harm.  Its hoofs were silver."

"It was a unicorn, and it had to be killed.  I ought to have killed Meg
too."

"You are a traitor," said Gawaine.  "We could have taken it home, and
been allowed to serve at supper."

"Anyway," said Gaheris, "now it is dead."

Meg bowed her head over the unicorn's forelock of white, and once again
began to sob.

Gareth began stroking the head.  He had to turn away to hide his tears.
By stroking it, he had found out how smooth and soft its coat was.  He
had seen a near view of its eye, now quickly fading, and this had
brought the tragedy home to him.

"Well, it is dead now, whatever," said Gaheris for the third time.  "We
had better take it home."

"We managed to catch one," said Gawaine, the wonder of their
achievement beginning to dawn on him.

"It was a brute," said Agravaine.

"We caught it!  We of ourselves!"

"Sir Grummore did not catch one."

"But we did."

Gawaine had forgotten about his sorrow for the unicorn.  He began to
dance round the body, waving his boar-spear and uttering horrible
shrieks.

"We must have a gralloch," said Gaheris.  "We must do the matter
properly, and cut its insides out, and sling it over a pony, and take
it home to the castle, like proper hunters."

"And then she will be pleased!"

"She will say, God's Feet, but my sons are of mickle might!"

"We shall be allowed to be like Sir Grummore and King Pellinore.
Everything will go well with us from now."

"How must we set about the gralloch?"

"We cut out its guts," said Agravaine.

Gareth got up and began to go away into the heather.  He said, "I do
not want to help cut him.  Do you, Meg?"

Meg, who was feeling ill inside herself, made no answer.  Gareth untied
her hair--and suddenly she was off, running for all she was worth away
from the tragedy, toward the castle.  Gareth ran after her.

"Meg, Meg!" he called.  "Wait for me.  Do not run."

But Meg continued to run, as swiftly as an antalop, with her bare feet
twinkling behind her, and Gareth gave it up.  He flung himself down in
the heather and began to cry in earnest--he did not know why.


At the gralloch, the three remaining huntsmen were in trouble.  They
had begun to slit at the skin of the belly, but they did not know how
to do it properly and so they had perforated the intestines.
Everything had begun to be horrible, and the once beautiful animal was
spoiled and repulsive.  All three of them loved the unicorn in their
various ways, Agravaine in the most twisted one, and, in proportion as
they became responsible for spoiling its beauty, so they began to hate
it for their guilt.  Gawaine particularly began to hate the body.  He
hated it for being dead, for having been beautiful, for making him feel
a beast.  He had loved it and helped to trap it, so now there was
nothing to be done except to vent his shame and hatred of himself upon
the corpse.  He hacked and cut and felt like crying too.

"We shall not ever get it done," they panted.  "How can we ever carry
it down, even if we manage the gralloch?"

"But we must," said Gaheris.  "We must.  If we do not, what will be the
good?  We must take it home."

"We cannot carry it."

"We have not a pony."

"At a gralloch, they sling the beast over a pony."

"We must cut his head off," said Agravaine.  "We must cut its head off
somehow, and carry that.  It would be enough if we took the head.  We
could carry it between us."

So they set to work, hating their work, at the horrid business of
hacking through its neck.


Gareth stopped crying in the heather.  He rolled over on his back, and
immediately he was looking straight into the sky.  The clouds which
were sailing majestically across its endless depth made him feel giddy.
He thought: How far is it to that cloud?  A mile?  And the one above
it?  Two miles?  And beyond that a mile and a mile, and a million
million miles, all in the empty blue.  Perhaps I will fall off the
earth now, supposing the earth is upside down, and then I shall go
sailing and sailing away.  I shall try to catch hold of the clouds as I
pass them, but they will not stop me.  Where shall I go?

This thought made Gareth feel sick, and, as he was also feeling ashamed
of himself for running away from the gralloch, he became uncomfortable
all over.  In these circumstances, the only thing to do was to abandon
the place in which he was feeling uncomfortable, in the hope of leaving
his discomfort behind him.  He got up and went back to the others.

"Hallo," said Gawaine, "did you catch her?"

"No, she escaped away to the castle."

"I hope she will not tell anybody," said Gaheris.  "It has to be a
surprise, or it is no good for us."

The three butchers were daubed with sweat and blood, and they were
absolutely miserable.  Agravaine had been sick twice.  Yet they
continued in their labour and Gareth helped them.

"It is no good stopping now," said Gawaine.  "Think how good it will
be, if we can take it to our mother."

"She will probably come upstairs to say good night to us, if we can
take her what she needs."

"She will laugh, and say we are mighty hunters."


When the grisly spine was severed, the head was too heavy to carry.
They got themselves in a mess, trying to lift it.  Then Gawaine
suggested that it had better be dragged with rope.  There was none.

"We could drag it by the horn," said Gareth.  "At any rate we could
drag and push it like that, so long as it was downhill."

Only one of them at a time could get a good hold of the horn, so they
took it in turns to do the hauling, while the others pushed behind when
the head got snagged in a heather root or a drain.  It was heavy for
them, even in this way, so that they had to stop every twenty yards or
so, to change over.

"When we get to the castle," panted Gawaine, "we will prop it up in the
seat in the garden.  Our mother is bound to walk past there, when she
goes for her walk before supper.  Then we will stand in front of it
until she is ready, and all will suddenly step back at once, and there
it will be."

"She will be surprised," said Gaheris.

When they had at last got it down from the sloping ground, there was
another hitch.  They found that it was no longer possible to drag it on
the flat land, because the horn did not give enough purchase.

In this emergency, for it was getting near to suppertime, Gareth
voluntarily ran ahead to fetch a rope.  The rope was tied round what
remained of the head, and thus at last, with eyes ruined, flesh bruised
and separating from the bones, the muddy, bloody, heather-mangled
exhibit was conveyed on its last stage to the herb garden.  They heaved
it to the seat, and arranged its mane as well as they could.  Gareth
particularly tried to prop it up so that it would give a little idea of
the beauty which he remembered.


The magic queen came punctually on her walk, conversing with Sir
Grummore and followed by her lap dogs: Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart.
She did not notice her four sons, lined up in front of the seat.  They
stood respectfully in a row, dirty, excited, their breasts beating with
hope.

"Now!" cried Gawaine, and they stood aside.

Queen Morgause did not see the unicorn.  Her mind was busy with other
things.  With Sir Grummore she passed by.

"Mother!" cried Gareth in a strange voice, and he ran after her,
plucking at her skirt.

"Yes, my white one?  What do you want?"

"Oh, Mother.  We have got you a unicorn."

"How amusing they are, Sir Grummore," she said.  "Well, my doves, you
must run along and ask for your milk."

"But, Mammy...."

"Yes, yes," she said in a low voice.  "Another time."

And the Queen passed on with the puzzled knight of the Forest Sauvage,
electrical and quiet.  She had not noticed that her children's clothes
were ruined: had not even scolded them about that.  When she found out
about the unicorn later in the evening she had them whipped for it, for
she had spent an unsuccessful day with the English knights.




_Chapter VIII_

The plain of Bedegraine was a forest of pavilions.  They looked like
old-fashioned bathing tents, and were every colour of the rainbow.
Some of them were even striped like bathing tents, but the most part
were in plain colours, yellow and green and so on.  There were heraldic
devices worked or stamped on the sides--enormous black eagles with two
heads perhaps, or wyverns, or lances, or oak trees, or punning signs
which referred to the names of the owners.  For instance, Sir Kay had a
black key on his tent, and Sir Ulbawes, in the opposing camp, had a
couple of elbows in flowing sleeves.  The proper name for them would be
manchets.  Then there were pennons floating from the tops of the tents,
and sheaves of spears leaning against them.  The more sporting barons
had shields or huge copper basins outside their front doors, and all
you had to do was to give a thump on one of these with the butt-end of
your spear, for the baron to come out like an angry bee and have a
fight with you, almost before the resounding boom had died away.  Sir
Dinadan, who was a cheerful man, had hung a chamber-pot outside his.
Then there were the people themselves.  All round and about among the
tents there were cooks quarrelling with dogs who had eaten the mutton,
and small pages writing insults on each other's backs when they were
not looking, and elegant minstrels with lutes singing tunes similar to
"Greensleeves", with soulful expressions, and squires with a world of
innocence in their eyes, trying to sell each other spavined horses, and
hurdy-gurdy men trying to earn a groat by playing on the vielle, and
gipsies telling your fortune for the battle, and enormous knights with
their heads wrapped in untidy turbans playing chess, and vivandires
sitting on the knees of some of them, and--as for entertainment--there
were joculators, gleemen, tumblers, harpers, troubadours, jesters,
minstrels, tregetours, bear-dancers, egg-dancers, ladder-dancers,
ballette-dancers, mountebanks, fire-eaters, and balancers.  In a way,
it was like Derby Day.  The tremendous forest of Sherwood stretched
round the tent-forest further than the eye could see--and this was full
of wild boars, warrantable stags, outlaws, dragons, and Purple
Emperors.  There was also an ambush in the forest but nobody was
supposed to know about that.

King Arthur paid no attention to the coming battle.  He sat invisible
in his pavilion, at the hub of the excitement, and talked to Sir Ector
or Kay or Merlyn day after day.  The smaller captains were delighted to
think that their King was having so many councils of war, for they
could see the lamp burning inside the silk tent until all hours, and
they felt sure that he was inventing a splendid plan of campaign.
Actually the conversation was about different things.

"There will be a lot of jealousy," said Kay.  "You will have all these
knights in this order of yours saying that they are the best one, and
wanting to sit at the top of the table."

"Then we must have a round table, with no top."

"But, Arthur, you could never sit a hundred and fifty knights at a
round table.  Let me see...."

Merlyn, who hardly ever interfered in the arguments now, but sat with
his hands folded on his stomach and beamed, helped Kay out of the
difficulty.

"It would need to be about fifty yards across," he said.  "You do it by
2[pi]r."

"Well, then.  Say it was fifty yards across.  Think of all the space in
the middle.  It would be an ocean of wood with a thin rim of humanity.
You couldn't keep the food in the middle even, because nobody would be
able to reach it."

"Then we can have a circular table," said Arthur, "not a round one.  I
don't know what the proper word is.  I mean we could have a table
shaped like the rim of a cart-wheel, and the servants could walk about
in the empty space, where the spokes would be.  We could call them the
Knights of the Round Table."

"What a good name!"

"And the important thing," continued the King, who was getting wiser
the more he thought, "the most important thing, will be to catch them
young.  The old knights, the ones we are fighting against, will be
mostly too old to learn.  I think we shall be able to get them in, and
keep them fighting the right way, but they will be inclined to stick to
the old habits, like Sir Bruce.  Grummore and Pellinore--we must have
them of course--I wonder where they are now?  Grummore and Pellinore
will be all right, because they were always kindly in themselves.  But
I don't think Lot's people will ever really be at home with it.  That
is why I say we must catch them young.  We must breed up a new
generation of chivalry for the future.  That child Lancelot who came
over with You-know-who, for instance: we must get hold of kids like
him.  They will be the real Table."

"Apropos of this Table," said Merlyn, "I don't see why I should not
tell you that King Leodegrance has one which would do very well.  As
you are going to marry his daughter, he might be persuaded to give you
the table as a wedding present."

"Am I going to marry his daughter?"

"Certainly.  She is called Guenever."

"Look, Merlyn, I don't like knowing about the future, and I am not sure
whether I believe in it...."

"There are some things," said the magician, "which I have to tell you,
whether you believe them or not.  The trouble is, I can't help feeling
there is one thing which I have forgotten to tell.  Remind me to warn
you about Guenever another time."

"It confuses everybody," said Arthur complainingly.  "I get muddled up
with half the questions I want to ask you myself.  For instance, who
was my..."

"You will have to have special Feasts," interrupted Kay, "at Pentecost
and so on, when all the knights come to dinner and say what they have
done.  It will make them want to fight in this new way of yours, if
they are going to recite about it afterwards.  And Merlyn could write
their names in their places by magic, and their coat armour could be
engraved over their sieges.  It would be grand!"

This exciting idea made the King forget his question, and the two young
men sat down immediately to draw their own blazons for the magician, so
that there should be no mistake about the tinctures.  While they were
in the middle of the drawing Kay looked up, with his tongue between his
teeth, and remarked:

"By the way.  You remember that argument we were having about
aggression?  Well, I have thought of a good reason for starting a war."

Merlyn froze.

"I would like to hear it."

"A good reason for starting a war is simply to have a good reason!  For
instance, there might be a king who had discovered a new way of life
for human beings--you know, something which would be good for them.  It
might even be the only way of saving them from destruction.  Well, if
the human beings were too wicked or too stupid to accept his way, he
might have to force it on them, in their own interests, by the sword."

The magician clenched his fists, twisted his gown into screws, and
began to shake all over.

"Very interesting," he said in a trembling voice.  "Very interesting.
There was just such a man when I was young--an Austrian who invented a
new way of life and convinced himself that he was the chap to make it
work.  He tried to impose his reformation by the sword, and plunged the
civilized world into misery and chaos.  But the thing which this fellow
had overlooked, my friend, was that he had had a predecessor in the
reformation business, called Jesus Christ.  Perhaps we may assume that
Jesus knew as much as the Austrian did about saving people.  But the
odd thing is that Jesus did not turn the disciples into storm troopers,
burn down the Temple at Jerusalem, and fix the blame on Pontius Pilate.
On the contrary, he made it clear that the business of the philosopher
was to make ideas _available_, and _not_ to impose them on people."

Kay looked pale but obstinate.

"Arthur is fighting the present war," he said, "to impose his ideas on
King Lot."




_Chapter IX_

The Queen's suggestion about hunting unicorns had a curious result.
The more lovelorn King Pellinore became, the more obvious it was that
something would have to be done.  Sir Palomides had an inspiration.

"The royal melancholy," said he, "can only be dispelled by Questing
Beast.  This is the subject to which the maharajah sahib has been
accustomed by lifelong habit.  Yours truly has said so all along."

"Personally," said Sir Grummore, "I believe the Questin' Beast is dead.
Anyway, it is in Flanders."

"Then we must dress up," said Sir Palomides.  "We must assume the role
of Questing Beast and be hunted ourselves."

"We could scarcely dress as the Beast."

But the Saracen had run away with the idea.

"Why not?" he asked.  "Why not, by Jingo?  Joculators assume garb of
animals--as stags, goats and so forth--and dance to bells and tabor
with many gyrings and circumflexions."

"But really, Palomides, we are not Joculators."

"Then we must learn to be so!"

"Joculators!"

A joculator was a juggler, a low kind of minstrel, and Sir Grummore did
not relish the idea at all.

"However could we dress as the Questin' Beast?" he asked weakly.  "She
is a frightfully complicated animal."

"Describe this animal."

"Well, dash it all.  She has a snake's head and the body of a leopard
and haunches like a lion and feet like a hart.  And, hang it, man, how
could we make this noise in her belly, like thirty couple of hounds
questin'?"

"Yours truly will be the belly," replied Sir Palomides, "and will give
tongue as follows."

He began yodelling.

"Hush!" cried Sir Grummore.  "You will wake the Castle."

"Then it is agreed?"

"No, it is not agreed.  Never heard such nonsense in me life.  Besides,
she don't make a noise like that.  She makes a noise like this."

And Sir Grummore began cackling in a tuneless alto, like thousands of
wild geese on the Wash.

"Hush!  Hush!" cried Sir Palomides.

"I won't hush.  The noise you was makin' was like pigs."

The two naturalists began hooting, grunting, squawking, squealing,
crowing, mooing, growling, snuffling, quacking, snarling and mewing at
one another, until they were red in the face.

"The head," said Sir Grummore, stopping suddenly, "will have to be of
cardboard."

"Or canvas," said Sir Palomides.  "The fishing populace will be in
possession of canvas."

"We can make leather boots for hoofs."

"Spots can be painted on the body."

"It will have to button round the middle--"

"--where we join."

"And you," added Sir Palomides generously, "can be the back end, and do
hounds.  The noise is plainly stated to come from the belly."

Sir Grummore blushed with pleasure and said gruffly, in his Norman way,
"Well, thanks, Palomides.  I must say, I think that's demned decent of
you."

"Not at all."


For a week King Pellinore saw hardly anything of his friends.  "You
write poems, Pellinore," they told him, "or go and sigh on the cliffs,
there's a good fellow."  He wandered about, occasionally crying out,
"Flanders--Glanders" or "Daughter--ought to," whenever the ideas
occurred to him, while the dark Queen hung in the background.

Meanwhile, in Sir Palomides' room, where the door was kept locked,
there was such a stitching and snipping and painting and arguing as had
seldom been known before.

"My dear chap, I tell you a libbard has black spots."

"Puce," Sir Palomides said obstinately.

"What is puce?  And anyway we have not got any."

They glared at each other with the fury of creators.

"Try on the head."

"There, you've torn it.  I said you would."

"Construction was of feeble nature."

"We must construct the thing again."

When the reconstruction was finished, the paynim stood back to admire
it.

"Look out for the spots, Palomides.  There, you've smudged them."

"A thousand pardons!"

"You ought to look where you are goin'."

"Well, who put his foot through the ribs?"

On the second day there was trouble with the back end.

"These haunches are too tight."

"Don't bend over."

"I have to bend over, if I am the back end."

"They won't split."

"Yes, they will."

"No, they won't."

"Well, they have."

"Look out for my tail," said Sir Grummore on the third day.  "You are
treadin' on it."

"Don't hold so tight, Grummore.  My neck is twisted."

"Can't you see?"

"No, I can't.  My neck is twisted."

"There goes my tail."

There was a pause while they sorted themselves out.

"Now, carefully this time.  We must walk in step."

"You give the step."

"Left!  Right!  Left!  Right!"

"I think my haunches are comin' down."

"If you let go of yours truly's waist, we shall come in half."

"Well, I can't hold up my haunches unless I do."

"There go the buttons."

"Damn the buttons."

"Yours truly told you so."

So they sewed on buttons during the fourth day, and started again.

"Can I practise my bayin' now?"

"Yes, indeed."

"How does my bayin' sound from inside?"

"It sounds splendid, Grummore, splendid.  Only it is strange, in a way,
coming from behind, if you follow my argument."

"I thought it sounded muffled."

"It did, a bit."

"Perhaps it will be all right from outside."

On the fifth day they were far advanced.

"We ought to practise a gallop.  After all, we can't walk all the time,
not when he is hunting us."

"Very good."

"When I say Go, then, Go.  Ready, steady, Go!"

"Look out, Grummore, you are butting me."

"Buttin'?"

"Be careful of the bed."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, dear!"

"Confound the bed to blazes.  Oh, my shins!"

"You have burst the buttons again."

"Damn the buttons.  I have stubbed my toe."

"Well, yours truly's head has come off also."

"We shall have to stick to walkin'."

"It would be easier to gallop," said Sir Grummore on the sixth day, "if
we had some music.  Somethin' like Tantivvy, you know."

"Well, we have not got any music."

"No."

"Could you sing out Tantivvy, Palomides, while I am bayin'?"

"Yours truly could try."

"Very well, then, off we go!"

"Tantivvy, tantivvy, tantivvy!"

"Damn!"

"We shall have to make the whole thing again," said Sir Palomides over
the week-end.  "We can still use the hoofs."

"I don't suppose it will hurt so much fallin' down out of doors--not on
the moss, you know."

"And probably it won't tear the canvas so badly."

"We will make it double strength."

"Yes."

"I am glad the hoofs will still do."


"By jove, Palomides, don't he look a monster!"

"A splendid effort, this time."

"Pity you can't make fire come out of his mouth, or somethin'.

"A danger of combustion there."

"Shall we try another gallop, Palomides?"

"By all means."

"Push the bed in the corner, then."

"Look out for the buttons."

"If you see anythin' we are runnin' into, just stop, see?"

"Yes."

"Keep a sharp look-out, Palomides."

"Right ho, Grummore."

"Ready, then?"

"Ready."

"Off we go."

"That was a splendid burst, Palomides," exclaimed the Knight of the
Forest Sauvage.

"A noble gallop."

"Did you notice how I was bayin' all the time?"

"I could not fail to notice it, Sir Grummore."

"Well, well, I don't know when I have enjoyed myself so much."

They panted with triumph, standing amid their monster.

"I say, Palomides, look at me swishin' my tail!"

"Charming, Sir Grummore.  Look at me winking one of my eyes."

"No, no, Palomides.  You look at my tail.  You ought not to miss it,
really."

"Well, if I look at you swishing, you ought to look at me winking.
That is only fair."

"But I can't see anythin' from inside."

"As for that, Sir Grummore, yours truly can't see so far round as the
anal appanage."

"Now, then, we will have one last go.  I shall swish my tail round and
round all the time, and bay like mad.  It will be a frightful
spectacle."

"And yours truly will continuously wink one optic or the other."

"Could we put a bit of a bound into the gallop, Palomides, every now
and then, do you think?  You know, a kind of prance?"

"The prance could more naturally be effected by the back end, solo."

"You mean I could do it alone?"

"Effectually."

"Well, I must say that is uncommonly decent of you, Palomides, to let
me do the prancin'."

"Yours truly trusts that a modicum of caution will be exercised in the
prance, to prevent delivery of uncomfortable blows to the posterior of
the forequarters?"

"Just as you say, Palomides."

"Boot and saddle, Sir Grummore."

"Tally-ho, Sir Palomides."

"Tantivvy, tantivvy, tantivvy, a-questing we will go!"


The Queen had recognized the impossible.  Even in the miasma of her
Gaelic mind, she had come to see that asses do not mate with pythons.
It was useless to go on dramatizing her charms and talents for the
benefit of these ridiculous knights--useless to go on hunting them with
the tyrannous baits of what she thought was love.  With a sudden turn
of feeling she discovered that she hated them.  They were imbeciles, as
well as being the Sassenach, and she herself was a saint.  She was, she
discovered with a change of posture, interested in nothing but her
darling boys.  She was the best mother to them in the world!  Her heart
ached for them, her maternal bosom swelled.  When Gareth nervously
brought white heather to her bedroom as an apology for being whipped,
she covered him with kisses, glancing in the mirror.

He escaped from the embrace and dried his tears--partly uncomfortable,
partly in rapture.  The heather which he had brought was set up
dramatically in a cup with no water--she was every inch the
homebody--and he was free to go.  He scampered from the royal chamber
with the news of forgiveness, went spinning down the circular stairs
like a tee-to-tum.


It was a different castle to the one in which King Arthur used to
scamper.  A Norman would hardly have recognized it as a castle, except
for the pele tower.  It was a thousand years more ancient than anything
the Normans knew.

This castle, through which the child was running to bring the good news
of their mother's love to his brothers, had begun, in the mists of the
past, as that strange symbol of the Old Ones--a promontory fort.
Driven to the sea by the volcano of history, they had turned at bay on
the last peninsula.  With the sea literally at their backs, on a cliffy
tongue of land, they had built their single wall across the root of the
tongue.  The sea which was their doom had also been their last defender
on every other side.  There, on the promontory, the blue-painted
cannibals had piled up their cyclopean wall of unmortared stones,
fourteen feet high and equally thick, with terraces on the inside from
which they could hurl their flints.  All along the outside of the wall
they had embedded thousands of sharp stones in the scraw, each stone
pointing outward in a _chevaux de frise_ which was like a petrified
hedgehog.  Behind it, and behind the enormous wall, they had huddled at
night in wooden shacks, together with their domestic animals.  There
had been heads of enemies erected on poles for decoration, and their
king had built himself an underground treasure chamber which was also a
subterranean passage for escape.  It had led under the wall, so that
even if the fort were stormed he could creep out behind the attackers.
It had been a passage along which only one man could crawl at a time,
and it had been constructed with a special kink in it, at which he
could wait to knock a pursuer on the head, as the latter negotiated the
obstacle.  The diggers of the souterrain had been executed by their own
priest-king, to keep the secret of it.

All that was in an earlier millennium.

Dunlothian had grown with the slow conservancy of the Old Ones.  Here,
with a Scandinavian conquest, had sprung up a wooden long-house--there,
the original stones of the curtain wall had been pulled down to build a
round tower for priests.  The pele tower, with a cow-byre under the two
living chambers, had come the last of all.

So it was among the untidy wreckage of centuries that Gareth scampered,
looking for his brothers.  It was among lean-to's and adaptations--past
ogham stones commemorating some long-dead Deag the son of No, built
into a later bastion upside down.  It was on the top of a wind-swept
cliff purged to the bone by the airs of the Atlantic, under which the
little fishing village nestled among the dunes.  It was as the
inheritor of a view which covered a dozen miles of rollers, and
hundreds of miles of cumulus.  All along the coast-line the saints and
scholars of Eriu inhabited their stone igloos in holy
horribleness--reciting fifty psalms in their beehives and fifty in the
open air and fifty with their bodies plunged in cold water, in their
loathing for the twinkling world.  St. Toirdealbhach was far from
typical of their species.

Gareth found his brothers in the store-room.

It smelt of oatmeal, ham, smoked salmon, dried cod, onions, shark oil,
pickled herrings in tubs, hemp, maize, hen's fluff, sailcloth,
milk--the butter was churned there on Thursdays--seasoning pine wood,
apples, herbs drying, fish glue and varnish used by the fletcher,
spices from overseas, dead rat in trap, venison, seaweed, wood
shavings, litter of kittens, fleeces from the mountain sheep not yet
sold, and the pungent smell of tar.

Gawaine, Agravaine and Gaheris were sitting on the fleeces, eating
apples.  They were in the middle of an argument.

"It is not our business," said Gawaine stubbornly.

Agravaine whined: "But it is our business.  It is at us more than
anybody, and it is not right."

"How dare you to say that our mother is not right?"

"She is not."

"She is."

"If you can but contradict...."

"They are decent for the Sassenach," said Gawaine.  "Sir Grummore let
me try his helm last night."

"That has nothing to do with it."

Gawaine said: "I am not wishing to talk about it.  It is base to be
talking."

"Pure Gawaine!"

As Gareth came in, he could see Gawaine's face flaming at Agravaine,
under its red hair.  It was obvious that he was going to have one of
his rages--but Agravaine was one of those luckless intellectuals who
are too proud to give in to brute force.  He was the kind who gets
knocked down in an argument because he cannot defend himself, but
continues the argument on the floor, sneering, "Go on, then, hit me
again to show how clever you are."

Gawaine glared at him.

"Silence your mouth!"

"I will not."

"I will make you."

"If you will make me or not, it will be the same."

Gareth said: "Be quiet, Agravaine.  Gawaine, leave him alone;
Agravaine, if you do not be quiet he will kill you."

"I do not care if he does kill me.  What I say is true."

"Hold your noise."

"I will not.  I say we ought to indite a letter to our father about
these knights.  We ought to tell him about our mother.  We----"

Gawaine was upon him before he could finish the sentence.

"Your soul to the devil!" he shouted.  "Traitor!  Ach, so you would!"

For Agravaine had done something unprecedented in the family troubles.
He was the weaker of the two and he was afraid of pain.  As he went
down, he had drawn his dirk upon his brother.

"Look to his arm," cried Gareth.

The two were going over and over among the rolled fleeces.

"Gaheris, catch his hand!  Gawaine, leave him alone!  Agravaine, drop
it!  Agravaine, if you do not drop it, he will kill you.  Ah, you
brute!"

The boy's face was blue and the dirk nowhere to be seen.  Gawaine, with
his hands round Agravaine's throat, was ferociously beating his head on
the floor.  Gareth took hold of Gawaine's shirt at the neck and twisted
it to choke him.  Gaheris, hovering round the edge, ferreted for the
dirk.

"Leave me," panted Gawaine.  "Let me be."  He gave a coughing or husky
noise in his chest, like a young lion making its roar.

Agravaine, whose Adam's apple had been hurt, relaxed his muscles and
lay hiccoughing with his eyes shut.  He looked as if he were going to
die.  They dragged Gawaine off and held him down, still struggling to
get at his victim and finish the work.

It was curious that when he was in one of these black passions he
seemed to pass out of human life.  In later days he even killed women,
when he had been worked into such a state--though he regretted it
bitterly afterwards.


When the counterfeit Beast was perfected, the knights took it away and
hid it in a cave at the foot of the cliffs, above high-water mark.
Then they had some whisky to celebrate, and set off in search of the
King, as darkness fell.

They found him in his chamber, with a quill pen and a sheet of
parchment.  There was no poetry on the parchment--only a picture which
was intended to be a heart transfixed by an arrow, with two P's drawn
inside it, interlaced.  The King was blowing his nose.

"Excuse me, Pellinore," said Sir Grummore, "but we have seen something
on the cliffs."

"Something nasty?"

"Well, not exactly...."

"I hoped it would be."

Sir Grummore thought the situation over, and drew the Saracen aside.
They decided that tact was needed.

"Oh, Pellinore," said Sir Grummore nonchalantly, "what is this that you
are drawin'?"

"What do you think it is?"

"It looks like a sort of drawin'."

"That is what it is," said the King.  "I wish you two would go away.  I
mean, if you could take a hint."

"It would be better if you were to make a line here," pursued Sir
Grummore.

"Where?"

"Here, where the pig is."

"My dear fellow, I don't know what you are talking about."

"I am sorry, Pellinore, I thought you was drawin' a pig with your eyes
shut."

Sir Palomides thought it was time to interfere.

"Sir Grummore," he said coyly, "has observed a phenomenon, by Jove!"

"A phenomenon?"

"A thing," explained Sir Grummore.

"What sort of thing?" asked the King suspiciously.

"Something you will like."

"It has four legs," added the Saracen.

"Is it animal?" asked the King, "vegetable or mineral?"

"Animal."

"A pig?" inquired the King, who was beginning to feel they must be
driving at something.

"No, no, Pellinore.  Not a pig.  Get pigs out of your head right away.
This thing makes a noise like hounds."

"Like sixty hounds," explained Sir Palomides.

"It is a whale!" cried the King.

"No, no, Pellinore.  A whale has no legs."

"But it makes such a noise."

"Does a whale?"

"My dear fellow, how am I to know?  You must try to keep the issue
clear."

"I see, but what is the issue, what?  It seems to be a menagerie game."

"No, no, Pellinore.  It is something we have seen which bays."

"Oh, I say," he wailed.  "I do wish you two would either shut up or go
away.  What with whales and pigs, and now this thing which bays, a
fellow does not know where he is half the time.  Can't you leave a
fellow alone, to draw his little things and hang himself quietly, for
once?  I mean to say, it is not much to ask, is it, what, don't you
know?"

"Pellinore," said Sir Grummore, "you must pull yourself together.  We
have seen the Questing Beast!"

"Why?"

"Why?"

"Yes, why?"

"Why do you say why?"

"I mean," explained Sir Grummore, "you could say Where? or When?  But
why Why?"

"Why not?"

"Pellinore, have you lost all sense of decency?  We have seen the
_Questing Beast_, I tell you--seen it on the cliffs here, quite close."

"It is not an it.  It is a She."

"My dear chap, it doesn't matter what she is.  We have seen her."

"Then why don't you go and catch her?"

"It is not for us to catch her, Pellinore.  It is for you.  After all,
she is your life's work, isn't she?"

"She's stupid," said the King.

"She may be stupid, or she may not," said Sir Grummore in an offended
tone.  "The point is, she is your _magnum opus_.  Only a Pellinore can
catch her.  You have told us so often."

"What is the point of catching her?" asked the monarch.  "What?  After
all, she is probably quite happy on the cliffs.  I don't see what you
are fussing about.

"It seems dreadfully sad," he added at a tangent, "that people can't be
married when they want to.  I mean, what is the good of this animal to
me?  I have not married it, have I?  So why am I chasing it all the
time?  It doesn't seem logical."

"What you want, Pellinore, is a good hunt.  Shake up your liver."

They took away his pen and poured him several bumpers of usquebaugh,
not forgetting to take a nip or two themselves.

"It seems the only thing to do," he said suddenly.  "After all, only a
Pellinore can catch it."

"That's the brave fellow."

"Only I do feel sad sometimes," he added, before they could stop him,
"about the Queen of Flanders' daughter.  She was not beautiful,
Grummore, but she understood me.  We seemed to get on together, if you
see what I mean.  I amn't clever, perhaps, and I may get into trouble
when I am by myself, but when I was with Piggy she always knew what to
do.  It was company too.  It is not bad to have a bit of company when
you are getting on in life, especially when you have been chasing the
Questing Beast all the time, what?  It gets a bit lonely in the Forest.
Not that the Questing Beast wasn't company in her way--so far as she
went.  Only you couldn't talk things over with her, not like with
Piggy.  And she couldn't cook.  I don't know why I am boring you
fellows with all this talk, but really sometimes one feels as if one
could hardly carry on.  It is not as if Piggy were a flapper, you see.
I really did love her, Grummore, really, and if only she would have
answered my letters it would have been ever so nice."

"Poor old Pellinore," they said.

"I saw seven maggot pies today, Palomides.  They were flying along like
frying pans."

"One for sorrow," explained the King.  "Two for joy, three for a
marriage, and four for a boy.  So seven ought to be four boys, ought
it, what?"

"Bound to be," said Sir Grummore.

"They were going to be called Aglovale, Percivale, and Lamorak, and
then there was one with a funny name which I can't remember.  That's
all off now.  Still, I must say I would have liked to have had a son
called Dornar."

"Look here, Pellinore, you must learn to let bygones be bygones.  You
will only wear yourself out.  Why don't you be a brave chap and catch
your Beast for instance?"

"I suppose I must."

"That's it.  Take your mind off things."

"It is eighteen years since I have been after it," said the King
pensively.  "It would be a change to catch it.  I wonder where the
brachet is?"

"Ah, Pellinore!  Now you're talking!"

"Suppose our honoured monarch were to start at once?"

"What?  This evening, Palomides?  In the dark?"

Sir Palomides nudged Sir Grummore secretly.  "Administer blows to
iron," he whispered, "while at high temperature."

"I see what you mean."

"I don't suppose it matters," said the King.  "Nothing does, really."

"Very well, then," cried Sir Grummore, taking control of the situation.
"That is what we will do.  We will put old Pellinore at one end of the
cliffs this very night, in an ambush, and then we two will drive the
place methodically toward him.  The Beast is bound to be there, as it
was seen only this afternoon."


"Don't you think," he inquired, as they were dressing up in the
darkness, "that it was clever, the way I explained about our bein'
here, I mean to drive the animal?"

"An inspiration," said Sir Palomides.  "Is my head on straight?"

"My dear chap, I can't see an inch."

The Saracen's voice sounded uneasy.

"This darkness," he said, "seems jolly palpable."

"Never mind," said Sir Grummore.  "It will hide any little faults in
our make-up.  Perhaps the moon will come out later."

"Thank goodness his sword is generally blunt."

"Oh, come now, Palomides, you mustn't get cold feet.  I can't think why
it is, but I feel perfectly splendid.  Perhaps it was those bumpers.  I
am goin' to prance and bay tonight, I can tell you."

"You are buttoning yourself to me, Sir Grummore.  Those are the wrong
buttons."

"Beg pardon, Palomides."

"Would it be enough if you were to wave your tail in the air, instead
of prancing?  There is a certain discomfort for the forequarters during
the prance."

"I shall wave my tail as well as prance," said Sir Grummore firmly.

"Just as you say."

"Take your hoof off my tail for a moment, Palomides."

"Could you carry your tail over your arm for the first part of the
journey?"

"It would hardly be natural."

"No."

"And now," added Sir Palomides bitterly, "it is going to rain.  Come to
think of it, it nearly always does rain in these parts."

He thrust his brown hand out of the serpent's mouth and felt the drops
on the back of it.  They drummed on the canvas like hail.

"Dear old forequarters," said Sir Grummore cheerfully, for he had
plenty of whisky, "it was you who thought of this expedition in the
first place.  Cheer up, old blackamoor.  It will be much worse for
Pellinore, waitin' for us to come.  After all, he has not got a canvas
hide with spots on it, to shelter under."

"Perhaps it will stop."

"Of course it will stop.  That's the ticket, old pagan.  Now then, are
we ready?"

"Yes."

"Give the step then."

"Left!  Right!"

"Don't forget the Tantivvy!"

"Left!  Right!  Tantivvy!  Tantivvy!  I beg your pardon?"

"I was only bayin'."

"Tantivvy!  Tantivvy!"

"Now for the prance!"

"Oh dear, Sir Grummore!"

"Sorry, Palomides."

"Yours truly will hardly be able to sit down."


Under the dripping cliffs King Pellinore stood stock still, looking
vaguely in front of him.  His brachet, on a long string, was wound
round him several times.  He was in full armour, which was getting
rusty, and the rain came in at five places.  It ran down both shins and
both forearms, but the worst place was his vizor.  This was constructed
on the snout principle, since it was found that if one had an ugly
helmet it frightened the enemy.  King Pellinore's looked like an
inquisitive pig.  It let the rain in through the nostrils, however, and
the water ran down in front in a steady trickle which tickled his
chest.  The King was thinking.

Well, he thought, he supposed this would keep them quiet.  It was not
very nice in all this rain and everything, but the dear fellows seemed
keen on it.  It would be difficult to find anybody kinder than old
Grum, and Palomides seemed a friendly chap, though he was a paynim.  If
they wanted to have a lark like this, it was only decent to humour
them.  Besides, it was nice for the brachet to have an outing.  It was
a pity that it could never keep unwound, but there, you could not
interfere with nature.  He would have to spend all tomorrow scrubbing
his armour.

It would give him something to do, reflected the King miserably, which
was better than wandering about all the time, with his eternal sorrow
gnawing at his heart.  And he fell to thinking about Piggy.

The nice thing about the Queen of Flanders' daughter, had been that she
did not laugh at him.  A lot of people laughed at you when you went
after the Questing Beast--and never caught it--but Piggy never laughed.
She seemed to understand at once how interesting it was, and made
several sensible suggestions about the way to trap it.  Naturally one
did not pretend to be clever or anything, but it was nice not to be
laughed at.  One was doing one's best.

And then the dreadful day had come when that cursed boat had floated to
the shore.  They had got into it, because knights must always accept an
adventure, and it had sailed away at once.  They had waved to Piggy
ever so, and the Beast had put its head out of the wood and waded out
to sea after them, looking most upset.  But the boat had gone on and
on, and the small figures on the shore had dwindled till they could
hardly see the kerchief which Piggy was waving, and then the brachet
had been sick.

From every port he had written to her.  He had given letters to the
innkeepers everywhere, and they had promised like anything to send them
on.  But she had never sent a syllable in reply.

It was because he was unworthy, decided the King.  He was vague and not
clever and always getting in a muddle.  Why should the daughter of the
Queen of Flanders write to a person like that, especially when he had
gone and got into a magic boat and sailed away?  It was like deserting
her, and of course she was right to be angry.  Meanwhile it would keep
raining, and the water did trickle so, and now that brachet was
sneezing.  The armour would be rusty, and there was a sort of draught
down the back of his neck where the helmet screwed on.  It was dark and
horrible.  Some sticky stuff was dripping off the cliffs.

"Excuse me, Sir Grummore, but is that you snuffling in my ear?"

"No, no, my dear fellow.  Go on, go on.  I am only doin' my bayin' as
well as I can."

"It is not the baying I refer to, Sir Grummore, but a kind of breathing
noise of a husky nature."

"My dear chap, it is no good askin' me.  All you can hear in here is a
kind of creakin', like a bellows."

"Yours truly thinks the rain is going to stop.  Do you mind if we stop,
too?"

"Well, Palomides, if you must stop, you must.  But if we don't get this
over quickly, I shall get my stitch again.  What do you want to stop
for?"

"I wish it was not so dark."

"But you can't stop just because it is dark."

"No.  One appreciates that."

"Go on, then, old boy.  Left!  Right!  That's the ticket."

"I say, Grummore," said Sir Palomides later.  "There it is again."

"What is?"

"The puffing, Sir Grummore."

"Are you sure it is not me?" inquired Sir Grummore.

"Positive.  It is a menacing or amorous puff, similar to the grampus.
This paynim sincerely wishes that it were not so dark."

"Ah, well, we can't have everythin'.  Now march on, Palomides, there's
a good fellow, do."

After a bit, Sir Grummore said sepulchrally:

"Dear old boy, can't you stop bumpin' all the time?"

"But I am not bumping, Sir Grummore."

"Well, what is, then?"

"Yours faithfully can feel no bumps."

"Somethin' keeps bumpin' me behind."

"Is it your tail, perhaps?"

"No.  I have that wound round me."

"In any case it would be impossible to bump you from the back, because
the forelegs are in front."

"There it is again!"

"What?"

"The bump!  It was a definite assault.  Palomides, we are bein'
attacked!"

"No, no, Sir Grummore.  You are imagining things."

"Palomides, we must turn round!"

"What for, Sir Grummore?"

"To see what is bumping me behind."

"Yours truly can see nothing, Sir Grummore.  It is too dark."

"Put your hand out of your mouth, and see what you can feel."

"I can feel a sort of round thing."

"That is me, Sir Palomides.  That is me, from the back."

"Sincere apologies, Sir Grummore."

"Not at all, my dear chap, not at all.  What else can you feel?"

The kindly Saracen's voice began to falter.

"Something cold," he said, "and--slippery."

"Does it move, Palomides?"

"It moves, and--it snuffles!"

"Snuffles?"

"Snuffles!"

At this moment the moon came out.

"Merciful powers!" cried Sir Palomides, in a high squealing voice, as
he peered out of his mouth.  "Run, Grummore, run!  Left, right!  Quick
march!  Double march!  Faster, faster!  Keep in step!  Oh, my poor
heels!  Oh, my God!  Oh, my hat!"


It was no good, decided the King.  Probably they had got lost, or
wandered off somewhere to amuse themselves.  It was beastly wet, as it
nearly always was in Lothian, and really he had done his best to fall
in with their plans.  Now they had wandered off--one might almost say
inconsiderately--and left him with his wretched brachet to get rusty.
It was too bad.

With a determined motion he marched away to bed, heaving the brachet
along behind him.


Half-way up a fissure in one of the steepest cliffs, with most of its
buttons burst, the counterfeit Beast was arguing with its stomach.

"But, my dear knight, how could yours truly foresee a calamity of this
nature?"

"You thought of it," replied the stomach furiously.  "You made us dress
up.  It is your fault."

At the foot of the cliff the Questing Beast herself, in a sentimental
attitude, waited in the romantic moonlight for her better half.

Behind her was a background of the silver sea.  In various parts of the
landscape several dozens of bent and distorted Old Ones were intently
examining the situation from the concealment of rocks, sandhills,
shell-mounds, igloos and so forth--still vainly trying to fathom the
subtle secrets of the English.




_Chapter X_

In Bedegraine it was the night before the battle.  A number of bishops
were blessing the armies on both sides, hearing confessions and saying
Mass.  Arthur's men were reverent about this, but King Lot's men were
not--for such was the custom in all armies that were going to be
defeated.  The bishops assured both sides that they were certain to
win, because God was with them, but King Arthur's men knew that they
were outnumbered by three to one, so they thought it was best to get
shriven.  King Lot's men, who also knew the odds, spent the night
dancing, drinking, dicing and telling each other dirty stories.  This
is what the chronicles say, at any rate.

In the King of England's tent, the last staff talk had been held, and
Merlyn had stayed behind to have a chat.  He was looking worried.

"What are you worried about, Merlyn?  Are we going to lose this battle,
after all?"

"No.  You will win the battle all right.  There is no harm in telling
you so.  You will do your best, and fight hard, and call in
You-know-whom at the right moment.  It will be in your nature to win
the battle, so it doesn't matter telling you.  No.  It is something
else which I ought to have told you that is worrying me just now."

"What was it about?"

"Gracious heavens!  Why should I be worrying if I could remember what
it was about?"

"Was it about the maiden called Nimue?"

"No.  No.  No.  No.  That's quite a different business.  It was
something--it was something I can't remember."

After a bit, Merlyn took his beard out of his mouth and began counting
on his fingers.

"I have told you about Guenever, haven't I?"

"I don't believe it."

"No matter.  And I have warned you about her and Lancelot."

"That warning," said the King, "would be a base one anyway, whether it
was true or false."

"Then I have said the bit about Excalibur, and how you must be careful
of the sheath?"

"Yes."

"I have told you about your father, so it can't be him, and I have
given the hint about the person.

"What is confounding me," exclaimed the magician, pulling out his hair
in tufts, "is that I can't remember whether it is in the future or in
the past."

"Never mind about it," said Arthur.  "I don't like knowing the future
anyway.  I had much rather you didn't worry about it, because it only
worries me."

"But it is something I must say.  It is vital."

"Stop thinking about it," suggested the King, "and then perhaps it will
come back.  You ought to take a holiday.  You have been bothering your
head too much lately, what with all these warnings and arranging about
the battle."

"I _will_ take a holiday," exclaimed Merlyn.  "As soon as this battle
is over, I will go on a walking tour into North Humberland.  I have a
Master called Bleise who lives in North Humberland, and perhaps he will
be able to tell me what it is I am trying to remember.  Then we could
have some wild fowl watching.  He is a great man for wild fowl."

"Good," said Arthur.  "You take a long holiday.  Then, when you come
back, we can think of something to prevent Nimue."

The old man stopped fiddling with his fingers, and looked sharply at
the King.

"You are an innocent fellow, Arthur," he said.  "And a good thing too,
really."

"Why?"

"Do you remember anything about the magic you had when you were small?"

"No.  Did I have some magic?  I can remember that I was interested in
birds and beasts.  Indeed, that is why I still keep my menagerie at the
Tower.  But I don't remember about magic."

"People don't remember," said Merlyn.  "I suppose you wouldn't remember
about the parables I used to tell you, when I was trying to explain
things?"

"Of course I do.  There was one about some Rabbi or other which you
told me when I wanted to take Kay somewhere.  I never could understand
why the cow died."

"Well, I want to tell you another parable now."

"I shall love it."

"In the East, perhaps in the same place which that Rabbi Jachanan came
from, there was a certain man who was walking in the market of Damascus
when he came face to face with Death.  He noticed an expression of
surprise on the spectre's horrid countenance, but they passed one
another without speaking.  The fellow was frightened, and went to a
wise man to ask what should be done.  The wise man told him that Death
had probably come to Damascus to fetch him away next morning.  The poor
man was terrified at this, and asked however he could escape.  The only
way they could think of between them was that the victim should ride
all night to Aleppo, thus eluding the skull and bloody bones.

"So this man did ride to Aleppo--it was a terrible ride which had never
been done in one night before--and when he was there he walked in the
market place, congratulating himself on having eluded Death.

"Just then, Death came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
'Excuse me,' he said, 'but I have come for you.'  'Why,' exclaimed the
terrified man, 'I thought I met you in Damascus yesterday!'  'Exactly,'
said Death.  'That was why I looked surprised--for I had been told to
meet you today, in Aleppo.'"

Arthur reflected on this gruesome chestnut for some time, then he said:

"So it is no good trying to escape Nimue?"

"Even if I wanted to," said Merlyn, "it would be no good.  There is a
thing about Time and Space which the philosopher Einstein is going to
find out.  Some people call it Destiny."

"But what I can't get over is this toad-in-the-hole business."

"Ah, well," said Merlyn, "people will do a lot for love.  And then the
toad is not necessarily unhappy in its hole, not more than when you are
asleep, for instance.  I shall do some considering, until they let me
out again."

"So they will let you out?"

"I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you.
It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come
back.  Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone?  _Hic
jacet Arthurus Rex quondam Rexque futurus_.  Do you remember your
Latin?  It means, the once and future king."

"I am to come back as well as you?"

"Some say from the vale of Avilion."

The King thought about it in silence.  It was full night outside, and
there was stillness in the bright pavilion.  The sentries, moving on
the grass, could not be heard.

"I wonder," he said at last, "whether they will remember about our
Table?"

Merlyn did not answer.  His head was bowed on the white beard and his
hands clasped between his knees.

"What sort of people will they be, Merlyn?" cried the young man's
voice, unhappily.




_Chapter XI_

The Queen of Lothian had taken to her chamber, cutting off
communication with her guests, and Pellinore broke his fast alone.
Afterwards he went for a walk along the beach, admiring the gulls who
flew above him like white quill pens whose heads had been neatly dipped
in ink.  The old cormorants stood like crucifixes on the rocks, drying
their wings.  He was feeling sad as usual, but he was also feeling
uncomfortable, because he was missing something.  He did not know what
it was.  He was missing Palomides and Grummore, if he had been able to
remember.

Presently he was attracted by shouting, and went to investigate.

"Here, Pellinore!  Hi!  We are over here!"

"Why, Grummore," he asked with interest, "whatever are you doing up
that cliff?"

"Look at the Beast, man, look at the Beast!"

"Oh, hallo, you have got old Glatisant."

"My dear chap, for heaven's sake do something.  We have been here all
night."

"But why are you dressed up like that, Grummore?  You have got spots,
or something.  And what has Palomides got on his head?"

"Don't stand there arguin', man."

"But you have a sort of tail, Grummore.  I can see it hanging down
behind."

"Of course I have a tail.  Can't you stop talkin' and do somethin'?  We
have been in this damned crevice all night, and we are droppin' with
fatigue.  Go on, Pellinore, kill that Beast of yours at once."

"Oh, I say, whatever should I want to kill her for?"

"Good gracious heavens, haven't you been tryin' to kill her for the
last eighteen years?  Now, come along, Pellinore, be a good chap and do
somethin'.  If you don't do somethin' quick, we shall both tumble out."

"What I can't understand," said the King plaintively, "is why you
should be in this cliff at all.  And why are you dressed up like that?
You look as if you were dressed as a sort of Beast yourselves.  And
where did the Beast come from, anyway, what?  I mean, the whole thing
is so sudden."

"Pellinore, once and for all, will you kill that Beast?"

"Why?"

"Because it has chased us up this cliff."

"It is unusual for the Beast," remarked the King.  "She does not
generally take an interest in people like this."

"Palomides," said Sir Grummore hoarsely, "says he believes she has
fallen in love with us."

"Fallen in love?"

"Well, you see, we were dressed up as a Beast."

"Like likes Like," explained Sir Palomides faintly.

King Pellinore slowly began to laugh for the first time since he had
arrived in Lothian.

"Well!" he said.  "Bless my soul!  Did you ever hear of anything to
match it?  Why does Palomides think she has fallen for him?"

"The Beast," said Sir Grummore with dignity, "has been walkin' round
and round the cliff all night.  She has been rubbin' herself against
it, and purrin'.  And she sometimes curls her neck round the rocks, and
gazes up at us in a sort of way."

"What sort of way, Grummore?"

"My dear fellow, look at her now."

The Questing Beast, who had not paid the least attention to the arrival
of her master, was staring up at Sir Palomides with her soul in her
eyes.  Her chin was pressed to the foot of the cliffs in a passion of
devotion, and occasionally she gave her tail a wag.  She moved it
laterally on the surface of pebbles, where its numerous heraldic tufts
and foliations made a rustling noise, and sometimes she scratched the
bluff with a small whimper.  Then, feeling that she had been too
froward, she would arch her graceful serpent neck and hide her head
beneath her belly, peeping upwards from the corner of one eye.

"Well, Grummore, what do you want me to do?"

"We want to come down," said Sir Grummore.

"I can see that," said the King.  "It seems a sensible idea.  Mind you,
I don't understand exactly how the whole thing started, what, but I can
see that, absolutely."

"Then kill it, Pellinore.  Kill the wretched creature."

"Oh, really," said the King.  "I don't know about that!  After all,
what harm has she done?  All the world loves a lover.  I don't see why
the poor beastie should be killed, just because she has got the gentle
passion.  I mean to say, I am in love myself, amn't I, what?  It gives
you a sort of fellow feeling."

"King Pellinore," said Sir Palomides definitely, "unless some steps are
taken pretty dam' quick, yours affectionately will be instantaneously
martyred, R.I.P."

"But, my dear Palomides, I can't possibly kill the old Beast, don't you
see, because my sword is blunt."

"Then stun her with it, Pellinore.  Give her a good bang on the head
with it, man, and perhaps she will get concussion."

"That is all very well for you, Grummore, old fellow.  But suppose it
doesn't stun her?  It might make her lose her temper, Grummore, and
then where should I be?  Personally I can't see why you should want to
have the creature assaulted at all.  After all, she is in love with
you, isn't she, what?"

"Whatever the reasons for the animal's behaviour, the point is we are
on this ledge."

"Then all you need to do is to come off it."

"My good man, how can we come down to be attacked?"

"It will only be a loving sort of attack," the King pointed out
reassuringly.  "Sort of making advances.  I don't suppose she will do
you any harm.  All you would have to do would be to walk along in front
of her until you reached the castle, what?  As a matter of fact you
could perhaps encourage her a bit.  After all, everybody likes to have
their affection returned."

"Are you suggesting," asked Sir Grummore coldly, "that we should flirt
with this reptile of yours?"

"It would certainly make it easier.  I mean, the walk back."

"And how are we to do this, pray?"

"Well, Palomides could twine his neck round hers occasionally, you
know, and you could wag your tail.  I suppose you could not lick her
nose?"

"Yours truly," said Sir Palomides feebly, finally and with aversion,
"can neither twine nor lick.  Also he is now about to fall.  Adieu."

With this the unfortunate paynim let go of the cliff with both hands
and appeared to be sinking into the monster's jaws--but that Sir
Grummore caught him, and the remaining buttons held him in position.

"There!" said Sir Grummore.  "Now look what you have done."

"But, my dear fellow..."

"I am not your dear fellow.  You are simply abandonin' us to
destruction."

"Oh, I say!"

"Yes, you are.  Heartlessly."

The King scratched his head.

"I suppose," he said doubtfully, "I could hold her by the tail, while
you made a dash for it."

"Then do so.  If you don't do somethin' immediately, Palomides will
fall, and then we shall come in half."

"I still don't see," said the King sadly, "why you had to dress up like
this to begin with.  It is all a mystery to me.

"However," he added, taking the Beast by the tail, "come on, old girl.
Heave-ho!  We shall have to do the best we can in the circumstances.
Now then, you two, run for your lives.  Hurry up, Grummore, I don't
think the Beast is pleased, by the feel of her.  Ah, you naughty thing,
leave it!  Run, Grummore!  Naughty Beast!  Pah!  Nasty, nasty!  Leave
it!  Quick, man, quick!  Come away then!  Don't touch!  Trust!  She'll
be off in a minute!  Come to heel, will you?  Heel!  Come behind!  Oh,
you horrid Beast!  Faster, Grummore!  Sit, sit!  Lie down, Beast!  How
dare you?  Look out, man, she's coming!  Oh, you would, would you?
There!  Now she's bitten me!"


They won the drawbridge by a short head, and it was drawn up after them
in the nick of time.

"Phew!" said Sir Grummore, unbuttoning the back end and standing up to
mop his brow.

"Hoots!" cried various auld wives who were in the castle delivering
eggs.  Some of the castle circle could speak English after a fashion,
including St. Toirdealbhach and Mother Morlan.

"Wee sleekit, cow'ring, timorous Beastie," said the drawbridge man.
"Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie!"

"Aroint us!" said the bystanders.

"Bonnie Sir Palomides," said a number of Old Ones who had known of
their plight on the cliff ledge all night--without saying anything
about it, as was their custom, for fear of being caught out, "is going
to lay him doon and dee."

They turned round to examine the paynim, and found that it was as they
said.  Sir Palomides had collapsed on a stone mounting block, without
troubling to take his head off, and was breathing heavily.  They took
it off for him and threw a bucket of water in his face.  Then they
fanned him with their aprons.

"Ah, the puir churl," they said compassionately.  "The sassenagh!  The
sable savage!  Will he no' come back again?  Gie him anither drappie
there.  Ah, the braw splash!"

Sir Palomides revived slowly, blowing bubbles out of his nose.

"Where is yours truly?" he asked.

"Here we are, old boy.  We got back safe.  The Beast is outside."

Through the portcullis there came a sorrowful howling to bear out Sir
Grummore's statement, as it had been thirty couple of hounds baying the
moon.  Sir Palomides shuddered.

"We ought to look out, to see if King Pellinore is comin'."

"Yes, Sir Grummore.  Allow one sec. for recuperation."

"The Beast may have done him a mischief."

"Poor fellow!"

"How do you feel yourself?"

"The indisposition is passing," said Sir Palomides bravely.

"Not much time to waste.  It may be eatin' him at this moment."

"Lead on," said the paynim, heaving himself to his feet.  "Forward to
the battlements."

So the whole party set off to climb the narrow stairs of the Pele Tower.

Below them, looking small and upside down from this height, the
Questing Beast could be seen sitting in the ravine which bounded the
castle on that side.  She was sitting on a boulder in it, with her tail
in the burn, and looking up at the drawbridge with her head on one
side.  Her tongue was hanging out.  Nothing could be seen of Pellinore.

"Evidently she is not eatin' him," said Sir Grummore.

"Unless she has eaten him."

"I hardly think she would have had time to do that, old boy, not in the
time."

"You would think she would have left some bones or something.  Or at
any rate the armour."

"Quite."

"What do you think we ought to do?"

"It seems bafflin'."

"Do you think we ought to make a sortie?"

"We could wait to see what happens, Palomides, don't you think?"

"No leaps," assented Sir Palomides, "without previous looks."

After they had been watching for half an hour or so, the faction of the
Old Ones grew bored with the lack of entertainment.  They clattered off
down the stairs, to throw stones at the Questing Beast off the top of
the wall.  The two knights stayed on the lookout.

"This is a pretty state of affairs."

"Indeed, it is."

"I mean, when you work it out."

"Exactly."

"Here is the Queen of Orkney angry about something on one side--I could
not help noticing that she seemed a little queer about that
unicorn--and Pellinore moping on the other.  And you are supposed to be
in love with La Beale Isoud, isn't it?  And now this Beast is after
both of us."

"A confusing situation."

"Love," said Sir Grummore uneasily, "is a pretty strong passion, when
you come to think of it."

At this moment, as if to confirm Sir Grummore's opinion, a pair of
enlaced figures sauntered along the cliff road.

"Good gracious," exclaimed Sir Grummore.  "What are these?"

As they drew nearer, their identity became clear.  One of them was King
Pellinore, and he had his arm round the waist of a stout, middle-aged
lady in a side-saddle skirt.  She had a red, horsey face, and carried a
hunting crop in her free hand.  Her hair was in a bun.

"It must be the Queen of Flanders' daughter!"

"I say, you two!" cried King Pellinore, as soon as he had observed
them.  "I say, look here, what do you think, can you guess?  Whoever
would have thought it, what?  What do you think I have found?"

"Aha!" cried the stout lady in a booming voice, archly tapping his
cheek with her hunting crop.  "But who did the findin', eh?"

"Yes, yes, I know!  It was not me that found her at all; it was she
that found me!  What do you think of that?

"And do you know what?" went on the King, in high delight.  "None of my
letters could possibly be answered!  I never put our address on them!
We hadn't got one!  I always knew there was something wrong.  So Piggy
got on her horse, you know, and came huntin' after me by moor and fell!
The Questing Beast helped her a great deal--it has an excellent
nose--and that magic barge of ours, can you imagine it, must have had
an idea or two in its head, for it went back to fetch them when it saw
that I was upset!  How nice of it!  They found it in a creek somewhere,
and here they are!

"But why are we standing about?" shouted the King.  He was so excited
that nobody else had time to talk.  "I mean to say, why are we shouting
so?  Is it polite, do you think?  Ought you two to come down and let us
in?  What is wrong with this drawbridge anyway?"

"It is the Beast, Pellinore, the Beast!  She is in the ravine!"

"What is wrong with the Beast?"

"She is besiegin' the castle."

"Oh, yes," said the King.  "Now I remember.  She bit me.

"And what do you think?" he went on, waving one hand in the air to show
that it was bandaged.  "Piggy tied it up for me like one o'clock.  She
tied it up with a bit of--well, you know."

"Petticoats," boomed the Queen of Flanders' daughter.

"Yes, yes, her petticoats!"

The King was convulsed with giggles.

"That is all very well, Pellinore, that is all very well.  But what are
you goin' to do about the Beast?"

His Majesty was intoxicated with gaiety.  "Ho, the Beast!" he cried.
"Is that the trouble?  I'll soon settle her!

"Now then!" he exclaimed, marching to the edge of the ravine and waving
his sword.  "Now then!  Off you go!  Shoo!  Shoo!"

The Questing Beast looked at him absently.  She moved her tail in a
vague gesture of recognition, then returned her attention to the
gatehouse.  The occasional stones which were being thrown at her by the
Old Ones she dexterously caught and swallowed, in the maddening way
which chickens have when you are trying to drive them off.

"Let down the drawbridge!" commanded the King.  "I will attend to her!
Shoo, now, shoo!"

The drawbridge was lowered with hesitation.  The Beast immediately drew
closer to it, with a hopeful expression.

"Now then," cried the King.  "You rush in, while I defend the rear."

The drawbridge reached the ground and Piggy was speeding across before
it touched.  King Pellinore, less agile or more bemused by the gentle
passion, collided with her in the gateway.  The Questing Beast ran into
them behind, knocking the King flat.

"Beware!  Beware!" cried all the retainers, fishwives, falconers,
farriers, fletchers, and other well-wishers who were assembled within.

The Queen of Flanders' daughter turned like a tigress to defend her
young.

"Be off, you shameless hussy," she cried, bringing her hunting crop
down on the creature's nose.  The Questing Beast recoiled with the
tears springing to its eyes, and the portcullis crashed between them.


In the evening a new crisis began to develop.  It became obvious that
Glatisant intended to besiege the castle until her mate had been
produced, and, in these circumstances, the Old Ones who had brought
their eggs to market refused to leave the gate without an escort.
Eventually the three southern knights had to convoy them to the foot of
the cliff, with drawn swords in their hands.

In the village street St. Toirdealbhach was waiting to receive the
convoy, a raffish Silenus supported by four small boys.  His breath
smelt strongly of whisky and he was in tearing spirits, waving his
shillelagh.

"Not a one more stories," he was shouting.  "Am not I going to be
married wid ould Mother Morlan, and after having a fight wid Duncan
this minute, and never more to be a saint?"

"Congratulations!" the children told him for the hundredth time.

"We are all right also," added Gareth.  "We are allowed to serve at
dinner every day."

"Glory be to God!  Is it every day, begor?"

"Yes, and our mother takes us for walks."

"Well, there now.  Praise youth and it will come!"

The saint caught sight of the convoy and began to howl like an Iroquois.

"Up the ribels!"

"Be easy now," they told him.  "Be easy, your Holiness.  The swords are
not for fighting with at all."

"Why wouldn't they be?" he inquired indignantly, and he proceeded to
kiss King Pellinore and breathe on him.

The King said: "I say, are you really going to be married?  So am I.
Are you excited?"

For answer, the holy man twined his arms round the King's neck and drew
him into Mother Morlan's shebeen--not entirely to Pellinore's
satisfaction, for he would have liked to hurry back to Piggy--but it
was obvious that a bachelor party would have to be held in celebration.
The whole Gaelic miasma had faded like the mist it was--whether under
the influence of love or of whisky or of its own nature as mist--and
the three southerners found themselves accepted at last as individuals
and guests, irrespective of the racial trauma, into the warm heart of
the North.




_Chapter XII_

The battle of Bedegraine was fought near Sorhaute in the forest of
Sherwood, during the Whitsun holiday.  It was a decisive battle,
because it was in some ways the twelfth century equivalent of what
later came to be called a Total War.

The Eleven Kings were ready to fight their sovereign in the Norman
way--in the foxhunting way of Henry the Second and of his sons--for
sport and acquisition and without the real intention of doing each
other a personal injury.  They--the kings with the tank-like knights of
their nobility--were prepared to take a sporting risk.  It was the kind
of risk which Jorrocks talked about.  King Lot might have said with
justice that the rebellion which he led against Arthur was the image of
foxhunting without its guilt, and only twenty-five per cent of its
danger.

But the Eleven Kings needed a background for their exploits.  Even if
the knights had little wish to kill each other on the grand scale,
there was no reason why they should not kill the serfs.  It would have
been a poor day's sport indeed, according to their estimation, without
a bag to count at the end of it.

So the war, as the rebel lords had wished to fight it, was a kind of
double battle, or a war within a war.  On the outer circle there were
sixty thousand kerns and gallowglasses marching with the Eleven, and
these ill-armed levies of the Old Ones were inflamed against the twenty
thousand foot-soldiers of Arthur's Sassenach army by the tragedy of the
Gael.  Between the armies there was a serious racial enmity.  But it
was an enmity controlled from above--by nobles who were not sincerely
anxious for each other's blood.  The armies were packs of hounds, as it
were, whose struggle with each other was to be commanded by Masters of
Hounds, who took the matter as an exciting gamble.  If the hounds had
turned mutinous, for instance, Lot and his allies would have been ready
to ride with Arthur's knights, in quelling what they would have
considered a real rebellion.

The nobles of the inner circle on both sides were in a way
traditionally more friendly with each other than with their own men.
For them the numbers were necessary for the sake of the bag, and for
scenic purposes.  For them a good war had to be full of "arms,
shoulders and heads flying about the field and blows ringing by the
water and the wood".  But the arms, shoulders and heads would be those
of villeins, and the blows which rang, without removing many limbs,
would be exchanged by the iron nobility.  Such, at any rate, was the
idea of battle in Lot's command.  When sufficient kerns had been
decapitated and sufficient rough handling had been dealt out to the
English captains, Arthur would recognize the impossibility of further
resistance.  He would capitulate.  Financial terms of peace would be
agreed on--which would yield an excellent profit in ransoms--and all
would be more or less as it had been before--except that the fiction of
feudal overlordship would be abolished, which was a fiction in any case.

Naturally a war of this sort was likely to be hedged with etiquette,
just as foxhunting is hedged with it.  It would begin at the advertised
meet, weather permitting, and it would be conducted according to
precedent.

But Arthur had a different idea in his head.  It did not seem to him to
be sporting, after all, that eighty thousand humble men should be leu'd
against each other while a fraction of their number, in carapaces like
the skins of tanks, manoeuvred for the sake of ransom.  He had begun to
set a value on heads, shoulders and arms--their owners' value, even if
the owner was a serf.  Merlyn had taught him to distrust the logic by
which countrysides could be pillaged for forage, husbandmen ruined,
soldiers slaughtered, so that he himself should pay a scathless ransom,
like the Coeur de Lion of the legends.

The King of England had ordered that there were to be no ransoms in his
sort of battle.  His knights were to fight, not against gallowglasses,
but against the knights of the Gaelic confederation.  Let the
gallowglasses fight among themselves if they must--indeed, since there
was a real aggression for them to settle, apart from the question of
ransoms, let them fight to the best of their ability.  But, as for his
nobles, they were to attack the nobles of the rebels as if they were
gallowglasses and nothing more.  They were to accept no composition,
observe no ballet-dancer's rules.  They were to press the war home to
its real lords--until they themselves were ready to refrain from
warfare, being confronted with its reality.

Afterwards, he knew for certain now, it was to be the destiny of his
life to deal with every way of twisting decency by threats of Power.

So we may well believe that the King's men were shriven on the night
before they fought.  Something of the young man's vision had penetrated
to his captains and his soldiers.  Something of the new ideal of the
Round Table which was to be born in pain, something about doing a
hateful and dangerous action for the sake of decency--for they knew
that the fight was to be fought in blood and death without reward.
They would get nothing but the unmarketable conscience of having done
what they ought to do in spite of fear--something which wicked people
have often debased by calling it glory with too much sentiment, but
which is glory all the same.  This idea was in the hearts of the young
men who knelt before the God-distributing bishops--knowing that the
odds were three to one, and that their own warm bodies might be cold at
sunset.


Arthur began with an atrocity and continued with other atrocities.  The
first one was that he did not wait the fashionable hour.  He ought to
have marshalled his Battle opposite Lot's, as soon as their breakfast
was over, and then, at about midday, when the lines were properly in
order, he should have given the signal to begin.  The signal having
been given, he should have charged Lot's footmen with his knights,
while Lot's knights charged his footmen, and there would have been a
splendid slaughter.

Instead, he attacked by night.  In the darkness, with a
war-whoop--deplorable and ungentlemanly tactics--he fell on the
insurgent camp with the blood pounding in the veins of his neck, and
Excalibur dancing in his hand.  He had taken the odds of three to one.
In knights he was wildly outmatched.  A single King of the rebels--the
King of the Hundred Knights--had with his own forces two-thirds of the
total number to which the Round Table was ever to grow.  And Arthur had
not started the war.  He was fighting in his own country, hundreds of
miles within his own borders, against an aggression which he had not
provoked.

Down came the tents, up flared the torches, out flew the blades, and
the yell of battle mingled with the lamentation of surprise.  The
noise, the slaughtering and slaughtered demons black against the
flames--what scenes there have been in Sherwood, where now the oak
trees crowd into a shade!

It was a masterful start, and it was rewarded by success.  The Eleven
Kings and their baronage were in armour already--it took so long to arm
a nobleman that he was often accomplished overnight.  If they had not
been, it might have been an almost bloodless victory.  Instead, it was
an initiative, and the initiative held.  The chivalry of the Old Ones
fought their way from the ruined encampment, hand to hand.  They
managed to unite into an armoured regiment--which was still several
times larger than anything in armour which the King could bring against
them--but they were deprived of their accustomed screen of footmen.
There had been no time to organize the gallowglasses, and such of these
as did remain with the nobility were demoralized or leaderless.  Arthur
detached his own footmen, under Merlyn, to deal with the infantry
battle which was centred round the camp, and he himself pressed on with
his cavalry against the kings themselves.  He had them on the run, and
saw that he must keep them on it.  They were indignantly surprised by
what they considered an unchivalrous personal outrage--outrageous to be
attacked with positive manslaughter, as if a baron could be killed like
a Saxon kern.

The King's second atrocity was that he neglected the kerns themselves.
That part of the battle, the racial struggle which had a certain
reality even if it was a wicked one, he left to the races
themselves--to the infantry and to Merlyn's direction, at the
struggling camp from which the cavalry was already sweeping away.
There were three Gaels to every Gall among the tents, but they were
surprised and taken at a disadvantage.  He wished them no particular
harm--concentrating his indignation upon the leaders who had seduced
their addled pates--but he knew that they would have to be allowed
their fight.  He hoped that it would be a victorious one so far as his
own troops were concerned.  In the meantime his business was with the
leaders--and, as the day dawned, the atrociousness of his conduct
became apparent.

For the Eleven Kings had assembled some apology for an infantry screen,
behind which to wait his charges.  He ought to have charged this screen
of terrified men, dealing them an enormous execution.  Instead, he
neglected them.  He galloped through the infantry as if they were not
his enemies at all--not even troubling to strike at them--pressing his
charge against the armoured core itself.  The infantry, for their part,
accepted the mercy only too thankfully.  They behaved as if it was not
an honour to be allowed to die for Lothian.  The discipline, as the
rebel generals said afterwards, was not Pictish.

The charges began with the growing day.

At a military tattoo perhaps, or at some old piece of show-ground
pageantry, you may have seen a cavalry charge.  If so, you know that
"seen" is not the word.  It is heard--the thunder, earth-shake,
drum-fire, of the bright and battering sandals!  Yes, and even then it
is only a cavalry charge you are thinking of, not a chivalry one.
Imagine it now, with the horses twice as heavy as the soft-mouthed
hunters of our own midnight pageants, with the men themselves twice
heavier on account of arms and shield.  Add the cymbal-music of the
clashing armour to the jingle of the harness.  Turn the uniforms into
mirrors, blazing with the sun, the lances into spears of steel.  Now
the spears dip, and now they are coming.  The earth quakes under feet.
Behind, among the flying clods, there are hoof-prints stricken in the
ground.  It is not the men that are to be feared, not their swords nor
even their spears, but the hoofs of the horses.  It is the impetus of
that shattering phalanx of iron--spread across the battle-front,
inescapable, pulverizing, louder than drums, beating the earth.

The knights of the confederation met the outrage as they could.  They
stood to it, and fought back.  But the novelty of their situation as
objects of ferocity in spite of their rank, and also as a large body
being charged with arrogance by a body numbering less than a quarter of
their own--and being charged again and again into the bargain--this had
an effect on their morale.  They gave ground before the charges, still
orderly but giving, and were shepherded along a glade of Sherwood
forest--a wide glade like an estuary of grass with trees on either side.

During this phase of the battle there was a display of bravery by
various individuals.  King Lot had personal successes against Sir
Meliot de la Roche and against Sir Clariance.  He was unhorsed by Kay,
and horsed again, only to be wounded in the shoulder by Arthur
himself--who was everywhere, youthful, triumphant, over-excited.

As a general.  Lot seems to have been a martinet and something of a
coward.  But he was a tactician in spite of his formality.  He seems to
have recognized by noon that he was faced by a new kind of warfare,
which required a new defence.  The demons of Arthur's cavalry were not
concerned with ransoms, it was now seen, and they were prepared to go
on smashing their heads against the wall of his cavalry until it broke.
He decided to wear them out.  At a hurried council of war behind the
line, it was arranged that he himself, with four other kings and half
the defenders, should retire along the glade to prepare a position.
The remaining six kings were sufficient to hold the English, while
Lot's men rested and re-formed.  Then, when the position was prepared,
the six kings of the advance guard were to retire through it, leaving
Lot in the front line while they re-formed.

The army split accordingly.

Arthur accepted this moment of division as the opportunity for which he
had been waiting.  He sent an equerry to gallop for the trees.  He had
made a pact of mutual aid with two French kings, called Ban and
Bors--and these two allies had come from France with about ten thousand
men, to lend him aid.  The Frenchmen had been hidden in the forest on
either side of the clearing, as reserves.  It had been in their
direction that the King had tried to drive the enemy.  The equerry
galloped, there was a twinkle of armour among the leafy oaks, and Lot's
mind jumped to the trap.  He looked only to the one side of the glade,
where Bors was issuing already upon his flank, being unaware at present
that Ban was on the other wing.

Lot's nerve began to collapse at this stage.  He was wounded in the
shoulder, faced by an enemy who seemed to accept the death of gentlemen
as a part of warfare, and now he was in an ambush.  "Oh, defend us from
death and horrible maims," he is reported to have said, "for I see well
we be in great peril of death."

He detached King Carados with a strong squadron to meet King Bors, only
to find that a second equerry had sprung King Ban from the opposite
side of him.  He was still in numerical superiority, but his nerve was
now gone for good.  "Ha," he said to the Duke of Cambenet, "we must be
discomfited."  He is even supposed to have wept "for pity and dole".

Carados was personally unhorsed, and his squadron broken by King Bors.
The advance guard of six kings was driven in by Arthur's charges.  Lot,
with King Morganore's division, faced about in order to hold King Ban
upon his wing.

The rebellion would have been ended on that day, with one more hour of
daylight.  But the sun set, coming to the rescue of the Old Ones, and
there was no moon for that quarter.  Arthur called off the hunt, judged
accurately that the insurgents were demoralized, and allowed his men to
sleep in comfort on their arms, with few but careful sentries.

The exhausted army of his enemies, who had diced the night before, now
spent the hours of darkness sleepless again, standing to arms or in
their councils.  Like all the highland armies that have ever marched
against Gramarye, they were distrustful of each other.  They expected
another night attack.  They were dismayed by what they had suffered.
They were divided on the subject of capitulation or resistance.  It was
the brink of daylight before King Lot could have his way.

The remaining infantry, by his orders, were to be turned off like so
many cattle, to stray and save their naked legs however they could.
The knights were to band themselves into a single phalanx to resist the
charges, and any man who ran away thereafter was to be shot at once for
cowardice.


In the morning, almost before they were formed, Arthur was on them.  In
conformity with his own tactics, he sent only a small troop of forty
spears to start the work.  These men, a picked striking force of
gallants, resumed the onslaughts of the previous afternoon.  They came
down at a hand gallop, smashed through the rank or broke it, re-formed,
and came again.  The dogged regiment withdrew before them, sullen,
dispirited, the fight knocked out of it.

At noon the three kings of the allies struck with their full force, in
a final blow.  There was the moment of intermingling with a noise like
thunder, the spectacle of broken lances sailing in the air while horses
pawed that element before they went down backward.  There was a yell
that shook the forest.  After it, on the trodden turf with its hoof
marks and kicked sods and a debris of offensive weapons, there was an
unnatural silence.  There were people riding about aimlessly at a walk.
But there were no longer any organized traces of the chivalry of the
Gael.


Merlyn met the King as he rode back from Sorhaute--a magician rather
tired, and still unmounted.  He was dressed in the infantry habergeon
in which he had insisted on fighting.  He brought the news that the
clans on foot had offered their capitulation.




_Chapter XIII_

In the September moonlight, several weeks later, King Pellinore was
sitting on the cliff top with his fiance, staring out to sea.  Soon
they were setting off for England, to be married.  His arm was about
her waist and his ear was pressed to the top of her head.  They were
unconscious of the world.

"But Dornar is such a funny name," the King was saying.  "I can't think
how you thought of it."

"But you thought of it, Pellinore."

"Did I?"

"Yes.  Aglovale, Percivale, Lamorak and Dornar."

"They will be like cherubs," said the King fervently.  "Like cherubim!
What are cherubim?"

Behind them the ancient castle loomed against the stars.  There was a
faint noise of shouting from the top of the Round Tower, where Grummore
and Palomides were arguing with the Questing Beast.  She was still in
love with her counterfeit, and still kept the castle in a state of
siege--which had only been broken for a few hours on the day of Lot's
return with his defeated army.  It had been a surprise for the English
knights to learn that they had been at war with Orkney all the time,
but it was too late to do anything about it, since the war was over.
Now everybody was inside, the drawbridge was permanently up, and
Glatisant lay in the moonlight at the foot of the tower, her head
gleaming like silver.  Pellinore had refused to have her killed.


Merlyn arrived one afternoon in the course of his northern walking
tour, wearing a haversack and a pair of monstrous boots.  He was sleek
and snowy and shining, like an eel preparing for its nuptial journey to
the Sargasso Sea, for the time of Nimue was at hand.  But he was
absent-minded, unable to remember the one thing which he ought to have
told his pupil, and he listened to their difficulties with an impatient
ear.

"Excuse me," they shouted from the top of the wall, as the magician
stood outside, "but it's about the Questin' Beast.  The Queen of
Lothian and Orkney is in a frightful temper about her."

"Are you sure it is about the Beast?"

"Certain, my dear fellow.  You see, she has us besieged."

"We dressed up," bawled Sir Palomides miserably, "as a sort of Beast
ourselves, respected sir, and she saw us coming into the castle.  There
are signs, ahem, of ardent affection.  Now this creature will not go
away, because she believes her mate to be inside, and it is of a great
unsafety to lower the drawbridge."

"You had better explain to her.  Stand on the battlements and explain
the mistake."

"Do you think she will understand?"

"After all," the magician said, "she is a magic beast.  It seems
possible."

But the explanation was a failure--she looked at them as if she thought
they were lying.

"I say, Merlyn!  Don't go yet."

"I have to go," he said absently.  "I have to do something somewhere,
but I can't remember what it is.  Meanwhile I shall have to carry on
with my walking tour.  I am to meet my master Bleise in North
Humberland, so that he can write down the chronicles of the battle, and
then we are to have a little wild-goose watching, and after that--well,
I can't remember."

"But, Merlyn, the Beast would not believe!"

"Never mind."  His voice was vague and troubled.  "Can't stop.  Sorry.
Apologize to Queen Morgause for me, will you, and say I was asking
after her health?"

He began to revolve on his toes, preparatory to vanishing.  Not much of
his walking tour was done on foot.

"Merlyn, Merlyn!  Wait a bit!"

He reappeared for a moment, saying in a cross voice: "Well, what is it?"

"The Beast will not believe us.  What are we to do?"

He frowned.

"Psycho-analyse her," he said eventually, beginning to spin.

"But, Merlyn, wait!  How are we to do this thing?"

"The usual method."

"But what is it?" they cried in despair.

He disappeared completely, his voice remaining in the air.

"Just find out what her dreams are and so on.  Explain the facts of
life.  But not too much of Freud."

Alter that, as a background to the felicity of King Pellinore--who
refused to bother with trivial problems--Grummore and Palomides had to
do their best.


"Well, you see," Sir Grummore was shouting, "when a hen lays an egg..."

Sir Palomides interrupted with an explanation about pollen and stamens.


Inside the castle, in the royal chamber of the Pele Tower, King Lot and
his consort were laid in the double bed.  The king was asleep,
exhausted by the effort of writing his memoirs about the war.  He had
no particular reason for staying awake.  Morgause was sleepless.

Tomorrow she was going to Carlion for Pellinore's wedding.  She was
going, as she had explained to her husband, in manner of a messenger,
to plead for his pardon.  She was taking the children with her.

Lot was angry about the journey and wished to forbid it, but she knew
how to deal with that.

The Queen drew herself silently out of the bed, and went to her coffer.
She had been told about Arthur since the army returned--about his
strength, charm, innocence and generosity.  His splendour had been
obvious, even through the envy and suspicion of those he had conquered.
Also there had been talk about a girl called Lionore, the daughter of
the Earl of Sanam, with whom the young man was supposed to be having an
affair.  The Queen opened the coffer in the darkness and stood near the
moonlit patch from the window, holding a strip of something in her
hands.  It was like a tape.

The strip was a less cruel piece of magic than the black cat had been,
but more gruesome.  It was called the Spancel--after the rope with
which domestic animals were hobbled--and there were several of them in
the secret coffers of the Old Ones.  They were a piseog rather than a
great magic.  Morgause had got it from the body of a soldier which had
been brought home by her husband, for burial in the Out Isles.

It was a tape of human skin, cut from the silhouette of the dead man.
That is to say, the cut had been begun at the right shoulder, and the
knife--going carefully in a double slit so as to make a tape--had gone
down the outside of the right arm, round the outer edge of each finger
as if along the seams of a glove, and up on the inside of the arm to
the arm-pit.  Then it had gone down the side of the body, down the leg
and up it to the crutch, and so on until it had completed the circuit
of the corpse's outline, at the shoulder from which it had started.  It
made a long ribbon.

The way to use a Spancel was this.  You had to find the man you loved
while he was asleep.  Then you had to throw it over his head without
waking him, and tie it in a bow.  If he woke while you were doing this,
he would be dead within the year.  If he did not wake until the
operation was over, he would be bound to fall in love with you.

Queen Morgause stood in the moonlight, drawing the spancel through her
fingers.


The four children were awake too, but they were not in their bedroom.
They had listened on the stairs during the royal dinner, so they knew
that they were off to England with their mother.

They were in the tiny Church of the Men--a chapel as ancient as
Christianity in the islands, though it was scarcely twenty feet square.
It was built of unmortared stones, like the great wall of the keep, and
the moonlight came through its single unglazed window to fall on the
stone altar.  The basin for holy water, on which the moonlight fell,
was scooped out of the living stone, and it had a stone lid cut from a
flake, to match it.

The Orkney children were kneeling in the home of their ancestors.  They
were praying that they might be true to their loving mother--that they
might be worthy of the Cornwall feud which she had taught them--and
that they might never forget the misty land of Lothian where their
fathers reigned.

Outside the window the thin moon stood upright in a deep sky, like the
paring of a finger nail for magic, and against the sky the weather vane
of the carrion crow with arrow in mouth pointed its arrow to the south.




_Chapter XIV_

Fortunately for Sir Palomides and Sir Grummore, the Questing Beast saw
reason at the last moment, before the cavalcade set out--otherwise they
would have had to stay in Orkney and miss the marriage altogether.
Even as it was, they had to stay up all night.  She recovered quite
suddenly.

The drawback was that she transferred her affection to the successful
analyst--to Palomides--as so often happens in psychoanalysis--and now
she refused to take any further interest in her early master.  King
Pellinore, not without a few sighs for the good old days, was forced to
resign his rights in her to the Saracen.  This is why, although Malory
clearly tells us that only a Pellinore could catch her, we always find
her being pursued by Sir Palomides in the later parts of the Morte
d'Arthur.  In any case, it makes very little difference who could catch
her, because nobody ever did.

The long march southward toward Carlion, with litters swaying and the
mounted escort jogging under flapping pennoncells, was exciting for
everybody.  The litters themselves were interesting.  They consisted of
ordinary carts with a kind of flag-staff at each end.  Between the
staffs a hammock was slung, in which the jolts were hardly felt.  The
two knights rode behind the royal conveyances, delighted at being able
to get out of the castle and see the marriage after all.  St.
Toirdealbhach followed with Mother Morlan, so that it would be a double
wedding.  The Questing Beast brought up the rear, keeping a tight eye
on Palomides, for fear of being let down once again.

All the saints came out of their beehives to see them off.  All the
Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha de Danaan, Old People and others waved to
them without the least suspicion from cliffs, currachs, mountains, bogs
and shell-mounds.  All the red deer and unicorns lined the high tops to
bid good-bye.  The terns came with their forked tails from the estuary,
squeaking away as if intent upon imitating an embarkation scene on the
wireless--the white-bottomed wheatears and pipits flitted along beside
them from whin to whin--the eagles, peregrines, ravens and chuffs made
circles over them in the air--the peat smoke followed them as if
anxious to make one last curl in the tips of their nostrils--the ogham
stones and souterrains and promontory forts exhibited their prehistoric
masonry in a blaze of sunlight--the sea-trout and salmon put their
gleaming heads out of the water--the glens, mountains and
heather-shoulders of the most beautiful country in the world joined the
general chorus--and the soul of the Gaelic world said to the boys in
the loudest of fairy voices: Remember Us!


If the march was exciting for the children, the metropolitan glories of
Carlion were enough to take their breath away.  Here, round the King's
castle, there were streets--not just one street--and castles of
dependent barons, and monasteries, chapels, churches, cathedrals,
markets, merchants' houses.  There were hundreds of people in the
streets, all dressed in blue or red or green or any bright colour, with
shopping baskets over their arms, or driving hissing geese before them,
or hurrying hither and thither in the livery of some great lord.  There
were bells ringing, clocks smiting in belfries, standards
floating--until the whole air above them seemed to be alive.  There
were dogs and donkeys and palfreys in caparison and priests and farm
wagons--whose wheels creaked like the day of judgment--and booths which
sold gilt gingerbread, and shops where the finest bits of armour in the
very latest fashions were displayed.  There were silk merchants and
spice merchants and jewellers.  The shops had painted trade signs hung
over them, like the inn signs which we have today.  There were
servitors carousing outside wine shops, and old ladies haggling over
eggs, and itinerant cads carrying cadges of hawks for sale, and portly
aldermen with gold chains, and brown ploughmen with hardly any clothes
on except a few bits of leather, and leashes of greyhounds, and strange
Eastern men selling parrots, and pretty ladies mincing along in high
dunces' caps with veils floating from the top of them, and perhaps a
page in front of the lady, carrying a prayer book, if she was going to
church.

Carlion was a walled town, so that this excitement was surrounded by a
battlement which seemed to go on for ever and ever.  The wall had
towers every two hundred yards, and four great gates as well.  When you
were approaching the town from across the plain, you could see the
castle keeps and church spires springing out of the wall in a
clump--like flowers growing in a pot.


King Arthur was delighted to see his old friends again, and to hear of
Pellinore's engagement.  He was the first knight he had taken a fancy
to, when he was a small boy in the Forest Sauvage, and he decided to
give the dear fellow a marriage of unexampled splendour.  The cathedral
of Carlion was booked for it, and no trouble was spared that a good
time should be had by all.  The pontifical nuptial high mass was
celebrated by such a galaxy of cardinals and bishops and nuncios that
there seemed to be no part of the immense church which was not teeming
with violet and scarlet and incense and little boys ringing silver
bells.  Sometimes a boy would rush at a bishop and ring a bell at him.
Sometimes a nuncio would pounce on a cardinal and cense him all over.
It was like a battle of flowers.  Thousands of candles blazed before
the gorgeous altars.  In every direction the blunt, accustomed, holy
fingers were spreading little tablecloths, or holding up books, or
blessing each other thoroughly, or soaking each other with Holy Water,
or reverently displaying God to the people.  The music was heavenly,
both Gregorian and Ambrosian, and the church was packed.  There were
monks and friars and abbots of every description, standing about in
sandals among the knights, whose armour flashed by candlelight.  There
was even a Franciscan bishop, wearing grey, with a red hat.  The copes
and mitres were almost all of solid gold cloth crusted with diamonds,
and there was such a putting of them on and taking of them off that the
whole cathedral rustled.  As for the Latin, it was talked at such a
speed that the rafters rang with genitive plurals--and there was such a
prelatical issuing of admonitions, exhortations and benedictions that
it was a wonder the whole congregation did not go to heaven on the
spot.  Even the Pope, who was as keen as anybody that the thing should
go with a swing, had kindly sent a number of indulgences for everybody
he could think of.

After the marriage came the wedding feast.  King Pellinore and his
Queen--who had stood hand in hand throughout the previous ceremony,
with St. Toirdealbhach and Mother Morlan behind them, quite dazzled
with candlelight and incense and aspersion--were propped up in the
place of honour and served by Arthur himself on bended knee.  You can
imagine how charmed Mother Morlan was.  There was peacock pie, jellied
eels, Devonshire cream, curried porpoise, iced fruit salad, and two
thousand side dishes.  There were speeches, songs, healths, and
bumpers.  A special courier arrived at full speed from North
Humberland, and delivered a message to the bridegroom.  He said, "Best
wishes from Merlyn Stop.  The present is under the throne Stop.  Love
to Aglovale, Percivale, Lamorak, Dornar."

When the excitement over the message had died down, and the wedding
present had been found, some round games were immediately arranged for
the younger members of the party.  In these a small page of the King's
household excelled.  He was a son of Arthur's ally at Bedegraine--King
Ban of Benwick--and his name was Lancelot.  There was bobbing for
apples, shovel-board, titter-totter, and a puppet or motion play called
_Mac and the Shepherds_, which made everybody laugh.  St. Toirdealbhach
disgraced himself by stunning one of the fatter bishops with his
shillelagh, during an argument about the Bull called Laudabiliter.
Finally, at a late hour, the party broke up after a feeling rendering
of _Auld Lang Syne_.  King Pellinore was sick, and the new Queen
Pellinore put him to bed, explaining that he was over-excited.


Far away in North Humberland, Merlyn jumped out of bed.  They had been
out at dawn and sunset to watch the geese, and he had gone to his rest
very tired.  But suddenly he had remembered it in his sleep--the
simplest thing!  It was Arthur's _mother's_ name which he had forgotten
to mention in the confusion!  There he had been, chattering away about
Uther Pendragon and Round Tables and battles and Guenever and sword
sheaths and things past and things to come--but he had forgotten the
most important thing of all.

Arthur's mother was Igraine--that very Igraine who had been captured at
Tintagil, the one that the Orkney children had been talking about in
the Round Tower at the beginning of this book.  Arthur had been
begotten on the night when Uther Pendragon burst into her castle.
Since Uther naturally could not marry her until she was out of mourning
for the earl, the boy had been born too soon.  That was why Arthur had
been sent away to be brought up by Sir Ector.  Not a soul had known
where he was sent, except for Merlyn and Uther--and now Uther was dead.
Even Igraine had not known.

Merlyn stood swaying in his bare feet on the cold floor.  If only he
had spun himself to Carlion at once, before it was too late!  But the
old man was tired and muddled with his backsight, and dreams were in
his noddle.  He thought it would do in the morning--could not remember
whether he was in the future or the past.  He put the veined hand
blindly toward the bedclothes, the image of Nimue already weaving
itself in his sleepy brain.  He tumbled in.  The beard went under the
covering, the nose into the pillow.  Merlyn was asleep.


King Arthur sat back in the Great Hall, which was empty.  A few of his
favourite knights had been taking their nightcap with him, but now he
was alone.  It had been a tiring day, although he had reached the full
strength of his youth, and he leaned his head against the back of his
throne, thinking about the events of the marriage.  He had been
fighting, on and off, ever since he had come to be King by drawing the
sword out of the stone, and the anxiety of these campaigns had grown
him into a splendid fellow.  At last it looked as if he might have
peace.  He thought of the joys of peace, of being married himself one
day as Merlyn had prophesied, and of having a home.  He thought of
Nimue at this, and then of any beautiful woman.  He fell asleep.


He woke with a start, to find a black-haired, blue-eyed beauty in front
of him, who was wearing a crown.  The four wild children from the north
were standing behind their mother, shy and defiant, and she was folding
up a tape.

Queen Morgause of the Out Isles had stayed away from the feasting on
purpose--had chosen her moment with the utmost care.  This was the
first time that the young King had seen her, and she knew that she was
looking her best.

It is impossible to explain how these things happen.  Perhaps the
Spancel had a strength in it.  Perhaps it was because she was twice his
age, so that she had twice the power of his weapons.  Perhaps it was
because Arthur was always a simple fellow, who took people at their own
valuation easily.  Perhaps it was because he had never known a mother
of his own, so that the role of mother love, as she stood with her
children behind her, took him between wind and water.

Whatever the explanation may have been, the Queen of Air and Darkness
had a baby by her half-brother nine months later.  It was called
Mordred.  And this, as Merlyn drew it later, was what the magician
called its pied-de-grue:

            Earl of Cornwall = Igraine = Uther Pendragon
                             |         |
       +-------------+-------+-----+   +------+
       |             |             |          |
  Morgan le Fay   Elaine   Lot = Morgause = Arthur
                               |          |
     +----------+----------+---+----+     +--------+
     |          |          |        |              |
  Gawaine   Agravaine   Gaheris   Gareth        MORDRED


Even if you have to read it twice, like something in a history lesson,
this pedigree is a vital part of the tragedy of King Arthur.  It is why
Sir Thomas Mallory called his very long book the Death of Arthur.
Although nine tenths of the story seems to be about knights jousting
and quests for the holy grail and things of that sort, the narrative is
a whole, and it deals with the reasons why the young man came to grief
at the end.  It is the tragedy, the Aristotelian and comprehensive
tragedy, of sin coming home to roost.  That is why we have to take note
of the parentage of Arthur's son Mordred, and to remember, when the
time comes, that the king had slept with his own sister.  He did not
know he was doing so, and perhaps it may have been due to her, but it
seems, in tragedy, that innocence is not enough.



EXPLICIT LIBER SECUNDUS




_Incipit Liber Tertius_

THE ILL-MADE KNIGHT




"Nay," said Sir Lancelot, "... for once shamed may never be recovered."




_Chapter I_

In the castle of Benwick, the French boy was looking at his face in the
polished surface of a kettle-hat.  It flashed in the sunlight with the
stubborn gleam of metal.  It was practically the same as the steel
helmet which soldiers still wear, and it did not make a good mirror,
but it was the best he could get.  He turned the hat in various
directions, hoping to get an average idea of his face from the
different distortions which the bulges made.  He was trying to find out
what he was, and he was afraid of what he would find.

The boy thought that there was something wrong with him.  All through
his life--even when he was a great man with the world at his feet--he
was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he
was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand.  There is no
need for us to try to understand it.  We do not have to dabble in a
place which he preferred to keep secret.

The Armoury, where the boy stood, was lined with weapons of war.  For
the last two hours he had been whirling a pair of dumbbells in the
air--he called them "poises"--and singing to himself a song with no
words and no tune.  He was fifteen.  He had just come back from
England, where his father King Ban of Benwick had been helping the
English King to quell a rebellion.  You remember that Arthur wanted to
catch his knights young, to train them for the Round Table, and that he
had noticed Lancelot at the feast, because he was winning most of the
games.

Lancelot, swinging his dumb-bells fiercely and making his wordless
noise, had been thinking of King Arthur with all his might.  He was in
love with him.  That was why he had been swinging the poises.  He had
been remembering all the words of the only conversation which he had
held with his hero.

The King had called him over when they were embarking for France--after
he had kissed King Ban good-bye--and they had gone alone into a corner
of the ship.  The heraldic sails of Ban's fleet, and the sailors in the
rigging, and the armed turrets and archers and seagulls, like
flake-white, had been a background to their conversation.

"Lance," the King had said, "come here a moment, will you?"

"Sir."

"I was watching you playing games at the feast."

"Sir."

"You seemed to win most of them."

Lancelot squinted down his nose.

"I want to get hold of a lot of people who are good at games, to help
with an idea I have.  It is for the time when I am a real King, and
have got this kingdom settled.  I was wondering whether you would care
to help, when you are old enough?"

The boy had made a sort of wriggle, and had suddenly flashed his eyes
at the speaker.

"It is about knights," Arthur had continued.  "I want to have an Order
of Chivalry, like the Order of the Garter, which goes about fighting
against Might.  Would you like to be one of those?"

"Yes."

The King had looked at him closely, unable to see whether he was
pleased or frightened or merely being polite.

"Do you understand what I am talking about?"

Lancelot had taken the wind out of his sails.

"We call it Fort Mayne in France," he had explained.  "The man with the
strongest arm in a clan gets made the head of it, and does what he
pleases.  That is why we call it Fort Mayne.  You want to put an end to
the Strong Arm, by having a band of knights who believe in justice
rather than strength.  Yes, I would like to be one of those very much.
I must grow up first.  Thank you.  Now I must say good-bye."

So they had sailed away from England--the boy standing in the front of
the ship and refusing to look back, because he did not want to show his
feelings.  He had already fallen in love with Arthur on the night of
the wedding feast, and he carried with him in his heart to France the
picture of that bright northern king, at supper, flushed and glorious
from his wars.

Behind the black eyes which were searching intently in the kettle-hat
there was a dream which had come to him the previous night.  Seven
hundred years ago--or it may have been fifteen hundred according to
Malory's notation--people took dreams as seriously as the psychiatrists
do today, and Lancelot's had been a disturbing one.  It was not
disturbing because of anything it might mean--for he had not the least
idea of its meaning--but because it had left him with a sense of loss.
This was what it was.

Lancelot and his young brother, Ector Demaris, had been sitting in two
chairs.  They got out of these chairs and were mounted on two horses.
Lancelot said: "Go we, and seek that which we shall not find."  So they
did.  But a Man or a Power set upon Lancelot, and beat him and
despoiled him, and clothed him in another array which was full of
knots, and made him ride on an ass instead of on the horse.  Then there
was a beautiful well, with the fairest waters he had ever seen, and he
got off his ass to drink out of it.  It seemed to him that there could
be nothing in the world more beautiful than to drink of this well.  But
as soon as he stooped his lips toward it, the water sank away.  It went
right down into the barrel of the well, sinking and sinking from him so
that he could not get it.  It made him feel desolate, to be abandoned
by the water of the well.

Arthur and the well, and the dumb-bells which were to make him worthy
of Arthur, and the ache in his tired arms from swinging them--all these
were at the back of the boy's mind as he tilted the tin hat backward
and forward between his fingers, but there was a more insistent thought
in his head also.  It was a thought about the face in the metal, and
about the thing which must have gone wrong in the depths of his spirit
to make a face like that.  He was not a self-deceiver.  He knew that
whichever way he turned the morion, it would tell him the same story.
He had already decided that when he was a grown knight he would give
himself a melancholy title.  He was the eldest son, so he was bound to
be knighted, but he would not call himself Sir Lancelot.  He would call
himself the Chevalier Mal Fet--the Ill-Made Knight.

So far as he could see--and he felt that there must be some reason for
it somewhere--the boy's face was as ugly as a monster's in the King's
menagerie.  He looked like an African ape.




_Chapter II_

Lancelot ended by being the greatest knight King Arthur had.  He was a
sort of Bradman, top of the battling averages.  Tristram and Lamorak
were second and third.

But you have to remember that people can't be good at cricket unless
they teach themselves to be so, and that jousting was an art, just as
cricket is.  It was like cricket in many ways.  There was a scorer's
pavilion at a tournament, with a real scorer inside it, who made marks
on the parchment just like the mark for one run which is made by the
cricket scorer today.  The people, walking round the ground in their
best frocks, from Grand Stand to Refreshment Tent, must have found the
fighting very like the game.  It took a frightfully long time--Sir
Lancelot's innings frequently lasted all day, if he were battling
against a good knight--and the movements had a feeling of slow-motion,
because of the weight of armour.  When the sword-play had begun, the
combatants stood opposite each other in the green acre like batsman and
bowler--except that they stood closer together--and perhaps Sir Gawaine
would start with an in-swinger, which Sir Lancelot would put away to
leg with a beautiful leg-glide, and then Lancelot would reply with a
yorker under Gawaine's guard--it was called "foining"--and all the
people round the field would clap.  King Arthur might turn to Guenever
in the Pavilion, and remark that the great man's footwork was as lovely
as ever.  The knights had little curtains on the back of their helms,
to keep the hot sun off the metal, like the handkerchiefs which
cricketers will sometimes arrange behind their caps today.

Knightly exercise was as much an art as cricket is, and perhaps the
only way in which Lancelot did not resemble Bradman was that he was
more graceful.  He did not have that crouching on the bat and hopping
out to the pitch of the ball.  He was more like Woolley.  But you can't
be like Woolley by simply sitting still and wanting to be so.

The Armoury, where the small boy who was later to be Sir Lancelot was
standing with his morion, was the largest single room in the castle of
Benwick.  It was to be the room in which this boy was to spend most of
his waking hours for the next three years.

The rooms of the main castle--which he could see from the windows--were
mostly small, because people can't afford to build for luxury when they
are making a fortification.  Round the inner fort with its small rooms
there was a wide byre, or shell-keep, into which the castle herds were
driven during a siege.  This was surrounded by a high wall with towers,
and, on the inner side of this wall, the big rooms which were needed
for stores, barns, barracks, and stables were built.  The Armoury was
one of these rooms.  It stood between the stables, for fifty horses,
and the cowsheds.  The best family armour--the bits which were actually
in use--was kept in a little room in the castle itself, and it was only
the arms of the troops, and the spare parts of the family stuff, and
the things which were needed for gymnastics, practice, or physical
training, which reposed in the Armoury.

Under the raftered ceiling, and the nearest to it, there hung or leaned
a collection of bannerettes and pennoncels, blazoned with the Ban
charges--France Ancient, as they are now called--which would be needed
on various occasions.  Along the wall there were tilting lances,
resting horizontally on nails so that they should not warp.  These
looked like bars for exercises in a gymnasium.  In one corner a
collection of old lances which had already warped or got injured in
some way, but which might still be useful for something, were standing
upright.  A rack, running the whole length of the second main wall,
held the infantry issue of mail habergeons with mittens, spears,
morions, and Bordeaux swords.  King Ban was fortunate in living at
Benwick, for the Bordeaux swords were local and particularly good.
Then there were harness-barrels, in which the armour was packed in hay
for expeditions overseas--some of it was still packed from the last
expedition, and a curious mixture it was.  Uncle Dap, who looked after
the Armoury, had been unpacking one of the barrels to make an inventory
of its contents--and had gone away in despair on discovering ten pounds
of dates and five loaves of sugar in it.  It must have been some sort
of honey sugar, unless it was loaf sugar brought back from the
Crusades.  He had left his list beside the barrel, and this recorded,
among other articles: a salade garnessed with golde, iij peire
gantelez, a vestment, a mesbooke, an auter cloth, a peir of
brigandines, a pyssyng basin of silver, x schertes for my Lord, a
jakete of leather, and a bagge of chessmen.  Then, in an alcove formed
by the harness-barrels, there was a set of shelves which formed the
dispensary for sick armour.  On the shelves there were huge bottles of
olive oil--nowadays they prefer a mineral oil for armour, but they did
not understand such niceties in Lancelot's time--together with boxes of
fine sand for polishing, bags of brigandine nails at eleven shillings
and eightpence the twenty thousand, rivets, spare rings for chain mail,
leather skins for cutting new straps and bases for the knee harness,
together with a thousand other details then fascinating, but now lost
to us.  There were gambesons like the pads which the goalkeeper wears
in hockey, or like the quilted protections which Americans have at
football.  In various corners there were pushed, so as to leave a free
space in the middle of the room, a collection of gymnastic apparatus
such as quintains and so on, while Uncle Dap's desk stood near the
door.  On the desk there were splattering quill pens, blotting sand,
sticks for beating Lancelot when he was stupid, and notes, in
unutterable confusion, as to which jupons had lately been
pawned--pawning was a great institution for valuable armour--and which
helms had been brought up to date with a glancing surface, and whose
vambrace stood in need of repair, and what had been paid to whom for
fforbeshynge which when.  Most of the accounts were wrongly added up.

Three years may seem a long time for a boy to spend in one room, if he
only goes out of it to eat and sleep and to practise tilting in the
field.  It is even difficult to imagine a boy who would do it, unless
you realize from the start that Lancelot was not romantic and debonair.
Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites would have found it difficult to
recognize this rather sullen and unsatisfactory child, with the ugly
face, who did not disclose to anybody that he was living on dreams and
prayers.  They might have wondered what store of ferocity he had
against himself, that could set him to break his own body so young.
They might have wondered why he was so strange.

To begin with, he had to spend the weary months charging against Uncle
Dap, with a blunt spear under his arm.  Uncle Dap, armed cap--pie,
would sit on a stool--and Lancelot, with the morne-headed spear, would
charge and charge against him, learning the best lodges on armour for a
point.  Then there were lonely hours with poises, with many other hours
out of doors--before he was even allowed to touch real arms--in which
he learned various kinds of throwing, casting with the sling-stick or
the casting spear, and tossing the bar.  After that, after a year of
toil, there was his promotion to the pel-quintain.  It was a stake
driven upright in the ground, and he had to fight against it with sword
and shield--rather like shadow-boxing, or using a punch-ball.  He had
to use arms for this exercise which weighed twice as much as the
ordinary sword and shield.  Sixty pounds was considered a good weight
for the arms used on the pel-quintain--so that, when he did come at
length to the usual weapons, he would wield them featly.  They would
seem light by comparison.  The final stage of breaking to the cricket
standard was by mock combats.  In these at last; and after all the
bitter setbacks of discipline, he was allowed to fight battles which
were nearly real ones, against his brother and cousins.  The combats
were held under strict rules.  They might begin with a cast of the
spear blunted, followed by seven strokes with the sword, point and edge
rebated, "without close, or griping one another with the handes, upon
paine of punishment as the judges for the time being shall thinke
requisite."  It was not lawful in these matches to foin--that is, to
make a thrust of the point.  Finally there was swashbuckling.  The now
vigorous boy might go at his companions harum-scarum, with sword and
buckler.

If you have been down in one of the old-fashioned diving suits which
used to be standard in the Royal Navy before frogmen and free diving
came along, you will know why divers move slowly.  A diver has forty
pounds of lead on each foot and two plaques of lead--each weighing
fifty pounds--one on his back and one on his chest.  These are apart
from the weight of the suit and the helmet.  Except when he is in the
sea, he weighs twice as much as a man.  When he has to step over a rope
or an air-tube on deck, it is hard work--like climbing a wall.  If you
push him from in front, the weight behind him tends to take over, so
that he might fall backwards.  The same thing happens vice versa.
Practised divers become adept at dealing with these handicaps, and can
hoist those forty pound feet up and down the ship's ladder fairly
nimbly--but an amateur half kills himself with the mere toil of
movement.  Lancelot, like the diver, had to learn to be nimble against
the force of gravity.

Knights-in-armour were like divers in more ways than one.

Apart from their helmets and encumbrances and the difficulty of
breathing, they had to be dressed in their suits by kind and careful
assistants.  They had to rely on these assistants to do it properly.  A
diver puts his life in the hands of the ratings who are dressing him.
These young men, like pages or squires, mother him with great
tenderness and concentration and with a sort of protective respect.
They always address him by his title, not by his name.  They say, "Sit
down, diver," or "Now the left foot, diver," or "Diver Two, can you
hear me on the inter-com?"

It is good to put your life in other people's hands.


Three years of it.  The other boys did not worry, for they had other
things to think about--but for the ugly one it was the whole of an
obscure and mystic life.  He had to perfect himself for Arthur as
somebody who was good at games, and he had to think about the theories
of chivalry even when he was in bed at night.  He had to teach himself
to possess a sound opinion on hundreds of disputed points--on the
proper length of weapons, or the cut of a mantling, or the articulation
of a pauldron, or whether cedar-wood was better than ash for spears, as
Chaucer seems to have believed.

Here is a short example of the problems of chivalry, which he thought
about in his early times.  There was a knight once called Reynaud de
Roy, who had a tilting match with another one called John de Holland.
Reynaud purposely fastened his tilting helm--the huge straw-padded drum
which sometimes fitted over the helmet proper--so that it was loose.
When John of Holland's spear point struck it, it simply fell off.  This
meant that the helm came off Reynaud, instead of Reynaud coming off his
horse.  An effective trick, but a dangerous one--the whole of chivalry
argued about it for a long time, some saying that it was unsporting,
some that it was fair but too risky, and some that it was a good idea.

Three years of discipline made Lancelot, not a merry heart and a
capacity for singing tirra-lirra.  Out of a lifetime which at his age
must have seemed to stretch little more than a week ahead, he gave
thirty-six months to another man's idea because he was in love with it.
He supported himself meanwhile on daydreams.  He wanted to be the best
knight in the world, so that Arthur would love him in return, and he
wanted one other thing which was still possible in those days.  He
wanted, through his purity and excellence, to be able to perform some
ordinary miracle--to heal a blind man or something like that, for
instance.




_Chapter III_

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

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

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

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


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

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

"Why?"

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

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

"Hum!"

They waited.

"You called him Galahad," said the old gentleman.

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

"However did you know?"

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

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

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

"Shall I live to see it?" asked Queen Elaine.

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

"Yes."

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

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

"Yes."

"Is everything well?"

"Yes.  He sent you his love."

"Is the King happy?"

"Very happy.  Guenever sent her love too."

"Who is Guenever?"

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

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

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

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

Lancelot said: "Oh!"

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

"Oh," said the boy, for the second time.

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

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

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

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

Merlyn looked guilty, and nodded his head.

"He was created on the day Arthur was married."

"I see."

There was another long pause.

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

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

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

"You will have a glass of something before you leave?"

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

"Such a short visit----" began the Queen.

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

"Good-bye now," he said with determination--and in a couple of spins
they were both gone.

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

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

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

"I am going to England," he said.

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

"I shall start this evening."

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

"My mother does not know."

"Do you mean that you are going to run away?"

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

"Do you expect me not to tell your mother?"

"Yes, I do."

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

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

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


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




_Chapter IV_

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The King began scrambling to his feet in great excitement.

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

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

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


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

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

He kissed the Queen's hand coldly.

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

"How do you do?" asked the Queen.

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

"Begin with the Table," said Lancelot.

"Oh dear!"

The Queen laughed and smiled at the new knight.

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

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

"What about the Orkney faction?"

"They will come round in time."

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

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

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

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

"I hope things have got better since then?"

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

"Did Pellinore repent?"

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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




_Chapter V_

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

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

"I don't know what you are talking about."

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

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

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

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

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

"Laws of arms!" shouted the old man.  "Pouf!"

"Well, it is no good saying Pouf."

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

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


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

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




_Chapter VI_

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

"I ought to go away."

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

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

"But, Lance----"

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

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

"Come back soon," said the Queen.




_Chapter VII_

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

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

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

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

"Who is your prisoner?"

The big knight lifted the prisoner's shield, which was hanging behind
him, and showed _or, a chevron gules, between three thistles vert_.

"What are you doing with Sir Gawaine?"

"Mind your own business," said Sir Carados.

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

"What cheer, Gawaine.  How stands it with you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

"It is Sir Lancelot!"

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

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

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

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

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

"How are you, Sir Lancelot?"

"I don't know, fair damsel.  I don't know how I got here, so I don't
rightly know how I am."

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

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

So the fair maid went away.

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

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

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

"You have to answer."

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

"Oh!" said Morgan le Fay.

"Yes," said Lancelot.

"That is all?"

"Yes."

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


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

"You said you might be able to help me?"

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

"I am afraid I am."

"I will help you," she said, "if you will help me."

Then she burst into tears.

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

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

"Why are you crying?" asked Sir Lancelot.

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

"I see.  And what is your father's name?"

"He is King Bagdemagus."

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

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

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

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


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

"Remember."

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

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

He got off his horse and looked at the pavilion.  There was something
queer about it--luxurious as it was in the rooky wood, and without
anybody in sight.

"This is a strange pavilion," he thought sadly, for his mind was full
of Guenever, "but I suppose I may as well stay in it for the night.
Either it is here for some adventure or other, in which case I ought to
try the adventure, or else the owners have gone away on holiday, and in
that case they will not mind my taking shelter for one evening.
Anyway, I am lost, and there is nothing else I can do."

He unharnessed the horse and spancelled him.  Then he took off his own
armour and hung it neatly on a nearby tree with the shield on top.
After this he ate some bread which the girl had given him, drinking
water from a stream which ran beside the pavilion, stretched his arms
out until the elbows went click, yawned, hit his front teeth with his
fist three times, and went to bed.  The bed was a sumptuous one with a
coverlet of red sendal, to match the tent.  Lancelot rolled himself in
it, pressed his nose into the silk pillow, kissed it for Guenever, and
was fast asleep.

It was moonlight when he woke, and a naked man was sitting on his left
foot, trimming his finger-nails.

Lancelot, who had been woken from his love sleep with a start, moved
suddenly in the bed when he felt the man.  The man, equally surprised
at feeling a movement, jumped up and snatched his sword.  Lancelot
jumped out on the other side of the bed and ran for his own arms, where
they were hanging in the tree.  The man came after him, waving his
blade and trying to get a cut at him from behind.  Lancelot reached the
tree in safety and swung round with his weapon in his hand.  They
looked strange and terrible in the moonlight, both stark naked, with
their silver steel glancing under the harvest moon.

"Now," cried the man, and he aimed a furious swipe at Lancelot's legs.
The next minute he had dropped his sword and was holding his stomach
with both hands, doubled up and whistling.  The cut which Lancelot had
given welled over with blood which looked black in the moonlight, and
you could see some of the insides of the stomach with their secret life
laid open.

"Don't hit me," cried the man.  "Mercy.  Don't hit me again.  You have
killed me."

"I am sorry," said Lancelot.  "You did not even wait till I had a
sword."

The man went on wailing: "Mercy!  Mercy!"

Lancelot stuck his blade in the ground and went over to examine the
wound.

"I am not going to hurt you," he said.  "It's all right.  Let me see."

"You have cut open my liver," said the man accusingly.

"Well, I can't do more than say I am sorry, even if I have.  I don't
know what we were fighting about anyway.  Lean on my shoulder and we
will get you into bed."

When he had got the man to bed, and stopped his bleeding, and
discovered that the wound was not a mortal one, a beautiful lady
appeared in the opening of the tent.  They had lit a rush light, so
that she saw what had happened in a flash, and immediately she began
screaming at the top of her voice.  She rushed over to comfort the
wounded man, and accused Lancelot of being a murderer, and carried on a
great deal.

"Do stop howling," said the man.  "He is not a murderer.  We just made
a mistake."

"I was in bed," said Lancelot, "when he came and sat on me, and we were
both so startled that we had a fight.  I am sorry that I hurt him."

"But it was our bed," cried the lady, like one of the Three Bears.
"What were you doing in our bed?"

"Really," he said, "I am sorry.  There was nobody in the pavilion when
I found it, and I was lost and tired, so I thought it would not matter
if I took a night's lodging."

"Nor did it matter," said the man.  "You are welcome to a night's
lodging, and I don't think the wound is going to be a bad one after
all.  May I inquire your name?"

"Lancelot."

"Well!" exclaimed the man.  "There now, my dear, look who I have been
fighting.  No wonder I got a bit of a chip.  I was wondering why my
life was spared so easily."

So they insisted that Lancelot should stay the night, and in the
morning they put him on the correct road for the abbey of white friars.

Nothing much came of this encounter in the main story, except that the
knight, whose name was Belleus, was introduced to the Round Table by
Lancelot as soon as he was well again.  He was the kind of generous
fellow that Arthur needed, and Lancelot tried to make up for the
trouble which he had caused by getting him a seat at the Table.


At the abbey of white friars the fair damsel was waiting in a state of
excitement.  She was afraid that he might have let her down.  His
horse's hoofs, however, had no sooner clattered on the cobbles than she
came flying from her tower room to welcome him with delight.

"Father will be here this evening," she cried.  "Oh, I am so glad you
came!  I was afraid you might have forgotten."

Lancelot's twisted mouth grinned at the word she had chosen to use.
Then he changed into civilian dress, had a bath, and waited for King
Bagdemagus.

"It is a puzzling life in Gramarye," he said to himself, trying to keep
his mind off the young Queen.  "Things happen so quickly.  One hardly
knows where one is half the time, and there is that cousin of mine who
vanished under the apple tree, who has still to be accounted for.  What
with magic queens and faction tournaments and people getting into bed
with you at night, and half the family vanishing without trace, it is
difficult to keep in line."

Then he brushed his hair, smoothed his gown, and went down to meet King
Bagdemagus.


There is no need to give a long description of the tourney.  Malory
gives it.  Lancelot picked three knights who were recommended by the
young damsel to go with him, and he arranged that all four of them
should bear the vergescu.  This was the white shield carried by
unfledged knights, and Lancelot insisted on this arrangement because he
knew that three of his own brethren of the Round Table were going to
fight on the other side.  He did not want them to recognize him,
because it might cause ill-feeling at court.  On the other hand, he
felt that it was his duty to fight against them because of the promise
which he had given to the damsel.  The King of Northgalis, who was the
leader of the opposite side, had one hundred and sixty knights in his
faction, and King Bagdemagus only had eighty.  Lancelot went for the
first knight of the Round Table, and put his shoulder out of joint.  He
went for the second one so hard that the unlucky fellow was carried
over his horse's tail and buried his helm several inches in the ground.
He hit the third knight on the head so hard that his nose bled, and his
horse ran away with him.  By the time he had broken the thigh of the
King of Northgalis, everybody could see that to all intents and
purposes the tournament was over.


The next thing that happened was that our hero set out to discover what
had become of Lionel.  He was free to do so, for the first time--for,
since the disappearance of his cousin, he had either been imprisoned by
the malignant queens or else he had been discharging his obligations to
the girl who had rescued him from them.  King Bagdemagus got the prize
at the tournament before he left, and the damsel was almost tearfully
grateful.  Everybody said that they would be friends for ever, and that
they had only to send each other word if there was anything that
anybody could do for anybody in return.  Then Lancelot mounted his
horse, got his bearings by asking several peasants where he was, and
rode off toward the forest of the apple tree where he had lost his
cousin.  He thought that by making an all-round-the-hat cast at the
place where he had last seen his cousin, he might be able to pick up
the scent once more, although it was cold.

In the forest of the apple tree, indeed at the very foot of the tree
itself, he came across a lady riding a white palfrey.  The tree was
thought to be a magic one, which was the reason why such a lot of
traffic went on round it.

"Lady," said he, "do you know of any adventures in this forest?"

"Plenty," she said, "if you are man enough to take them on."

"I could try."

"You look a strong man," said the lady.  "You have a bold look, too, in
spite of your ears which stick out so frightfully.  If you like, I will
take you where the fiercest baron in the world lives, but he is sure to
kill you."

"Never mind."

"I will only take you if you tell me your name.  It would be murder to
take you unless you are a famous knight."

"My name is Lancelot."

"I thought it was," said the lady.  "Well, it is lucky it is.
According to the things which people are saying about you, you are
probably the only knight in the world who can beat the man I am taking
you to.  His name is Sir Turquine."

"Good."

"Some say he is a madman.  He has sixty-four knights in prison, whom he
has captured in single combat, and he spends the time beating them with
thorns.  If he captures you, he will beat you too, all naked."

"He sounds an exciting man to fight."

"It is a sort of concentration camp."

"That is what I have been getting ready for," said Sir Lancelot.  "It
is what Arthur invented the Round Table to prevent."

"If I take you to him, you must promise to do something for me
afterwards--that is, if you win."

"What sort of thing?" he asked cautiously.

"You need not be afraid," said the lady.  "It is only to vanquish
another knight I know of, who is distressing some damsels."

"I will promise that gladly."

"Well," said the lady, "God, He knows how you will get on.  Anyway, I
will say a prayer for you while you are fighting."


When they had been riding for some time, they came to a ford like the
one at which he had fought the first fight with King Arthur.  On the
trees round the ford there were hanging rusty helms and melancholy
shields--sixty-four of them, with their bends and chevrons and luces
hauriant and merles and eagles displayed and lions passant guardant
looking desolate and abandoned.  The leather of their guiges was green
and mildewy.  It looked like a gamekeeper's gallows.

In the middle of the glade, on the chief tree, there hung an enormous
copper basin, triumphing over the beaten shields.  The latest shield
under it was Lionel's--argent, a bend gules distinguished with some
sort of label of cadency.

Lancelot knew what he had to do with this basin, and he did it.  He put
his helm in position, rode through the dripping leaves to the basin,
and beat on it with the butt of his spear until the bottom fell out.
Then he and the lady stood still in the forest, which was as if it had
been shocked silent by the hideous noise.

Nobody came.

"His castle is beyond," said the lady.

They went to the castle gates in silence, and rode up and down in front
of them for half an hour.  He took off his helm and gauntlets, and
frowned, and bit his finger-nails from anxiety.

After the half-hour was over, a gigantic knight came riding through the
forest.  He looked so like Sir Carados--the knight who had been slain
at the rescue of Gawaine--that Lancelot was startled.  Not only was he
of the same build, but he also had a bound knight thrown across the
saddlebow of his mare.  Most peculiar of all, the bound knight's shield
carried the three thistles and the chevron, with a red canton.  In
fact, the second of the big knights had captured Gaheris--Gawaine's
brother.  Lancelot watched him with a critical eye.

It may not be amiss to mention that a good judge of style could often
recognize a knight in armour, even if he was disguised and bearing the
vergescu.  In later life Lancelot sometimes had to fight disguised,
because otherwise nobody would fight him.  Yet Arthur and others
generally guessed him by his riding.  People nowadays can recognize
cricketers, even when their faces are too far away to be seen, and so
it was then.

Lancelot was a good judge of style, because of his long practice.  As
soon as he had watched Sir Turquine for a moment or two, he noticed
that there was a slight weakness in his seat.  He remarked to the lady
that unless Turquine sat better, he thought he would be able to rescue
the prisoners.  As it turned out, Turquine did sit better when it came
to the tilt, so that this particular criticism came to nothing--but it
throws a sidelight on jousting and may have been worth mentioning.

The riding was the whole thing.  If a man had the courage to throw
himself into the fullest gallop at the moment of impact, he generally
won.  Most men faltered a little, so that they were not at their best
momentum.  This was why Lancelot constantly gained his tilts.  He had
what Uncle Dap called the _lan_.  Sometimes, when he was in disguise,
he would ride clumsily on purpose, showing daylight at his seat.  But
at the last moment there was always the true dash--so that the
onlookers, and frequently his wretched opponent, could exclaim, "Ah,
Lancelot!" even before the lance drove home.

"Fair knight," he said, "put down that wounded man and let him rest a
little.  Then we two can prove our strengths."

Sir Turquine rode up to him, and said through his teeth: "If you are a
knight of the Round Table, it will give me great pleasure to knock you
down first and whack you afterwards.  I could do that to you, and your
whole table with you."

"It seems a tall order."

Then they retreated in the usual way, fewtered their spears, and
charged together like thunder.  Lancelot, at the last moment, noticed
that he was wrong about Turquine's seat.  In the last flash he realized
that Turquine was the finest tilter he had met, that he was coming with
a hurl as great as his own, and that his aim was sure.

The knights ducked and drew themselves together; the spears struck at
the same moment; the horses, checked in mid-career, reared up and fell
over backward; the spears burst and went sailing high in the air,
turning over and over gracefully like the results of high explosive;
and the lady on the palfrey looked away.  When she looked again, both
horses were down with their backs broken, and the knights lay still.

Two hours later, Lancelot and Turquine were still fighting with their
swords.

"Stop," said Turquine.  "I want to speak to you."

Lancelot stopped.

"Who are you?" asked Sir Turquine.  "You are the finest knight I ever
fought with.  I never saw a man with such good wind.  Listen, I have
sixty-four prisoners in my castle, and I have killed or maimed hundreds
of others, but none were as good as you.  If you will have peace, and
be my friend, I will loose my prisoners."

"It is kind of you."

"I will do this for you, if you are anybody except one person.  If you
are he, I must fight you to the death."

"Who is this person?"

"Lancelot," said Sir Turquine.  "If you are Lancelot, I must never
yield or make friends.  He killed my brother Carados."

"I am that man."

Sir Turquine made a hissing through his helm and struck craftily,
before his enemy was ready.

"Ah, would you?" said Lancelot.  "I only had to pretend I was not
myself, and I could have had the prisoners safe.  But you try to kill
me without warning."

Sir Turquine continued to hiss.

"I am sorry about Carados," said Lancelot.  "He was killed in fair
fight and never offered to yield.  I never had him at mercy.  He was
killed in the middle of the fight."

They fought for two more hours.  The blade was not the only weapon used
by knights in armour.  Sometimes they struck each other with the edges
of their shields, sometimes they clubbed each other with the pommels of
their swords.  The grass all round was speckled with their
blood--little spots like those on trout, but with a kind of tail on
each spot, like a tadpole.  Sometimes, because of their weight, they
fell over each other.  The heavy, straw-stuffed helms of chivalry had
such small holes to breathe through that they felt like suffocating.
Their shields hung wearily, not covering them properly.

It was over in a second.  Neither of them spoke.  Lancelot dropped his
sword at a moment of opportunity and caught Turquine by the snout of
his helm.  They fell over, and the helm came off.  They drew their
misericordes for the close work.  Turquine bounced and shuddered and
was dead.

Later, while Gaheris and the lady were giving him some water, Lancelot
said: "Whatever was wrong with him, he was game.  I am sorry he would
not yield."

"But think of the maimed knights and the beating."

"He was the old school," he said.  "It is what we have to stop.  But he
was a credit to the old school as a fighter, all the same."

"He was a brute," said the lady.

"Whatever he was, he was fond of his brother.  Look, Gaheris, will you
lend me your horse?  I want to go on, and my own is dead, poor
creature.  If you could lend me yours, you could go forward and let
Lionel and the others out of the castle.  Tell Lionel to go back to
court and not to be a silly fellow.  I have to ride with this lady.
Will you do that?"

"You can have my horse, certainly," said Gaheris.  "You have saved him
and me as well.  How you keep on saving the Orkneys!  Last time it was
Gawaine.  And Agravaine is in that castle at this minute.  Of course
you can have my horse, Lancelot, of course you can."




_Chapter VIII_

Lancelot had several other adventures during his first quest--it lasted
a year--but perhaps only two are worth repeating in detail.  They were
both mixed up with the conservative ethics of Force Majeur against
which the King had started his crusade.  It was the old school, the
Norman baronial attitude, which provided the adventures at this
period--for few people can hate so bitterly and so self-righteously as
the members of a ruling caste which is being dispossessed.  The knights
of the Round Table were sent out as a measure against Fort Mayne, and
the choleric barons who lived by Fort Mayne took up the cudgels with
the ferocity of despair.  They would have written to _The Times_ about
it, if there had been such a paper.  The best of them convinced
themselves that Arthur was newfangled, and that his knights were
degenerate from the standards of their fathers.  The worst of them made
up uglier names than Bolshevist even, and allowed the brutal side of
their natures to dwell on imaginary enormities which they attributed to
the knights.  The situation became divorced from common sense, so that
atrocity stories were accepted by the atrocious people.  Many of the
barons whom Lancelot had to put down had worked themselves into such a
state about him, through fear of losing their ancient powers, that they
believed him to be a sort of poison-gas man.  They fought him with as
much unscrupulousness and hatred as if he had been an antichrist, and
they truly believed themselves to be defending the right.  It became a
civil war of ideologies.

One day in the fine summer, he was riding through the park land of a
castle which was strange to him.  The trees grew dispersedly about the
sward--great elms and oaks and beeches--and Lancelot was thinking about
Guenever with a heavy heart.  Before he had parted from the lady who
led him to Sir Turquine--and he had done the thing for her which he had
promised--they had started a conversation about marriage, which had
upset him.  The lady had said that he ought either to have a wife or a
mistress, and Lancelot had been angry.  "I can't stop people from
saying things if they want to," he had said, "but circumstances make it
impossible for me to marry, while I consider that having a mistress is
no good."  They argued about it for some time, and then parted.  Now,
although he had passed several adventures in between, he was still
thinking of the lady's advice and feeling wretched.

There was the sound of bells in the air--and he looked up immediately.

A fine peregrine falcon, with her music jingling in the whistling wind
als clear, and her creance trailing behind her, was beating along above
his head toward the top of one of the elms.  She was in a temper.  As
soon as she reached the top of the elm she sat down in it, looking
about her with raging eye and panting beak.  The creance wrapped itself
three times round the nearest bough.  When she noticed Sir Lancelot
riding toward her, she tried to fly away again in fury.  The creance
caught her.  She hung upside down, bating with her wings.  His heart
came into his mouth for fear that she would break some feathers.  In a
few moments she ceased to flap, and hung upside down, revolving slowly,
looking ignoble and indignant and ridiculous, holding her head the
right way up like a snake's.

"Oh, Sir Lancelot, Sir Lancelot!" cried an unknown gentlewoman, riding
toward him at full speed and evidently trying to wring her hands in
spite of the reins.  "Oh, Sir Lancelot!  I have lost my falcon."

"There she is," he said, "in that tree."

"Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!" cried the lady.  "I was only trying to call her
in cranes, and the string broke!  My husband will kill me if I do not
catch her again.  He is so hasty and such a keen falconer."

"But surely he will not kill you?"

"Oh, he will!  He will not mean it, but he will do it!  He is such a
hasty man."

"Perhaps I could stop him?"

"Oh, no," said the gentlewoman.  "That would not do at all.  You might
hurt him.  I would not like you to hurt my dear husband.  Don't you
think you could climb up the tree and catch the hawk instead?"

Lancelot looked at the gentlewoman and at the tree.  Then he heaved a
deep sigh and remarked, as Malory reports him: "Well, fair lady, since
that ye know my name, and require me of my knighthood to help you, I
will do what I may to get your hawk; and yet truly I am an ill climber,
and the tree is passing high, and few boughs to help me withal."

He had spent his childhood learning to be a fighter.  It had left him
no time for birds'-nesting like other boys.  The lady's request, which
would have given no trouble to people brought up like Arthur or
Gawaine, really was an upset for him.

Lancelot took off his armour sadly, with an occasional crooked glance
at the horrible tree, until he was dressed in his shirt and breeches.
Then he assaulted the first boughs manfully, while the gentlewoman ran
about underneath, talking about hawks and husbands and the nice weather
they were having.

"All right," he said, with his eyes full of bark and a hideous scowl on
his face.  "All right.  All right."

At the top of the tree, the falcon was in such a tangle with her
creance--she had wound it round her neck and wings, as usual, and was
under the impression that it was assaulting her--that Lancelot had to
let her stand on his bare hand.  This she gripped with the fury of
hysteria, but he patiently disentangled her without minding the stabs.
Falconers seldom fuss when their hawks hurt them.  They are too
interested.

When the hawk was safely rescued from the branches, he realized that he
would not be able to climb down again with one hand.

He shouted to the lady, who seemed small at the foot of the tree: "Look
out, I am going to tie her jesses to a heavy branch, if I can break one
off, and then throw her down.  I will get one that is not too heavy, so
that she comes gently.  I shall have to throw her out a bit, so that
she is clear of the boughs."

"Oh, do be careful!" cried the lady.

When Lancelot had done what he said, he began to make his way down
again with care.  There were some bad bits on the way, where he had to
rely on balance alone.  He was about twenty feet from the ground when a
fat knight in full armour came galloping up.

"Ha, Sir Lancelot!" shouted the fat knight.  "Now I have you where I
want you."

The lady picked up the falcon and began to go away.

"Lady!" said Lancelot, wondering how everybody came to know his name.

The fat man screamed out: "You leave her alone, you assassin.  That is
my wife, that is.  She has only been doing what I told her.  It was a
trick.  Ha!  Ha!  Now I have got you without any of your famous armour
on, and I am going to kill you, like drowning a kitten."

"It is not very knightly," said Lancelot, with a grimace.  "You might
at least let me arm and fight fair."

"Let you arm, you puppy!  Whatever do you take me for?  I don't want
any of this newfangled nonsense.  When I catch a man who eats human
children roasted, I kill him like the vermin he is."

"But really----"

"Come down, come down!  I can't wait about all day.  Come down and take
your medicine like a man, if you are a man."

"I assure you that I do not roast children."

The fat knight grew quite purple in the face and shouted: "Liar!  Liar!
Devil!  Come down at once."

Lancelot sat on a branch and dangled his feet and bit his fingernails.

"Do you mean to say," he asked, "that you loosed that falcon on
purpose, with her cranes on, so as to be able to murder me when I was
naked?"

"Come down!"

"If I come down, I shall do my best to kill you."

"Buffoon!" cried the fat knight.

"Well," said Lancelot, "it is your own fault.  You should not play
dirty tricks.  For the last time, will you let me arm like a gentleman?"

"Certainly not."

Lancelot broke off a bough of rotten wood, and jumped down on the other
side of his horse, so that the horse was between them.  The fat knight
rode at him, and tried to swipe off his head, leaning across the horse
between.  Lancelot parried the stroke with his bough, and the knight's
sword stuck in the wood.  Then he took the sword away from its owner
and slit his throat.

"Go away," said Lancelot to the gentlewoman.  "Stop howling.  Your
husband was a fool and you are a bore.  I am not sorry I killed him."

But he was sorry.


The last adventure was also concerned with treachery and a lady.  The
young man was riding mournfully through the fen country--which had not
been drained in those days and was probably the wildest part of
England.  It was all secret ways through the marshes, which were known
only to the Saxon marsh men who had been conquered by Uther Pendragon,
and the whole sea-smelling plain was one vast quack under the low sky.
The bitterns boomed and the marsh harriers skimmed over the reeds and
millions of widgeon and mallard and tufted ducks flew about in various
wedges, looking like champagne bottles balanced on a nimbus of wings.
On the salt marshes the geese from Spitzbergen walked and nibbled, with
their necks bent into their peculiar loop, and the fen men stalked them
with nets and engines.  The fen people had spotted bellies and their
toes were webbed--at any rate that was the belief in the rest of
England.  They generally killed foreigners.

While Lancelot was riding along a straight road which seemed to lead
nowhere, he saw two people galloping towards him from the other end.
They turned out to be a knight and his lady.  The lady was in front,
going like mad, and the knight was after her.  His sword flashed
against the dull sky.

"Here!  Here!" cried Lancelot, riding at them.

"Help!" screamed the lady.  "Oh, save me!  He is trying to cut my head
off."

"Leave her alone!  Get out!" shouted the knight.  "She is my wife, and
she has been committing adultery!"

"I never did," wailed the lady.  "Oh, sir, save me from him.  He is a
cruel, beastly brute.  Just because I am fond of my cousin german, he
is jealous.  Why should I not be fond of my cousin german?"

"Scarlet woman!" exclaimed the knight, and he tried to get at her.

Lancelot rode between them and said: "Really, you must not go for a
woman like that.  I don't care whose fault it is, but you can't kill
women."

"Since when?"

"Since King Arthur was king."

"She is my wife," said the knight.  "She is nothing to do with you.
Get out!  And she is an adulteress, whatever she says."

"Oh no, I am not," said the lady.  "But you are a bully.  And you
drink."

"Who made me drink, then?  And, besides, it is no worse to drink than
be an adulteress."

"Be quiet," said Lancelot, "both of you.  This is a nuisance.  I shall
have to ride between you until you cool off.  I suppose you would not
care to have a fight with me, sir, instead of killing this lady?"

"Certainly not," said the knight.  "I know by your argent, a bend
gules, that you are Lancelot; and I would not be such a fool as to
fight you, especially for a bitch like this.  What the devil has it got
to do with you?"

"I will go," said Lancelot, "as soon as you promise on your knighthood
not to kill women."

"Well, I won't promise."

"You wouldn't," said the lady.  "Anyway, you would not keep your
promise, if you did."

"There are some marsh soldiers," said the knight, "cantering after us.
Look behind.  They are armed cap--pie."

Lancelot reined his horse and looked over his shoulder.  At the same
moment the knight leaned over to his near side and swapped off the
lady's head.  When Lancelot looked back again, without seeing any
soldiers, he found the lady sitting beside him with no head on.  She
slowly began to sag to the left, throbbing horribly, and fell in the
dust.  There was blood all over his horse.

Lancelot grew white about the nostrils.

He said, "I shall kill you for that."

The knight immediately jumped off his horse and lay on the ground.

"Don't kill me!" he said.  "Mercy!  She was an adulteress."

Lancelot dismounted also and drew his sword.

"Get up," he said.  "Get up and fight, you, you----"

The knight scrambled along the ground toward him, and threw his arms
round his thighs.  By being close to the avenger, he made it difficult
for him to swing the sword.  "Mercy!"  His abjection made Lancelot feel
horrible.

"Get up," he said.  "Get up and fight.  Look, I will take my armour off
and fight you with my sword only."

But "Mercy, mercy!" was all the knight would say.

Lancelot began to shudder, not at the knight but at the cruelty in
himself.  He held his sword loathingly, and pushed the knight away.

"Look at all the blood," he said.

"Don't kill me," said the knight.  "I yield.  I yield.  You can't kill
a man at mercy."

Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were
going back from his own soul.  He felt in his heart cruelty and
cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.

"Get up," he said.  "I won't hurt you.  Get up, go."

The knight looked at him, on all fours like a dog, and stood up,
crouching uncertainly.

Lancelot went away and was sick.


At the feast of Pentecost it was customary for the knights who had been
on Table quests to gather again at Carlion so as to relate their
adventures.  Arthur had found that this made people keener on fighting
in the new way of Right, if they had to tell about it afterwards.  Most
of them preferred to bring their prisoners with them, as witnesses to
their stories.  It was as if some Inspector General of Police in a very
distant part of Africa were to send out his superintendents into the
jungle, asking them to come back next Christmas with all the savage
chiefs whom they had brought to righteousness.  For one thing, it
impressed the savage chiefs to see the great court, and they often went
home reformed.

The Pentecost next after Lancelot's first quest was almost a fiasco.  A
few seedy giants of the Strong Arm, who had been captured by the Orkney
faction, turned up and said their homage, but the Lancelot contingent
was a spate.  "Whose man are you?" "Lancelot's."  "And whose are you,
my good fellow?" "Lancelot's."  After a bit the whole table began
shouting the answers.  Arthur would say: "You are welcome to Carlion,
Sir Belleus, and may I ask which of my knights you have yielded to?"
"Lancelot," the Table would shout in chorus.  And Sir Belleus, blushing
rather and wondering whether the laughter was at him, would say in a
small voice: "Yes, I yielded to Sir Lancelot."

Sir Bedivere came and admitted how he had swapped off his adulterous
wife's head.  He had brought it with him, and was told to take it to
the Pope as a penance--he became very holy after that.  Gawaine came
gruffly and told in Scottish English how he had been rescued from Sir
Carados.  Gaheris, at the head of a deputation of sixty-four knights
with rusty shields, related his rescue from Sir Turquine.  The daughter
of King Bagdemagus arrived in an enthusiastic state and told about the
tournament with the King of Northgalis.  Besides these, there were many
people from adventures which we have left out--mainly knights who had
yielded to Sir Lancelot when he was disguised as Sir Kay.  You may
remember from the first book that Kay was inclined to throw his tongue
a bit too much, and he had got himself unpopular on account of this.
Lancelot had been compelled during the quest to rescue him from three
knights who were pursuing him.  Then, so that Kay could get home to
court unmolested, Lancelot had changed armour with him one night while
he was asleep--and thereafter the knights who went for Lancelot under
the impression that he was Kay had gotten the surprise of their lives,
while the knights who met Kay in Lancelot's armour had given him a wide
berth.  Knights yielded under this category included Gawaine, Uwaine,
Sagramour, Ector de Maris, and three others.  Also there came a knight
called Sir Meliot de Logres, who had been rescued under supernatural
circumstances.

All these people gave themselves up, not to King Arthur, but to
Guenever.  Lancelot had kept himself away for a whole year, but there
was a limit to his endurance.  Thinking of her all the time and longing
to be back with her, he had allowed himself this one indulgence.  He
had sent his captives to kneel at her feet.  It was a fatal course of
action.




_Chapter IX_

It is difficult to explain about Guenever, unless it is possible to
love two people at the same time.  Probably it is not possible to love
two people in the same way, but there are different kinds of love.
Women love their children and their husbands at the same time--and men
often feel a lusty thought for one woman while they are feeling a love
of the heart for another.  In some way such as this Guenever did come
to love the Frenchman without losing her affection for Arthur.  She and
Lancelot were hardly more than children when it began, and the King was
about eight years their senior.  At twenty-two, the age of thirty seems
to be the verge of senility.  The marriage between her and Arthur had
been what they call a "made" marriage.  That is to say, it had been
fixed by treaty with King Leodegrance, without consulting her.  It had
been a successful union, as "made" marriages generally are, and before
Lancelot came on the scene the young girl had adored her famous
husband, even if he was so old.  She had felt respect for him, with
gratitude, kindness, love, and a sense of protection.  She had felt
more than this--you might say that she had felt everything except the
passion of romance.

And then the captives arrived.  A blushing queen of little more than
twenty summers on her throne, and the whole flame-lit hall filling with
noble knights on bended knee.  "Whose prisoner are you?"  "I am the
Queen's prisoner, to live or die, sent by Sir Lancelot."  "Whose you?"
"The Queen's, by Lancelot's arm."  Sir Lancelot--the name on
everybody's lips: the best knight in the world, top of the averages,
even above Tristram: the courtly, the merciful, the ugly, the
invincible: and he had sent them all to her.  It was like a birthday
party, so many presents.  It was like the story books.

Guenever sat straight and bowed royally to her prisoners.  She pardoned
them all.  Her eyes were brighter than her crown.

Lancelot came last.  There was a stir among the torchbearers near the
door, and a sound went round the hall.  The clatter of knives and
plates and tankards, the noise of friendly shouting which had sounded a
moment before like a meeting of seabirds on St. Kilda, the yells for
more mutton or a pint of mead were stilled--and the blurs of white
faces turned toward the door.  There was Lancelot, no longer in armour
but dressed in a magnificent velvet robe, scalloped and diapered.  He
hesitated in the dark frame, hideous and friendly, wondering why the
silence was--and the lights showed him up.  Then the faces turned back
again, the seabird meeting started once more, and Lancelot came forward
to kiss the King's hand.

It was the moment.  Perhaps it is better than trying to explain.

"Well, Lance," said Arthur cheerfully, "these are some high jinks, and
no mistake about it.  Jenny can hardly sit still, with all her
captives."

"They were for her," said Lancelot.  The Queen and he did not look at
each other.  They had done so with the click of two magnets coming
together, the moment that he crossed the threshold.

"I can't help thinking they were for me too," said the King.  "The
result ought to be that you have made me a present of about three
counties."

Lancelot felt a need to prevent silence.  He began talking too quickly.

"Three counties is not much," he said, "for the Emperor of all Europe.
You speak as if you had never conquered the Dictator of Rome.  How are
your dominions getting on?"

"They are getting on as you make them, Lance.  It was no good
conquering the Dictator, unless you and the others do the civilizing
part.  What is the use of being the Emperor of Europe, if the whole
place is fighting mad?"

Guenever supported her hero in the effort against silence.  It was
their first partnership.

"You are a strange man," she said, "Arthur dear.  You fight all the
time, and conquer countries and win battles, and then you say that
fighting is a bad thing."

"So it is a bad thing.  It is the worst thing in the world.  Oh, God,
we needn't explain it again."

"No."

"How is the Orkney faction?" asked the younger man hastily.  "How is
your famous civilization going?  Might for Right?  You mustn't forget I
have been away a year."

The King put his head in his hands and looked miserably at the table
between his elbows.  He was a kind, conscientious, peace-loving fellow,
who had been afflicted in his youth by a tutor of genius.  Between the
two of them they had worked out their theory that killing people, and
being a tyrant over them, was wrong.  To stop this sort of thing, they
had invented the idea of the Table--a vague idea like democracy, or
sportsmanship, or morals--and now, in the effort to impose a world of
peace, he found himself up to the elbows in blood.  When he was feeling
healthy he did not grieve much, because he knew the dilemma was
inevitable--but in weak moments he was persecuted by shame and
indecision.  He was one of the first Nordic men who had invented
civilization, or who had desired to do otherwise than Attila the Hun
had done, and the battle against chaos sometimes did not seem to be
worth fighting.  He often thought that it might have been better for
all his dead soldiers to be alive--even if they had lived under tyranny
and madness--rather than be quite dead.

"The Orkney faction is bad," he said.  "So is civilization, except for
the bit which you have just brought in.  Before you came, I was
thinking that I was the Emperor of nothing--now I feel as if I were the
Emperor of three counties."

"What is wrong with the Orkney faction?"

"Oh, God, must we talk about it when we were feeling happy because you
had come back?  I suppose we must."

"It is Morgause," said the Queen.

"Partly.  Morgause is having love affairs with anybody she can get hold
of, now that Lot is dead.  How I wish King Pellinore had not had that
unfortunate accident when he killed him!  It is having a bad effect on
her children."

"How do you mean?"

The King scratched on the table and stated: "I wish you had not
conquered Gawaine, that time when you were disguised as Kay.  I almost
wish you had not made such brilliant successes in rescuing him and his
brothers from Carados and Turquine."

"Why not?"

"This Round Table," said the older man slowly, "was a good thing when
we thought of it.  It was necessary to invent a way for the fighting
men to express themselves without doing harm.  I can't see how we could
have done it otherwise than by starting a fashion, like children.  To
get them in, we had to have a gang, as kids have in schools.  Then the
gang had to swear a darksome oath that they would only fight for our
ideas.  You could call it for civilization.  What I meant by
civilization when I invented it, was simply that people ought not to
take advantage of weakness--not violate maidens, and rob widows, and
kill a man when he was down.  People ought to be civil.  But it has
turned into sportsmanship.  Merlin always said that sportsmanship was
the curse of the world, and so it is.  My scheme is going wrong.  All
these knights now are making a fetish of it.  They are turning it into
a competitive thing.  Merlin used to call it Games-Mania.  Everybody
gossips and nags and hints and speculates about who unseated whom last,
and who has rescued most virgins, and who is the best knight of the
Table.  I made it a round table to prevent that very thing, but it has
not prevented it.  The Orkney faction have got the craze worst.  I
suppose their sense of insecurity over their mother makes it necessary
for them to be sure of a safe place at the top of the list.  They have
to excel, to make up for her.  That is why I wish you had not beaten
Gawaine.  He is a decent chap, but he will hold it against you inside
himself.  You have hurt him in his tilting average--it is a part of
their make-up which has now become more important to my knights than
their souls.  If you are not careful, you will have the Orkney faction
after your blood, as well as after poor Pellinore's.  It's a foul
position.  People will do the basest things on account of their
so-called honour.  I wish I had never invented honour, or
sportsmanship, or civilization."

"What a speech!" said Lancelot.  "Cheer up.  The faction won't hurt me,
even if it does come after my blood.  As for your scheme going wrong,
that is nonsense.  The Round Table is the best thing that ever
happened."

Arthur, whose head was still in his hands, raised his eyes.  He saw
that his friend and his wife were looking at each other with the wide
pupils of madness, so he quickly attended to his plate.




_Chapter X_

Uncle Dap said, turning the helm round in his hands: "Your mantling is
cut and torn.  We shall have to get another.  It is honourable to have
the mantling slashed, but dishonourable to keep it so when there is an
opportunity to replace it.  Such a course of action would be boastful."

They were talking in a little closet with a north window, cold and
grey, and the blue light lay like frozen oil upon the steel.

"Yes."

"How did Joyeux go?  Is he sharp still?  Did you like his balance?"

Joyeux had been made by Galand, the greatest swordsmith of the Middle
Ages.

"Yes."

"Yes!  Yes!" cried Uncle Dap.  "Can you say nothing but Yes?  Death of
my soul, Lancelot, but one asks if you are dumb!  What in the world is
this that has come over you, in the end?"

Lancelot had been smoothing the panache of feathers which was used as a
distinguishing mark on the helm in Uncle Dap's hands.  It was
detachable.  People have got it into their heads, through the cinema
and the comic advertisements, that knights in armour generally wore
ostrich plumes, nodding like stalks of pampas grass.  This was not the
case.  Kay's panache, for instance, was shaped like a rigid, flat fan,
with its edges pointing fore and aft.  It was carefully arranged out of
the eyes of peacock feathers, exactly as if a stiff peacock fan had
been erected endwise on his head.  It was not a tuft of plumes, and it
did not nod.  It was rather like the adipose fin of a fish, but gaudy.
Lancelot, who did not care for gaudy things, wore a few heron's hackles
bound with silver thread, which suited the argent of his shield.  He
had been stroking them.  Now he threw them violently into a corner and
stood up.  He began walking the narrow room in a jerky way.

"Uncle Dap," he said, "do you remember how I asked you not to talk
about something?"

"I do."

"Is Guenever in love with me?"

"You should ask her," replied his uncle, with French logic.

"What must I do?" he cried.  "What must I do?"

If it is difficult to explain about Guenever's love for two men at the
same time, it is almost impossible to explain about Lancelot.  At least
it would be impossible nowadays, when everybody is so free from
superstitions and prejudice that it is only necessary for all of us to
do as we please.  Why did not Lancelot make love to Guenever, or run
away with his hero's wife altogether, as any enlightened man would do
today?

One reason for his dilemma was that he was a Christian.  The modern
world is apt to forget that several people were Christians in the
remote past, and in Lancelot's time there were no Protestants--except
John Scotus Erigena.  His Church, in which he had been brought up--and
it is difficult to escape from your upbringing--directly forbade him to
seduce his best friend's wife.  Another stumbling block to doing as he
pleased was the very idea of chivalry or of civilization which Arthur
had first invented and then introduced into his own young mind.
Perhaps a bad baron who believed in the Strong Arm might have gone off
with Guenever, even in the face of his Church's councils, because
taking your neighbour's wife was really a form of Fort Mayne.  It was a
matter of the stronger bull winning.  But Lancelot had spent his
childhood between knightly exercises and thinking out King Arthur's
theory for himself.  He believed as firmly as Arthur did, as firmly as
the benighted Christian, that there was such a thing as Right.
Finally, there was the impediment of his nature.  In the secret parts
of his peculiar brain, those unhappy and inextricable tangles which he
felt at the roots, the boy was disabled by something which we cannot
explain.  He could not have explained either, and for us it is all too
long ago.  He loved Arthur and he loved Guenever and he hated himself.
The best knight of the world: everybody envied the self-esteem which
must surely be his.  But Lancelot never believed he was good or nice.
Under the grotesque, magnificent shell with a face like Quasimodo's,
there was shame and self-loathing which had been planted there when he
was tiny, by something which it is now too late to trace.  It is so
fatally easy to make young children believe that they are horrible.

"It seems to me," said Uncle Dap, "that it depends very largely on what
the Queen wants to do."




_Chapter XI_

Lancelot stayed at the court for several weeks this time, and each week
made it more difficult to go away.  On top of the more or less social
tangle in which he found himself, there was a personal puzzle--for he
put a higher value on chastity than is fashionable in our century.  He
believed, like the man in Lord Tennyson, that people could only have
the strength often on account of their hearts being pure.  It so
happened that his strength was as the strength of ten, and such was the
medieval explanation which had been discovered for it.  As a corollary
to this belief, he supposed that if he gave in to the Queen he would
lose his tenfold might.  So, for this reason, as well as for the other
ones, he fought against her with the courage of despair.  It was not
pleasant for Guenever either.

One day Uncle Dap said: "You had better go away.  You have lost nearly
two stone in weight.  If you go away something will either snap or not
snap.  It is better to get it over quickly."

Lancelot said: "I cannot go."

Arthur said: "Please stay."

Guenever said: "Go."

The second quest which he embarked upon was the turning-point of his
life.  There had been a good deal of talk in Camelot about a certain
King Pelles, who was lame and lived in the haunted castle of Corbin.
He was supposed to be slightly mad, because he believed himself to be a
relation of Joseph of Arimathea.  He was the sort of man who would
become a British Israelite nowadays, and spend the rest of his life
prophesying the end of the world by measuring the passages in the Great
Pyramid.  However, King Pelles was only slightly mad, and his castle
was certainly haunted.  It had a haunted room in it, with innumerable
doors out of which things came and fought you in the night.  Arthur
thought it was worth sending Lancelot to investigate the place.

On the way to Corbin Lancelot had a strange adventure, which he
remembered for many years with awful grief.  He was to look back on it
as the last adventure of his virginity, and to believe, day by day for
the next twenty years, that before it had happened he had been God's
man, while, after it, he had become a lie.

There was a village under the castle of Corbin, which seemed a
prosperous one.  It had cobbled streets and stone houses and old
bridges.  The castle stood on a hill to one side of the valley, and
there was a handsome pele tower on the hill of the other side.  All the
people of the village were in the street, as if they were waiting for
him, and there was a dreamlike quality in the air, as if a shower of
gold dust had come from the sun.  Lancelot felt peculiar.  His blood
might have had too much oxygen in it, from the way he was conscious of
every stone in every wall, and all the colours in the valley, and the
joyful stepping of his horse.  The people of the enchanted village knew
his name.

"Welcome, Sir Lancelot Dulac," they cried, "the flower of all
knighthood!  By thee we shall be holpen out of danger."

He reined his horse and spoke to them.

"Why do you call out to me?" he asked, thinking of other things.  "How
do you know my name?  What is the matter?"

They answered in chorus, speaking together solemnly and without
difficulty.

"Ah, fair knight," they said.  "Do you see that tower on the hill?
There is a dolorous lady in it, who has been kept boiling in scalding
water for many winters by magic, and nobody can get her out except the
best knight in the world.  Sir Gawaine was here last week, but he could
not do it."

"If Sir Gawaine could not do it," he said, "I am sure that I can't."

He did not like this sort of competition.  The danger about being the
best knight in the world was that if you were always being tested about
it, the day was bound to come when you would fail to retain the title.

"I think I had better ride on," he said, and he gave his reins a shake.

"No, no," said the people gravely.  "You are Sir Lancelot and we know
it.  You will get our lady out of the boiling water."

"I must go."

"She is in pain."

Lancelot leaned on the withers of his horse, lifted his right leg over
the crupper, and found himself on the ground.

"Tell me what I must do," he said.

The people formed in a procession round him, and the mayor of the
village took him by the hand.  They walked together silently up the
hill to the pele tower, except that the mayor explained the situation
as they went.

"Our lady of the manor," said the mayor, "used to be the most beautiful
girl in the country.  So Queen Morgan le Fay and the Queen of
Northgalis grew jealous of her, and they have put her in this magic for
revenge.  It is terrible how it hurts her, and she has been boiling for
five years.  Only the best knight in the world can get her out."

When they came to the tower gate, another strange thing happened.  It
was heavily bolted and barred in the old-fashioned way.  The masonry of
the doorway was constructed with deep slots in it, in which heavy beams
ran to and fro--heavy enough to withstand a battering ram.  Now these
beams withdrew into the wall of their own accord, and the iron locks
turned their own wards with a grinding noise.  The door quietly opened.

"Go in," said the mayor, and the people stood still outside, waiting
for what was to happen.

On the first floor of the tower there was the furnace which kept the
magic water hot.  Lancelot could not enter there.  On the second floor
there was a room full of steam, so that he could not see across it.  He
went into this room, holding his hands joined together in front of him,
as blind people do, until he heard a squeak.  A clearing in the steam,
caused by the draught from the door so long unopened, showed him the
lady who had given the squeak.  She was sitting shyly in the bath
looking at him, a charming little lady, who was--as Malory puts it--as
naked as a needle.

"Well!" said he.

The girl blushed, so far as she could blush when she was boiled, and
said in a small voice: "Please give me your hand."  She knew how the
magic had to be undone.

Lancelot gave her his hand, and she stood up, and got out of the bath,
and all the people outside began cheering, as though they knew exactly
what was happening.  They had brought a dress with them, and the proper
underwear, and the ladies of the village formed a circle in the gateway
while the pink girl was dressed.

"Oh, it does feel lovely to be dressed!" she said.

"My popsy!" cried a fat old woman who had evidently been her nurse when
she was small, weeping tears of joy.

"Sir Lancelot done it," shouted the villagers.  "Three cheers for Sir
Lancelot!"

When the cheering had died away, the boiled girl came to him and put
her hand in his.

"Thank you," she said.  "Ought we to go to church now, and thank God as
well as you?"

"Certainly we must."

So they went to the clean little chapel in the village and thanked God
for His mercies.  They kneeled between the frescoed walls, where some
important-looking saints with blue haloes were standing on tiptoe to
avoid foreshortening, and the gay paints of the stained-glass window
poured upon their heads.  They were cobalt blue, purple from manganese,
yellow from copper, red, and a green which was also got from copper.
The whole inside of the place was a tankful of colour.  It was half-way
through the service before he realized that he had been allowed to do a
miracle, just as he had always wanted.


King Pelles limped down from his castle on the other side of the
valley, to find out what the excitement was about.  He looked at
Lancelot's shield, kissed the boiled child absent-mindedly, leaning
over like an obedient stork to have his cheek pecked, and remarked:
"Dear me, you are Sir Lancelot!  And I see you have fetched my daughter
out of that kettle arrangement.  How kind of you!  It was prophesied
long ago.  I am King Pelles, near cousin to Joseph of Arimathea--and
you, of course, are but the eighth degree from Our Lord Jesus Christ."

"Good gracious!"

"Indeed, indeed," said King Pelles.  "It is all written down
arithmetically in the stones at Stonehenge, and I have some sort of
holy dish in my castle at Carbonek, together with a dove which flies
about in various directions holding a censer of gold in its beak.
Still, it was extremely kind of you to fetch my daughter out of the
kettle."

"Daddy," said the girl.  "We ought to be introduced."

King Pelles waved his hand as if he were trying to scare away the
midges.

"Elaine," he said.  It was another one with the same name.  "This is my
daughter, Elaine.  How do you do?  And this is Sir Lancelot Dulac.  How
do you do?  All written in the stones."

Lancelot, perhaps slightly biased by having first met her with no
clothes on, thought that Elaine was the most beautiful girl he had
seen, except Guenever.  He felt shy too.

"You must come and stay with me," said the King.  "That is in the
stones also.  Show you the holy dish some day, and all that.  Teach you
arithmetic.  Nice weather.  Don't have daughters unboiled every day.  I
think dinner will be ready."




_Chapter XII_

Lancelot stayed at the castle of Corbin for days.  Its haunted rooms
were up to expectation and there was nothing else to do.  He felt such
feelings in his breast because of Guenever--the frightful pang of
hopeless love--that he was drained of effort.  He could not summon the
energy to go elsewhere.  At the beginning of his love for her there had
been restlessness, so that he had felt that if only he kept moving and
doing new things every moment there might be a hope of escape.  Now his
power to be busy was gone.  He felt that he might as well be in one
place as another, if he was only waiting to see whether his heart would
break or not.  He was too simple to see that if the finest knight in
the world rescued you out of a kettle of boiling water, with no clothes
on, you would be likely to fall in love with him--if you were only
eighteen.

One evening, when Pelles had been particularly tiresome about religious
family trees, and when the gnawing in the boy's heart had made it
impossible for him to eat properly or even to sit still at dinner, the
butler took the situation in hand.  He had served the Pelles family for
forty years, was married to the nurse who had greeted Elaine with tears
of joy, and he approved of love.  He also understood about young men
like Lancelot--young men who might still be undergraduates or
jet-pilots if they were in England today.  He would have made an
excellent college butler.

"More wine, sir?" asked the butler.

"No, thank you."

The butler bowed politely and poured another horn, which Lancelot
drained without looking at it.

"A nice vintage, sir," said the butler.  "His Majesty takes great
trouble with his cellar."

King Pelles had gone to the library to work out some prognostications,
and his guest was left gloomily in the hall.

"Yes."

There was a rustling outside the buttery door, and the butler went over
to it while Lancelot was drinking another measure.

"Now this is a fine wine, sir," said the butler.  "His Majesty sets
great store by this wine, and my wife has just fetched up a fresh
bottle from the cellar.  Observe the crust, sir.  It is a wine which I
am sure you will appreciate."

"All wines are the same to me."

"You modest young gentleman," said the butler, substituting a larger
horn.  "If I may say so, sir, you will have your little joke.  But it
is easy to recognize a judge of wine when you come across him."

He was bothering Lancelot, who wanted to be alone with his misery, and
Lancelot realized that he was being bothered.  For this reason he
automatically wondered whether he had not perhaps been discourteous to
the butler in his distraction.  Perhaps the butler was really keen on
the wine, and had troubles of his own.  He politely drank it up.

"Very nice," he said encouragingly.  "A splendid vintage."

"I am glad to hear you praise it, sir."

"Have you ever," asked Lancelot, putting the question which all young
men are always asking, and without noticing that it had anything to do
with the drink, "have you ever been in love?"

The butler smiled discreetly and poured another bumper.

By midnight Lancelot and the butler were sitting on opposite sides of
the table, both looking red in the face.  They had a brew of piment
between them--a mixture of red wine, honey, spices, and whatever else
the butler's wife had added.

"So I tell you," said Lancelot, glaring like an ape.  "Wouldn't tell
everybody, but you are a nice chap.  Understanding chap.  Pleasure to
tell anything.  Have another drink."

"Good health," said the butler.

"What am I to do?" he cried.  "What am I to do?"

He put his horrible head between his arms on the table, and began to
weep.

"Courage!" said the butler.  "Do or die!"

He made a rapping on the table with one hand, looking at the buttery
door, and with the other poured out another bumper.

"Drink," he said.  "Drink hearty.  Be a man, sir, if I may make so
bold.  You will have good news in a minute, that you will, and you want
to seize the unforgiving minute, as the bard says."

"Good chap," said Lancelot.  "Damned if I wouldn't, if I could."

"Jack is as good as his master."

"Certainly is," said the young man, winking in a way which he was
afraid must look most beastly.  "Better, in fact, eh, butler?"

He began to grin like an ass.

"Ah," said the butler, "and there is my wife Brisen at the buttery
door, holding a message.  I dare say it might be for you.

"What does it say?" asked the butler, watching the boy who sat staring
at the paper.

"Nothing," he said, throwing the paper on the table and walking
unsteadily to the door.

The butler read the paper.

"It says that Queen Guenever is at the castle of Case, five miles from
here, and she wants you.  It says the King is not with her.  There are
some kisses on it."

"Well?"

"You dare not go," said the butler.

"Dare not?" shouted Sir Lancelot, and he went into the darkness
staggering, laughing like a caricature, and calling for his horse.


In the morning he woke suddenly in a strange room.  It was quite dark,
with tapestry over the windows, and he had no headache because his
constitution was good.  He jumped out of bed and went to the window, to
draw the curtain.  He was fully aware, in the suddenness of a second,
of all that had happened on the previous night--aware of the butler and
of the drink and of the love-potion which had perhaps been put in it,
of the message from Guenever, and of the dark, solid, cool-fired body
in the bed which he had just got out of.  He drew the curtain and
leaned his forehead against the cold stone of the mullion.  He was
miserable.

"Jenny," he said, after minutes which seemed to be hours.

There was no answer from the bed.

He turned round and found himself looking at the boiled girl, Elaine.
She lay in the bed, her small bare arms holding the bedclothes to her
sides, with her violet eyes fixed on his.

Lancelot was always a martyr to his feelings, never any good at
disguising them.  When he saw Elaine his head went back.  Then his ugly
face took on a look of profound and outraged sorrow, so simple and
truthful that his nakedness in the window-light was dignity.  He began
to tremble.

Elaine did not move, but only looked upon him with her quick eyes, like
a mouse.

Lancelot went over to the chest where his sword was lying.

"I shall kill you."

She only looked.  She was eighteen, pitifully small in the big bed, and
she was frightened.

"Why did you do it?" he cried.  "What have you done?  Why have you
betrayed me?"

"I had to."

"But it was treachery!"

He could not believe it of her.

"It was treachery!  You have betrayed me."

"Why?"

"You have made me--taken from me--stolen----"

He threw his sword into a corner and sat down on the chest.  When he
began to cry, the gross lines of his face screwed themselves up
fantastically.  The thing which Elaine had stolen from him was his
might.  She had stolen his strength of ten.  Children believe such
things to this day, and think that they will only be able to bowl well
in the cricket match tomorrow, provided that they are good today.

Lancelot stopped crying, and spoke with his eyes on the floor.

"When I was little," he said, "I prayed to God that he would let me
work a miracle.  Only virgins can work miracles.  I wanted to be the
best knight in the world.  I was ugly and lonely.  The people of your
village said that I was the best knight of the world, and I did work my
Miracle when I got you out of the water.  I did not know it would be my
last as well as my first."

Elaine said: "Oh, Lancelot, you will work plenty more."

"Never.  You have stolen my miracles.  You have stolen my being the
best knight.  Elaine, why did you do it?"

She began to cry.

He got up, wrapped himself in a towel, and went over to the bed.

"Never mind," he said.  "It was my fault for getting drunk.  I was
miserable, and I got drunk.  I wonder if that butler tried to make me?
It was not very fair if he did.  Don't cry, Elaine.  It was not your
fault."

"It was.  It was."

"Probably your father made you do it, so as to have the eighth degree
from Our Lord in the family.  Or else it was that enchantress Brisen,
the butler's wife.  Don't be sorry about it, Elaine.  It is over now.
Look, I will give you a kiss."

"Lancelot!" cried Elaine.  "It was because I loved you.  Haven't I
given something too?  I was a maiden, Lancelot.  I didn't rob you.  Oh,
Lancelot--it was my fault.  I ought to be killed.  Why didn't you kill
me with your sword?  But it was because I loved you, and I couldn't
help it."

"There, there."

"Lancelot, suppose I have a baby?"

He stopped comforting her and went to the window again, as if he were
going mad.

"I want to have your baby," said Elaine.  "I shall call him Galahad,
like your first name."

She still held the coverlet to her sides with the small, bare arms.
Lancelot turned upon her in fury.

"Elaine," he said, "if you have a baby, it is your baby.  It is unfair
to bind me with pity.  I am going straight away now, and I hope I shall
never see you again."




_Chapter XIII_

Guenever was doing some petit point in the gloomy room, which she hated
doing.  It was for a shield-cover for Arthur, and had the dragon
rampant gules.  Elaine was only eighteen, and it is fairly easy to
explain the feelings of a child--but Guenever was twenty-two.  She had
grown to have some of the nature of an individual, stamped on the
simple feelings of the child-queen who had once received her present of
captives.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not
have until they are middle-aged.  It is something which cannot be
taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey
laws which are constant.  It has no rules.  Only, in the long years
which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops.
You can't teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her
logically--she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience.
In some way like that, you cannot teach a young woman to have knowledge
of the world.  She has to be left to the experience of the years.  And
then, when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds
that she can do it.  She can go on living--not by principle, not by
deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar
and shifting sense of balance which defies each of these things often.
She no longer hopes to live by seeking the truth--if women ever do hope
this--but continues henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense.
Balance was the sixth sense, which she won when she first learned to
walk, and now she has the seventh one--knowledge of the world.

The slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women
contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery,
compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy--this discovery is not a
matter for triumph.  The baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: I have
balance!  But the seventh sense is recognized without a cry.  We only
carry on with our famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves
in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a stage of
deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do.

And at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we
lacked the seventh sense.  We begin to forget, as we go stolidly
balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young
bodies flaming with the impetus of life.  It is hardly consoling to
remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds.

But there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world,
confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and
passionately concerned.  There was a time when it was of vital interest
to us to find out whether there was a God or not.  Obviously the
existence or otherwise of a future life must be of the very first
importance to somebody who is going to live her present one, because
her manner of living it must hinge on the problem.  There was a time
when Free Love versus Catholic Morality was a question of as much
importance to our hot bodies as if a pistol had been clapped to our
heads.

Further back, there were times when we wondered with all our souls what
the world was, what love was, what we were ourselves.

All these problems and feelings fade away when we get the seventh
sense.  Middle-aged people can balance between believing in God and
breaking all the commandments, without difficulty.  The seventh sense,
indeed, slowly kills all the other ones, so that at last there is no
trouble about the commandments.  We cannot see any more, or feel, or
hear about them.  The bodies which we loved, the truths which we
sought, the Gods whom we questioned: we are deaf and blind to them now,
safely and automatically balancing along toward the inevitable grave,
under the protection of our last sense.  "Thank God for the aged,"
sings the poet:

  Thank God for the aged
  And for age itself, and illness and the grave.
  When we are old and ill, and particularly in the coffin,
  It is no trouble to behave.


Guenever was twenty-two as she sat at her petit point and thought of
Lancelot.  She was not half-way to her coffin, not ill even, and she
only had six senses.  It is difficult to imagine her.

A chaos of the mind and body--a time for weeping at sunsets and at the
glamour of moonlight--a confusion and profusion of beliefs and hopes,
in God, in Truth, in Love, and in Eternity--an ability to be
transported by the beauty of physical objects--a heart to ache or
swell--a joy so joyful and a sorrow so sorrowful that oceans could lie
between them: then, as a counterpoise to these attractive features,
outcrops of selfishness indecently exposed--restlessness or inability
to settle down and stop bothering the middle-aged--pert argument on
abstract subjects like Beauty, as if they were of any interest to the
middle-aged--lack of experience as to when truth should be suppressed
in deference to the middle-aged--general effervescence and nuisance and
unfittingness to the set patterns of the seventh sense--these must have
been some of Guenever's characteristics at twenty-two, because they are
everybody's.  But on top of them there were the broad and yet uncertain
lines of her personal character--lines which made her different from
the innocent Elaine, lines of less pathos perhaps but more reality,
lines of power which made her into the individual Jenny that Lancelot
loved.

"Oh, Lancelot," she sang as she stitched at the shield-crown.  "Oh,
Lance, come back soon.  Come back with your crooked smile, or with your
own way of walking which shows whether you are angry or puzzled--come
back to tell me that it does not matter whether love is a sin or not.
Come back to say that it is enough that I should be Jenny and you
should be Lance, whatever may happen to anybody."

The startling thing was that he came.  Straight from Elaine, straight
from her robbery, Lancelot came like an arrow to the heart of love.  He
had slept with Guenever already in deceit, already had been cheated of
his tenfold might.  He was a lie now, in God's eyes as he saw them, so
he felt that he might as well be a lie in earnest.  No more to be the
best knight in the world, no more to work miracles against magic, no
more to have compensation for ugliness and emptiness in his soul, the
young man sped to his sweetheart for consolation.  There was the
clatter of his iron-shod horse on the cobbles, which made the Queen
drop her needlework to see whether it was Arthur back from his
hunting--the ring of his chain-mail feet upon the stairs, going
chink-chink like spurs against the stone--and then, before she was
quite certain of what had happened, Guenever was laughing or weeping,
unfaithful to her husband, as she had always known she would be.




_Chapter XIV_

Arthur said: "Here is a letter from your father, Lance.  He says he is
being attacked by King Claudas.  I promised to help him against
Claudas, if it was necessary, in exchange for his help at Bedegraine.
I shall have to go."

"I see."

"What do you want to do?"

"How do you mean, what do I want to do?"

"Well, do you want to come with me or to stay here?"

Lancelot cleared his throat and said: "I want to do whatever you think
best."

"It will be difficult for you," said Arthur.  "I hate to ask you.  But
would you mind if I asked you to stay?"

Lancelot could not think of the safe words, so the King mistook his
silence for disappointment.

"Of course, you have a right to see your father and mother," he said.
"I don't want you to stay, if it hurts too much.  Probably we can
manage it another way."

"Why did you want to leave me in England?"

"There ought to be somebody here to look after the factions.  I should
feel safer in France if I knew there was a strong man left behind.
There is going to be trouble in Cornwall soon, between Tristram and
Mark, and there is the Orkney feud.  You know the difficulties.  And it
would be nice to think there was somebody looking after Gwen."

"Perhaps," said Lancelot, choosing the words with pain, "it would be
better to trust somebody else."

"Don't be absurd.  How could I trust anybody more?  You would only have
to show that mug of yours outside the dog kennel and all the thieves
would run away at once."

"It is not a very handsome one."

"Cut-throat!" exclaimed the King affectionately, and he thumped his
friend on the back.  He went off to arrange about the expedition.

They had a year of joy, twelve months of the strange heaven which the
salmon know on beds of river shingle, under the gin-clear water.  For
twenty-four years they were guilty, but this first year was the only
one which seemed like happiness.  Looking back on it, when they were
old, they did not remember that in this year it had ever rained or
frozen.  The four seasons were coloured like the edge of a rose petal
for them.

"I don't understand," said Lancelot, "why you should love me.  Are you
sure you do?  Is there some mistake about it?"

"My Lance."

"But my face," he said.  "I am so horrible.  Now I can believe that God
might love the world, whatever it was like, because of himself."

At other times, they were in a terror which came from him.  Guenever
did not feel remorse on her own account, but she caught it from her
lover.

"I dare not think.  Don't think.  Kiss me, Jenny."

"Why think?"

"I can't help thinking."

"Dear Lance!"

Then there were different times when they quarrelled about nothing--but
even the quarrels were those of lovers, which seemed sweet when they
remembered them afterwards.

"Your toes are like the little pigs which went to market."

"I wish you would not say things like that.  It is not respectful."

"Respectful!"

"Yes, respectful.  Why shouldn't you be respectful?  I am the Queen,
after all."

"Do you seriously mean to tell me that I am supposed to treat you with
respect?  I suppose I am to kneel on one knee all the time and kiss
your hand?"

"Why not?"

"I wish you wouldn't be so selfish.  If there is one thing I can't
stand, it is being treated like a possession."

"Selfish, indeed!"

And the Queen would stamp her foot, or perhaps sulk for a day.  But she
forgave him when he had made a proper act of contrition.

One day, when they were at the stage of telling each other their
private feelings, with a sort of innocent amazement when they
corresponded, Lancelot gave the Queen his secret.

"Jenny, when I was little I hated myself.  I don't know why.  I was
ashamed.  I was a very holy little boy."

"You are not very holy now," she said, laughing.  She did not
understand what she was being told.

"One day my brother asked me to lend him an arrow.  I had two or three
specially straight ones, which I was very careful of, and his were a
bit warped.  I pretended that I had lost my straight arrows, and said I
couldn't lend them to him."

"Little liar!"

"I know I was.  Afterwards I had the most dreadful remorse for having
told him the lie, and I thought I had been untrue to God.  So I went
out to a bed of stinging nettles that was on the moat, and put my arrow
arm into them, as a punishment.  I rolled up my sleeve and put it right
in."

"Poor Lance!  What an innocent you must have been."

"But, Jenny, they didn't sting me!  I am sure I am right in remembering
that they didn't sting me."

"Do you mean there was a miracle?"

"I don't know.  It is difficult to be sure.  I was such a dreamy boy,
always living in a make-up world where I was Arthur's greatest knight.
I may have made it up about the nettles.  But I think I can remember
the shock when they didn't sting."

"I am sure it was a miracle," said the Queen decidedly.

"Jenny, all my life I have wanted to do miracles.  I have wanted to be
holy.  I suppose it was ambition or pride or some other unworthy thing.
It was not enough for me to conquer the world--I wanted to conquer
heaven too.  I was so grasping that it was not enough to be the
strongest knight--I had to be the best as well.  That is the worst of
making day-dreams.  It is why I tried to keep away from you.  I knew
that if I was not pure, I could never do miracles.  And I did do a
miracle, too: a splendid one.  I got a girl out of some boiling water,
who was enchanted into it.  She was called Elaine.  Then I lost my
power.  Now that we are together, I shall never be able to do my
miracles any more."

He did not like to tell her the full truth about Elaine, for he thought
that it would hurt her feelings to know that he had come to her as the
second.

"Why not?"

"Because we are wicked."

"Personally I have never done a miracle," said the Queen, rather
coldly.  "So I have less to regret."

"But, Jenny, I am not regretting anything.  You are my miracle, and I
would throw them overboard all over again for the sake of you.  I was
only trying to tell you about the things I felt when I was small."

"Well, I can't say I understand."

"Can't you understand wanting to be good at things?  No, I can see that
you would not have to.  It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or
inferior, who have to be good at things.  You have always been full and
perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.  But I have always been
making up.  I feel dreadful sometimes, even now, with you, when I know
that I can't be the best knight any longer."

"Then we had better stop, and you can make a good confession, and do
some more miracles."

"You know we can't stop."

"The whole thing seems fanciful to me," said the Queen.  "I don't
understand it.  It seems unpractical and selfish."

"I know I am selfish.  I can't help it.  I try not to be.  But how can
I help being what I was made?  Oh, can't you understand what I am
telling you?  I was lonely when I was small, and I worked hard at my
exercises.  I used to tell myself that I would be a great explorer, and
cross the Chorasmian Waste: or I would be a great king, like Alexander
or St. Louis: or a great healer: I would find out a balsam which cured
wounds and give it away free: perhaps I would be a saint, and salve
wounds just by touching them, or I would find something important--a
relic of the True Cross, or the Holy Grail, or something like that.
These were my dreams, Jenny.  I am only telling you what I used to
day-dream about.  They are what I mean by my miracles, which are lost
now.  I have given you my hopes, Jenny, as a present from my love."




_Chapter XV_

The year of their happiness ended with Arthur's return--and almost
immediately collapsed in ruin, but not on account of the King.  The
evening after his home-coming, while he was still giving them details
of the defeat of Claudas as they happened to come into his memory,
there was a disturbance at the Porter's Lodge, and Sir Bors was ushered
into the Great Hall at dinner.  He was Lancelot's cousin, and had been
spending a holiday at the castle of Corbin, investigating the
hauntings.  He had some news for Lancelot, which he told him in a
whisper after dinner--but unfortunately he was a misogynist, and, like
most people of that sort, he had the female failing of indiscretion.
He told the news to some of his bosom friends as well.  Soon it was all
over the court.  The news was that Elaine of Corbin had given birth to
a fine son, whom she had christened Galahad--which was Lancelot's first
name, as you remember.

"So this," said Guenever, when she next saw her lover alone, "so this
is why you lost your miracles.  It was all lies about your giving them
to me."

"What do you mean?"

Guenever began to breathe through her nose.  She was feeling as if
there were two red thumbs behind her eyeballs, trying to push them out,
and she did not want to look at him.  She was trying not to make a
scene, and she dreaded her heart.  She had shame and hatred of what she
might say, but she could not help saying it.  She was like a person
swimming in a rough sea.

"You know what I mean," she said bitterly, looking away.

"Jenny, I wanted to tell you, but it was too difficult to explain."

"I can understand the difficulty."

"It is not what you think."

"What I think!" she cried.  "How do you know what I think?  I think
what everybody would think--that you are a mean seducer, just a liar,
you and your miracles.  And I was fool enough to believe you."

Lancelot turned his head at each of her stabs, as if he were trying to
let them glance off him.  He looked on the ground, to hide his eyes.
He had wide eyes, which generally gave him an expression of fear or
surprise.

"Elaine means nothing to me," he said.

"Then she ought to do.  How can you say that she means nothing to you
when she is the mother of your child?  When you tried to keep her
secret?  No, don't touch me, go away."

"I can't go away, when it is like this."

"If you touch me I shall go to the King."

"Guenever, I was made drunk at Corbin.  Then they told me that you were
waiting for me at Case, and they took me to a dark room with Elaine in
it.  I came away next morning."

"A clumsy lie."

"It is true."

"A baby wouldn't believe it."

"I can't make you believe it, if you don't want to.  I drew my sword to
kill Elaine, when I found out."

"I will have her killed."

"It was not her fault."

The Queen began plucking at the neck of her dress, as if it were too
tight for her.

"You are standing up for her," she said.  "You are in love with her,
and deceiving me.  I thought so all along."

"I swear I am telling the truth."

She suddenly gave up and began to cry.

"Why didn't you tell me before?" she asked.  "Why didn't you tell me
you had a baby?  Why have you lied to me all the time?  I suppose she
was your famous miracle, which you were so proud of."

Lancelot, who also suffered from violent emotions, began to cry in
turn.  He put his arms round her.

"I didn't know I had one," he said.  "I didn't want one.  It was not my
seeking."

"If you had told me the truth, I could have believed you."

"I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't.  I was afraid you would be hurt."

"It has hurt me worse like this."

"I know it has."

The Queen dried her tears and looked at him, smiling like a spring
shower.  In a minute they were kissing, feeling like the green earth
refreshed by rain.  They thought that they understood each other once
more--but their doubt had been planted.  Now, in their love, which was
stronger, there were the seeds of hatred and fear and confusion growing
at the same time: for love can exist with hatred, each preying on the
other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury.




_Chapter XVI_

In the castle of Corbin, the child Elaine was making ready for her
journey.  She was coming to capture Lancelot from Guenever, an
expedition of which everybody except herself could feel the pathos.
She had no weapons to fight with, and did not know how to fight.  She
was quite without character.  Lancelot did not love her.  And she was
in the yet more hopeless position of loving him.  She had nothing to
oppose against the Queen's maturity except her own immaturity and
humble love, nothing except the fat baby which she was carrying to its
father--a baby which was to him only the symbol of a cruel trick.  It
was an expedition like that of an army without weapons against an
impregnable fortress, an army which at the same time had its hands tied
behind its back.  Elaine, with an artlessness which could only be
explained by the fact that she had spent most of her life in the
seclusion of her magic cauldron, had decided to meet Guenever on her
own ground.  She had ordered gowns of the utmost magnificence and
sophistication--and in these, which would only make her look all the
more stupid and provincial, she was going to Camelot to fight her
battle with the English Queen.

If Elaine had not been Elaine, she might have taken Galahad as her
weapon.  Pathos and proprietorship, rightly applied to a nature like
Lancelot's, might have been successful in binding him.  But Elaine was
not clever, did not understand the attempt to bind her hero.  She took
Galahad because she adored him.  She took him only because she did not
want to be parted from her baby, and because she wanted to show him off
to his father, and partly because she wanted to compare the faces.  It
was a year since she had set eyes on the man for whom her child-mind
lived.

Lancelot, while Elaine was planning his capture, remained with the
Queen at court.  But he now remained without the temporary peace of
heart which he had been able to invent for himself while the King was
away.  In the King's absence he had been able to drown himself in the
passing minute--but Arthur was perpetually at his elbow now, as a
comment on his treachery.  He had not buried his love for Arthur in his
passion for Guenever, but still felt for him.  To a medieval nature
like Lancelot's, with its fatal weakness for loving the highest when he
saw it, this was a position of pain.  He could not bear to be made to
feel that his sentiment for Guenever was an ignoble sentiment, for it
was the profound feeling of his life--yet every circumstance now
conspired to make it seem ignoble.  The hasty moments together, the
locked doors and base contrivances, the guilty manoeuvres which the
husband's presence forced on the lovers--these had the effect of
soiling what had no excuse unless it was beautiful.  On top of this
stain there was the torture of knowing that Arthur was kind, simple and
upright--of knowing that he was always on the edge of hurting Arthur
dreadfully, although he loved him.  Then there was pain about Guenever
herself, the tiny plant of bitterness which they had sown, or seen
sown, in each other's eyes, on the occasion of their first quarrel of
suspicion.  It was a pain to him to be in love with a jealous and
suspicious woman.  She had given him a mortal blow by not believing his
explanation about Elaine instantly.  Yet he was unable not to love her.
Finally there were the revolted elements of his own character--his
strange desire for purity and honour and spiritual excellence.  All
these things, working together with the unconscious dread of Elaine's
arrival with his son, broke his happiness without allowing him to
escape.  He seldom sat down, but strayed about with nervous movements,
picking things up and setting them down without looking at them,
walking to windows and looking out but seeing nothing.

For Guenever the dread of Elaine's arrival was not unconscious.  She
had known from the first moment that Elaine was bound to come.  For
her, however, as for all women, the dreads were in advance of the male
horizon.  Men often accuse women of driving them to unfaithfulness by
senseless jealousy, before there has been any thought of unfaithfulness
on their own part.  Yet the thought was probably there, unconscious and
undetectable except to women.  The great Anna Karenina, for instance,
forced Vronsky into a certain position by the causeless jealousy of a
maniac--yet that position was the only real solution to their problem,
and it was the inevitable solution.  Seeing so much further into the
future than he did, she pressed towards it with passionate tread,
wrecking the present because the future was bound to be a wreck.

So with Guenever.  Probably she was not over-strained by Elaine's
immediate problem.  Probably she had no real suspicion against that
side of Lancelot.  Yet, with her prescience, she was aware of dooms and
sorrows outside her lover's purview.  It would not be accurate to say
that she was aware of them in a logical sense, but they were present in
her deeper mind.  It is a pity that language is such a clumsy weapon
that we cannot say that a mother was "unconscious" of her baby crying
in the next room--with the meaning that the mother somehow,
unconsciously, knew that it was crying.  Facts of which Guenever was
subconscious, in this sense, included the whole of the Arthur-Lancelot
situation, most of the future tragedy at court, and the grievous fact
of her own childlessness--which was never to be remedied.

She said to herself that Lancelot had betrayed her, that she was the
victim of Elaine's cunning, that her lover was sure to betray her
again.  She tormented herself with a thousand words of the same sort.
But what she felt to herself, in the uncharted regions of her heart,
was a different matter.  Perhaps she was actually jealous, not of
Elaine, but of the baby.  Perhaps it was Lancelot's love for Arthur
that she feared.  Or it may have been a fear of the whole position, of
its instability and the nemesis inherent in it.  Women know, far better
than men, that God's laws are not mocked.  They have more cause to know
it.

Whatever the explanation of Guenever's attitude, the fruits of it were
pain for her lover.  She became as restless as he was, more
unreasonable, and much more cruel.

Arthur's feelings completed the misery of the court.  He, unfortunately
for himself, had been beautifully brought up.  His teacher had educated
him as the child is educated in the womb, where it lives the history of
man from fish to mammal--and, like the child in the womb, he had been
protected with love meanwhile.  The effect of such an education was
that he had grown up without any of the useful accomplishments for
living--without malice, vanity, suspicion, cruelty, and the commoner
forms of selfishness.  Jealousy seemed to him the most ignoble of
vices.  He was sadly unfitted for hating his best friend or for
torturing his wife.  He had been given too much love and trust to be
good at these things.

Arthur was not one of those interesting characters whose subtle motives
can be dissected.  He was only a simple and affectionate man, because
Merlyn had believed that love and simplicity were worth having.

Now, with a situation developing before his eyes which has always been
notoriously difficult of solution--so difficult that it has been given
a label and called the Eternal Triangle, as if it were a geometrical
problem like the Pons Asinorum in Euclid--Arthur was only able to
retreat.  It is generally the trustful and optimistic people who can
afford to retreat.  The loveless and faithless ones are compelled by
their pessimism to attack.  Arthur was strong and gentle enough to hope
that, if he trusted Lancelot and Guenever, things would come right in
the end.  It seemed to him that this was better than trying to bring
them right at once by such courses as, for instance, by cutting off the
lovers' heads for treason.

Arthur did not know that Lancelot and Guenever were lovers.  He had
never actually found them together or unearthed proofs of their guilt.
It was in the nature of his bold mind to hope, in these circumstances,
that he would not find them together--rather than to lay a trap by
which to wreck the situation.  This is not to say that he was a
conniving husband.  It is simply that he was hoping to weather the
trouble by refusing to become conscious of it.  Unconsciously, of
course, he knew perfectly well that they were sleeping together--knew
too, unconsciously, that if he were to ask his wife, she would admit
it.  Her three great virtues were courage, generosity and honesty.  So
he could not ask her.

Such an attitude to the position did not make it easier for the King to
be happy.  He became, not excitable like Guenever nor restless like
Lancelot, but reserved.  He moved about his own palace like a mouse.
Yet he made one effort to grasp the nettle.

"Lancelot," said the King, finding him one afternoon in the rose
garden, "you have been looking wretched lately.  Is there anything the
matter?"

Lancelot had snapped off one of the roses, and was pinching the sepals.
These ancient roses, it has lately been asserted, were so constructed
that the five sepals did actually stick out beyond the petals--just as
they are represented to do in the heraldic rose.

"Is it anything," asked the King, hoping against hope, "about this girl
who is said to have had your baby?"

If Arthur had left him alone with the first question, and a silence to
answer it in, perhaps they would have had the matter out.  But Arthur
was afraid of what might come in the silence, and, once he had given
the lead of the second question, the chance was gone.

"Yes," said Lancelot.

"You could not bring yourself to marry her, I suppose?"

"I don't love her."

"Well, you know your own business best."

Lancelot, with an uncontrollable desire to get some of his misery off
his chest by telling about it--and yet unable to tell the true story to
this particular listener--began a long rigmarole about Elaine.  He
began telling Arthur half the truth: how he was ashamed and had lost
his miracles.  But he was forced to make Elaine the central figure of
this confession, and, after half an hour, he had unwittingly presented
the King with a story to believe in--a story with which Arthur could
content himself if he did not want to be conscious of the true tale.
This half-truth was of great use to the poor fellow, who learned to
substitute it for the real trouble in later years.  We civilized
people, who would immediately fly to divorce courts and alimony and
other forms of attrition in such circumstances, can afford to look with
proper contempt upon the spineless cuckold.  But Arthur was only a
medieval savage.  He did not understand our civilization, and knew no
better than to try to be too decent for the degradation of jealousy.

Guenever was the next person to find Lancelot in the rose garden.  She
was all sweetness and reason.

"Lance, have you heard the news?  A messenger has just arrived to say
that this girl who is persecuting you is on her way to court, bringing
the baby.  She will be here this evening."

"I knew she would come."

"We shall have to do our best for her, of course.  Poor child, I expect
she is unhappy."

"It is not my fault if she is unhappy."

"No, of course it isn't.  But people get made unhappy by the world, and
we must help them when we can."

"Jenny, it is sweet of you to be kind about it."

He turned towards her, and made a movement to catch her hand.  Her
words had made him hope that all would be well.  But Jenny took her
hand away.

"No, dear," she said.  "I don't want you to make love to me until she
has gone.  I want you to be quite free."

"Free?"

"She is the mother of your baby, and she is unmarried.  We two can't
ever be married.  I want you to be able to marry her if you would like
it, because that is the only thing which can be done."

"But, Jenny----"

"No, Lance.  We must be sensible.  I want you to keep away from me
while she is here, and to find out whether you could love her after
all.  It is the least that I can do for you."




_Chapter XVII_

Elaine arrived at the yawning barbican, and Guenever kissed her coolly.
"You are welcome to Camelot," she said.  "Five thousand welcomes."

"Thank you," said Elaine.

They looked at each other with hostile, smiling faces.

"Lancelot will be delighted to see you."

"Oh!"

"Everybody knows about the baby, dear.  There is nothing to be shy
about.  The King and I are quite excited to see whether he will be like
his father."

"It is kind of you," said Elaine uncomfortably.

"You must let me be the first to see him.  You have called him Galahad,
have you not?  Is he strong?  Does he notice things?"

"He weighs fifteen pounds," the girl announced with pride.  "You can
see him now, if you like."

Guenever took hold of herself with an effort which was hardly
noticeable, and began fussing with Elaine's wraps.

"No, dear," she said.  "I must not be so selfish as that.  You must
rest after your long journey, and probably Baby will have to be settled
down.  I can come to see him this evening, when he has had a sleep.
There will be plenty of time."

But she had to see the baby in the end.

When Lancelot next met the Queen, her sweetness and reason were gone.
She was cold and proud, and spoke as if she were addressing a meeting.

"Lancelot," she said, "I think you ought to go to your son.  Elaine is
grieving because you have not been to see him."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes."

"Is he ugly?"

"He takes after Elaine."

"Thank God.  I will go at once."

The Queen called him back.

"Lancelot," she said, taking a breath through her nose, "I am trusting
you not to make love to Elaine under my roof.  If you and I are to keep
apart until it is settled, it is only fair that you should keep away
from her."

"I don't want to make love to Elaine."

"You must say that, of course.  And I will believe you.  But if you
break your word this time, it will be finished between us.  Absolutely
finished."

"I have said all I can say."

"Lancelot, you have deceived me once, so how can I be sure?  I have put
Elaine in the next room to mine, and I shall see if you go to it.  I
want you to keep in your own room."

"If you like."

"I shall send for you some time tonight, if I can get away from Arthur.
I will not tell you when.  If you are not in your room when I send for
you, I shall know that you are with Elaine."


The girl was weeping in her chamber, while Dame Brisen arranged the
cradle for the little boy.

"I saw him in the archery butts, and he saw me too.  But he looked
away.  He made an excuse and went out.  He has not even seen our baby."

"There, there," said Dame Brisen.  "Lawks a mussy."

"I ought not to have come.  It has only made me more miserable, and him
too."

"'Tis that there Queen."

"She is beautiful, isn't she?"

The Dame said darkly: "Handsome is as handsome does."

Elaine began to sob helplessly.  She looked repulsive, with her red
nose, as people do when they abdicate their dignity.

"I wanted him to be pleased."

There was a knock on the door, and Lancelot came in--which made her
quickly dry the eyes.  They greeted each other with constraint.

"I am glad you have come to Camelot," he said.  "I hope you are well?"

"Yes, thank you."

"How is--the baby?"

"Your lordship's son," said Dame Brisen with emphasis.

She turned the cradle towards him, and moved back so that he could see.

"My son."

They stood looking down at the fresh thing, helpless and only half
alive.  They were strong, as the poet sings, and it was weak--one day
they would be weak, and it strong.

"Galahad," said Elaine, and she leaned over the wrappings, making the
foolish gestures and meaningless sounds which mothers delight to use
when their babies are beginning to pay attention.  Galahad clenched his
fist and hit himself in the eye with it, an achievement which seemed to
give pleasure to the women.  Lancelot watched them in amazement.  "My
son," he thought.  "It is a part of me, yet it is fair.  It does not
seem to be ugly.  How can you tell with babies?"  He held out his right
finger to Galahad, putting it inside the fat palm of his hand, which
clutched it.  The hand looked as if it had been fitted to the arm by a
cunning doll maker.  There was a deep crease round the wrist.

"Oh, Lancelot!" cried Elaine.

She tried to throw herself into his arms, but he pushed her off.  He
looked at Brisen over her shoulder with fear and exasperation.  He made
a wild, senseless sound--and rushed out of the room.  Elaine,
unsupported, sank down beside the bed and began to sob more than ever.
Brisen, standing rigid, as she had stood to bear Sir Lancelot's glare,
looked at the closed door with an inscrutable expression.




_Chapter XVIII_

In the morning he and Elaine were summoned to the Queen's chamber.  He,
for his part, went with a kind of happiness.  He was remembering how
Guenever must have pleaded illness on the previous evening, so as to
leave the King's room.  Her lover had been sent for in the darkness.
The usual conniving hand had led him by the finger on tiptoe to the
chosen bed.  In the silence forced on them by being next to Arthur's
chamber, but in passionate tenderness, they had done their best to make
it up.  Lancelot was happier today than he had been since the story of
Elaine started.  He felt that if he could only persuade his Guenever to
make a clean break with the King, so that everything was in the open,
there might still be a possibility of honour.

Guenever was stiff, as if she were in a rigor, and her face was drained
white--except that there was a red spot on either side of her nostrils.
She looked as if she had been seasick.  She was alone.

"So," said the Queen.

Elaine looked straight in her blue eyes, but Lancelot stopped as if he
had been shot.

"So."

They stood, waiting for Guenever to speak or die.

"Where did you go last night?"

"I----"

"Don't tell me," shouted the Queen, moving her hand so that they could
see a ball of handkerchief in it, which she had torn to pieces.
"Traitor!  Traitor!  Get out of my castle with your strumpet."

"Last night----" said Lancelot.  His head was whirling with a
desperation which neither of the women noticed.

"Don't speak to me.  Don't lie to me.  Go!"

Elaine said calmly: "Sir Lancelot was in my room last night.  My woman
Brisen brought him in the dark."

The Queen began pointing at the door.  She made stabbing movements at
it with her finger, and, in her trembling, her hair began to come down.
She looked hideous.

"Get out!  Get out!  And you go too, you animal!  How dare you speak so
in my castle?  How dare you admit it to me?  Take your fancy man and
go!"

Lancelot was breathing heavily and looking upon the Queen with a fixed
stare.  He might have been unconscious.

"He thought he was coming to you," said Elaine.  She had her hands
folded together, and watched the Queen passively.

"The old lie!"

"It is not a lie," said Elaine.  "I could not live without him.  Brisen
helped me to pretend."

Guenever ran up to her with tottering steps.  She wanted to hit Elaine
in the mouth, but the girl did not move.  It was as if she was hoping
that Guenever would hit her.

"Liar!" screamed the Queen.

She ran back to Lancelot, where he had sat down on a chest and was
staring blankly at the floor, with his head between his hands.  She
caught hold of his mantle and began pushing or heaving him toward the
door, but he would not move.

"So you taught her the story!  Why couldn't you think of a new one?
You might have given me something interesting.  I suppose you thought
the old, stale stuff would do?"

"Jenny----" he said, without looking up.

The Queen tried to spit on him, but she had never practised spitting.

"How dare you call me Jenny?  You are reeking of her still.  I am the
Queen, the Queen of England!  I am not your trull!"

"Jenny----"

"Get out of my castle," screamed the Queen at the top of her voice.
"Never show your face in it again.  Your evil, ugly, beastlike face."

Lancelot suddenly said to the floor, in a loud voice: "Galahad!"

Then he took down his hands from his head and looked up, so that they
could see the face she spoke of.  It had a surprised look, and one of
the eyes had begun to squint.

He said, more quietly: "Jenny."  But he looked like a blind man.

The Queen opened her mouth to say something, though nothing came out.

"Arthur," he said.  Then he gave a loud shriek, and jumped straight out
of the window, which was on the first floor.  They could hear him crash
into some bushes, with a crump and crackle of boughs, and then he was
running off through the trees and shrubbery with a loud sort of
warbling cry, like hounds hunting.  The hullabaloo faded into the
distance, and there was silence in the chamber with the women.

Elaine, who was now as white as the Queen had been but still held
herself proud and upright, said: "You have driven him mad.  His wits
must have been weak."

Guenever said nothing.

"Why have you driven him mad?" asked Elaine.  "You have a fine husband
of your own, the greatest in the land.  You are a Queen, with honour
and happiness and a home.  I had no home, and no husband, and my honour
was gone too.  Why would you not let me have him?"

The Queen was silent.

"I loved him," said Elaine.  "I bore a fine son for him, who will be
the best knight of the world."

"Elaine," said Guenever, "go away from my court."

"I am going."

Guenever suddenly caught her by the skirt.

"Don't tell anybody," she said quickly.  "Don't say anything about what
happened.  It will be his death if you do."

Elaine freed the skirt.

"Did you expect I would?"

"But what are we to do?" cried the Queen.  "Is he mad?  Will he get
better?  What will happen?  Ought we to do something?  What are we to
say?"

Elaine would not stay to talk with her.  At the door, however, she
turned with a trembling lip.

"Yes, he is mad," she said.  "You have won him, and you have broken
him.  What will you do with him next?"

When the door was closed, Guenever sat down.  She dropped her tattered
handkerchief.  Then--slowly, deeply, primitively--she began to cry.
She put her face in her hands and throbbed with sorrow.  (Sir Bors, who
did not care for the Queen, once said to her: "Fie on your weeping, for
ye weep never but when there is no boot.")




_Chapter XIX_

King Pelles was sitting in the solar with Sir Bliant two years later.
It was a fine winter morning with the fields frosted, no wind, and a
light fog which was not enough to confuse the pigeons.  Sir Bliant, who
had been staying the night, was dressed in scarlet furred with miniver.
His horse and squire were in the courtyard, ready to take him back to
Castle Bliant, but the two men were having their elevenses before he
started.  Sitting with their hands spread to the splendid log fire,
they sipped their mulled wine, nibbled pastry, and talked about the
Wild Man.

"I am sure he must have been a gentleman," said Sir Bliant.  "He kept
doing things which nobody but a gentleman would do.  He had a natural
leaning to arms."

"Where is he now?" asked King Pelles.

"God He knows.  He vanished one morning when the hounds were at Castle
Bliant.  But I am sure he was a gentleman."

They sipped and gazed into the flames.

"If you want to have my opinion," added Sir Bliant, lowering his voice,
"I believe he was Sir Lancelot."

"Nonsense," said the King.

"He was tall and strong."

"Sir Lancelot is dead," said the King.  "God be good to him.  Everybody
knows that."

"It was not proved."

"If he had been Sir Lancelot, you could not have mistaken him.  He was
the ugliest man I have ever seen."

"I never met him," said Sir Bliant.

"It was proved that Lancelot ran mad in his shirt and breeches, until
he got gored by a wild boar and died in a hermitage."

"When was that?"

"Last Christmas."

"It was about the same time that my Wild Man ran away with the hunt.
Ours was a boar hunt too."

"Well," said King Pelles, "they _may_ have been the same person.  If
they were, it is interesting.  How did your fellow arrive?"

"It was during the summer questing, the year before last.  I had my
pavilion pitched in a fair meadow, in the usual way, and I was inside
it, waiting for something to turn up.  I was playing chess, I remember.
Then there was a frightful row outside, and I went out, and there was
this naked lunatic lashing on my shield.  My dwarf was sitting on the
ground, rubbing his neck--the maniac had half broken it--and he was
calling out for help.  I went to the fellow and said: 'Look here, my
good man, you don't want to be fighting me.  Come now, you lay down
that sword and be a good chap.'  He had got hold of one of my own
swords, you know, and I could see that he was mad straightway.  I said:
'You ought not to be fighting, old boy.  I can see that what you need
is a good sleep and something to eat.'  And, really, he did look
dreadful.  He was like a man who had been watching a passager for three
nights.  His eyeballs were bright red."

"What did he say?"

"He just said: 'As for that, come not too nigh: for, an thou do, wit
thou well I will slay thee.'"

"Strange."

"Yes, it was strange, wasn't it?  That he should have known the high
language, I mean."

"What did you do?"

"Well, I was only in my gown, and the man looked dangerous.  I went
back into the pavilion and did on my armour."

King Pelles handed him another pasty, which Sir Bliant accepted with a
nod.

"When I was armed," he went on, with his mouth full, "I went out with a
spare sword to disarm the chap.  I did not intend to strike him, or
anything like that, but he was a homicidal maniac and there was no
other way of getting the sword from him.  I went up to him like you do
to a dog, holding out my hand and saying: 'There's a poor fellow: come
now, there's a good chap.'  I thought it would be easy."

"Was it?"

"The moment he saw me in armour, and with a sword, he came straight at
me like a tiger.  I never saw such an attack.  I tried to parry a bit,
and I dare say I would have killed him in self-defence, if he had given
me a chance.  But the next thing I knew was that I was sitting on the
ground, and my nose and ears were bleeding.  He had given me a buffet,
you know, which troubled my brains."

"Goodness," said King Pelles.

"The next thing he did was to throw away his sword and rush straight
into the pavilion.  My poor wife was there, in bed, with no clothes on.
But he just jumped straight into bed with her, snatched the coverlet,
rolled himself up in it, and went fast asleep."

"Must have been a married man," said King Pelles.

"The wife gave some frightful shrieks, hopped out of bed on the other
side, jumped into her smock, and came running out to me.  I was still a
bit astonied, lying on the ground, so she thought I was dead.  I can
tell you we had a fine to-do."

"Did he sleep right through it?"

"He slept like a log.  We managed to pull ourselves together
eventually, and the wife put one of my gauntlets down my neck to stop
the nosebleed, and then we talked it over.  My dwarf, who is a splendid
little chap, said we ought not to do him any harm, because he was
touched by God.  As a matter of fact, it was the dwarf who suggested
that he might be Sir Lancelot.  There was a good deal of talk about the
Lancelot mystery that year."

Sir Bliant paused to take another bite.

"In the end," he said, "we took him to Castle Bliant in a horse litter,
bed and all.  He never stirred.  When we got him there, we tied his
hands and feet against the hour when he would wake up.  I am sorry
about it now, but we could not chance it according to what we knew at
the time.  We kept him in a comfortable room, with clean clothes, and
the wife gave him a lot of nourishing food, to build up his strength,
but we thought it best to keep him handcuffed all the same.  We kept
him for a year and a half."

"How did he get away?"

"I was coming to that.  It is the plum of the story.  One afternoon I
was out in the forest for half an hour's questing, when I was set upon
by two knights from behind."

"Two knights?" asked the King.  "From behind?"

"Yes.  Two of them, and from behind.  It was Sir Bruce Saunce Pit and
a friend of his."

King Pelles thumped his knee.

"That man," he exclaimed, "is a public menace.  I can't think why
somebody doesn't do away with him."

"The trouble is to catch the fellow.  However, I was telling you about
the Wild Man.  Sir Bruce and the other one had me at a considerable
disadvantage, as you will admit, and I regret to say that I was
compelled to run away."

Sir Bliant stopped and gazed into the fire.  Then he cheered up.

"Ah, well," he said, "we can't all be heroes, can we?"

"Not all," said King Pelles.

"I was sore wounded," said Sir Bliant, discovering a formula, "and I
felt myself faint."

"Quite."

"These two came galloping with me all the way to the Castle, one on
either side, and they kept hitting me all the time.  I don't know to
this day how I got away with my life."

"It was written in the Stones," said the King.

"We rode past the barbican loopholes, hell-for-leather, and it was
there that the Wild Man must have seen us.  We kept him in the barbican
chamber, you know.  Well, he saw us at all events, and we found out
afterwards that he broke his fetters with his bare hands.  They were
iron fetters, and he had them on his ankles also.  He wounded himself
dreadfully doing it.  Then he came hurling out of the postern, with his
hands all bloody and the chains flying about him, and he pulled Bruce's
ally out of the saddle, and took his sword from him, and walloped Bruce
on the head so that he knocked him noseling, clean off his horse.  The
second knight tried to stab the Wild Man from behind--he was absolutely
unarmed--but I cut off the fellow's hand at the wrist, just as he
stabbed.  Then the both of them caught their horses, and rode away for
all they were fit.  They rode more than a pace, I can tell you."

"That was Bruce all over."

"My brother was staying with me that year.  I said to him: 'Why ever
have we kept this dear fellow chained up?'  I was ashamed when I saw
his wounded hands.  'He is happy and gracious,' I said, 'and now he has
saved my life.  We must never chain him up again, but give him his
freedom and do everything we can for him.'  You know, Pelles, I liked
that Wild Man.  He was gentle and grateful, and he used to call me
Lord.  It is a dreadful thing to think that he might have been the
great Dulac, and us keeping him tied up and letting him call me Lord so
humbly."

"What happened in the end?"

"He stayed quietly for several months.  Then the boar hounds came to
the castle, and one of the followers left his horse and spear by a
tree.  The Wild Man took them and rode away.  It was as if he were
excited by gentlemanly pursuits, you know--as if a suit of armour, or a
fight, or a hunt, stirred something in his poor head.  They made him
want to join in."

"Poor boy," said the King.  "Poor, poor boy!  It might well have been
Sir Lancelot.  He is known to have been killed by a boar last
Christmas."

"I should like to know that story."

"If your man was Lancelot, he rode straightaway after the boar they
were hunting.  It was a famous boar which had troubled the hounds for
several years, and that was why the field was not on foot.  Lancelot
was the only man up at the kill, and the boar slew his horse.  It gave
him a dreadful wound in the thigh, riving him to the hough bone, before
he cut off its head.  He killed it near a hermitage, with one blow.
The hermit came out, but Lancelot was so mad with his pain and
everything that he threw his sword at the man.  I heard this from a
knight who was actually there.  He said there was no doubt about its
being Sir Lancelot--he was ugly and all that--and he said that he and
the hermit carried him into the hermitage after he had fainted.  He
said that nobody could possibly have recovered from the wound, and
that, in any case, he saw him die.  What made him most certain, he
said, about the Wild Man being a great knight, was that when he was
standing in his death agony beside the dead boar, he spoke to the
hermit as 'Fellow'.  So you see, there may have been a touch of sanity
at the end."

"Poor Lancelot," said Sir Bliant.

"God be good to him," said King Pelles.

"Amen."

"Amen," repeated Sir Bliant, looking into the fire.  Then he stood up
and shook his shoulders.

"I shall have to be going," he said.  "How is your daughter?  I forgot
to ask."

King Pelles sighed, and stood up also.

"She spends her time at the convent," he said.  "I believe she is going
to be received next year.  However, we are to be allowed to see her
next Saturday, when she comes home on a short visit."




_Chapter XX_

After Sir Bliant had ridden away, King Pelles stumped upstairs to do
some biblical genealogy.  He was puzzled about the Lancelot affair, and
interested in it on account of his grandson Galahad.  All of us have
been driven nearly mad by our wives and sweethearts, but King Pelles
was aware that there is a tough streak in human nature which generally
prevents us from being quite driven.  He thought it eccentric of
Lancelot, to say the least, to lose his reason over a lover's tiff--and
he wanted to find out, by looking up the Ban genealogy, whether there
had been a streak of lunacy in the family which could account for it.
If there were, it might descend on Galahad.  The child might have to be
sent to the hospital of Bethlehem, which later ages were to call
Bedlam.  There had been enough trouble without that.

"Ban's father," said King Pelles to himself, polishing his spectacles
and blowing dust off numerous works of Heraldry, Genealogy, Nigromancy,
and Mystical Mathematics, "was King Lancelot of Benwick, who married
the King of Ireland's daughter.  King Lancelot's father, in his turn,
was Jonas, who married the daughter of Manuel of Gaul.  Now who was the
father of Jonas?"

When one comes to think of it, there may have been a weak link in
Lancelot's mind.  This may have been the cupboard skeleton we noticed,
ten years ago, at the back of the small boy's head as he turned the
kettle-hat to and fro, in the Armoury of Benwick Castle.

"Nacien," said King Pelles.  "Drat this Nacien.  There seem to be two
of him."

He had got back, through Lisais, Hellias le Grose, Nacien the
Hermit--from whom Lancelot probably inherited his visionary
tendency--and Nappus, to a second Nacien who, if he existed, would
quite upset the King's theory that Lancelot was but the eighth degree
from Our Lord.  As a matter of fact, nearly all hermits seemed to be
called Nacien in those days.

"Drat him," repeated the King, and he glanced out of the window to see
what the noise was about in the street outside the castle.

A Wild Man--there seemed to be a lot of them about this morning--was
being run through Corbin by the villagers who had once gone out to
welcome Lancelot.  He was naked, as thin as a ghost, and he ran along
with his hands over his head, to protect it.  The small boys running
all round him were throwing turfs at him.  He stopped every now and
then, and caught one of the boys and threw him over the hedge.  This
only made the boys throw stones.  King Pelles could clearly see the
blood running over his high cheek-bones, and the sunken cheeks, and the
hunted eyes, and the blue shadows between his ribs.  He could also see
that the man was making for the castle.

In the castle yard, when King Pelles had gone dot-and-carry downstairs,
there was quite a crowd of castle folk standing round the Wild Man in
admiration.  They had lowered the portcullis, to keep the village boys
out, and they were disposed to treat the fugitive with kindness.

"Look at his wounds," said one of the squires.  "Look at that great
scar there.  Perhaps he was a knight errant before he went mad, and so
we ought to give him courtesy."

The Wild Man stood in the middle of the ring, while the ladies giggled
and the pages pointed.  He hung his head and stood motionless, without
speaking, waiting for what was to be done to him next.

"Perhaps he is Sir Lancelot."

There was a great laugh at this.

"No, but seriously.  It was never exactly proved that Lancelot is dead."

King Pelles went right up to the Wild Man and looked into his face.  He
had to stoop sideways to do this.

"Are you Sir Lancelot?" he asked.

The emaciated, dirty, bearded face: its eyes never even blinked.

"Are you?" repeated the King.

But there was no answer from the dummy.

"He is deaf and dumb," said the King.  "We will keep him as a jester.
He looks funny enough, I must say.  Somebody get the man some
clothes--you know, comic clothes--and put him to sleep in the pigeon
house.  Give him some clean straw."

The dummy suddenly lifted both its hands and let out a roar, which made
everybody start back.  The King dropped his spectacles.  Then it
lowered its hands again and stood sheepishly, so that the people gave a
nervous giggle.

"Better lock him in," said the King wisely.  "Safety first.  And do not
hand him his food--throw it to him.  Can't be too careful."

So Sir Lancelot was led away to the pigeon house, to be King Pelles'
fool--and there he was locked in, and fed by throwing, and lodged on
clean straw.

When the King's nephew, a boy called Castor, came to be knighted on the
following Saturday--this was the ceremony which Elaine was coming home
to attend--there was gaiety in the castle.  The King, who was addicted
to festivals and ceremonials of all sorts, celebrated the occasion
royally, by presenting a new gown to every man on the estate.  He also
celebrated it, regrettably, by making too generous a use of the cellars
over which Dame Brisen's husband presided.

"Wossle," cried the King.

"Drink hail," replied Sir Castor, who was on his best behaviour.

"Everybody gotter gown?" shouted the King.

"Yes, thank you, Your Majesty," replied the attendants.

"Sure?"

"Quite sure, Your Majesty."

"Thas alri, then.  Goo' ole gown!"

And the King wrapped himself in his own gown with great affection.  He
was a different man on occasions like this.

"Everybody wants to thank Your Majesty very much for his generous
present."

"Notter tall."

"Three cheers for King Pelles!"

"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!"

"Warrabout the fool?" inquired the King suddenly.  "Fool gotter gown?
Where's the pore fool?"

There was a silence at this, for nobody had remembered to put a gown
aside for Sir Lancelot.

"Notter gown?  Nottergotter gown?" cried the King.  "Fesha fool at
once."

Sir Lancelot was fetched from the pigeon house, for the royal favour.
He stood still in the torchlight with some straws in his beard, a
pitiful figure in his jester's patch-work.

"Pore fool," said the King sadly.  "Pore fool.  Here, have mine."

And, in spite of all remonstrances and advices to the contrary, King
Pelles struggled out of his costly robe, which he popped over
Lancelot's head.

"Lettim loose," cried the King.  "Givim holly-holly day.
Karnkeepamanlocktupforever."

Sir Lancelot, standing upright in the grand dress, looked strangely
stately in the Great Hall.  If only his beard had been trimmed--our
clean-shaven generation has forgotten what a difference the trimming of
a beard can make--if only he had not starved away to a skeleton in the
cell of the poor hermit after the boar hunt--if only he had not been
rumoured to be dead--but, even as it was, a sort of awe came into the
Hall.  The King did not notice it.  With measured tread Sir Lancelot
walked back to his pigeon loft, and the house carls made an avenue for
him as he went.




_Chapter XXI_

Elaine had done the ungraceful thing as usual.  Guenever, in similar
circumstances, would have been sure to grow pale and interesting--but
Elaine had only grown plump.  She walked in the castle garden with her
companions, dressed in the white clothes of a novice, and there was a
clumsy action in her walk.  Galahad, now three years old, walked with
her, holding hands.

It was not that Elaine was going to be a nun because she was desperate.
She was not going to spend the rest of her life acting the cinema nun.
A woman can forget a lot of love in two years--or at any rate she can
pack it away, and grow accustomed to it, and hardly remember it more
than a business-man might remember an occasion when, by ill-luck, he
failed to make an investment which would have made him a millionaire.

Elaine was going to leave her son and become the bride of Christ,
because she saw that this was the only thing to do.  It was not a
dramatic thing, and perhaps it was not very reverent--but she knew that
she would never again love any human person as she had loved her dead
knight.  So she was giving in.  She could not tack against the wind any
longer.

She was not moping for Lancelot, nor did she weep for him on her
pillow.  She hardly ever thought of him.  He had worn a place for
himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring
against the rock, might do.  The making of the place had been her pain.
But now the shell was safely in the rock.  It was lodged, and ground no
longer.  Elaine, walking in the garden with her girls, thought only
about the ceremony at which Sir Castor had been knighted, and whether
there would be enough cakes for the feast, and that Galahad's stockings
needed mending.

One of the girls who had been playing a kind of ball game to keep
warm--the same game as Nausicaa was playing when Ulysses arrived--came
running back to Elaine from the shrubbery by the well.  Her ball had
taken her in that direction.

"There is a Man," she whispered, much as if it had been a rattlesnake.
"There is a Man, sleeping by the well!"

Elaine was interested--not because it was a man, nor because the girl
was frightened, but because it was unusual to sleep out of doors in
January.

"Hush, then," said Elaine.  "We will go and see."

The plump novice in the white clothes who tiptoed over to Lancelot, the
homely girl going composedly towards him with a round face which had
stubbornly refused to accept the noble traces of grief, the young
matron who had been thinking about Galahad's mending--this person was
not conscious of vulnerability or needs.  She went over calmly and
innocently, busy about quite different concerns, like the thoughtless
rabbit who goes hop-and-nibble along the accustomed path.  But the wire
loop tightens suddenly.

Elaine recognized Lancelot in two heartbeats.  The first beat was a
rising one which faltered at the top.  The second one caught up with
it, picked its momentum from the crest of the wave, and both came down
together like a rearing horse that falls.

Lancelot was stretched out in his knightly gown.  Sir Bliant, in
remarking that gentlemanly things seemed to stir something in his head,
had noticed truly.  Moved by the gown, by some strange memory of
miniver and colour, the poor Wild Man had gone from the King's table to
the well.  There, alone in the darkness, without a mirror, he had
washed his face.  He had swilled out his eye sockets with bony
knuckles.  With a currycomb and a pair of shears from the stables he
had tried to arrange his hair.

Elaine sent her women away.  She gave Galahad's hand to one of them,
and he went without protest.  He was a mysterious child.

Elaine knelt down beside Sir Lancelot and looked at him.  She did not
touch him or cry.  She lifted her hand to stroke his thin one, but
thought better of it.  She squatted on her hams.  Then, after a long
time, she did begin to cry--but it was for Lancelot, for his tired eyes
smoothed in sleep, and for the white scars on his hands.


"Father," said Elaine, "if you don't help me now, nobody ever can."

"What is it, my dear?" asked the King.  "I have a headache."

Elaine paid no attention.

"Father, I have found Sir Lancelot."

"Who?"

"Sir Lancelot."

"Nonsense," said the King.  "Lancelot was killed by a boar."

"He is asleep in the garden."

The King suddenly pulled himself out of his chair of state.

"I knew it all along," he said.  "Only I was too stupid to know.  It is
the Wild Man.  Obviously."

He reeled a little and put his hand to his head.

"Leave this to me," said the King.  "You let me deal.  I know exactly
what to do.  Butler!  Brisen!  Where the devil has everybody gone to?
Hi!  Hi!  Oh, there you are.  Now, butler, you go and fetch your wife,
Dame Brisen, and get two other men that we can trust.  Let me see.  Get
Humbert and Gurth.  Where did you say he was?"

"Asleep by the well," said Elaine quickly.

"Quite.  So everybody must be told to keep out of the rose garden.  Do
you hear, butler?  All people are to avoid, that none may be in the way
where the King will come.  And get a sheet.  A strong sheet.  We shall
have to carry him in it, by the four corners.  And get the tower room
ready.  Tell Brisen to air the bedclothes.  Better have a feather bed.
Light a fire, and fetch the doctor.  Tell him to look up Madness in
_Bartholomeus Anglicus_.  Oh, and you had better get some jellies made,
and things like that.  In the heaviness of his sleep we shall have to
put fresh garments on him."

When Lancelot came to himself in the clean bed, he groaned.  He opened
his eyes and looked at King Pelles.  Next he looked at Elaine.  He
continued to look at them for some time, and made speaking movements
with his monkey lips.  Then he went to sleep again.

The next time he woke they could see that his eyes were clear.  But he
was evidently in a pitiful state of mind.  He was relying on them to
save him.

The third time he woke, he said: "O Lord Jesus, how did I get here?"

They said the usual things about resting now, and not talking till he
was stronger, and so forth.  The doctor waved his hand to the Royal
Orchestra, who immediately struck up with _Jesu Christes Milde
Moder_--since Dr. Bartholomew's book had recommended that madmen should
be gladded with instruments.  Everybody watched hopefully, to see the
effect, but Lancelot grabbed the King's hand and cried in anguish: "For
God's sake, my lord, tell me how I came here?"

Elaine put her hand on his forehead and made him lie down.

"You came like a madman," she said, "and nobody knew who you were.  You
have been having a breakdown."

Lancelot turned his puzzled eyes on her, and smiled nervously.

"I have been making a fool of myself," he said.

Later he asked: "Did many people see me while I was mad?"




_Chapter XXII_

Lancelot's body revenged itself on his mind.  He lay in bed for a
fortnight in the airy bedroom with an ache in every bone, while Elaine
kept herself outside the room.  She had him at her mercy, and could
have nursed him day and night.  But there was something in her
heart--either decency, or pride, or generosity, or humility, or the
determination not to be a cannibal--which spared him.  She visited him
not more than once a day, and thrust nothing on him.

One day he stopped her as she was going out.  He was sitting up in a
day-gown, and his hands lay still in his lap.

"Elaine," he said, "I suppose I ought to be making plans."

She waited for her sentence.

"I cannot stay here for ever," he said.

"You know you will be welcome as long as you like."

"I cannot go back to court."

Elaine remarked, with hesitation: "My father would give you a castle,
if you liked, and we--could live there together."

He looked at her, and looked away.

"Or you could have the castle."

Lancelot took her hand and said: "Elaine, I don't know what to say.  I
can't very well say anything."

"I know you don't love me."

"Do you think we should be happy, then?"

"I only know when I shall be unhappy."

"I don't want you to be unhappy.  But there are different ways of being
that.  Don't you think it might turn out that you would be more unhappy
if we lived together?"

"I should be the happiest woman in the world."

"Look, Elaine, our only hope is to speak plainly, even if it sounds
horrible.  You know that I don't love you, and that I do love the
Queen.  It is an accident which has happened and it can't be changed.
Things do happen like that: I can't alter it.  And you have trapped me
twice.  If it had not been for you, I should still be at court.  Do you
think we could ever be happy, living together, like that?"

"You were my man," said Elaine proudly, "before you were ever the
Queen's."

He passed a hand over his eyes.

"Do you want to have a husband on those terms?"

"There is Galahad," said Elaine.

They sat side by side, looking into the fire.  She did not cry or bid
for pity--and he knew she was sparing him these things.

He said, with difficulty: "I will stay with you, Elaine, if you want me
to.  I don't understand why you should want it.  I am fond of you, very
fond of you.  I don't know why, after what has happened.  I don't want
you to be hurt.  But, Elaine--I can't marry you."

"I don't mind."

"It is because--it is because marriage is a contract.  I--I have always
been proud of my Word.  And if I do not--and if I have not that feeling
for you--hang it, Elaine, I am under no obligation to marry you, when
it was you who tricked me."

"No obligation."

"Obligation!" exclaimed Lancelot, with a wry face.  He threw the word
into the fire as if it had a bad taste.  "I must be sure that you
understand, and that I am not cheating you.  I will not marry you,
because I do not love you.  I did not start this, and I can't give you
my freedom: I can't promise to stay with you for ever.  I don't want
you to accept these terms, Elaine: they are humiliating ones.  They are
dictated by the circumstances.  If I were to say anything else, it
would be lies, and things would be worse----"

He broke off and hid his head in his hands.

"I don't understand," he said.  "I am trying to do my best."

Elaine said: "Under any terms, you are my good and gracious lord."


King Pelles gave them a castle which was already known to Sir Lancelot.
The King's tenant, Sir Bliant, had to move out to make room for
them--which he did the more readily when he knew that he was obliging
the Wild Man who had saved his life.

"Is he Sir Lancelot?" asked Bliant.

"No," said King Pelles.  "He is a French knight who calls himself the
Chevalier Mal Fet.  I told you I was right about Sir Lancelot being
dead."

It had been arranged that Lancelot was to live incognito--because, if
it were allowed to get about that he was still living and lodged at
Bliant Castle, there would only be a hue-and-cry for him from the court.

Bliant Castle had such a fine moat that it was practically an island.
The only way to get to it was by boat, from a barbican on the land
side, and the castle itself was surrounded by a magic fence of iron,
probably a sort of cheval de frise.  Ten knights were appointed to
serve Lancelot there, and twenty ladies to serve Elaine.

She was wild with joy.

"We will call it the Joyous Island," she said.  "We shall be so happy
there.  And, Lance"--he flinched when she called him by the pet
name--"I want you to have your hobbies.  We must have tournaments, and
hawking, and plenty of things to do.  You must invite people to stay,
so that we can have company.  I promise I won't be jealous of you,
Lance, and I won't try to live in your pocket.  Don't you think we
might have a happy time if we are careful?  Don't you think the Joyous
Isle would be a lovely name?"

Lancelot cleared his throat and said: "Yes, it would be an excellent
one."

"You must have a new shield made for you, so that you can go on with
your tournaments without being recognized.  What sort of blazon will
you have?"

"Anything," said Lancelot.  "We can arrange that later."

"The Chevalier Mal Fet.  What a romantic name!  What does it mean?"

"You could make it mean several things.  The Ugly Knight would be one
meaning, or the Knight Who Has Done Wrong."

He did not tell her that it could also mean the Ill-Starred Knight--the
Knight with a Curse on Him.

"I don't think you are ugly--or wrong."

Lancelot pulled himself together.  He knew that it would be most unfair
to stay with Elaine if he were going to mope about it, or to do the
Grand Renunciation--but, on the other hand, it was empty work to
pretend.

"That is because you are a darling," he said.  He kissed her quickly
and clumsily, to cover the crack in the word.  But Elaine noticed it.

"You will be able to attend to Galahad's education personally," she
said.  "You will be able to teach him all your tricks, so that he grows
up to be the greatest knight in the world."

He kissed her again.  She had said, "If we are careful," and she was
trying to be careful.  He felt pity for her trying, and gratitude for
the decency of her mind.  He was like a distracted man doing two things
at once, one of them important and the other unimportant.  He felt a
duty to the unimportant one.  But it is always embarrassing to be
loved.  And he did not like to accept Elaine's humility because of his
opinion of himself.


The morning when they were to set out for Bliant arrived, and the
newly-made knight, Sir Castor, stopped Lancelot in the Hall.  He was
only seventeen.

"I know you are calling yourself the Ill-Made Knight," said Sir Castor,
"but I think you are Sir Lancelot.  Are you?"

Lancelot took the boy by the arm.

"Sir Castor," he said, "do you think that is a knightly question?
Suppose I were Sir Lancelot, and was only calling myself the Chevalier
Mal Fet--don't you think I might have some reasons for doing that,
reasons which a gentleman of lineage ought to respect?"

Sir Castor blushed very much and knelt on one knee.

"I won't tell anybody," he said.  Nor did he.




_Chapter XXIII_

The spring came slowly, the new menage settled down, and Elaine
arranged a tournament for her cavalier.  There was to be a prize of a
fair maid and a jerfalcon.

Five hundred knights came from all parts of the kingdom to compete in
the tournament--but the Chevalier Mal Fet knocked down anybody who
would stand up to him, with a kind of absent-minded ferocity, and the
thing was a failure.  The knights went away puzzled and frightened.
Not a single person had been killed--he spared everybody indifferently
as soon as he had knocked them down--and, by the Chevalier at any rate,
not a single word had been spoken.  The defeated knights, jogging home
with their bruises, missed the conviviality which usually happened on
tournament evenings, wondered who the taciturn champion could be, and
talked superstitiously among themselves.  Elaine, smiling bravely until
the last of them had gone, went up to her room and cried.  Then she
dried her eyes and set out to find her lord.  He had vanished as soon
as the fighting was over, for he had got into the habit of going away
by himself at sunset every evening--she did not know where.

She found him on the battlements, in a blaze of gold.  Their shadows,
and the shadow of the tower on which they stood, and all the spectres
of the burning trees, stretched over the parkland in broad strips of
indigo.  He was looking towards Camelot with desperate eyes.  His new
shield, with the blazon of his incognito, was propped in front of him.
The cognizance was of a silver woman on a sable field, with a knight
kneeling at her feet.

In her simplicity, Elaine had been delighted by the compliment on the
shield.  She had never been clever.  Now she realized, for the first
time, that the silver woman was crowned.  She stood helplessly,
wondering what she could do--but there was nothing she could do.  Her
weapons were blunt ones, of soft metal.  She could only use patience
and hope and self-restraint, poor tools when matched against the
heart-felt mania of love to which the ancient race was martyred.

One morning they were sitting on a green bank at the edge of the lake.
Elaine was doing embroidery, while Lancelot watched his son.  Galahad,
a priggish, mute little boy, was playing some private game with his
dolls--to which he remained attached long after most boys would have
taken to soldiers.  Lancelot had carved two knights in armour for him
out of wood.  They were mounted on wheeled horses, from which they were
detachable, and they held their spears in fewter.  By pulling the
horses towards each other, with strings tied to the platform on which
they stood, the knights could be made to tilt.  They could be made to
knock each other out of the saddle.  Galahad did not care for them at
all, but played with a rag doll which he called the Holy Holy.

"Gwyneth will ruin that sparrow hawk," remarked Lancelot.

They could see one of the castle gentlewomen coming towards them at a
great pace, with the sparrow hawk on her fist.  Her haste had excited
the hawk, which was bating continuously--but Gwyneth paid no attention
to it, beyond giving it an occasional angry shake.

"What is the matter, Gwyneth?"

"Oh, my lady, there are two knights waiting beyond the water, and they
say they have come to tilt with the Chevalier."

"Tell them to go away," said Lancelot.  "Say I am not at home."

"But, sir, the porter has told them the way to the boat, and they are
coming over one at a time.  They say they won't both come, but the
second will come if you beat the first.  He is in the boat already."

He got up and dusted his knees.

"Tell him to wait in the tilt yard," he said.  "I will be twenty
minutes."


The tilt yard was a long, sanded passage between the walls, with a
tower at each end.  It had galleries looking down on it from the walls,
like a racquets court, and was open to the sky.  Elaine and the
domestics sat in these galleries to watch, and the two knights fought
beneath them for a long time.  The tilting was even--each of them had a
fall--and the sword-play lasted for two hours.  At the end of this
time, the strange knight cried: "Stop!"

Lancelot stopped at once, as if he were a farm labourer who had been
given permission to knock off for his dinner.  He stuck his sword in
the ground, as if it were a pitchfork, and stood patiently.  He had,
indeed, only been working with the quiet patience of a farm hand.  He
had not been trying to hurt his opponent.

"Who are you?" asked the stranger.  "Please tell me your name?  I have
never met a man like you."

Lancelot suddenly lifted both gauntlets to his helm, as if he were
trying to bury in them the face which was already hidden, and said
miserably: "I am Sir Lancelot Dulac."

"What!"

"I am Lancelot, Degalis."

Degalis threw his sword against the stone wall with a clang, and began
running back towards the tower by the moat.  His iron feet threw echoes
down the yard.  He unlaced and tossed away his helm as he ran.  When he
had reached the portcullis of the gatehouse, he put his hands to his
mouth and shouted with all his might:

"Ector!  Ector!  It is Lancelot!  Come over!"

Immediately he was running back towards his friend.

"Lancelot!  My dear, dear fellow!  I was sure it was you, I was sure it
was you!"

He began fumbling with the laces, trying to get the helm off with
clumsy fingers.  He snatched off his own gauntlet and hurled them, too,
with a clash against the wall.  He could hardly wait to see Sir
Lancelot's face.  Lancelot stood still, like a tired child being
undressed.

"But what have you been doing?  Why are you here?  It was feared that
you were dead."

The helm came off, and went to join the rest of the discards.

"Lancelot!"

"Did you say that Ector was with you?"

"Yes, it is your brother Ector.  We have been looking for you for two
years.  Oh, Lancelot, I am glad to see you!"

"You must come in," he said, "and refresh yourselves."

"But what have you been doing all this time?  Where have you been
hidden?  The Queen sent out three knights to search for you at the
beginning.  In the end there were twenty-three of us.  It must have
cost her twenty thousand pounds."

"I have been here and there."

"Even the Orkney faction helped.  Sir Gawaine is one of the searchers."

By this time Sir Ector had arrived in the boat--Sir Ector Demaris, not
King Arthur's guardian--and the portcullis had been raised for him.  He
ran for the Chevalier, as if he were to tackle him at football.

"Brother!"

Elaine had come down from her gallery and was waiting at the end of the
tilt yard.  She was now to welcome, as she knew well, the people who
were to break her heart.  She did not interfere with their greetings,
but watched them like a child who had been left out of a game.  She
stood still, gathering her forces.  All her powers, all the frontier
guards of her spirit, were being called in and concentrated at the
citadel of her heart.

"This is Elaine."

They turned to her and began to bow.

"You are welcome to Bliant Castle."




_Chapter XXIV_

"I can't leave Elaine," he said.

Ector Damaris said: "Why not?  You don't love her.  You are under no
obligation to her.  You are only making yourselves miserable by staying
together."

"I am under an obligation to her.  I can't explain it, but I am."

"The Queen," said Degalis, "is desperate.  She has spent a fortune
looking for you."

"I can't help that."

"It is no good sulking," said Ector.  "It seems to me that you are
sulking.  If the Queen is sorry for what she has done, whatever it was,
you ought to behave generously and forgive her."

"I have nothing to forgive the Queen."

"That is just what I say.  You ought to go back to court and follow
your career.  For one thing, you owe it to Arthur: don't forget that
you are one of his sworn knights.  He has been needing you badly."

"Needing me?"

"There is the usual trouble with the Orkneys."

"What have the Orkneys been doing?  Oh, Degalis, you don't know how it
does my heart good to hear the old names.  Tell me all the gossip.  Has
Kay been making a fool of himself lately?  Is Dinadan still laughing?
What is the news about Tristram and King Mark?"

"If you are so keen about the news, you ought to come back to court."

"I have told you I can't."

"Lancelot, you are not looking at this realistically.  Do you seriously
think you can stay here incognito with this wench, and still be
yourself?  Do you think you can beat five hundred knights in a
tournament without being recognized?"

"The moment we heard about the tournament," said Ector, "we came at
once.  Degalis said: 'That is Lancelot, or I'm a Dutchman.'"

"It would mean," said Degalis, "if you insist on staying here, that you
would have to give up arms altogether.  One more fight, and you would
be known all over the country.  For that matter, I think you are known
already."

"Staying with Elaine would mean giving up everything.  It would mean
absolute retirement--no quests, no tournaments, no honour, no love: and
you might even have to stay indoors all day.  Yours is not an easy face
to forget, you know."

"Whatever it means, Elaine is kind and good.  Ector, when people trust
you and depend on you, you can't hurt them.  You could not treat a dog
so."

"People don't marry dogs, however."

"Damn it, this girl loves me."

"So does the Queen."

Lancelot turned the cap round in his hands.

"The last time I saw the Queen," he said, "she told me never to come
near her again."

"But she has spent twenty thousand pounds looking for you."

He waited for some time and then asked, in a voice which sounded rough:
"Is she well?"

"She is absolutely wretched."

Ector said: "She knows it was her fault.  She cried a great deal, and
Bors told her she was a fool, but she didn't argue with him.  Arthur is
wretched too, because the whole Table is upside down."

Lancelot threw his cap on the ground and stood up.

"I told Elaine," he said, "that I would not promise to stay with her:
so I must."

"Do you love her?" asked Degalis, cutting to the root.

"Yes, I do.  She has been good to me.  I am fond of her."

At their looks, he changed the word.

"I love her," he said defiantly.


The knights had been staying for a week, and Lancelot, listening
hungrily to their Table news, was weakening every day.  Elaine, sitting
at the high table beside her lord at dinner, lived in a flow of
conversation about people whose names she had never heard and about
events which she could not understand.  There was nothing to do except
to offer second helpings, which Ector would accept without interrupting
the anecdote of the moment.  They leaned across her and talked and
laughed, and Elaine busily laughed too.  Every day Lancelot went to his
turret at sunset--she had tiptoed away when she first found him there,
and he did not know it was a discovered rendezvous.

"Lancelot," she said one morning, "there is a man waiting on the other
side of the moat, with a horse and armour."

"A knight?"

"No.  He looks like a squire."

"I wonder who it can be this time.  Tell the porter to fetch him
across."

"The porter says he won't come across.  He says he will wait there for
Sir Lancelot."

"I will go and see."

Elaine detained him as he went down to the boat.

"Lancelot," she said, "what do you want me to do with Galahad, if you
should go away?"

"Go away?  Who says I am going away?"

"Nobody has said so, but I want to know."

"I don't understand what you are talking about."

"I want to know how Galahad is to be brought up."

"Well, I suppose in the usual way.  He will learn to be a good knight,
I hope.  But the whole question is imaginary."

"That is what I wanted to know."

She detained him once more, however.

"Lancelot, will you tell me one other thing?  If you should go away, if
you should have to leave me--would you be coming back?"

"I have told you that I am not going away."

She was trying the meaning of her words, as she made them, like a man
walking slowly over a bog and feeling in front of him as he went.

"It would help me to go on with Galahad--it would help me to go on
living--if I knew that it was for something--if I knew that one day--if
I knew that you would be coming back."

"Elaine, I don't know why you are talking like this."

"I am not trying to stop you, Lance.  Perhaps it will be best for you
to go.  Perhaps it is a thing which has to happen.  Only, I wanted to
know if I should see you again--because it is important to me."

He took her hands.

"If I go," he said, "I will come back."

The man on the other side of the moat was Uncle Dap.  He was standing
with Lancelot's old charger, now two years older, and all his
accustomed armour neatly stowed on the saddle, as if for a kit
inspection.  Everything was correctly folded and strapped in the proper
military place.  The habergeon was rolled in a tight bundle.  The helm,
pauldrons, and vambraces were polished, literally by weeks of
polishing, to that veneer or patina of light which is to be found only
on things bought newly from the shop before they have been dulled by
household cleaning.  There was a smell of saddle soap, mixed with the
unmistakable, personal smell of armour--as individual a smell as that
which you get in the professional's shop on a golf course, and, to a
knight, as exciting.

All Lancelot's muscles made an emphatic sortie towards the feeling of
his own armour, which he had not seen since he left Camelot.  His
forefinger felt where the handle of his sword would use it for a
fulcrum.  His thumb knew the exact weight in ounces which it would have
to exert on the near side of the fulcrum.  The pad on the inside of his
palm lusted for the gripe of the hilt.  His whole arm remembered the
balance of Joyeux and wanted to wag him in the air.

Uncle Dap looked older, and would not speak.  He only held the bridle
and displayed the gear, waiting for the knight to mount and ride.  His
stern eye, as fierce as a goshawk's, waited on his charge.  He held out
the great tilting helm silently, with its familiar panache of heron
hackles and the silver thread.

Lancelot took the helm from Uncle Dap, with both hands, and turned it
round.  His hands knew the weight to expect--exactly twenty-two and a
half pounds.  He saw the superb polish, the fresh padding, and the new
mantling set behind.  It was of azure sarsenet, hand-embroidered in
gold thread with the numerous small fleur-de-lis of ancient France.  He
knew at once whose fingers had done the embroidery.  He lifted the helm
to his nose and sniffed the mantling.

Immediately she was there--not the Guenever whom he had remembered on
the battlements, but the real Jenny, in a different posture, with every
lash of her eyelids and every pore of her skin and every note of her
voice and every articulation of her smile.

He did not look back as he rode away from Bliant Castle--and Elaine,
standing on the barbican tower, did not wave.  She watched him going
with a still-struck concentration, like somebody who, shipwrecked, gets
as much fresh water into the little boat as possible.  She had a few
seconds left, to make her store of Lancelot that must last her through
the years.  There would be only this store, and their son, and a lot of
gold.  He had left her all his money, enough to bring a thousand pounds
a year for life--in those days a huge sum.




_Chapter XXV_

Fifteen years after leaving Elaine, Lancelot was still at court.  The
King's relations with Guenever and her lover were much as they had
always been.  The great difference was that everybody was older.
Lancelot's hair, which had already turned badger-grey when he first
came back from his madness as a fellow of twenty-six, was quite white.
Arthur's also was prematurely snowed--but both men's lips were red in
their silky nests of beard.  Guenever alone had contrived to keep the
raven on her head.  She looked a splendid figure when she was forty.

Another difference was that a new generation had come to court.  In
their own hearts the chief characters of the Round Table felt the
ardent feelings which they had always felt--but now they were figures
instead of people.  They were surrounded by younger clients for whom
Arthur was not the crusader of a future day, but the accepted conqueror
of a past one--for whom Lancelot was the hero of a hundred victories,
and Guenever the romantic mistress of a nation.  To these young people,
a sight of Arthur as he hunted in the greenwood was like seeing the
idea of Royalty.  They saw no man at all, but England.  When Lancelot
rode by, laughing at some private joke with the Queen, the commonalty
were amazed that he could laugh.  "Look," they would say to each other,
"he is laughing, as if he were a vulgar person like ourselves.  How
condescending, how splendidly democratic of Sir Lancelot, to laugh, as
if he were an ordinary man!  Perhaps he eats and drinks as well, or
even sleeps at night."  But in their hearts the new generation was
quite sure that the great Dulac did no such things.

Indeed, a lot of water had flowed under the bridges of Camelot in
twenty-one years.  They had been the years of building.  When they
began, they had been years of perrires and mangonels trundling along
the rutty highways from one siege to another, to hurl destruction over
castle walls--of movable wooden towers on wheels, going lumbering
against recreant keeps, so that the archers, shooting down from the top
of them, could throw death into treacherous strongholds--of companies
of engineers marching along in clouds of summer dust, their picks and
shovels on their shoulders, to undermine revolted bartizans so that the
great stones caved and fell tottering.  When Arthur had been unable to
take a strong-arm castle by assault, he had caused tunnels to be dug
under selected parts of the wall.  These tunnels, being supported on
beams of wood which could be burned away with fire at the proper
moment, had collapsed, bringing the rubble-filled baileys down on top
of them.

The early years had been times of battle, in which those who insisted
on living by the sword had been made to die by it.  They had been years
lit by whole towersful of combatants roasting like so many Guy
Fawkes--for the great objection to a pele tower as a stronghold was
that it made a first-class chimney--years ringing with the sound of
battle-axes thudding on battle-axe-proof doors--which were constructed
by nailing the first ply of boards horizontally, and the second ply
vertically, so that the wood could not be split along the grain--years
illustrated by the shambling tumble of Norman giants--who were most
conveniently dealt with by cutting off their legs first, so that you
could get a fair reach at their heads--and by the flicker of swords
round helmets or elbow-cops, a flickering which, in extreme cases, was
attended by such a shower of sparks as to make the struggling knights
seem perfectly incandescent.

Wherever you went, during the first years, every vista had been
terminated by a marching column of mercenaries, robbing and pilling
from the Marches--or by a knight of the new order exchanging buffets
with a conservative baron whom he was trying to restrain from murdering
serfs--or by a golden-haired maiden being rescued out of some lofty
keep by means of leather ladders--or by Sir Bruce Saunce Pit riding a
full wallop with Sir Lancelot coming deliverly after him--or by a few
surgeons carefully ransacking the wounds of an unfortunate combatant,
and making him eat onions or garlic, so that, by smelling at the wound,
they could discover whether the intestines had been perforated or not.
When they had examined the wounds they dressed them with the oily wool
from the udders of sheep, which made a natural lanolin dressing.  Here
would be Sir Gawaine sitting on his antagonist's chest, and finishing
him off, through the ventails of his helm, with the long sharp poinard
called the Mercy of God.  There would be a couple of knights who had
suffocated themselves in their own helms during the course of a battle,
a misfortune which frequently happened in those days of violent
exercise and small vents.  On one side would be a commodious gibbet set
up by some old-fashioned princeling to hang King Arthur's knights and
the common Saxons who trusted them--a gibbet perhaps nearly as
sumptuous as that constructed at Montfaucon, which could support sixty
bodies depending like drab fuchsias between its sixteen stone pillars.
The humbler gallows had rungs on them, like the footholds on telegraph
poles, so that the executioners could scramble up and down.  On another
side would be a demesne so hedged about with man-traps in its
shrubberies that none dared walk within a mile of it.  In front of you,
there might be a daffish knight who had been caught in a buck-trap,
which, swinging him into the air on the end of a stout branch released
by the action of the trap, had left him dangling helplessly between
heaven and earth.  Behind you, there might be a savage tournament or
faction fight going on, with all the heralds crying out, "_Laissez les
aller_" to ranks of chivalry who were about to charge--a cry which was
exactly equivalent to the shout, "They're off!" which is still to be
heard at the Grand National today.

The World had been expected to end in the year one thousand, and, in
the reaction which followed its reprieve, there had been a burst of
lawlessness and brutality which had sickened Europe for centuries.  It
had been responsible for the doctrine of Might which was the Table's
enemy.  The fierce lords of the Strong Arm had hunted the wild
woodlands--only, of course, there had always been exceptions like the
good Sir Ector of Forest Sauvage--till John of Salisbury had been
forced to advise his readers: "If one of these great and merciless
hunters shall pass by your habitation, bring forth hastily all the
refreshment you have in your house, or that you can readily buy, or
borrow from your neighbour: that you may not be involved in ruin, or
even accused of treason."  Children, Duruy tells us, had been seen
hanging in trees, by the sinews of their thighs.  It had been no
uncommon sight to see a man-at-arms whistling like a lobster, and
looking like porridge, because they had emptied a bucket of boiling
bran over his armour during a siege.  Other spectacles even more
dramatic have been mentioned by Chaucer: the smyler with the knyf under
the cloke, the careyne in the bush with throte y-corve, or the colde
deeth with mouth gaping upright.  Everywhere it had been blood on
steel, and smoke on sky, and power unbridled--and, in the general
confusion of the times, Gawaine had at last contrived to murder our
dear old friend King Pellinore, in revenge for the death of his own
father, King Lot.

Such had been the England which Arthur had inherited, such the
birthpangs of the civilization which he had sought to invent.  Now,
after twenty-one years of patient success, the land presented a
different picture.

Where the black knights had hoved, all brim and furious by some ford,
to take toll of anybody rash enough to pass that way, now any virgin
could circumambulate the whole country, even with gold and ornaments
upon her person, without the least fear of harm.  Where once the
horrible lepers--they called them Measles--had been accustomed to
ramble through the woods in white cowls, ringing their doleful clappers
if they wanted to give warning, or just pouncing on you without ringing
them if they did not, now there were proper hospitals, governed by
religious orders of knighthood, to look after those who had come back
sick with leprosy from the Crusades.  All the tyrannous giants were
dead, all the dangerous dragons--some of which used to come down with a
burrr like the peregrine's stoop--had been put out of action.  Where
the raiding parties had once streamed along the highways with
fluttering pennoncels, now there were merry bands of pilgrims telling
each other dirty stories on the way to Canterbury.  Demure clerics,
taking a day's outing to Our Lady of Walsingham, were singing _Alleluia
Dulce Carmen_, while the less demure ones were warbling the great
medieval drinking-song of their own composition: _Meum est propositum
in taberna mori_.  There were urbane abbots, titupping along on ambling
palfreys, in furred hoods which were against the rules of their orders,
and yeomen in smart tackle with hawks on their fists, and sturdy
peasants quarrelling with their wives about new cloaks, and jolly
parties going out to hunt without armour of any sort.  Some were riding
to fairs as great as that of Troyes, others to universities which
rivalled Paris, where there were twenty thousand scholars whose ranks
eventually provided seven popes.  In the abbeys all the monks were
illuminating the initial letters of their manuscripts with such a riot
of invention that it was impossible to read the first page at all.
Those who were not doing the chi-ro page were carefully copying out the
Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours, or the Legenda Aurea, or the
Jeu d'Echecs Moralis, or a Treatise of Hawkynge--that is, if they were
not engaged upon the Ars Magna of the magician Lully, or the Speculum
Majus by the greatest of all magicians.  In the kitchens the famous
cooks were preparing menus which included, for one course alone:
ballock broth, caudle ferry, lampreys en galentine, oysters in civey,
eels in sorr, baked trout, brawn in mustard, numbles of a hart, pigs
farsed, cockintryce, goose in hoggepotte, venison in frumenty, hens in
brewet, roast squirrels, haggis, capon-neck pudding, garbage, tripe,
blaundesorye, caboges, buttered worts, apple mousse, gingerbread, fruit
tart, blancmange, quinces in comfit, stilton cheese, and causs boby.
In the dining halls the older gentlemen, who had spoiled their palates
with drinking, were relishing those strange delicacies of the Middle
Ages--the strong flavours of whale and porpoise.  Their dainty ladies
were putting roses and violets in their dishes--baked marigolds still
make an excellent flavouring for bread-and-butter puddings--while the
squires were showing their weakness for sheep's-milk cheese.  In the
nurseries all the little boys were moving heaven and earth to persuade
their mothers to have hard pears for dinner, which were stewed in
honey-syrup and vinegar, and eaten with whipped cream.  The manners of
the table, too, had reached a pitch of civilization far beyond our own.
Now, instead of the plates made of bread, there were covered dishes,
scented finger bowls, sumptuous table cloths, a plethora of napkins.
The diners themselves were wearing chaplets of flowers and graceful
draperies.  The pages were serving the food with the formal movements
of a ballet.  Wine bottles were being placed on the tables, but ale,
being less respectable, was being put beneath.  The musicians, with
strange orchestras of bells, large horns, harps, viols, zithers and
organs, were playing as the people ate.  Where once, before King Arthur
had made his chivalry, the Knight of the Tower Landry had been
compelled to warn his daughter against entering her own dining hall in
the evening unaccompanied--for fear of what might happen in the dark
corners--now there was music and light.  In the smoky vaults, where
once the grubby barons had gnawed their bones with bloody fingers, now
there were people eating with clean fingers, which they had washed with
herb-scented toilet soap out of wooden bowls.  In the cellars of the
monasteries the butlers were tapping new and old ale, mead, port,
claree, dry sherry, hock, beer, metheglyn, perry, hippocras, and the
best white whisky.  In the law courts the judges were dispensing the
King's new law, instead of the fierce law of Fort Mayne.  In the
cottages the good wives were making hot griddle bread enough to make
your mouth water, and putting fine turf on their fires regardless of
expense, and herding fat geese on the commons enough to support twenty
families for twenty years.  The Saxons and Normans of Arthur's
accession had begun to think of themselves as Englishmen.

No wonder that the young, ambitious knights of Europe flocked to the
great court.  No wonder that they saw a king when they looked on
Arthur, a conqueror when they looked on Lancelot.

One of the young men who came to court in those days was Gareth.
Another was Mordred.




_Chapter XXVI_

"We don't see many arrows thrilling in people's hearts nowadays,"
remarked Lancelot one afternoon at the archery butts.

"Thrilling!" exclaimed Arthur.  "What a splendid word to describe an
arrow vibrating, just after it has hit!"

Lancelot said: "I heard it in a ballad."

They went away and sat in an arbour, from which they could watch the
young people practising their shots.

"It is true," said the King gloomily.  "We don't get much of the old
fighting in these decadent days."

"Decadent!" protested his commander-in-chief.  "What are you so gloomy
about?  I thought this was what you wanted?"

Arthur changed the subject.

"Gareth is shaping well," he said, watching the boy.  "It's funny.  He
can't be many years younger than you are, yet one thinks of him as a
child."

"Gareth is a dear."

The King put his hand on Lancelot's knee and squeezed it affectionately.

"Some people might say that you are the dear," he said, "so far as
Gareth is concerned.  It has come to be quite a legend how the boy
arrived at court anonymously, so that his own brothers didn't recognize
him, and how he worked in the kitchen, and got nicknamed Beaumains when
Kay wanted to be nasty, and how you were the only person who was decent
to him until he did his great adventure and became a knight."

"Well," said Lancelot defensively, "his brothers hadn't seen him for
fifteen years.  You can't blame Gawaine for that."

"I am not blaming anybody.  I was just saying that it was nice of you
to take notice of a kitchen page, and help him along, and knight him in
the end.  But then, you always were nice to people."

"It is strange how they come here," said his friend.  "I suppose they
can't keep away.  Any boy with a bit of go in him feels that he has to
come to Arthur's court, even if it is to work in the kitchen, because
it is the centre of the new world.  That is why Gareth ran away from
his mother.  She wouldn't let him come, so he ran away and came
incognito."

"Nonsense.  Morgause is a bad old woman--that's all you can say about
her.  She forbade him to come to court because she hated you, but he
came for all that."

"Morgause is my half-sister, and I have hurt her badly.  It can't be
nice for a woman to have all her sons going away to serve the man she
hates.  Even Mordred, her last."

Lancelot looked uncomfortable.  He had an instinctive dislike for
Mordred, and did not like having it.  He did not know about Arthur
being Mordred's father--for that was a story which had been hushed up
in the earliest days, before either he or Guenever came to court, just
as Arthur's own birth had been.  But he did feel that there was
something strange between the young man and the King.  He disliked
Mordred irrationally, as a dog dislikes a cat--and he felt ashamed of
the dislike, because it was a confused principle of his to help the
younger knights.

"It must have hurt her worst of all when Mordred came," pursued the
King.  "Women are always fondest of their last babies."

"So far as I can learn, she was never particularly fond of any of them.
If she was hurt by their coming to court, it was only because she hated
you.  Why does she?"

"It's a bad story.  I would rather not talk about it.

"Morgause," added the King, "is a woman--is a woman of pronounced
character."

Lancelot laughed rather sourly.

"She must be," he said, "from the way she is carrying on.  I hear she
is making a dead set at Pellinore's son Lamorak now, although she is a
grandmother."

"Who told you?"

"It's all over the court."

Arthur got up and walked three steps in agitation.

"Good God!" he exclaimed.  "And Lamorak's father killed her husband!
And her son killed Lamorak's father!  And Lamorak is hardly of age!"

He sat down and looked at Lancelot, as if he were afraid of what he
might say next.

"All the same, that is what she is doing."

The King suddenly and vehemently asked: "Where is Gawaine?  Where is
Agravaine?  Where is Mordred?"

"They are supposed to be on some quest or other."

"Not--not in the North?"

"I don't know."

"Where is Lamorak?"

"I think he is staying in Orkney."

"Lancelot, if you had only known my sister--if you had only known the
Orkney clan at home.  They are mad on their family.  If Gawaine--if
Lamorak--O my God, have mercy on my sins, and on the sins of other
people, and on the tangle in this world!"

Lancelot looked at him in consternation.

"What are you afraid of?"

Arthur stood up for the second time, and began talking fast.

"I am afraid for my Table.  I am afraid of what is going to happen.  I
am afraid it was all wrong."

"Nonsense."

"When I started the Table, it was to stop anarchy.  It was a channel
for brute force, so that the people who had to use force could be made
to do it in a useful way.  But the whole thing was a mistake.  No,
don't interrupt me.  It was a mistake because the Table itself was
founded on force.  Right must be established by right: it can't be
established by Force Majeur.  But that is what I have been trying to
do.  Now my sins are coming home to roost.  Lancelot, I am afraid I
have sown the whirlwind, and I shall reap the storm."

"I don't understand what you are talking about."

"Here comes Gareth," said the King calmly, suddenly, and as if
everything were over.  "I think you will understand in a minute."

While they had been talking, a messenger in leather leggings had
arrived at the butts.  The King had seen him out of the corner of his
eye as he hastily sought Sir Gareth and handed him a letter.  He had
watched the boy reading the letter, once, twice, three times, and later
as he spoke confusedly with the man.  Now, after handing his bow to the
messenger without noticing that he was doing so, Gareth was coming to
them slowly.

"Gareth," said the King.

The young man knelt down and took the King's hand.  He held it as if it
were a banister or a life-line.  He looked at Arthur with dull eyes,
and did not cry.

"My mother is dead," said Gareth.

"Who killed her?" asked the King, as if it were the natural question.

"My brother Agravaine."

"What!"

The exclamation was from Lancelot.

"My brother has killed our mother, because he found her sleeping with a
man."

"Keep quiet, Lancelot, please," said the King.  Then to Gareth: "What
did they do to Sir Lamorak?"

But Gareth had not finished the first part of his story.

"Agravaine cut off her head," he said.  "Like the unicorn."

"The unicorn?"

"Please, Lancelot."

"He killed our mother in her blood."

"I am sorry."

"I always knew he would," said Gareth.

"Are you sure the news is true?"

"It is true.  It is true.  It was Agravaine who killed the unicorn."

"Was Lamorak the unicorn?" asked the King gently.  He did not know what
his nephew was talking about, but he was anxious to help.  "Is Lamorak
dead?"

"Oh, Uncle!  It says that Agravaine found her naked in a bed with Sir
Lamorak, and he cut off her head.  Now they have hunted Lamorak down as
well."

Lancelot was less patient than the King, because he knew fewer of the
sorrows which had happened in the early days.

"Who were they?" he asked.

"Mordred, Agravaine, and Gawaine."

"So it comes to this," said Sir Lancelot, "that your three brothers
have first murdered King Pellinore--who would not willingly have hurt a
fly--murdered him because he killed their father by accident in a
tournament--then murdered their own mother in bed--and finally
butchered Pellinore's young son Lamorak, for being seduced by their
mother, who was three times as old as he was.  I suppose they set upon
him all against one?"

Gareth held the King's hand tighter, and began to droop his head.

"They surrounded him," he said numbly, "and Mordred stabbed him in the
back."




_Chapter XXVII_

Gawaine and Mordred came straight to Camelot from their foray among the
Old Ones, but Agravaine did not come with them.  They had quarrelled as
soon as Lamorak was dead, or rather, as soon as they had found time to
realize what had happened.  The murder of Queen Morgause had not been
done on purpose.  Agravaine had done it on the spur of the moment--in
his outraged passion, he said--but they knew by instinct that it was
from jealousy.  So they had raised the old charge against him, that he
was only a fat bully whose noblest employment was the killing of
defenceless people or women, and they had left him, weeping, after a
furious scene.  Gawaine, who now remembered all his adoration for their
peculiar mother--an adoration which the queen-witch had wished on each
of her sons--rode to the King's court in gloomy penitence.  He knew
that Arthur would be furious about the way in which young Lamorak had
been killed, for the boy had been the third best knight of the Table,
and yet he was not ashamed of having killed him.  To his mind Lamorak
deserved death, like a felon, because he and his father had injured the
Orkney clan.  He knew that the whole court would look at him sideways
on account of his mother's murder, and how the old talk would be
revived about that woman whom he had slain himself in temper, when he
was young.  Even this did not dismay him much.  But he was penitent and
miserable because his own dear Orkney mother was gone--he was only
beginning to realize how it had happened--because he had hurt Arthur's
ideal, and because he was generous in his own heart.  He hoped that the
King would hang him, or send him into exile, or punish him severely.
He went into the royal chamber with a sulky shame.

Mordred walked into the room behind Gawaine, as if nothing had
happened.  He was a thin wisp of a fellow, so fair-haired that he was
almost an albino: and his bright eyes were so blue, so palely azure in
their faded depths, that you could not see into them.  He was
clean-shaven.  It seemed that there was no part of him which you could
catch hold of, neither his hair, nor his eyes, nor his whiskers.  Even
the colour had been washed out of him, it seemed, so as to leave no
handle.  Only, in the skeletal, pink face, the brilliant eyes had
crow's-feet round them--a twinkle which you could assume to be of
humour, if you liked, or else of irony, or merely of screwing up those
sky-blue pupils so as to look far and deep.  He walked with an upright
carriage, both ingratiating and defiant--but one shoulder was higher
than the other.  He had been born slightly crooked--a clumsy delivery
by the midwife--like Richard III.

Arthur was waiting for them, with Guenever and Lancelot on either hand.

The burly, red-haired Gawaine knelt down clumsily on one knee.  He did
not look at the King, but spoke to the floor.

"Pardon."

"Pardon," said Mordred also--but he, kneeling beside his half-brother,
looked the King between the eyes.  He had a non-committal voice,
beautifully modulated--its words might have meant the opposite of what
they said.

"You are pardoned," said Arthur.  "Go away."

"Go?" asked Gawaine.  He was not sure whether he was being banished.

"Yes, go.  We can meet at dinner.  But go, now.  Leave me, please."

Gawaine said roughly: "The half of yon was done by sore ill fortune."

This time Arthur's voice was neither tired nor miserable.

"Go!"

He stamped his foot like a war-horse, pointing to the door as if he
would throw them out of it.  His eyes flashed from his face, like a
sudden flame of green ash, so that even Mordred got up quickly.
Gawaine was startled and stumbled out of the door in confusion, but the
crooked man recollected himself before he left.  He made a play-actor's
bow, a low, luxurious simulacrum of humility--then, straightening
himself up, he looked the King in the eye, and smiled, and went.

Arthur sat down, trembling.  Lancelot and Guenever looked at each other
over his head.  They would have liked to ask why he was going to
forgive his nephews, or to protest that it was impossible to pardon
matricides without damaging the Round Table.  But they had never seen
Arthur in his royal rage before.  They felt that there was something in
it which they did not understand, so they held their peace.

Presently the King said: "I was trying to tell you something, Lance,
before this happened."

"Yes."

"You two have always listened to me about my Table.  I want you to
understand."

"We will do our best."

"Long ago, when I had my Merlyn to help, he tried to teach me to think.
He knew he would have to leave in the end, so he forced me to think for
myself.  Don't ever let anybody teach you to think, Lance: it is the
curse of the world."

The King sat looking at his fingers, and they waited while the old
thoughts ran sideways across his hands like crabs.

"Merlyn," he said, "approved of the Round Table.  Evidently it was a
good thing at the time.  It must have been a step.  Now we must think
of making the next one."

Guenever said: "I don't see what is wrong with the Round Table, just
because the Orkney faction chooses to get murderous."

"I was explaining to Lance.  The idea of our Table was that Right was
to be the important thing, not Might.  Unfortunately we have tried to
establish Right by Might, and you can't do that."

"I don't see why you can't do it."

"I tried to dig a channel for Might, so that it would flow usefully.
The idea was that all the people who enjoyed fighting should be headed
off, so that they fought for justice, and I hoped that this would solve
the problem.  It has not."

"Why not?"

"Simply because we have got justice.  We have achieved what we were
fighting for, and now we still have the fighters on our hands.  Don't
you see what has happened?  We have run out of things to fight for, so
all the fighters of the Table are going to rot.  Look at Gawaine and
his brothers.  While there were still giants and dragons and wicked
knights of the old brigade, we could keep them occupied: we could keep
them in order.  But now that the ends have been achieved, there is
nothing for them to use their might on.  So they use it on Pellinore
and Lamorak and my sister--God be good to them.  The first sign of the
fester was when our chivalry turned into Games-Mania--all that nonsense
about who had the best tilting average and so forth.  This is the
second sign, when murder begins again.  That is why I say that dear
Merlyn would want me to start another thinking, now, if only he were
here to help."

"It is something like idleness and luxury unmanning us--the strings
have gone slack and out of tune."

"No: it is not that at all.  It is simply that I have kept a rod in
pickle for my own back.  I ought to have rooted Might out altogether,
instead of trying to adapt it.  Though I don't know how the rooting
could have been done.  Now the Might is left, with nothing to use it
on, so it is working wicked channels for itself."

"You ought to punish it," said Lancelot.  "When Sir Bedivere killed his
wife you made him carry her head to the Pope.  You ought to send
Gawaine to the Pope now."

The King opened his hands and looked up for the first time.

"I am going to send you all to the Pope," he said.

"What!"

"Not exactly to the Pope.  You see, the trouble is--as I see it--that
we have used up the worldly objects for our Might--so there is nothing
left but the spiritual ones.  I was thinking about this all night.  If
I can't keep my fighters from wickedness by matching them against the
world--because they have used up the world--then I must match them
against the spirit."

Lancelot's eye caught fire, and he began to watch the other man
attentively.  At the same moment Guenever withdrew into herself.  She
glanced quickly at her lover, a covert glance, then gave a new,
reserved attention to her husband.

"If something is not done," went on the King, "the whole Table will go
to ruin.  It is not only that feud and open manslaughter have started:
there is the bold bawdry as well.  Look at the Tristram business with
King Mark's wife.  People seem to be siding with Tristram.  Morals are
difficult things to talk about, but what has happened is that we have
invented a moral sense, which is rotting now that we can't give it
employment.  And when a moral sense begins to rot it is worse than when
you had none.  I suppose that all endeavours which are directed to a
purely worldly end, as my famous Civilization was, contain within
themselves the germs of their own corruption."

"What is this about sending us to the Pope?"

"I was speaking metaphorically.  What I mean is, that the ideal of my
Round Table was a temporal ideal.  If we are to save it, it must be
made into a spiritual one.  I forgot about God."

"Lancelot," said the Queen in a peculiar voice, "has never forgotten."

But her lover was too interested to notice her tone.

"What do you intend to do?" he asked.

"I thought we could start by trying to achieve something which would be
helpful to the spirit, if you see what I mean.  We have achieved the
bodily things: peace and prosperity: now we lack work.  If we invent
another bodily employment, a temporal employment--mere empire building
or something like that--we shall be faced by the same problem again,
probably worse, as soon as it has been achieved.  But why can't we pull
our Table together by turning its energies to the spirit?  You know
what I mean by the spirit.  If our Might was given a channel so that it
worked for God, instead of for the rights of man, surely that would
stop the rot, and be worth doing?"

"A Crusade!" exclaimed Lancelot.  "You are going to send us to the
rescue of the Holy Sepulchre!"

"We could try that," said the King.  "I hadn't exactly thought of it,
but it might be a good thing to try."

"Or we could look for relics," cried his commander, who was quite on
fire.  "If all the knights were looking for a piece of the True Cross,
they might not even need to fight.  I mean, if we were to go on a
Crusade, we should still be using force: we should be putting the Might
into a channel against the infidels.  But if we really and truly banded
the whole Table together to search for something which belonged to God
himself, why, that would be infinitely worth doing--and, although we
should be busy, there might be no need for fighting at all.  If it
comes to that, we needn't necessarily look for one thing alone.  Why,
if all our knights--one hundred and fifty men, all specialists in
questing, like detectives--if all our knights were to turn their
energies to the quest for things which belonged to God--why, we might
find hundreds and hundreds of things which would be of huge value.  The
Round Table might have been positively invented and trained just for
that object.  We might find some new gospels, even.  The whole of
Christianity might be helped by what we did.  Think of a hundred and
fifty men all trained for the search!  And it is not too late to try.
The True Cross was found in 326, but the Holy Shroud was not discovered
at Lirey until 1360!  We might find the spear which killed Our Lord!"

"I was thinking of that."

"We must look for manuscripts particularly."

"Yes."

"We must fare forth everywhere, to the Holy Land, to every place!  We
shall be like my dear de Joinville!"

"Yes."

"I think," said Sir Lancelot, "this is the most splendid idea you have
ever had!"

"I am afraid of it," said the King, and this time it was his voice
which sounded strange.  "I thought, in the night time, that perhaps it
was aiming too high.  If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.
It may mean the end of the Table.  Supposing somebody were to find God?"

But Lancelot's mind was not made for metaphysics.  He did not notice
the change in Arthur's voice.  He began to hum to himself the great
Crusader's hymn:

  Lignum crucis,
  Signum ducis,
  Sequitur exercitus ...


"We could search for the Holy Grail!" he cried triumphantly.


It was at this moment that a messenger arrived from King Pelles.  Sir
Lancelot was wanted, he said, to knight a young man at an abbey.  He
was a fine young fellow, seemly and demure as a dove.  He had been
educated in a convent.  His name, said the messenger, was thought to be
Galahad.

Queen Guenever stood up, and sat down.  She opened her hands, and
closed them again.  She knew that Sir Lancelot was going to his son by
another woman--but she hardly minded that.




_Chapter XXVIII_

If you want to read about the beginning of the Quest for the Grail,
about the wonders of Galahad's arrival--Guenever, in a strange mixture
of curiosity, envy and horror, made a half-hearted attempt to vamp
him--and of the last supper at court, when the thunder came and the
sunbeam and the covered vessel and the sweet smell through the Great
Hall--if you want to read about these, you must seek them in Malory.
That way of telling the story can only be done once.  The material
facts were that the knights of the Round Table set out in a body, soon
after Pentecost, with the immediate object of finding the Holy Grail.

It was two years before Lancelot came back to court--and it was a
lonely time for those at home.  Slowly those knights who had survived
began to trickle back in twos and threes, tired men bearing news of
loss or rumours of success.  They came limping on crutches, or leading
spent horses which could carry them no longer, or, as one did who had
lost a hand in battle, carrying the one hand in the other.  All these
men looked worn and confused.  Their faces were fanatical, and they
babbled of dreams.  Ships which moved of their own power, silver tables
on which strange Masses had been said, spears which flew through the
air, visions of bulls and of thorn trees, demons in old tombs, kings
and hermits who had been living for four hundred years--these figured
in the rumours which filled the palace.  A count taken by Sir Bedivere
showed that half the knights were missing.  They were presumed dead.
But all the time Sir Lancelot did not come back.

The first reliable witness to return was Gawaine, who reached the court
in a black temper, with his head bandaged.  He was the only one of the
Orkney clan who had refused to learn English correctly and spoke in a
Northern accent--almost an assumed one.  He still thought half in
Gaelic.  He was defiant of the Southerners, proud of his race.

"Blindness and Darkness on the Quest," said Gawaine.  "If I was e'er
upon a sleeveless errand, it was yon."

"What happened?"

Arthur and Guenever, like good children, sat with their hands in their
laps to listen to the stories.  Like children, they were alert and
eager, sifting the truth as best they could.

"What happened, is it?  Why, what happened was that I wasted eighteen
months and mair forbye in seeking footless for adventure--and ended up
half deid with what ye name concussion.  May God presairve me from the
Holy Grail, whatever."

"Tell us from the beginning."

"From the beginning?"

He was surprised at his uncle's interest.

"Tuts, there is thing-a-bit to tell."

"Tell it all the same."

"Fetch some drink for Sir Gawaine," said the Queen.  "Sit down, my
lord.  You are welcome home.  Make yourself easy and tell the story--if
you are not too tired?"

"I am nae tired--but only for the ache within my heid.  I can relate
the tale.  Thanks to you, I will take whisky, Ma'am.  Let see, where
did yon stour begin?"

The laird of the Orkneys sat down and tried to remember.

"When we left the castle of Vagon ... Ye mind we rode to Vagon in a
body, the first day, and aye dispairsed next morn?  When we left
thence, I raid north-west.  It didna signify which way.  Lancelot gave
all men the hint, the day before we scattered, that auld King Pelles
mentioned him a sacred dish one time, in yin of his great castles.  He
didna cleave importance tae it, but told the people for its worth.  The
best half went in that deerection, but I didna fash masel'.
North-west, I raid."

He took a good swallow.

"The first tracks e'er I happened on," he said, "were Galahad's.  For a
conceited, kindless carl, commend me to yon mannie.

"Yon laddie," continued Sir Gawaine, taking another gulp and warming to
his work, "yon lily laddie is, without discussion, the utmost catamite
which it had been my woe to smell the stink of through the world--he
is."

"Did he knock you down?" asked the King.

"Na, na.  'Twas later.  I crossed his tracks at the outsetting.

"Bred in a nunnery," he went on furiously, "amidst a paircel of auld
hens!  I have news at me about his pairsonal quest from various who
have fronted him--the holy milksop with his hairt of a cold puttock....
But there, the chiel's an Englishman.  He wad be cut, if he dared cross
the Border.

"Unless he will have been cut already," he concluded, struck by the
idea.

"What has Sir Galahad been doing wrong?"

"Thing a bit.  The man's a vegetarian and teetotaller, and he makes
believe he is a vairgin.  But I encountered with Sir Melias--ye ken Sir
Melias is sairely maimed?  He telt me how yon Galahad behaved.  By some
cause Melias had taken to the carl, and asked permissions of the boy to
go the one way with him.  I canna fathom why he would be doing sic a
thing, for the first one that had sought to go with Galahad was Uwaine.
Sir Galahad refused it!  Sir Uwaine wasna guid enough for him!  Well,
well, he condescended to let Melias go, however, and he knighted him to
boot!  My soul to the devil--to be knighted by a gomeril of eighteen!
When he had knighted Melias, he quoth these verra words: 'Now, fair
sir,' says he, 'sith ye be come of kings and queens, now look that
knighthood be well set in you, for ye ought to be a mirror unto all
chivalry!'  What like do ye name it?  Aye, a Southron snob.  The next
act was that they twa came their ways to an adventure by the
crossroads, where Melias had a wish to ride toward the left.  Galahad
said: 'It were better ye rode not that way, for I deem I should better
escape in that way than ye.'  There was nae fause modesty abune the
bonnie Galahad, ye see?  Well, Melias went left for a' that--and he
came by ill-luck stricken through the hauberk at the hands of some
mysterious knight wha rode upon him, as Galahad foretold.  He was like
to die--the broken truncheon in his side.  When the great Galahad found
him wounded, what does my mannie say, but: 'Therefore it had been
better to have ridden that other way!'  A handsome chiel to say
I-told-ye-so to one half deid!  Nor did he give him aid."

"What happened to Sir Melias?"

"He said to Galahad: 'Sir, let death come when it pleaseth him.'  He
drew the truncheon forth himself.  Melias is a bonnie knight, and there
is gladness on me that I may tell you he is still on life."

Arthur said: "After all, Galahad is only a child!  He has growing
pains, perhaps.  I don't think we ought to judge him unkindly for
little faults of social intercourse."

"Did ye ken that he has aye attacked his father, and unhorsed him too?
Do ye ken that he has let his father kneel before him, for to ask his
blessing?  Do ye ken that peoples have been asking for to die in
Galahad's arms, and that he has been granting them to do so, as a
favour?"

"Well, perhaps it was a favour."

"Diabhal!" exclaimed Gawaine, and he buried his nose in the beaker.

"You are not telling us about yourself."

"The first adventure which I suffered--indeed it wasna far from being
the single one--fell at the Castle of Maidens.  It were best not tell
of yon, before the Queen."

Arthur said rather coldly: "My wife is not a baby or an imbecile, Sir
Gawaine.  Everybody knows about the custom of that Castle."

Guenever said politely: "They call it _droit de seigneur_ in French."

"Well then, indeed, I came to the Castle of Maidens with Uwaine and Sir
Gareth.  It was kept by seven knights, whatever, who insisted on the
custom.  We found those seven outside the castle fully armed, and had
braw fight with them, and slew them all.  When all was done, 'twas
manifest that Galahad had been before us.  'Twas he had driven them
forth at first, without his killing e'er a one of them, and he himself
was ben the castle at the very time.  All we had done was play the
butcher's part, in finishing what wasna rightly ours."

"Bad luck."

"Galahad rode his gait and wouldna speak with us.  The meaning was that
we were sinful--he was blessed.  I dinna mind what happened after that."

"Did you ride on with Uwaine and Gareth?"

"Nay, we parted after Maiden Castle.  I rode all airts until I found a
hermitage, with its releegious man.  Ye ken the sort, e wheen
Salvationist.  The first demand he made was: 'I would wit how it
standeth betwixt your God and you?'  I asked that he should gie me
lodging for the nicht.  Well, he was host and priest as well, so when
he pressed me to confession, I couldna well refuse.  He clattered
waeful havers of the seven knights--they being the seven deadly sins,
said he--and told me, calm as daylight, that I was but a murdering man
masel'."

"Did he tell you," asked the King with interest, "that it was wrong to
kill people for any reason, and especially when you were looking for
the Grail?"

"My soul to the devil, he did so.  He preached that Galahad had aye
expelled the seven knights without a slaughter, and mentioned that the
Holy Grail was nae for bloodshed."

"What else did he say?"

"I canna mind.  When he had complimented me as I was telling ye, he
counselled I should make a penance.  Unless a body made his guid
confession--and was absolvit fair--it would be bootless seeking for the
Grail, says he.  The chiel was daffish.  An errant knight stands in a
posture which should make the penance needless--as I shewed him--the
like that manual labourers dinna fast in Lent.  I gave the man the lie
and took my way forthwith.  I met with Aglovale and Griflet after that
... What then, what then?  I rode with them four days, I mind ... Aye
then we parted once again, and darkness on me if I didna ride till
Michaelmas without adventure!

"Troth is," added Gawaine, "there are nae ventures to be found in
England, these late days.  The place is failed."

"Fetch Sir Gawaine another drink."

"When Michaelmas was gone and past, I met with Ector Demaris.  He had
been luckless like masel'!  We rode to a wee chapel in the forest, and
slept there with a dram inside us--and each man had the one same dream
that night.  It concairned a hand and arm, in samite, with a bridle and
a candle in its gripe.  A voice made known that we twa were in need of
them.  I encountered with a second priest thereafter, wha said the
bridle was for continence and the candle was for faith--it seems that
Ector and masel' were lacking these.  Ye mind how any man may twist a
dream.  The next thing after was a piece of dour misfortune, the like
of that which has been on me all the while.  We came, the twa of us,
upon my cousin Uwaine with his shield in cover--and didna recognize his
blazon.  Ector conceded me the first fall with my cousin, my ain kin.
The spear went fair through Uwaine's chest.  There will have been a
weakness in his brigandine."

"Is Uwaine dead?"

"Aye, dead, man.  It is the black ill-happening that was on me."

Arthur cleared his throat.

"I should have thought it was worse happening for Uwaine," he said,
"God rest him.  Perhaps it might not have been a bad thing if you had
listened to that priest of yours at the beginning."

"I had nae wish to kill!  He was own cousin to the Orkneys!  And think
ye that the southron prig, him of the white shield, had before refused
to ride with him!"

"Do you mean Galahad?  Was he bearing the vergescu?"

"Aye, Galahad.  It wasna the vergescu.  He had laid hold upon a shield
in some place, which was to have belonged to Joseph Arimathea, so he
said.  The cognizance was argent, a tau cross gules.  The argent was to
signify the white of virgins, we were let to know, and the red cross
was for the Grail ... I am from my tale."

"You had just killed Uwaine," said Arthur patiently.

"Ector and I rode on to one more hermitage, and it was there the priest
made known about the bridle in our dream.  This priest was vegetarian,
may I tell ye!  He gave the auld tale about murder, hot and hot, and
was for pressing our repentance.  We made excuses, and we rode out
gait."

"Did he tell you that the reason why neither of you had any luck was
because you were only looking for slaughter?"

"Aye, did he.  He said that Lancelot was better man than us because he
rarely killed his adversary--and in parteecular by cause he didna in
this quest.  Also he said that many other knights--Ector himself met
twenty--were in the same case with us from their sins.  He said
manslaughter was contrary to the quest.  We juist made speech with him,
and slipped away while he was talking yet."

"And then?"

"We came upon a castle then, Ector and I, a bonnie tournament was
forward.  We joined the attacking men--and had fine battle--and were at
point to force our way inside--the tempers were a wee bit risen--when
Galahad came up.  God the Almighty knows what ill wind brought yon
mannie.  It seems he wasna for approving of such knights as fight for
sport.  He joined the ither side, and drove us forth the castle, and he
gave me this."

Gawaine touched his bandage.

"Ector was not for fighting him," he explained.  "They were related.
But I fought none the less for that, and small thanks with it.  He gave
a blow which split my helm whatever, and broke the iron coif--aye, and
it glanced off too, killing my horse.  Yon was the end for me, by
Christ.  I was for bed during one month and more."

"And then you came home?"

"Aye, home."

"You certainly seem to have been unlucky," said the Queen.

"Unlucky!"

Gawaine looked into his empty beaker for a moment or two.  Then he
cheered up.

"I slew King Bagdemagus," he said.  "Nae doot ye heard of yon.  I
missed to tell ye in my tale."

Arthur had been listening closely and turning over his own thoughts.
Now he made a movement of impatience.

"Go to bed, Gawaine," he said.  "You must be tired.  Go to bed and
think about it."




_Chapter XXIX_

The next person to get home was Sir Lionel, one of Lancelot's cousins.
Lancelot had one brother called Ector, and two cousins called Lionel
and Bors.  Lionel was in a temper, rather like Gawaine, but the object
of his annoyance was not Galahad.  It was his own brother, Bors.

"Morals," said Lionel, "are a form of insanity.  Give me a moral man
who insists on doing the right thing all the time, and I will show you
a tangle which an angel couldn't get out of."

The King and Queen were sitting side by side as usual, to hear the
traveller's story.  They had formed a habit of carrying the
refreshments into the Great Hall with their own hands, as soon as any
knight got back, so that they could hear the news while he ate.  The
light fell on the table between them--from a high stained window--so
that their hands moved among plates and glasses which were rubies,
emeralds or pools of flame.  They were in a magic world of gems, a
glade under trees whose leaves were jewels.

"Has Bors been going in for morals?"

"Bors always did," said Lionel, "curse him.  Morals seem to run in my
family.  Lancelot is bad enough to begin with, but Bors beats him to a
frazzle.  Did you know that Bors has only once committed the sexual
act?"

"Really."

"Yes, really.  And, so far as this Quest for the Holy Grail is
concerned, he seems to have been doing a sort of advanced course in
Catholic dogma."

"Do you mean he is studying?"

Lionel relented a little.  He was fond of his brother in his heart, but
he had been through an experience which had embittered their relations.
Now that he could talk about it, and had had time to think it over, he
was beginning to see the other side of the quarrel.

"No," he said.  "You mustn't take me seriously.  Bors is a dear fellow
and, if ever there is to be a saint in our family, it will be him.  He
isn't bright in the head, and he is a bit of a prig, but his guesses
are sometimes pure gold.  I believe God has been testing him, during
this quest, and I'm not sure that he has not come out trumps.  I tried
to kill him."

"You had better begin your story at the beginning," said Arthur, "or we
shan't understand how it goes along."

"My story is nothing.  I have been footling about like Gawaine, being
called a murderer by a few hermits.  I'll tell you the story of Bors,
because I come into it.

"God," began Lionel, "has been making a trial of Bors, I suppose.  It
is as if he was going to be priested, and they wanted to be sure if he
was orthodox.  Do you know, I think that where Gawaine and myself and
Ector and all the rest of us went off the right line, was when we
didn't go to confession at the beginning?  Bors went, the first day,
and he took a penance too.  He promised to eat nothing but bread and
water, and to wear a Garment, and to sleep on the floor.  Of course he
was not going to have anything to do with the ladies--but then, he only
once had.  That's his trouble.  Well, the first thing that happened
after putting his life in order was that he began having visions.  He
saw the pelican in her piety, and a swan and a raven and some rotten
wood and some flowers.  It all had to do with his theology, and he did
explain it to me, but I can't remember.  The next thing which happened
was that a lady begged him to rescue her from a knight called Sir
Pridam.  He rescued the lady easily enough, and had an opportunity to
kill Sir Pridam.  Mark this.  He told me the story after our battle,
and he insisted that it was his first trial.  He said that he felt like
a show jumper, being put over bigger leaps each time, and he was afraid
that if he ever bungled a leap he would be sent back to the stable.  If
he had killed Sir Pridam he would have been finished.  They would have
put him out to grass again, just as they did with Gawaine and the rest
of us.  He said that nobody told him these things--the leaps suddenly
appeared in front of him, and it was as if there were somebody
watching--somebody who would not help or hint, but who just watched to
see if he would get over.  Well, he didn't kill Pridam.  He only
squealed at him to give in and hit his face with the flat of the sword
until he yielded.  And that jump was safely done.  Do you think there
can have been something against killing people in this quest, King?
You know, some sort of supernatural No?"

"I think you are a wise man, Lionel," said the King, "even if you did
try to kill your brother.  Go on with the story."

"Well, the next trial was directly about me.  It was the reason why I
tried to kill him.  I'm sorry about it now.  I have only just realized
I'm sorry.  At the time I didn't understand."

"What was the second trial?"

"Bors and I have always been fond of each other, as you know.  This
tiff is nothing.  We have always loved each other in our way, and Bors
was riding through the forest, when he came face to face with two
things.  One was me, bound naked on a hackney, with two knights riding
on either side, and flogging me with thorns.  The other was a virgin,
riding more than a pace, with a knight galloping after her, to have her
maidenhead.  The two convoys were going in opposite directions, and
Bors was alone.

"Come to think of it," remarked Sir Lionel ruefully, "I am unlucky
about getting flogged with thorns.  I got it from Sir Turquine once
before."

"Which party did Bors choose?"

"Bors decided to rescue the maiden.  When I eventually asked him what
the devil he meant by deserting his own brother, at the time of our
battle later on, he explained that he had thought I was inclined to be
a dirty dog--though fond of me--while the maiden was a maiden after
all.  So he thought his duty was toward the better party.  That was why
I tried to kill him.

"But now," added Lionel, "I can see his point.  I can see it was his
second trial, and a difficult decision it must have been to make."

"Poor Bors.  I hope he was not too much of a prig about it?"

"He was humble.  These trials just used to loom up in front of the old
gossip, and he would make a wild guess, generally thinking that he had
guessed wrong--and in the end he would come out bewildered, and find
that he had guessed right.  He sweated along, doing the best he could."

"What was the third trial?"

"They got worse as they went.  In the third trial a man came to him
dressed as a priest, and told him that there was a lady in a castle
nearby who was doomed to death unless Bors made love to her.  This
supposed priest pointed out that he had already sacrificed the life of
his own brother--that was me--by wrongly choosing to help the maiden,
and that if he did not sin with the new lady now, he would have a
second life on his conscience.  I ought to have mentioned that the two
knights left me for dead, and Bors found me apparently dead, and he had
taken my body to an abbey for burial.  Of course, I recovered later.

"Well, the lady appeared in the castle--as stated by the feigned
priest--and she confirmed the story.  She said that there was a magic
which would make her die for love, unless my brother was good to her.
Bors now realized that he must either commit mortal sin and save the
lady, or refuse to commit it and let her die.  He told me afterwards
that he remembered some bits out of the penny catechism, and a sermon
which was once given when there was a mission at Camelot.  He decided
that he was not responsible for the lady's actions, while he was
responsible for his own.  So he refused the lady."

Guenever giggled.

"That was not the end of it.  The lady was dazzlingly beautiful, and
she climbed to the highest keep of her castle, with twelve lovely
gentlewomen, and she said that if Bors would not stop being so pure,
they would all jump off together.  She said she would force them to do
so.  She said that he only had to have one night with her--and why need
it not be fun?--for the gentlewomen to be saved.  All twelve of them
shouted out to Bors, and begged him for mercy, and wept for dole.

"I can tell you my brother was in a quandary.  The poor things were so
frightened and so pretty, and he only had to stop being obstinate to
save their lives."

"What did he do?"

"He let them jump."

"Shame!" cried the Queen.

"Oh, they were only a collection of fiends, of course.  The whole tower
turned up-so-down and vanished immediately, and it turned out that they
had been fiends all the time, including the priest."

"I suppose the moral is," said Arthur, "that you must not commit mortal
sin, even if twelve lives depend upon it.  Dogmatically speaking, I
believe that is sound."

"I don't know what the dogma is, but I know it nearly turned my
brother's hair grey."

"And a good right it had to.  What was the fourth trial, if there was
one?"

"The fourth one was me, and it was the last hurdle.  I revived at the
abbey where he had left me to be buried, and, when I was well enough, I
rode to seek him out.  I am sorry about it now--by the way, I shall
have to ask your pardon for some of the things I did--but, when you
come to think of it, it does seem a bit steep to be left by your own
brother to be beaten to death.  What with taking one's meals off the
mantelpiece, and not understanding at the time about the things which
were happening to Bors, and knowing that, just before I lost
consciousness, I had seen him leave me to my fate--well, I admit that I
was in a bitter frame of mind.  In fact, I was murderous.

"I found Bors at a chapel in the forest, and I told him at once that I
was going to kill him.  I said: 'I shall do to thee as a felon or a
traitor, for ye be the untruest knight that ever came out of so worthy
an house.'  Bors refused to fight.  I said: 'If you don't fight, I
shall kill you as you stand.'  Bors said that he couldn't fight his own
brother, of all people.  He said that he was not even allowed to kill
ordinary chaps on the Grail Quest, so how could he kill his brother?  I
said: 'I do not care what you are allowed to do, or not allowed to do.
If you like to defend yourself, I shall fight you: if not, I shall kill
you anyway.'  I was furious.  Bors just knelt down and asked for mercy.

"I can see now," he went on, "that it was right enough for Bors to do
as he did.  He was after the Grail, he was in the anti-homicide
squadron, and I was his brother.  Also it was brave of him.  But I
couldn't see it at the time.  I simply thought he was being obstinate,
and I knocked him feet-upwards as he kneeled.  Then I drew my sword to
cut off his head."

Lionel sat in silence for a minute, looking at the plate in front of
him, where there was a bright pool of ruby from the stained glass,
shaped like an egg.

"You know," he said, "it's all very well to take up with morals and
dogmas, so long as there is only yourself in it: but what are you to do
when other people join the muddle?  I suppose it was clear enough for
Bors to kneel down and let me kill him, but the next thing was that a
hermit came rushing out of the chapel and threw himself across my
brother's body.  He said he was going to prevent me at all costs from
becoming a fratricide.  I killed the hermit."

"Killed a defenceless man?"

"I am desperately sorry, King, but it is true.  Don't forget that I was
in a frightful rage, and the fellow prevented me from getting at Bors,
and I am a plain man of my hands.  They were baffling me with a sort of
moral weapon, and I used my own weapon against it.  I felt that Bors
was standing up to me in an unfair way, and that this hermit was
helping him.  I felt he was setting his will against mine.  If he
wanted to save the hermit, let him stop being obstinate and get up and
fight.  If you see what I mean, I felt that the hermit was his
business, not mine.

"I'm afraid that I was simply in a passion," admitted Lionel after a
bit.  "You know how you get.  I wanted to fight, and I was going to
have it.  I had said I would kill him if not, and I was going to kill
him.  You know how it is.  It is like the sulks."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"I had better finish my story," he said awkwardly.

"Go on."

"Well, Bors let me kill the hermit.  He just lay on the ground and
asked for love.  I was more maddened than ever, by this time, partly by
shame, and I raised my sword to cut off my brother's head there and
then--when Sir Golgrevance of Gore turned up.  He put himself between
us and said fie on me for trying to shed my father's blood.  That was
the last straw, with all the hermit's blood round my feet, so I just
went for Colgrevance instead.  And in a few minutes I had him on the
run."

"What did Bors do?"

"Poor Bors.  What his feelings were at that moment, I don't like to
think.  There he was at his fence again, you see, and he only had to
refuse it to save another life.  He had wasted the hermit's, apparently
through obstinacy, and now I was going to kill the innocent
Golgrevance, who had tried to help him.  Colgrevance kept sobbing out
to him, too, saying: 'Get up and help, man.  Why are you letting me be
killed for you?'"

"Passive resistance," said Arthur with intense interest.  "It is a new
weapon.  But it seems difficult to use.  Go on, please."

"Well, I killed Colgrevance in fair fight.  I am sorry, but I did.
Then I came back to Bors, to finish the matter.  He held his shield
over his head, but would not struggle."

"What happened?"

"God came," said the boy solemnly.  "He came between us, and dazzled
us, and made our shields burn."

There was a long pause while Arthur digested the first tidings of
certain things which he had hoped or feared.

"You see," said Lionel, "Bors prayed."

"And God came?"

"I don't know exactly what happened, but the sun was flaming on our
shields.  Something happened.  We suddenly stopped fighting, and began
to laugh.  I saw that Bors was an idiot, and he kissed me and we made
it up.  Then he told me his story, as I have told you, and sailed away
in a magic ship, covered in white samite.  Bors will find the Grail, if
anybody does find it, and that is the end of my story."

They sat silent, finding it difficult to talk about spiritual matters,
until finally Sir Lionel spoke for the last time.

"It is all very well for Bors," he said complainingly, "but what about
the hermit?  What about Sir Colgrevance?  Why didn't God save them?"

"Dogmas are difficult things," said Arthur.

Guenever said: "We don't know what their past history was.  The killing
didn't do any harm to their souls.  Perhaps it even helped their souls,
to die like that.  Perhaps God gave them this good death because it was
the best thing for them."




_Chapter XXX_

The third important arrival was Sir Aglovale, who came rather late in
the afternoon, when the rubies had left the table and climbed the wall.
He was a lad of less than twenty summers, with a fine noble face and a
sense of humour.  He was still in mourning for his Father, King
Pellinore--and he signified this by wearing a black sash on his shield
arm.  At least, they thought it was for King Pellinore.  As a matter of
fact, his mother had died as well since they last saw him.  He was also
bringing news of the death of a sister--for nearly all of Pellinore's
family had been unfortunate.

"Is Gawaine here?" asked Aglovale.  "Where are Mordred and Agravaine?"

He glanced about him, as if he might actually find them in the Hall.
Above his head, the coloured beam of light fell upon a small and
primitive piece of tapestry--a picture of some knights in chain mail,
with nose guards on their painted helmets, chasing a boar.

Arthur said: "Aglovale, they are here.  My happiness is in your hands."

"I see."

"Are you going to kill them?"

"I came to kill Gawaine first.  It seems queer, after looking for the
Holy Grail."

"Aglovale, you have every right to try for revenge against the Orkneys,
and I will not stop you if you do try.  But I want you to know what you
are doing.  Your father killed their father and your brother slept with
their mother.  No, don't explain about it--let me remind you of the
facts.  Then the Orkneys killed your father and brother.  Now you are
going to kill some of the Orkneys, and Gawaine's sons will kill your
sons, and so we shall go on.  That is the law of the North.

"But, Aglovale, I am trying to make a new law in Britain, by which
people don't have to go on shedding young blood for ever.  Have you
thought that it may be uphill work for me?  There is a saying that two
wrongs don't make a right, and I am fond of this saying.  Don't apply
it to yourself--apply it to me.  I could have punished the Orkneys for
murdering your brother.  I could have cut their heads off.  Would you
have liked me to do that?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps I ought to have."

Arthur looked at his hands, as he often did when he was in trouble.

Then he said: "It is a pity you never had the opportunity of seeing the
Orkneys at home.  They didn't have a happy family life like yours."

Aglovale said: "Do you think my family life is very happy now?  Do you
know that my mother died a few months ago?  Father used to call her
Piggy."

"Aglovale, I am sorry.  We had not heard."

"People used to laugh at my father, King.  I know he was not a
formidable character.  But he must have made a fairly good husband,
mustn't he, for my mother to die of loneliness because he had gone?
Mother was not an introspective person, King, but she faded away after
the Orkneys had killed father and Lamorak.  Now she is in the same
grave."

"You must do what you think right, Aglovale.  I know you are a true
Pellinore, and will do that.  I won't ask any favours for myself.  But
will you let me mention three things?  The first is that your father
was the first knight I ever fell in love with: yet I didn't punish
Gawaine.  The second is that all the Orkneys adored their mother.  She
made them love her too much, but she only loved herself.  And the third
thing--oh, Aglovale, listen to this one--is that a king can only work
with his best tools."

"I'm afraid I don't follow the third point."

"Do you think," asked Arthur, "that feuds are good things?  Are they
making for happiness in your two families?"

"Not exactly."

"If I want to stop the feud law, do you think it would be any good my
appealing to Gawaine, and to people like him?"

"I see."

"What good would it have done if I had executed all the Orkney family?
We should only have had three knights less to work with.  And their
lives have been unhappy, Aglovale.  So, you see, my hope is with you."

"I must think it over."

"Do.  Don't decide anything quickly.  Don't consider me.  Just do what
you think right, because you are a Pellinore--and then I know all will
turn out for the best.  Now tell me about your Grail adventures, and
forget about the Orkneys for one evening."

Aglovale heaved a sigh, and said: "So far as I am concerned, there have
not been any Grail adventures.  But it has cost me a sister.  Perhaps a
brother as well."

"Is your sister dead?  My poor boy, I thought she was safe in a covent."

"They have found her dead in a sort of boat."

"Dead in a boat!"

"Yes, a magic boat.  She had a long letter in her hands, all about the
Grail Quest and about my brother Percy."

"Are we hurting you by asking questions?"

"No.  I like to talk about it.  I still have Dornar left, and it seems
that Percy has been distinguishing himself."

"What has Sir Percivale been doing?"

"Perhaps I had better tell you what the letter said, from the start.

"As you know," began Sir Aglovale, "Percy was the one in our family who
took after Daddy most.  He was gentle and humble, and a bit vague.  He
was shy too.  When he met Bors in this magic boat of theirs, he was
abashed of him, it says in the letter.  He was a maiden knight, like
Galahad, you see.  I used often to think, when I saw them together,
that he and Daddy made a good pair.  They were both fond of animals,
for one thing, and they knew how to get on with them.  There was
Daddy's Questing Beast, and now Percy seems to have been befriending
lions mainly, since he went away.  Also Percy was benevolent and
simple.  One day, when they were trying to pull a blessed sword out of
a scabbard--I mean the three of them in the holy boat--Percy was given
the first pull.  He did not succeed, of course--all that sort of thing
was reserved for Galahad--but when he had failed he just looked round
proudly and said: 'By my faith, now I have failed!'  However, I am
getting ahead of my story.

"It says in the letter that the first adventure Percy had, after
leaving Vagon, was to ride off with Sir Lancelot until they met Sir
Galahad.  They jousted with him, and Galahad gave them both a fall.
Then Percy left Lancelot, and went to a hermitage, where he was
confessed.  The hermit advised him to follow Galahad to Goothe or
Carbonek, and never to fight him.  As a matter of fact, Percy had been
seized by a sort of enthusiastic hero worship for Galahad, so the
advice suited him.  He rode on to Carbonek, where he heard the abbey
clock smite as he was pricking through the forest--and it was there
that he came across King Evelake, who was about four hundred years old.
I had better leave out about Evelake, for I don't quite understand it.
I think the old man couldn't die until the Holy Grail had been found,
or something like that.  But King Pelles is mixed up with it too, and
all that part of the letter is a bit difficult to follow.  Anyway,
Percy had a fight with eight knights and twenty men-at-arms, who set on
him at Carbonek, and he was rescued in the nick of time by Galahad
himself.  Unfortunately his horse was killed, and Galahad rode away
again without even passing the time of day.

"You know," said Lionel, pausing, "it may be all very well to be holy
and invincible, and I don't hold it against Galahad for being a virgin,
but don't you think that people might be a little human?  I don't want
to be catty, but that young man makes my hair go the wrong way.  Why
couldn't he say Good-morning or something, instead of rescuing a fellow
and then riding away in silence with that white nose of his in the air?"

Arthur made no comment, and the young man resumed his story.

"Percy was trying to join up with Galahad, according to instructions,
and Galahad had ridden off, so the poor old fellow just went running
after him shouting out, 'I say!' He had some dreadful troubles trying
to borrow horses from people, and finally ended up on a groom's
hackney, cantering after Galahad as fast as it could go.  But a knight
turned up and knocked him off his hackney--I'm afraid our family was
never exactly in the heroic style--and there he was on foot again, with
Galahad no nearer.  Well, a lady appeared at this point--they found out
afterwards that she was a fairy, and not a very nice one at that--and
asked him fiercely what he was trying to do.  Percy said: 'I do neither
good nor great ill, what?'  So the lady lent him a black horse which
turned out to be a fiend, and it vanished in dramatic circumstances
when Percy luckily crossed himself that evening.  He was in a sort of
desert by that time, where he proceeded to make friends with a lion by
rescuing it from a serpent.  Percy was always keen on our Dumb Friends,
as I said.

"The next thing that happened was that a perfectly delicious
gentlewoman turned up, with full camping equipment, and invited Percy
to dinner.  He was hungry--what with the desert and so forth--and he
had never been accustomed to drinking wine, so he had a terrific party.
I'm afraid he got a bit huffed, and the upshot was that he laughed too
much and got excited, and asked the lady--well, you know.  The lady was
agreeable, and it was just going to come off nicely, when Percy luckily
noticed the cross on the pommel of his sword, which was lying on the
ground.  He blessed himself again, and the lady's pavilion turned
up-so-down, and off she went in a ship, roaring and yelling, and the
water burned after her.

"Percy was so ashamed of himself, and had such a headache next morning,
that he stuck his sword into his own thigh as a punishment.  After
that, the holy boat turned up, with Bors inside it, and the two of them
sailed away together, wherever it would take them."

Guenever said: "If that holy boat was intended to convey people to the
Grail, I can perfectly well understand how Bors was in it.  We know
that he had been through some dreadful tests.  But why Sir Percivale?
I don't mean to be rude, Sir Aglovale, but your brother does not seem
to have _done_ much."

"He had preserved his integrity," said Arthur.  "He was as clean as
Bors--indeed, he was cleaner.  He was perfectly innocent.  God says
something about suffering little children to come unto Him."

"But such a muddle!"

Arthur was annoyed.

"If God is supposed to be merciful," he retorted, "I don't see why He
shouldn't allow people to stumble into heaven, just as well as climb
there.  Go on with your letter, Sir Aglovale."

"It is at this point that my sister comes into it.  She was a nun, you
know, and, when they first cut off her hair, there was a vision to say
that it ought to be kept in a box.  My sister was a learned woman, who
had a vocation to pursue religious studies.  Just about the time when
Percy and Bors entered the boat, a new vision came to the convent which
told her to do certain things.  The first was to look for Sir Galahad.

"Galahad was spending a night in a hermitage near Carbonek, after
knocking out Sir Gawaine, when my sister found him.  She made him get
up and arm himself, and together they rode off to the Collibe Sea,
where, beyond a strong castle, they found the blessed barge with Bors
and Percy waiting.  They all sailed away together, until they came to a
swallow of the sea, between two high rocks--and there a second barge
was waiting.  There was some reticence about entering the new boat,
because it had a scroll on it which warned people off unless they were
in perfect faith--but Galahad stepped aboard as usual, with his
insufferable self-confidence.  They followed him and found a rich bed
with a crown of silk on it and a part-drawn sword.  It was King David's
sword.  There were also three magic spindles, made out of the Eden
tree, and two inferior swords for Percy and Bors.  Naturally the main
sword was for Galahad.  The pommel was of marvellous stone, the scales
of the haft were of the ribs of two beasts called Calidone and Ertanax,
the scabbard was of serpent's skin, and one side of the sword was as
red as blood.  But the girdle was only plain hemp.

"My sister set to work with the spindles, and made a new girdle out of
her own hair, which she had brought in the box according to
instructions.  She explained to them about the history of the sword,
which she knew from her studies, and how the spindles had come to be
made of wood which was coloured all through the grain, and finally the
sword was put on Galahad.  She was a virgin, and she fixed it on a
virgin, with her own hair.  Then they returned to their first vessel
and sailed away toward Carlisle.

"On the way to Carlisle they rescued an old gentleman who was being
kept prisoner by some wicked men in his castle.  They killed a lot of
these men in the fight, and Bors and Percy were upset about it, but
Galahad said it was perfectly all right killing people who had not been
christened--and it turned out that these had not been.  So the old man
of the castle asked permission to die in Galahad's arms, and Galahad
condescendingly granted it.

"When they got to Carlisle, there was another castle which belonged to
a lady who had the measle.  The doctors told her that the only cure was
to bathe in a dish filled with blood from a clean virgin of royal
lineage.  Everybody who went that way was forced to be bled by the
people of the castle, and the description fitted my sister.  The three
knights fought all day to save her, but in the evening the reason for
the custom was explained to them, and my sister said: 'Better is one
harm than two.'  She consented to be bled, stopped the fighting, and
the next morning they did it.  She blessed the surgeons, arranged for
her body to be floated off in the holy boat with this letter in her
hand, and then she died under the operation."


Sir Aglovale came back to the King, as he was going up to bed after the
usual condolences and exclamations had been made.  The Hall was dark,
and the jewels of light had gone.

"By the way," he said shyly.  "Will you ask the Orkney faction to have
dinner with me tomorrow?"

Arthur looked at him closely through the looming twilight--then began
an enormous smile.  He kissed Aglovale, with a tear which ran into one
corner of his smile.  He said: "Now I have got a new Pellinore to love."




_Chapter XXXI_

Still there was no news of the great Dulac.  He had become a magical
name which gave warmth to all hearts, particularly women's, in whatever
place he was.  He had become a _maestro_ himself--was regarded as he
had once regarded Uncle Dap.  If you have learned to fly, or been
taught by a great musician or fencer, you have only to remember that
teacher, to know how the people of Camelot had come to think of
Lancelot.  They would have died for him--for his mastery.  And he was
lost.

The survivors trickled in--Palomides, now christened and bored to death
with the Questing Beast and aged by his long poetic rivalry with Sir
Tristram for the love of La Beale Isoud--Sir Grummore Grummursum, as
bald as an egg now, nearly eighty, afflicted by gout, but still bravely
questin'--Kay, keen-eyed and sarcastic--Sir Dinadan making jokes about
his own defeats, although he was so tired he could barely keep his lids
apart--even old Sir Ector of the Forest Sauvage, eighty-five years old
and tottering.

They brought with them broken arms and rumours.  One said that Galahad,
Bors, the other Ector and a nun had been present at a miraculous Mass.
It had been celebrated by a lamb, served by a man, a lion, an eagle,
and an ox.  After the Mass, the celebrant had passed out through a
stained-glass lamb in one of the church windows, without breaking the
glass, thus signifying the immaculate conception.  Another told how
pitilessly Galahad had dealt with a fiend in a tomb, how he had cooled
the well of lust, and how the castle of the leprous lady had finally
been tumbled down.

These people, with their rusty armour and hewn shields, had seen
Lancelot here and there.  They spoke of a harnessed ugly man, praying
at a wayside cross--of a worn face asleep in the moonlight on its
shield.  They spoke also of unbelievable things--of Lancelot unhorsed,
defeated, kneeling after he had been knocked down.

Arthur asked questions, sent messengers, remembered his captain in his
prayers.  Guenever, in a dangerous frame of mind, began walking on the
edge of a verbal precipice.  At any moment she might say or do
something which would be a compromise upon herself and upon her lover.
Mordred and Agravaine, who had been among the first to retire from the
Quest, watched and waited with bright eyes.  They were as motionless as
Lord Burleigh is said to have been at Queen Elizabeth's councils, or as
a sleek cat who faces the mousehole secretly--a presence, a
concentration.

The rumours began to be of Lancelot's death.  He had been killed by a
black knight at a ford--he had jousted with his own son, who had broken
his neck--he had gone mad again, after being beaten by his son, and was
riding overthwart and endlong--his armour had been stolen by a
mysterious knight, and he had been eaten by a beast--he had fought
against two hundred and fifty knights, been taken captive, and hanged
like a dog.  A strong faction believed and hinted that he had been
murdered, sleeping, by the Orkneys, and had been buried under a pile of
leaves.

The faint tail of knighthood straggled in by twos and threes, then one
at a time, then with intervals of days between the solitary riders.
The list of dead and missing, kept by Sir Bedivere, began to settle
down into a list of dead, as the missing either returned exhausted or
were confirmed dead by reliable report.  An obituary tinge began to be
present in the whispers about Lancelot.  He was loved by nearly
everybody, so that the speakers did not like to do more than whisper of
his death, for fear that if they spoke of it aloud they would make it
true.  But they whispered about his goodness and remarkable visage:
about such-and-such a blow which he had once given to so-and-so: about
the grace of his leg-glides.  A few obscure pages and kitchenmaids, who
remembered vividly a smile or a tip at Christmas, went to sleep with
damp pillows, although they knew that the great captain could not have
been expected even to remember their names.  Kay startled everybody by
declaring with a sniff that he himself had always been a mean
blackguard, and then went quickly out of the room blowing his nose.  In
all the court a tension grew, and a feeling of doom.

Lancelot came back out of a rainstorm, wet and small.  He was leading
an old barrel of a white mare, without a trot left in her.  The black
autumn clouds were behind them, and her hollow ribs stood out like
flake-white against their indigo.  A magic, a mind-reading, an
intuition must have taken place--for all the palace battlements and
turrets, and the drawbridge of the Great Gate, were thronged with
people waiting, and watching, and pointing in silence, before ever he
appeared.  When the tiny figure could be seen, threading wearily
through the far trees of the chase, a murmuration went up among the
people.  It was Lancelot in a scarlet gown beside the white.  He was
safe.  Everything was known about all his adventures, before anything
had been spoken.  Arthur ran about like a madman, telling everybody to
go in, to leave the battlements, to give the man a chance.  By the time
the figure arrived, there was nobody to hurt him.  Only, the Great Gate
stood open and Uncle Dap was there, bent and white-headed, to receive
his horse.  Hundreds of eyes, glancing from behind curtains, saw the
spent man hand the reins to his squire--saw him standing with bowed
head, which he had never raised--saw him turn and pace toward his own
apartment, and vanish in the darkness of the turret stair.


Two hours later Uncle Dap presented himself in the King's chamber.  He
had been undressing Lancelot and putting him to bed.  Under the scarlet
gown, he said, there had been a fair white garment--under that, a
horrible shirt of hair.  Sir Lancelot had sent him with a message.  He
was very tired, and begged the King's pardon.  He would wait on him
tomorrow.  Meanwhile, so that there should be no delay about the
important news, Uncle Dap was to tell the King that the Holy Grail had
been found.  Galahad, Percivale and Bors had found it, and with it, and
with the body of Percivale's sister, they had arrived at Sarras in
Babylon.  The Grail could not be brought to Camelot.  Bors would be
coming home eventually, but the others were never to return.




_Chapter XXXII_

Guenever had overdressed for the occasion.  She had put on a make-up
which she did not need, and put it on badly.  She was forty-two.

When Lancelot saw her waiting for him at the table, with Arthur beside
her, the heart-sack broke in his wame, and the love inside it ran about
his veins.  It was his old love for a girl of twenty, standing proudly
by her throne with the present of captives about her--but now the same
girl was standing in other surroundings, the surroundings of bad
make-up and loud silks, by which she was trying to defy the invincible
doom of human destiny.  He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent
youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth--the trick
of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones.  Her
stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching.  The girl was still
there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge.
She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished.  Under the
clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for
help.  The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here--what
have they done to me?  I will not submit.  Some part of her spirit knew
that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to
hold her lover with the eyes alone.  They said: Don't look at all this.
Look at me.  I am still here, in the eyes.  Look at me, here in the
prison, and help me out.  Another part said: I am not old, it is
illusion.  I am beautifully made-up.  See, I will perform the movements
of youth.  I will defy the enormous army of age.

Lancelot saw one soul alone, a condemned and innocent child, holding
her indefensible position with the contemptible arms of hair dye and
orange silk, with which she had--with what fears?--hoped to please him.
He saw

  The impassioned, pigmy fist
  Clenched cloudward and defiant,
  The pride that would prevail, the doomed protagonist
  Grappling the ghostly giant.


Arthur said: "Are you rested now?  How are you feeling?"

"We are so glad to see you," said Guenever, "so glad to have you back."

They, on their side, saw a man of serenity--the kind of sage that
Kipling described in Kim.  They saw their new Lancelot as a silence and
perception.  He had come from the height of his spirit.

Lancelot said: "I'm quite rested now, thank you.  I expect you want to
know about the Grail."

The King said: "It has been selfish of me, I'm afraid.  I have kept
everybody out.  We will have it written down and put in almeries at
Salisbury.  But we did want to hear it from you first, Lance, without
interruptions."

"Are you sure you won't be too tired to tell?"

Lancelot smiled and took their hands.

"There isn't much to tell," he said.  "After all, I didn't find the
Grail myself."

"Sit down and break your fast.  You can talk when you have eaten.  You
are much thinner."

"Would you like a glass of hippocras, or some perry?"

"I am not drinking at present," he said, "thank you."

While he was eating, the King and Queen sat on either side and watched.
Before he knew that he wanted the salt--just as his fingers were
beginning to reach for it--they handed it to him.  He laughed at their
serious faces, which made him feel uncomfortable, and pretended to
asperge Arthur with his cup of water to make them smile.

"Do you want a relic?" he asked.  "You could have my boots if you like.
They are quite worn out."

"Lancelot, it is not a thing to joke about.  I believe you have seen
the Holy Grail yourself."

"Even if I have seen it, I don't need to be handed the salt."

But they still looked at him.

Lancelot said: "Please understand.  It is Galahad and the others who
were allowed the Grail.  I was not allowed it.  So it will be wrong and
you will hurt me, if you make a fuss about it.  How many of the knights
got back?"

"Half," said Arthur.  "We have heard their stories."

"I expect you know more about it than I do."

"We only know that the homicides and those who didn't confess were
turned back; and you say that Galahad, Bors, and Percivale were
allowed.  I am told that Galahad and Percivale were virgins; and Bors,
although he was not quite a virgin, turned out to be a first-class
theologian.  I suppose Bors passed for his dogma, and Percivale for his
innocence.  I know hardly anything about Galahad, except that everybody
dislikes him."

"Dislikes him?"

"They complain about his being inhuman."

Lancelot considered his cup.

"He is inhuman," he said at last.  "But why should he be human?  Are
angels supposed to be human?"

"I don't quite follow."

"Do you think that if the Archangel Michael were to come here this
minute, he would say: 'What charming weather we are having today!
Won't you have a glass of whisky?'"

"I suppose not."

"Arthur, you mustn't feel that I am rude when I say this.  You must
remember that I have been away in strange and desert places, sometimes
quite alone, sometimes in a boat with nobody but God and the whistling
sea.  Do you know, since I have been back with people, I have felt I
was going mad?  Not from the sea, but from the people.  All my gains
are slipping away, with the people round me.  A lot of the things which
you and Jenny say, even, seem to me to be needless: strange noises:
empty.  You know what I mean.  'How are you?'--'Do sit down.'--'What
nice weather we are having!'  What does it matter?  People talk far too
much.  Where I have been, and where Galahad is, it is a waste of time
to have 'manners.'  Manners are only needed between people, to keep
their empty affairs in working order.  Manners makyth man, you know,
not God.  So you can understand how Galahad may have seemed inhuman,
and mannerless, and so on, to the people who were buzzing and clacking
about him.  He was far away in his spirit, living on desert islands, in
silence, with eternity."

"I see."

"Please don't think me rude to say these things.  I am trying to
explain a feeling.  If you had ever been to Patrick's Purgatory, you
would know what I mean.  People seem ridiculous when you come out."

"I see exactly.  I understand about Galahad too."

"He was a lovely person really.  I spent a long time in a boat with
him, and I know.  But this did not mean that we always had to be
offering each other the best seat in the boat."

"It was my worldly knights who disliked him most.  I see.  However, we
are waiting to hear your story, Lance, not Galahad's."

"Yes, Lance; tell us how you got on, and leave out about the angels."

"As I was never allowed to meet any angels," said Sir Lancelot with a
smile, "it's the best thing I can do."

"Go on."

"When I left Vagon," began the commander-in-chief, "I had a shrewd idea
that the best place to search would be the castle of King Pelles----"

He stopped, for Guenever had made a sudden move.

"I didn't go to the castle," he said gently, "because I had an
accident.  Something happened to me which was outside my own plans, and
after that I went where I was taken."

"What was the accident?"

"It was not an accident really.  It was the first stroke of a
correction which I have had, and for which I am thankful.  Do you know,
I shall be talking about God a great deal, and this is a word which
offends unholy people just as badly as words like 'damn' and so on
offend the holy ones.  What shall we have to do about it?"

"Just assume that we are the holy ones," said the King, "and go on
about your accident."

"I was riding with Sir Percivale, when we came across my son.  He
unhorsed me at the first tilt--my son did."

"A surprise attack," said Arthur quickly.

"It was a fair tilt."

"Naturally you would not want to beat your son."

"I did want to beat him."

Guenever said: "Everybody has to be unlucky sometimes."

"I rode at Galahad with all the skill I could manage, and he gave me
the finest fall I ever had.

"Indeed," added Lancelot, with one of his gaping grins, "I might say
that he gave me one of the only falls I ever had.  The first thing I
can remember feeling, when I was lying on the ground, was pure
astonishment.  It was only later that it turned to something else."

"What did you do?"

"I was lying on the ground, and Galahad was standing his horse beside
me without saying a word, when a woman came up who was a recluse in a
hermitage where we had been fighting.  She made a curtsy and said: 'God
be with thee, best knight of the world'."

Lancelot looked on the table, and moved his hand in a gesture to stroke
the cloth.  Then he cleared his throat and said: "I looked up, to see
who was talking to me."

The King and Queen waited.

Lancelot cleared his throat again: "I am trying to tell you about my
spirit, if you see what I mean, not about my adventures.  So I can't be
modest about it.  I am a bad man, I know, but I was always good with
arms.  It was a consolation to me in my badness, sometimes, to
think--to know that I was the best knight of the world."

"And so?"

"Well, the lady was not talking to me."

They digested the position in silence, watching a flutter which had
developed on the right side of his mouth.

"Galahad?"

"Yes," said Sir Lancelot.  "The lady was looking past me at my son
Galahad, and he cantered away as soon as she had spoken.  Soon
afterwards the lady went away as well."

"What a disgusting thing to say!" exclaimed the King.  "What a dirty,
deliberate outrage!  She ought to have been whipped."

"It was true."

"But to come and say it in front of you on purpose!" cried Guenever.
"Besides, after a single fall----"

"She said what God told her to say.  You see, she was a holy woman.
But I couldn't understand it at the time----

"I am much holier now," he added apologetically, "but at the time I
couldn't bear it.  I felt as if my prop had been taken from me, and I
knew that she only said the simple truth.  I felt as if she had broken
the last piece of my heart.  So I rode away from Percivale to be by
myself, like an animal, with my hurt.  Percivale suggested something to
do, but I only said: 'Do as ye list.'  I rode away with heavy cheer,
overthwart and endlong, to find a place where I could split my heart
alone.  I rode to a chapel eventually, feeling as if I might be going
mad again.  You see, Arthur, I had a lot of troubles on my mind which
being a famous fighter seemed to make up for, a little, and when that
was gone it felt as if there was nothing left to me."

"There was everything left.  You are still the finest fighter in the
world."

"The funny thing was that the chapel had no door.  I don't know whether
it was my sins, or my resentment at being broken, but I couldn't get
in.  I slept on my shield outside, and there was a dream of a knight
who came and took away my helm and my sword and my horse.  I tried to
wake up, but I couldn't.  All my knightly things were being taken away
from me, but I could not wake, because my heart was full of bitter
thoughts.  A voice said that I was never more to have worship--but I
only rebelled against the voice, and so, when I woke, the things were
gone.

"Arthur, if I don't make you understand about that night, you will
never understand the rest.  I had spent all my childhood, when I might
have been chasing butterflies, learning to be your best knight.
Afterwards I was wicked, but I had one thing.  I used to feel so proud,
inside myself, because I knew that I was supposed to be top of the
averages.  It was a base feeling, I know.  But I had nothing else to be
proud of.  First my Word and my miracles had gone, and now, on the
night I am telling you about, this was gone too.  When I woke up and
found that my arms were taken, I walked about in agony.  It was
disgusting, but I cried and cursed.  That was the time when they began
to break me."

"My poor Lance."

"It was the best thing that ever happened.  In the morning, do you
know, I heard the little fowls singing--and that cheered me up.  Funny
to be comforted by a lot of birds.  I never had time for bird's-nesting
when I was small.  You would have known what kind of birds they were,
Arthur--but I couldn't tell.  There was one very small one, which
cocked its tail in the air and looked at me.  It was about as big as
the rowel of a spur."

"Perhaps it was a wren."

"Well, then, it was a wren.  Will you show me one tomorrow?  The thing
which these birds made me see, because my black heart could not see it
alone, was that if I was to be punished, it was because of my own
nature.  What happened to the birds was according to the nature of
birds.  They made me see that the world was beautiful if you were
beautiful, and that you couldn't get unless you gave.  And you had to
give without wanting to get.  So I accepted that beating from Galahad,
and the taking away of my armour; and in a blessed moment, I went to
find a confessor so that I would not be wicked any more."

"All the knights," said Arthur, "who got to the Grail had the sense to
be confessed first."

"I had always made bad confessions before that.  I have lived nearly
all my life in mortal sin.  But this time I confessed everything."

"Everything?" asked the Queen.

"Everything.  You see, Arthur, I have had a sin on my conscience all my
life, which I thought I could not tell to people, because----"

"There is no need to tell it to us," said the Queen, "if it hurts you.
After all, we are not your confessors.  It was enough to tell the
priest."

"Leave her in peace," agreed the King.  "At any rate she bore a fine
son, who seems to have achieved the Grail."

He was alluding to Elaine.

Lancelot looked with sudden misery from one to the other, and clenched
his fists.  All three stopped breathing.

"I confessed, then," he said eventually, and they breathed again--but
his voice was leaden.  "I was given a penance."  He paused, still
doubtful, half recognizing the moment as a cross-road of his life.  Now
was the time, they all knew, if there ever was to be a time, when he
ought to have had it out with his friend and king--yet Guenever was
thwarting him.  It was her secret too.

"The penance was to wear the hair shirt of a certain dead religious
that we knew of," he went on at last, defeated.  "I was to take no meat
or wine, and to hear Mass daily.  So I left the priest's house after
three days, and rode back to a cross near the place where I had lost my
arms.  The priest had loaned me some to go on with.  Well, I slept at
the cross that night, and had another dream--and in the morning, the
knight who had stolen my armour came back.  I jousted with him and
retrieved the armour.  Wasn't that strange?"

"I suppose you were in a state of grace now, after your good
confession, so you could be trusted with your might."

"That was what I thought, but you will see about it presently.  I
thought, now that I had got my sin off my chest, I would be allowed to
be the best knight in the world once more.  I rode away very happy,
trying to sing a bit, until I came to a fair plain with a castle and
pavilions and everything--and there was a tournament of five hundred
knights in black and white.  The white knights were winning, so I
thought I would join with the black.  I thought I would do a great
exploit of rescue for the weaker party, now that I was forgiven."  He
stopped, and closed his eyes.  "But the white knights," he added,
opening them, "took me prisoner quite soon."

"You mean you were beaten again?"

"I was beaten and disgraced.  I thought I was more sinful than ever.
When they had set me loose, I rode and cursed just as I had done on the
first evening, and, when the night came, I lay down under an apple tree
and actually cried myself to sleep."

"But this is heresy," exclaimed the Queen, who was a good theologian,
like most women.  "If you were clean confessed, and had done penance
and been absolved----"

"I had done penance for one sin," said Lancelot.  "But I had forgotten
about another one.  In the night I had a new dream, of an old man who
came to me and said: 'Ah, Lancelot of evil faith and poor belief, why
is thy will turned so lightly toward thy deadly sin?'  Jenny, I have
all my life been in another sin, the worst of all.  It was pride that
made me try to be the best knight in the world.  Pride made me show off
and help the weaker party of the tournament.  You could call it
vainglory.  Just because I had confessed about--about the woman, that
did not make me into a good man."

"So you were beaten."

"Yes, I was beaten.  And next morning I went to another hermit to be
confessed again.  This time I made a thorough job of it.  I was told
that it was not enough, in the Quest for the Grail, to be continent and
to refrain from killing people.  All boasting and pride of the world
had to be left behind, for God did not like such deeds in his Quest.  I
had to renounce all earthly glory.  And I did renounce it, and was
absolved."

"What happened next?"

"I rode to the water of Mortoise, where a black knight came to joust
with me.  He knocked me down as well."

"A third defeat!"

Guenever cried: "But if you really were absolved this time!"

Lancelot put his hand over hers, and smiled.

"If a boy steals sweets," he said, "and his parents punish him, he may
be very sorry and good afterwards.  But that doesn't entitle him to
steal more sweets, does it?  Nor does it mean that he must be given
sweets.  God was not punishing me by letting the black knight knock me
down--he was only withholding the special gift of victory which it had
always been within his power to bestow."

"But, my poor Lance, to have given up your glory and not to get
anything back!  When you were a sinful man you were always victorious,
so why should you always be beaten when you were heavenly?  And why are
you always hurt by the things you love?  What did you do?"

"I knelt down in the water of Mortoise, Jenny, where he had knocked
me--and I thanked God for the adventure."




_Chapter XXXIII_

Arthur could not stand much more of this.

"It is disgusting," he exclaimed indignantly.  "I don't like to listen
to it.  Why should a good, kind, dear person be tortured like that?  It
makes me feel ashamed inside, even to hear of it.  What----"

"Hush," said Sir Lancelot.  "I am very glad that I gave up love and
glory.  And, what is more, I was practically forced to do it.  God did
not take such pains for Gawaine or Lionel, did he?"

"Bah!" said King Arthur, in the tone which Gawaine had used before him.

Lancelot laughed.

"Well," he said, "that's a convincing remark.  But perhaps you had
better hear the end of the story.

"I lay down by the water of Mortoise that evening, and a dream came
which told me to go in a ship.  The ship was there when I woke up, sure
enough; and when I went inside it there was the most lovely smell and
feeling and food to eat and--well, whatever, you can think of.  I was
'fulfilled with all things that I thought on or desired'.  I know I
can't explain to you about the ship at this hour, because, for one
thing, it is fading from me now that I am with people.  But you mustn't
think just of incense in the ship, or precious cloths on it.  There
were these, but they were not the loveliness.  You must think of a tar
smell too, and the colours of the sea.  Sometimes it was quite green,
like thick glass, and you could see the bottom.  Sometimes it was all
in big, slow terraces, and the water fowl who were flying along the top
vanished in the hollows.  When it was stormy, the huge fangs of the
breakers gnawed at the rocky islands.  They made white fangs on the
cliffs, not as they burst up, but as the water streamed down.  At
night, when it was calm, you could see the stars reflected on the wet
sands.  There were two stars quite close together.  The sands were all
ribbed, like the roof of your mouth.  And there was the smell of
seaweed, the noise of the lonely wind.  There were islands with little
birds on them like rabbits, but their noses were rainbows.  The winter
was the best thing, because then there were the geese on the
islands--long smoke lines of them singing like hounds in the cold
streak of morning.

"It is no good being indignant about what God did to me at the
beginning, Arthur, for he gave me far more in return.  I said: 'Fair
Sweet Father Jesu Christ, I wot not in what joy I am, for this joy
passeth all earthly joys that ever I was in.'

"A strange feature about the ship was that there was a dead woman in
it.  She had a letter in her hand which told me how the others had been
getting on.  It was stranger still that I was not frightened of her for
being dead.  She had such a calm face that she was company for me.  We
felt a sort of communion together in the ship and in the sea.  I don't
know what I was fed on.

"When I had been in this ship with the dead lady for a month, Galahad
was brought to us.  He gave me his blessing, and let me kiss his sword."

Arthur was as red as a turkey cock.

"Did you ask for his blessing?" he demanded.

"Of course."

"Well!" said Arthur.

"We sailed in the holy ship for six months together.  I got to know my
son very well in that time, and he seemed to care for me.  Quite often,
he said the most courteous things.  We had adventures with animals on
the out islands all that time.  There were sea weasels which whistled
beautifully, and Galahad showed me cranes flying along the water, with
their shadows flying under them, upside down.  He told me that the
fishing people call a cormorant the Old Black Hag, and that ravens live
as long as men.  They went cronk, cronk, high in the air, and came
tumbling down for fun.  One day we saw a pair of choughs: they were
beautiful!  And the seals!  They came along beside the music of the
ship, and talked like men.

"One Monday we came to a forest land.  A white knight rode down to the
shore and told Galahad to come out of the boat.  I knew that he was
being taken away to find the Holy Grail, so I was sad that I couldn't
go too.  Do you remember, when you were little, how children used to
pick up sides for a game and perhaps you wouldn't be picked at all?  It
felt like that, but worse.  I asked Galahad to pray for me.  I asked
him to pray God to hold me in his service.  Then we kissed each other
and said good-bye."

Guenever complained: "If you were in a state of grace, I can't
understand why you should have been left."

"It is difficult," said Lancelot.

He opened his hands and looked between them on the table.

"Perhaps my intentions were bad," he said at length.  "Perhaps, inside
myself, unconsciously, you could say, I had not a proper purpose of
amendment...."

The Queen was subtly radiant as she listened.

"Nonsense," she whispered, meaning the opposite.  She pressed his hand
warmly, and Lancelot took it away.

"When I prayed to be _held_," he said, "perhaps it was because..."

"It seems to me," said Arthur, "that you are allowing yourself the
luxury of a needlessly tender conscience."

"Perhaps.  At all events, I was not picked."

He sat, watching the sea heaving between his hands, and hearing the
wooden clatter of gannets on an island cliff.

"The ship took me out to sea again," he said at length, "on a big wind.
I did not sleep very much, and I prayed a great deal.  I asked that, in
spite of not being picked, I might be allowed to get some tidings of
the Sangreal."

In the silence which fell on the room, they pursued their separate
thoughts.  Arthur's were of the pitiful spectacle--the show of an
earthly, sinful man, but the best of them, plodding along behind these
three supernatural virgins; his doomed, courageous, vain toil.

"Funny," said Lancelot, "how the people who can't pray say that prayers
are not answered, however much the people who can pray say they are.
My ship took me at midnight, in a great gale, to the back side of
Carbonek Castle.  Strange, also, that it should have been the very
place I was heading for when I started.

"The moment the ship came alongside, I knew that I was to be granted a
part of my desire.  I couldn't see it all, of course, because I was not
a Galahad or Bors.  But they were very kind to me.  They went out of
their way to be kind.

"It was black as death behind the castle.  I put on my armour and went
up.  There were two lions at the entry of the stairs, who tried to bar
my way.  I drew my sword to fight them, but a hand struck me on the
arm.  It was silly of me, of course, to trust in my sword, when I could
have trusted in God.  So I blessed myself with my numb arm and went in,
and the lions didn't hurt me.  All the doors were open except the last
one, and there I kneeled down.  When I prayed, it opened.

"Arthur, this must seem untrue as I tell it.  I don't know a way of
putting it in words.  Behind the last door there was a chapel.  They
were at Mass.

"Oh, Jenny, the beautiful chapel with all its lights and everything!
You would say: 'The flowers and the candles.'  But it was not these.
Perhaps there were none.

"It was, oh, the shout of it--the power and the glory.  It seized on
all my senses to drag me in.

"But I couldn't go in, Arthur and Jenny--there was a sword to stop me.
Galahad was inside, and Bors, and Percivale.  There were nine other
knights, from France and Danemark and Ireland: and the lady from my
ship was there as well.  The Grail was there, Arthur, on a silver
table, and other things!  But I was forbidden to go in, for all my
yearning at the door.  I don't know who the priest was.  It may have
been Joseph of Arimathea, it may have been--oh, well.  I did go in to
help him--in spite of the sword--because he was carrying what was too
heavy to be carried.  I only wanted to help, Arthur, as God was my
witness.  But a breath smote my face at the last door like a blast from
a furnace, and there I fell down dumb."




_Chapter XXXIV_

In the dark chamber there was a coming and going of maids.  The cans
and pails rattled on the stairway, and there was much steam.  When the
maids trod in the puddles on the floor, they made a slashing noise, and
from the next room there was whispering mixed with the secret noise of
silk.

The Queen had climbed the six steps of the wooden ladder which led to
her bath, and now she was sitting on the plank inside it, with her head
showing over the top.  The bath was like a large beer barrel, and her
head was wrapped in a white turban.  She was naked, except for a pearl
necklace.  There was a mirror--it had been very expensive--in one
corner, and a little table in another one held the scents and oils.
Instead of a powder puff, there was a chamois leather bag with powdered
chalk in it, scented with attar of roses from the crusades.  All over
the floor between the puddles, there was a confusion of linen towels
for drying her, and of jewellery boxes, brocades, garments, garters,
shifts, which had been brought from the other room for her to choose.
There were some condemned head-dresses lying in disgrace--strange
shapes of starch like candle extinguishers, and meringues, and the
double horns of cows.  The hair nets which kept them together were
strung with pearls, and the kerchiefs were of Eastern silk.  One of the
ladies-in-waiting was standing in front of the Queen's tub, holding an
embroidered mantle for inspection.  It was charged with the impaled
arms of her husband and of her father: the dragon rampant of England
and the six charming lioncels passant regardant of King Leodegrance,
who bore lions on account of his name.  This mantle had a heavy silk
tassel, like a curtain cord, to join it across her breast.  The silk
bordure was furred with countervair, silver and blue.

Guenever had lost her raddled look, and sat accepting the clothes which
were recommended for her, without fuss.  The ladies-in-waiting had a
happy air.  For more than a year they had waited on a Queen who was
petulant, cruel, contradictory, miserable.  Now she was pleased with
anything, and did not hunt them.  They were all quite sure that
Lancelot must have become her lover again.  This was not the case.

Guenever looked upon the six lioncels passant regardant--they were
marching along with red tongues and claws, winking pertly over their
backsides and waving their flame-tipped tails.  She nodded her head
with a contented, sleepy look, and the lady-in-waiting carried it to
the dressing-room with a curtsy.  The Queen watched her go.

You could pretend that Guenever was a sort of man-eating lioncelle
herself, or that she was one of those selfish women who insist on
ruling everywhere.  In fact, this is what she did seem to be, to a
superficial inspection.  She was beautiful, sanguine, hot-tempered,
demanding, impulsive, acquisitive, charming--she had all the proper
qualities for a man-eater.  But the rock on which these easy
explanations founder, is that she was not promiscuous.  There was never
anybody in her life except Lancelot and Arthur.  She never ate anybody
except these.  And even these she did not eat in the full sense of the
word.  People who have been digested by a man-eating lioncelle tend to
become nonentities--to live no life except within the vitals of the
devourer.  Yet both Arthur and Lancelot, the people whom she apparently
devoured, lived full lives, and accomplished things of their own.

One explanation of Guenever, for what it is worth, is that she was what
they used to call a "real" person.  She was not the kind who can be
fitted away safely under some label or other, as "loyal" or "disloyal"
or "self-sacrificing" or "jealous".  Sometimes she was loyal and
sometimes she was disloyal.  She behaved like herself.  And there must
have been something in this self, some sincerity of heart, or she would
not have held two people like Arthur and Lancelot.  Like likes like,
they say--and at least they are certain that her men were generous.
She must have been generous too.  It is difficult to write about a real
person.

She lived in warlike times, when the lives of young people were as
short as those of airmen in the twentieth century.  In such times, the
elderly moralists are content to relax their moral laws a little, in
return for being defended.  The condemned pilots, with their lust for
the life and love which is probably to be lost so soon, touch the
hearts of young women, or possibly call up an answering bravado.
Generosity, courage, honesty, pity, the faculty to look short life in
the face--certainly comradeship and tenderness--these qualities may
explain why Guenever took Lancelot as well as Arthur.  It was courage
more than anything else--the courage to take and give from the heart,
while there was time.  Poets are always urging women to have this kind
of courage.  She gathered her rose-buds while she might, and the
striking thing was that she only gathered two of them, which she kept
always, and that those two were the best.

Guenever's central tragedy was that she was childless.  Arthur had two
illegitimate children, and Lancelot had Galahad.  But Guenever--and she
was the one of the three who most ought to have had children, and who
would have been best with children, and whom God had seemingly made for
breeding lovely children--she was the one who was left an empty vessel,
a shore without a sea.  This was what broke her when she came to the
age at which her sea must finally dry.  It is what turned her for a
little time into a raving woman, though that time was still in the
future.  It may be one of the explanations of her double love--perhaps
she loved Arthur as a father, and Lancelot because of the son she could
not have.

People are easily dazzled by Round Tables and feats of arms.  You read
of Lancelot in some noble achievement, and, when he comes home to his
mistress, you feel resentment at her because she cuts across the
achievement, or spoils it.  Yet Guenever could not search for the
Grail.  She could not vanish into the English forest for a year's
adventure with the spear.  It was her part to sit at home, though
passionate, though real and hungry in her fierce and tender heart.  For
her there were no recognized diversions except what is comparable to
the ladies' bridge party of today.  She could hawk with a merlin, or
play blind man's buff, or pince-merille.  These were the amusements of
grown-up women in her time.  But the great hawks, the hounds, heraldry,
tournaments--these were for Lancelot.  For her, unless she felt like a
little spinning or embroidery, there was no occupation--except Lancelot.

So we must imagine the Queen as a woman who had been robbed of her
central attribute.  As she grew to her difficult age, she did strange
things.  She was even to be suspected of poisoning a knight.  She even
became unpopular.  But unpopularity is often a compliment--and
Guenever, though she lived tempestuously and finally died in an
unreconciled sort of way--she was not cut out for religion, as Lancelot
was--was never insignificant.  She did what women do, on the whole
right royally, and at the moment, in the tub with the lioncels before
her, she was busy doing it.


When a man had practically seen God, however human he might be, you
could not immediately expect him as a lover.  When the man was
Lancelot, who was mad on God in any case, you had to be both sanguine
and cruel to expect him like that at all.  But women are cruel in this
way.  They do not accept excuses.

Guenever knew that Lancelot would come back to her.  She had known it
from the moment when he had prayed to be "held."  The knowledge had
revived her like a watered flower too long left unwatered.  It had
swept away the rouge and bedizening silks which had moved his pity when
he first came back.  Now it only remained for her to accomplish the
reunion smoothly and fully.  There was no hurry.

Lancelot, who did not know that he was to betray his much-loved God
again for the sake of the Queen, was made happy by her attitude--though
it surprised him.  He had feared some terrible scene of jealousy or
recrimination.  He had wondered how he would be able to explain to the
tortured child, imprisoned in the painted eyes, that he could not come
to her--that he had a sweeter necessity, however much her pain.  He had
been afraid that she would attack him, would lay her poor snares before
him--snares which would be all the more pitifully beguiling because of
their poverty.  He had really not known how he was to face the pity.

Instead, Guenever had bloomed and lost her paints.  She had made no
assault, no recrimination.  She had smiled with real joy.  Women, he
had told himself wisely, were unpredictable.  He had even been able to
discuss the matter with her, in complete frankness, and she had agreed
with what he said.

Guenever, sitting in the bath and looking sightlessly upon the
lioncels, had a sleepy look of secret happiness when she remembered
their conversation.  She saw the charming, ugly face, talking so
seriously about the interests of its honest heart.  She loved these
interests--loved the old soldier to follow so faithfully his innocent
love of God.  She knew it was doomed to failure.

Lancelot had said, apologizing and begging her not to think him
offensive, (1) that they could not very well go back to the old way,
after the Grail; (2) that, had it not been for their guilty love, he
might have been allowed to achieve the Grail; (3) that it would be
dangerous in any case, because the Orkney faction was beginning to
watch them unpleasantly, particularly Agravaine and Mordred; and (4)
that it would be a great shame to themselves and also to Arthur.  He
numbered the points carefully.

At other times he tried to explain to her, in confused words and at
great length, about his discovery of God.  He thought that if he could
convert Guenever to God, this would solve the moral problem.  If they
could go to God together, he would not be deserting his mistress or
sacrificing her happiness to his own.

The Queen smiled outright.  He was a darling.  She had agreed with
every word he said--was a regular convert already!

Then she lifted one white arm out of the bath, and reached for a
scrubbing brush on an ivory handle.




_Chapter XXXV_

It was all very well at the first flush of his return.  Queens may see
further ahead than common men, but there seems to be a limit to their
vision.  It was fine to wait with a warm feeling while Lancelot kept
faith with his divinity for a week or for a month.  But, when the
months began to grow to a year, then it was a different matter.
Perhaps he would relapse in the end--perhaps.  But a woman could wait
too long for victory--she could be too old to enjoy it.  It could be
senseless to go on waiting for a joy, when joy was on the doorstep, and
Time hurried by.

Guenever grew slowly, not less blooming, but angrier.  A storm gathered
in her deep breasts, as the months of holiness added together.
Holiness?  Selfishness, she cried to herself--selfish to abandon
another soul so as to save your own.  The story of Bors, allowing the
twelve supposed gentlewomen to be hurled from the castle turret rather
than save them by committing a mortal sin, had shocked her to the
heart.  Now Lancelot was doing the same thing.  It was well for him,
with his chivalry and mysticism and all the compensations of the male
world, to make the grand renunciation.  But it took two to make a
renunciation, just as it took two to make love, or to make a quarrel.
She was not an insensate piece of property, to be taken up or laid down
at his convenience.  You could not give up a human heart as you could
give up drinking.  The drink was yours, and you could give it up: but
your lover's soul was not your own: it was not at your disposal; you
had a duty towards it.

Lancelot saw these things as clearly as the bold Guenever--and, as
their relations gradually worsened, he was hard put to it to keep his
mind.  It was for him the same as it had been for Bors, when the
unarmed hermit interfered.  So far as he himself was concerned, he had
every right to insist on yielding to the God he loved, as Bors had
yielded to Lionel.  But when Guenever threw herself across him, as the
hermit had thrown himself across Bors, had he the right to sacrifice
his old love as the hermit had been sacrificed?  Lancelot, like the
Queen, was shocked by the solutions of Bors.  The hearts of these two
lovers were instinctively too generous to fit with dogma.  Generosity
is the eighth deadly sin.

It came to a head one morning, while they were singing together, alone
in the solar.  A musical instrument called a regal stood on the table
between them.  It looked like two large bibles.  Guenever had sung a
little piece by French Mary, and Lancelot was plodding his way through
another by the hunchback of Arras, when the Queen put her right hand on
all the notes which she could cover, and pressed both bibles with her
left.  The regal gave a dreadful sneer, and died.

"Why did you do that?"

"You had better go," she said.  "Go away.  Start a quest.  Can't you
see that you are wearing me out?"

Lancelot took a deep breath and said: "Yes, I do see it, every day."

"Then you had better go.  No, I am not making a scene.  I don't want to
quarrel about it, and I don't want to alter your mind.  But I think it
would be kinder if you went."

"It sounds as if I were hurting you on purpose."

"No.  It is not your fault.  But I would just like you to go, Lance, so
as to give me a rest.  For a little while.  We needn't fight about it."

"If you want me to go, I will, of course."

"I do want you to."

"Perhaps it would be better."

"Lance, I want you to realize that I am not trying to trick you into
anything, or to force you.  It is only that I think it would be good
for us to be parted for a month or two, as friends.  It is only that."

"I know you would never try to trick me, Jenny.  And I feel muddled
too.  I was hoping that you would understand about it.  About what has
happened to me.  It would have been easy if you had been on that boat
as well, or felt it yourself.  But I can't make you feel it, because
you were not there, and so it is difficult for me.  I feel as if I were
sacrificing you, or us if you like, to a new sort of love...

"And besides," he said, turning away, "it is not as if--as if I didn't
want my old love too."

After he had stood in silence for a minute, looking out of the window
with his hands unnaturally still at his sides, he added in a harsh
voice, without turning round: "If you like, we will start again."

When he swung round from the window, the room was empty.  After dinner
he asked for the Queen at her door, but received only a verbal message
begging him to do as she had asked.  He packed his scanty traps, not
understanding what had happened, but feeling that he had escaped
calamity by a hairbreadth.  He said good-bye to his bent old squire,
who was now far too ancient to go with him in any case, and rode from
Camelot next morning.




_Chapter XXXVI_

If the maids-in-waiting were pleased by the Queen's supposed renewal of
intrigue, there were others at court who were not.  Or, if they were
pleased, it was a cruel and waiting pleasure.  The tone of the court
had changed for the fourth time.

There had been the first feeling, a companionship of youth under which
Arthur had launched his grand crusade--the second, of chivalrous
rivalry growing staler every year in the greatest court of Europe,
until it had nearly turned to feud and competition.  Then the
enthusiasm of the Grail had burned the bad gasses of the air into a
short-lived beauty.  Now the maturest or the saddest phase had come, in
which enthusiasms had been used up for good, and only our famous
seventh sense was left to be practised.  The court had "knowledge of
the world" now: it had the fruits of achievement, civilization,
savoir-vivre, gossip, fashion, malice, and the broad mind of scandal.

Half the knights had been killed--the best half.  What Arthur had
feared from the start of the Grail Quest had come to pass.  If you
achieve perfection, you die.  There had been nothing left for Galahad
to ask of God, except death.  The best knights had gone to perfection,
leaving the worst to hold their sieges.  A leaven of love was left, it
is true--Lancelot, Gareth, Aglovale and a few old dodderers like Sir
Grummore and Sir Palomides: but the tone was set elsewhere.  It came
from the surly angers of Gawaine, the fripperies of Mordred, and the
sarcasms of Agravaine.  Tristram had done no good to it in Cornwall.  A
magic cloak had gone the rounds, which only a faithful wife could
wear--or perhaps it was a magic horn which only a faithful wife could
drink from.  A canting shield had been presented with a voiceless
snigger, a shield whose blazon was a hint to cuckolds.  Marital
fidelity had become "news."  Clothes had become fantastic.  The long
toes of Agravaine's slippers were secured by gold chains to garters
below his knee, and, as for Mordred's toes, their chains were secured
to a belt round his waist.  The surcoats, which had originally served
as covering to armour, were long behind and high in front.  You could
hardly walk for fear of tripping over your sleeves.  Ladies were
compelled to shave their foreheads and to show no hair, if they wanted
to be in the mode, while, so far as their sleeves were concerned, they
had to tie knots in them to keep them off the floor.  Gentlemen showed
their legs to an equally startling extent.  Their clothes were
parti-coloured.  Sometimes one leg was red and the other was green.
And they did not wear their slittered mantle, their gaycoat graceless,
from a sense of exuberance.  Mordred wore his ridiculous shoes
contemptuously: they were a satire on himself.  The court was modern.

So there were eyes on Guenever now--not the eyes of strong suspicion or
of warm connivance, but the bored looks of calculation and the cold
ones of society.  At the mouse-hole the sleek cats were still.

Mordred and Agravaine thought Arthur hypocritical--as all decent men
must be, if you assume that decency can't exist.  They found Guenever
barbarous.

La Beale Isoud, they said, had made a cuckold of King Mark in a
civilized way.  She had done it with an air, publicly, fashionably, in
the best taste.  Everybody had been able to rub it into the King, and
to enjoy the fun.  She had shown a perfect flair for dress, for comic
hats which made her look like a tipsy heifer.  She had spent millions
of Mark's money on peacock tongues for dinner.

Guenever, on the other hand, dressed like a gipsy, entertained like a
lodging-house keeper, and kept her lover a secret.  On top of this, she
was a nuisance.  She had no sense of style.  She was growing old
ungracefully, and she cried or made scenes like a fishwife.  It was
said that she had sent Lancelot away after a terrible quarrel, during
which she had accused him of loving other women.  She was supposed to
have cried out: "I see and feel daily that thy love beginneth to
slake."  Mordred said, in his equivocal, musical voice, that he could
understand a fishwife, but not a fish mistress.  The epigram was widely
reported.

Arthur, reserved and unhappy in the new atmosphere which had begun to
pull away from him instead of with him, moved about the palace in his
plain dress, trying to be polite.  The Queen, more aggressive--she had
been a bold girl as he first remembered her, with dark hair and red
lips, tossing her head--went out to meet the situation, and tried to
deal with it by entertaining and by pretending to be fashionable
herself.  She fell back on the paints and finery which she had left
when Lancelot returned.  She began to behave as if she were a little
mad.  All glorious reigns have these blank patches, during which the
Crown is unpopular.

Trouble came suddenly, while Lancelot was away.  The feeling of danger,
which had hung in the air since the Grail, suddenly crystallized upon a
dinner party given by the Queen.

It seems that Gawaine was fond of fruit.  He liked apples and pears
best--and the poor Queen, anxious to be successful in her new line as a
fashionable entertainer, took particular care to have nice apples when
she gave a dinner for twenty-four knights, at which Gawaine was to be
present.  She knew that the Cornwall and Orkney faction had always been
the menace to her husband's hopes--and Gawaine was now the head of the
clan.  She hoped that the dinner would be a success, that it would help
in the new atmosphere, that it would be a sophisticated dinner.  She
was trying to placate her critics by being a courteous hostess like La
Beale Isoud.

Unfortunately there were other people who knew of Gawaine's weakness
for apples, and bad blood over the Pellinore murders still existed.
Arthur had managed to wean Sir Aglovale from his revenge, it is true,
and the old feud seemed to have healed over.  But there was a knight
called Sir Pinel, who was a distant relative of the Pellinores, and he
considered that revenge was necessary.  Sir Pinel poisoned the apples.

Poison is a bad weapon.  It went astray in this case, as it often does,
and an Irish knight called Patrick ate the apple which was intended for
Gawaine.

You can imagine the situation: the pale knights starting to their feet
in the candlelight, the ineffectual attempts at aid, and their
supposing eyes turning upon one another with ashamed suspicion.
Everybody knew of Gawaine's foible.  His family had never been
favourites with the now unpopular Queen.  She herself had given the
dinner.  And Pinel was not in a position to explain.  Somebody in that
room had murdered Sir Patrick in mistake for Gawaine, and until the
murderer was discovered they would all be under the same suspicion.
Sir Mador de la Porte--more pompous than the rest, or more malevolent,
or more of a stickler--ended by voicing the thought which was in every
mind.  He accused the Queen of treason.

Nowadays, when a point of justice is obscure and difficult, each side
hires lawyers to argue it out.  In those days the upper classes hired
champions to fight it out--which came to the same thing.  Sir Mador
decided to save himself the expense of a champion by fighting his own
case, and he insisted that Guenever must brief a champion for her
defence.  Arthur, whose whole philosophy of royalty hinged on justice
instead of power, could do nothing to save his wife.  If Mador demanded
the Court of Honour, he must have it.  And Arthur could not fight in
his wife's quarrel, just as married people are not allowed to give
evidence against each other today.

Here was a pretty state of affairs.  Suspicion and rumour and
counter-recrimination had obscured the issue almost before it started.
The Pellinore feud, the old Pendragon-Cornwall feud, the Lancelot
entanglement, and then the sudden death of a person not apparently
concerned with any of them--all these mixed themselves together into a
fume of venom which coiled about the Queen.  If Lancelot had been
there, he would have fought as her champion.  But she had sent him
away--nobody knew where, some thought to his parents in France.
Perhaps, if he had been known to be on hand, Sir Mador might have
swallowed his accusation.

It seems kinder not to dwell on the days before the trial by
battle--not to describe the distracted woman kneeling to Sir Bors, who
had never liked her before, and who now, just back from his virginal
achievement of the Grail, liked her still less.  She begged him to
fight for her if Lancelot could not be found.  She had to beg for it,
poor creature, because the feeling at court had come to such a pitch
that nobody would accept her brief.  The Queen of England was unable to
command a champion.

The night before the battle was the worst.  All night, neither she nor
Arthur slept.  He firmly believed her innocence, but he could not
interfere with justice.  She, pathetically and repeatedly asserting
this innocence, although she was in the entanglement which the other
trouble had brought her to, knew that the next night might see her
burned to death.  Together they saw the tragedy and humiliation of
their Table, from which no man was willing to save them--knew that the
Queen of it was called, by common breath, a destroyer of good knights.
In the bitter darkness Arthur suddenly cried despairingly: "What aileth
you, that ye cannot keep Sir Lancelot on your side?"  And so it went on
until the morning.




_Chapter XXXVII_

Sir Bors the misogynist had reluctantly consented to fight for the
Queen, if nobody else could be found.  He had explained that it was
irregular to do so, because he himself had been present at the
dinner--but, when discovered by Arthur with the Queen kneeling at his
feet, he had blushed, raised her, and consented.  Then he had vanished
for a day or two, because the trial was not to take place for a
fortnight.

A meadow at Westminster had been prepared for the combat.  A barricade
of strong logs, like a corral for horses, had been erected round the
wide square--which had no barrier down the middle.  For an ordinary
joust there would have been a barrier: but in this case the fight was
to be  outrance, which meant that it might end with swords on foot,
and so the barrier was left out.  A pavilion had been erected for the
King on one side, and another one for the Constable on the other.  The
barricades and the pavilions were decorated with cloth.  There was a
curtained gateway at each end, like the dramatic hole through which the
circus people ride into their arena.  In one corner of the corral,
visible for all to see, was a great bundle of faggots with an iron
stake in the middle, which would not burn or melt.  This was for the
Queen, if the law went against her.  Before Arthur had started his
life's work, a man accusing the Queen of anything would have been
executed out of hand.  Now, because of his own work, he must be ready
to burn his wife.

For a new idea had begun to form in the King's mind.  The efforts to
dig a channel for Might had failed, even when it was turned to the
spirit, and now he was feeling his way towards abolishing it.  He had
decided not to truckle with Might any more--to cut it out, root and
branch, by establishing another standard altogether.  He was groping
towards Right as a criterion of its own--towards Justice as an abstract
thing which did not lean upon power.  In a few years he would be
inventing Civil Law.

It was a cold day.  The cloths strained against the scaffolding of
barricade and pavilion, and the pennons lay taut on the wind.  In the
corner the executioner blew on his nails, standing close to the brazier
from which he would take the fire for his bigger blaze.  The heralds in
the Constable's pavilion moistened their lips, which the breeze was
cracking, before lifting their trumpets for a fanfare.  Guenever,
sitting between guards under the Constable's ward, had to ask for a
shawl.  The people noticed that she was thinner.  It was the bleak face
of middle age, waiting intent and stoical between the beefy faces of
the soldiers.

Naturally it was Lancelot who rescued her.  Bors had managed to find
him at an abbey, during his two days' absence, and now he came back in
the nick of time to fight Sir Mador for the Queen.  Nobody who knew him
would have expected him to do anything else, whether he had been sent
away in disgrace or not--but, as it was thought that he had left the
country, his return did have a dramatic quality.

Sir Mador came from his recess at the south end of the lists, and
proclaimed the accusation while his herald blew.  Sir Bors came from
the northern hole to parley with the King and with the Constable--a
long, indistinct argument or explanation which the people could not
catch on account of the wind.  The spectators became restive, wondering
what the hitch was, and why the trial by battle did not proceed in the
usual way.  Then, after several journeys from King's pavilion to
Constable's, and vice versa, Sir Bors returned to his own hole.  There
was an uncomfortable pause, during which a black lap dog with a pug
nose escaped into the lists and scampered about on some errand best
known to itself.  One of the kings-of-arms caught it and tied it with
his guige, for which the people gave him an ironic cheer.  Then there
was silence, except for the vendors who were crying nuts and
gingerbread.

Lancelot rode out from the north exit, marked with the Bors
escutcheon--and immediately everybody in the amphitheatre knew that it
was he, although he was disguised.  The silence was as if everybody had
caught their breath simultaneously.

He had not come back out of condescension to the Queen.  The cruel
explanation that he had "given her up" so as to save his soul, and that
he had now returned from a sense of dramatic magnanimity, was not the
true one.  It was more complicated.

This knight's trouble from his childhood--which he never completely
grew out of--was that for him God was a real person.  He was not an
abstraction who punished you if you were wicked or rewarded you if you
were good, but a real person like Guenever, or like Arthur, or like
anybody else.  Of course he felt that God was better than Guenever or
Arthur, but the point was that he was personal.  Lancelot had a
definite idea of what he looked like, and how he felt--and he was
somehow in love with this Person.

The Ill-Made Knight was not involved in an Eternal Triangle.  It was an
Eternal Quadrangle, which was eternal as well as quadrangular.  He had
not given up his mistress because he was afraid of being punished by
some sort of Holy Bogy, but he had been confronted by two people whom
he loved.  The one was Arthur's Queen, the other a wordless presence
who had celebrated Mass at Castle Carbonek.  Unfortunately, as so often
happens in love affairs, the two objects of his affection were
contradictory.  It was almost as if he had been confronted with a
choice between Jane and Janet--and as if he had gone to Janet, not
because he was afraid that she would punish him if he stayed with Jane,
but because he felt, with warmth and pity, that he loved her best.  He
may even have felt that God needed him more than Guenever did.  This
was the problem, an emotional rather than a moral one, which had taken
him into retreat at his abbey, where he had hoped to feel things out.

Still, it would not be quite true to say that he had not come back from
some motives of magnanimity.  He was a magnanimous man.  He was a
maestro.  Even if God's need for him was the greater in normal times,
now it was obvious that his first love's need was pressing.  Perhaps a
man who had left Jane for Janet might have had enough warmth inside him
to return for Jane, when she was in desperate need, and this warmth
might be compared to pity or to magnanimity or to generosity--if it
were not unfashionable and even a little disgusting to believe in these
emotions nowadays.  Lancelot, in any case, who was wrestling with his
love for Guenever as well as with his love for God, came back to her
side as soon as he knew that she was in trouble, and, when he saw her
radiant face waiting for him under shameful durance, his heart did turn
over inside its habergeon with some piercing emotion--call it love or
pity, whichever you please.

Sir Mador de la Forte's heart turned over at the same time--but it was
too late to draw back.  His face went crimson inside its helm, where
nobody could see it, and he felt a warm glow under the straw fillet
which padded his skull.  Then he went back to his own corner and
spurred his horse.

There is something beautiful about the way in which a broken lance
sails into the air.  Down below it, on the ground, there is much bustle
going on.  The lazy motion with which the lance goes up, turning over
silently and languidly as it goes, contrasts with this.  It seems
superior to earthly considerations and does not seem to be moving fast.
The fast movement--which was, in this case, Sir Mador dismounting
backwards and upside down--is going on underneath the lance, which
performs its own independent pirouette in graceful detachment, and
comes down elsewhere, when everybody has forgotten it.  Sir Mador's
lance came down on its point, by some ballistic freak, just behind the
king-of-arms who was holding the black pug.  When the latter turned
round later on, and found it upright behind him, looking over his
shoulder as it were, he gave a start.

Sir Lancelot dismounted, so as not to have the advantage of a horse.
Sir Mador got up and began doing some wild swipes at the enemy with his
sword.  He was over-excited.

It took two knockouts to finish Sir Mador.  The first time he was down,
when Lancelot was coming towards him to accept his surrender, he became
flustered and thrust at the towering man from below.  It was a foul
blow, for it went into the groin from underneath, just at the point
where armour must necessarily be weakest.  When Lancelot had withdrawn,
to let Mador get up if he wanted to go on fighting, it was seen that
the blood was streaming down his cuisses and greaves.  There was
something terrible about the patient way in which he withdrew, although
he had been badly stabbed in the thigh.  If he had lost his temper it
would have been easier to bear.

The Queen's champion knocked Sir Mador down harder the second time.
Then he jerked off his helm.

"All right," said Sir Mador.  "I give in.  I was wrong.  Spare my life."

Lancelot did a nice thing.  Most knights would have been satisfied with
winning the Queen's case, and would have left it at that.  But Lancelot
had a sort of methodical consideration for people--he was sensitive to
things which they might be feeling, or might be likely to feel.

"I will spare your life," he said, "only if you promise that nothing is
to be written about this on Sir Patrick's grave.  Nothing about the
Queen."

"I promise," said Mador.

Then, while the defeated advocate was being carried away by some
leeches, Lancelot went to the royal box.  The Queen had been released
immediately, and was there with Arthur.

Arthur said: "Take off your helm, stranger."

They felt a swelling of love when he took it off, and compassion to see
the hideous, well-known face again, while he stood in front of them,
bleeding hard.

Arthur came down from the box.  He made Guenever get up, and took her
hand, and led her down into the arena.  He made a regular bow to Sir
Lancelot, and pulled Guenever's hand so that she curtsied too.  He did
this in front of his people.  He spoke in the old-fashioned talk, and
said with a full voice: "Sir, grant mercy of your great travail that ye
have had this day for me and for my Queen."  Guenever, behind his
smiling loving face, was sobbing as if her heart would burst.




_Chapter XXXVIII_

It so happened that the Patrick accusation was cleared up next day,
when Nimue arrived with a second-sighted explanation.  Merlyn, before
letting her lock him up in the cave, had given the Matter of Britain
into her hands.  He had made her promise--it was all that he could
do--that she would watch over Arthur herself, now that she knew his own
magic.  Then he had gone meekly to his imprisonment, casting a last,
long, doting look upon her.  Nimue, though scatterbrained and
unpunctual, was a good girl in her way.  She turned up a day late, told
how the apple had come to be poisoned, and went back to her own
concerns.  Sir Pinel confirmed the statement by running away the same
morning, leaving a written confession, and everybody had to admit that
it was a lucky thing Sir Lancelot had been about.

It was not so lucky for the Queen.  She was alive and saved, it was
true--but the unbelievable happened.  In spite of the tears, in spite
of the fountain of feeling which had sprung between them once again,
Lancelot persisted in remaining loyal to his Grail.

Well for him, she exclaimed--she was growing madder every day, and it
hurt people to watch it--well for him to wrap himself in his new
delight.  He had a grand feeling, no doubt, a compensation of vigour
and clarity and uplifting of the heart.  Perhaps his famous God did
give him something which she could not give.  Perhaps he was happier
with God, and would soon begin doing miracles left and right.  But what
about her?  He was not considering what she got out of God.  The
position was exactly the same, she railed at him, as if he had left her
for another woman.  He had taken the best of her, and now that she was
old and worthless he had gone elsewhere.  He was behaving with the
beastly selfishness of Man, taking all he could get from one quarter,
and then, when that was used, going to another.  He was a sneak-thief.
And to think that she had believed in him!  She did not love him any
more now, would not let him come near her if he were to pray for it on
bended knees.  As a matter of fact, she had despised him even before
the search for the Grail began--yes, despised him, and had determined
to throw him over.  He was not to think that he was deserting her: it
was quite the contrary.  She was tossing him away, like a dirty clout,
because she felt nothing but contempt for him.  For his poses and
swelled head and meanness and childishness and conceit.  For his futile
little God, and his goody-goody lies.  To tell him the truth, and
really she felt no further interest in concealing it, there was a young
knight at court who was already her lover: had been her lover long
before the Grail!  He was a much finer young man than Lancelot.  What
would she want with a sour husk when she had a rosy boy at her feet who
worshipped her, yes, worshipped the ground she trod on?  Lancelot had
better return to Elaine, to the mother of his famous son.  Perhaps they
would be able to say their prayers together, one frump with the other
frump, all night.  They could talk about their baby, their Galahad, who
had found the loathsome Grail, and they could laugh at her if they
liked, yes, they were welcome to laugh at her, laughing because she had
never managed to bear a son.

Then Guenever would begin the laughing--while always one part of her
looked out from the eye windows, and hated the noise which she was
making--and the tears would come after the laughter, and she would weep
with all her heart.


A strange feature was that Arthur, who wanted to arrange a tournament
in celebration of the Queen's acquittal, fixed upon a place near Corbin
as the spot where the tournament was to be held.  The place may have
been Winchester or Brackley, where one of the four surviving English
tilting grounds is to be found.  It does not matter where it was--what
does matter is that Corbin was the castle where the now childless
Elaine lived out her lonely middle age.

"I suppose you will go to this tournament?" asked the Queen fiercely.
"I suppose you will go to be near your trull?"

Lancelot said: "Jenny, couldn't you forgive her?  She is probably ugly
as well as miserable now.  She never had much to fall back on."

"The generous Lancelot!"

"If you don't want me to go," he said, "I won't.  You know I have never
loved any human being except you."

"Only Arthur," said the Queen.  "Only Elaine.  Only God.  Unless there
are some others I haven't heard about."

Lancelot shrugged his shoulders--one of the stupidest things to do,
when the other party wants to have a fight.

"Are you going?" he asked.

"I going?  Am I to watch you flirting with that turnip?  Certainly I
shan't go, and I forbid you to go either."

"Very well," he said.  "I will tell Arthur that I am ill.  I could say
that my wound has not healed yet."

He went to find the King.


Everybody had started for the tournament, and the court was empty, when
Guenever changed her mind.  Perhaps she had kept Lancelot behind so as
to be alone with him, and, finding that it was no good being alone with
him, had reversed her decision--but we do not know the reason.

"You had better go," she said.  "If I keep you here you will say it was
because I was jealous, and you will cast it in my teeth.  Besides,
there may be a scandal if you stay with me.  And I don't want you.  I
don't want to see your face.  Take it away.  Go!"

"Jenny," he said reasonably, "I can't go now.  There will be much more
of a scandal if I do go after all, when I have said that my wound
prevents me.  They will think that we have had a quarrel."

"Let them think what they please.  The only thing I tell you is that
you are to go, before you drive me mad."

"Jenny," he said.

He felt that his heart was breaking in two pieces, and that the madness
which she had given him once before might well be coming again.
Perhaps she noticed this too.  At all events, she suddenly relented in
her manner.  She saw him off to Corbin with a loving kiss.


"I promise I will come back," he had said, and now he was keeping his
promise.  It was unthinkable that he should go to the tournament
without visiting Elaine.  He had not only promised to return to her,
but he was the repository of all the last messages of their only son,
now dead or at least translated.  The cruellest man could hardly have
refused to visit her with such messages.

He would lodge at Corbin, tell her about Galahad, and fight in the
tournament disguised.  He would explain to Arthur that he had pleaded
the wound so as to come unexpectedly, in disguise, because that was one
of the new-fashioned things to do.  This subterfuge would be assisted
by the fact of his staying at Corbin castle, instead of at the actual
place of the tournament.  It would prevent any scandal about a
last-minute quarrel with the Queen.

He was surprised to find, as he rode up the avenue to the moat, through
the cheval de frise, that Elaine was waiting for him on the
battlements, in the same attitude as that in which he had left her
twenty years before.  She met him at the Great Gate.

"I was waiting for you."

She was plump and dumpy now, rather like Queen Victoria, and she
received him faithfully.  He had said that he would come back and here
he was.  She had expected nothing else.

With her next words she stabbed him to the heart.

"You will be staying for good now," said she, hardly as a question.  It
was in this way that she had construed his answer when they parted all
that time ago.




_Chapter XXXIX_

If people want to read about the Corbin tournament, Malory has it.  He
was a passionate follower of tournaments--like one of those old
gentlemen who nowadays frequent the cricket pavilion at Lord's--and he
may have had access to some ancient Wisden, or even to the score-books
themselves.  He reports the celebrated tournaments in full, with the
score of each knight, and the name of the man who bowled him over, or
how knocked out.  But the accounts of old cricket matches are inclined
to be boring for those who did not actually play in them, so we must
leave it unreported.  The only things which are apt to be dull in
Malory are the detailed score-sheets, which he gives two or three
times--and even they are not dull for anybody who knows the form of the
various smaller knights.  It is sufficient for our purposes to say that
Lancelot hit the other side all round the field--his skill had come
back to him since the Grail--and that he would have carried his sword
after the innings of a lifetime, if the wound which he got from Sir
Mador had not broken out afresh.  It is strange that he should have
played well on this occasion--for he was distracted by the triple
misery of Guenever and God and Elaine--but great performances have been
given by others in similar circumstances.  Finally, when he had made
thirty or forty in spite of the old wound (and, incidentally, he had
knocked out Mordred and Agravaine), three knights set upon him at the
same time, and the spear of one of them penetrated his defence.  It
broke, leaving the head of the spear in his side.

Lancelot withdrew from the field while he could still sit his horse,
and galloped away, lolling in the saddle, to find a place where he
could be alone.  When he was badly hurt he had this instinct for
solitude.  To him, there was something private about death--so that, if
he had to die, he tried to get a chance of doing it by himself.  Only
one knight went with him--he was too weak to shake him off--and it was
this knight who helped him to draw the spearhead from his ribs, and who
eased him when he finally fainted by "turning him into the wind."  It
was also this knight who brought the distracted Elaine to his bedside,
after he had been put to bed.

The importance of the Winchester tournament did not lie in any
particular feat of arms, nor even in Lancelot's grievous hurt--for he
eventually recovered from it.  Where it did touch the lives of our four
friends was in a circumstance which remains to be told.  For Lancelot,
suddenly faced with the unlucky Elaine's unfounded conviction that he
was going to stay with her for ever, had faltered in telling her the
truth.  Perhaps he was a weak man in most ways--weak to have taken
Guenever from his best friend in the first place, weak to have tried to
exchange his mistress for his God, and weakest of all to have helped
Elaine by telling her he would come back.  Now, in the face of the poor
lady's simple hope, he had lacked the courage to break her illusion
with an immediate blow.

One of the troubles in dealing with Elaine, in spite of her simplicity
or ignorance, was that her nature was a sensitive one--more sensitive
than Guenever's, in fact, although she lacked the power of that bold
and extraverted queen.  She had been sensitive enough not to overwhelm
him with welcomes when he came home from his long absence: not to
reproach him--she had never felt that she had reason to reproach him:
and, above all, not to suffocate him with pity for herself.  She had
held her heart with a firm hand while they waited at Corbin for the
tournament, carefully hiding the long years during which she had hoped
for her lord, and her absolute loneliness now that their son was gone.
Lancelot had known quite well what she was hiding.  Uncertain and
sensitive himself, he had forgotten about the way in which their
peculiar relationship had started.  He had begun to blame himself
exclusively for Elaine's sorrows.

So, when she did make her small request, after having spared him so
many tears and welcomes, what could he do but seek her pleasure?  He
had still to tell her that her unflinching hope was baseless.  He was
putting it off.  Feeling like an executioner who knows that he must
kill tomorrow, he had tried to give a little joy today.

"Lance," she had said before the tournament, asking her strange favour
humbly and childishly, "now that we are together, you will wear my
token at the fight?"

Now that we are together!  And in her tone of voice he had read a
picture of twenty years' desertion, realizing for the first time that
during all that period she had been following his career of chivalry
like a schoolchild doting on the batsman Hobbs.  The poor bird had been
picturing all the fights--almost certainly picturing them quite wrong:
nourishing a starved heart on second-hand accounts in secret: wondering
whose token was in the place of honour today.  Perhaps she had been
telling herself for twenty years that some day the great champion would
fight under a favour of her own--one of those ridiculous ambitions with
which the wretched soul consoles itself, for lack of decent fare.

"I never wear favours," he had said, truthfully.

She had not pleaded or complained, and she had truly tried to hide her
disappointment.

"I will wear yours," he had said immediately.  "I shall be proud to
wear it.  And, besides, it will help my disguise very much.  Just
because everybody knows that I don't wear favours, it will be a
splendid disguise to wear one.  How clever of you to think of it!  And
it will make me fight better.  What is it to be?"

It was a scarlet sleeve embroidered with large pearls.  You can do good
embroidery in twenty years.


A fortnight after the Winchester tournament, while Elaine nursed her
hero back to life, Guenever was having a scene with Sir Bors at court.
Being a woman-hater, Bors always had instructive scenes with women.  He
said what he thought, and they said what they thought, and neither of
them understood the other a bit.

"Ah, Sir Bors," said the Queen, having sent for him in great haste as
soon as she heard about the red sleeve--Bors being one of Lancelot's
closest relations.  "Ah, Sir Bors, have ye heard say how falsely Sir
Lancelot hath betrayed me?"

Bors noted that the Queen was "nigh out of her mind for wrath," blushed
deeply, and said with exaggerated patience: "If anybody has been
betrayed, it is Lancelot himself.  He has been mortally wounded by
three knights at once."

"And I am glad," cried the Queen, "glad to hear it!  A good thing if he
dies.  He is a false traitor knight!"

Bors shrugged his shoulders and turned his back, as much as to say that
he was not going to listen to talk like that.  The whole of his back,
as he went to the door, showed what he thought about women.  The Queen
rushed after him, to retain him by force if necessary.  She was not
going to be cheated of her scene as easily as that.

"Why should I not call him a traitor," she shouted, "when he bare the
red sleeve upon his head at Winchester, at the great jousts?"

Bors, afraid that he was going to be physically assaulted, said: "I am
sorry about the sleeve.  If he had not worn it as a disguise, perhaps
people would not have set upon him three to one."

"Fie on him," exclaimed the Queen.  "He got a good thrashing anyway, in
spite of all his pride and boasting.  He was beaten in fair fight."

"No, he was not.  It was three to one, and his old wound broke out too."

"Fie on him," repeated the Queen.  "I heard Sir Gawaine say in front of
the King that it was wonderful how much he loved Elaine."

"I can't stop Gawaine saying things," retorted Sir Bors hotly,
desperately, pathetically, furiously, and with terror.  Then he went
out and slammed the door, leaving the honours about even.


At Corbin, Elaine and Lancelot were holding hands.  He smiled feebly at
her, and said in a pale voice: "Poor Elaine.  You always seem to be
nursing me back from something.  You never seem to have me, except when
I am only half alive."

"I have you for good now," she said radiantly.

"Elaine," he said, "I want to talk to you."




_Chapter XL_

When the Ill-Made Knight came back from Corbin, Guenever was still in a
rage.  For some reason she was determined to believe that Elaine had
become his mistress again, possibly because this seemed to be the best
way of hurting her lover.  She claimed that he had only been pretending
about his religious feelings--as was shown by his immediately going off
with Elaine when he had the chance.  This, she said, had been at the
back of his mind all along.  He was a sham, and a weak sham at that.
They had hysterical scenes together, about his weakness and shamness,
alternating with other scenes of a more affectionate kind, which were
necessary to counter-balance the idea that she had been in love with a
sham man all her life.  She began to look healthier, even beautiful
again, as a result of these quarrels.  But two lines came between her
eyebrows, and she had a frightening eye sometimes, which glittered like
a diamond.  Lancelot began to have a dogged look.  They were drifting.

Elaine had been explained to, and it was Elaine who now struck the only
strong blow of her life.  She struck it unintentionally, by committing
suicide.

A death-barge came down the river to the capital, since rivers were the
highways of the day, and it was moored beneath the palace wall.  She
was in it--the plump partridge who had always been helpless.  Probably
people commit suicide through weakness, not through strength.  Her
gentle efforts to guide the hand of destiny, by decoying her master
with feeble tricks or by reticent considerations--these had not been
strong enough to be recognized in the despotism of life.  Her son had
gone, and her lover, and there was nothing left.  Even the promise to
return had failed her futile grasp.  It had once been something to live
for, a handrail--not a particularly sumptuous handrail, but
sufficiently serviceable to keep her upright.  She had been able to
make do.  Never having been a high-handed or demanding girl, she had
been able to make a little go a long way.  But now even the little was
gone.

Everybody went down to see the barge.  It was not a lily maid of
Astolat they saw, but a middle-aged woman whose hands, in stiff-looking
gloves, grasped a pair of beads obediently.  Death had made her look
older and different.  The stern, grey face in the barge was evidently
not Elaine--who had gone elsewhere, or vanished.

Even if Lancelot was a weak man, or a games-maniac, or that infuriating
creation, a person who consistently tries to be decent, he does not
seem to have had an easy time of it.  With his inherited tendency to
madness, and his fantastic face, the confusion of his loyalties and
moral standards, it must have been difficult enough to keep the balance
of life without the various blows which were given to him above the
bargain.  He could have supported even the extra blows if he had been
blessed with a callous heart.  But his heart had been made as a match
for Elaine's, and now it was unable to bear the burden which hers had
been forced to lay down.  All the things which he might have done for
the poor creature, but which it was now too late to do, and all the
shameful questions about responsibility which go with the irrevocable,
united in his mind.

"Why were you not kinder to her?" cried the Queen.  "Why could you not
have given her something to live for?  You might have showed her some
bounty and gentleness, which would have preserved her life."

Guenever, who did not yet realize that Elaine had come between them
more effectively than ever, said this quite spontaneously, and she
meant it.  She was overwhelmed with pity for her rival in the barge.




_Chapter XLI_

The new kind of life went on at Camelot in spite of the suicide.
Nobody could have called it a specially happy kind--but people are
tenacious of life, and will go on living.  It was not all of it a
plot-like life: most of it was just story--one thing after the other--a
chain of unnecessary accidents.  One ridiculous accident which happened
about this time is worth mentioning, not because it had any
consequences or antecedents, but because it was somehow the sort of
thing which happened to Lancelot.  He behaved about it in his own way.

He was lying on his stomach in a wood one day, with what sad thoughts
nobody knows, when a lady archer came by, who was hunting.  It does not
say whether she was a masculine sort of lady with a moustache and
gentlemen's neckwear, or whether she was one of those scatterbrains
from the film world who do archery because it is so cute.  Anyway, she
saw Lancelot, and she thought he was a rabbit.  On the whole she must
have been one of the masculine ladies, for, although it is a pretty
trait to shoot at men in mistake for rabbits, it would have been
unusual for a film star to hit the mark.  Lancelot, bounding to his
feet with about six inches of arrow embedded in his rump, behaved
exactly like Colonel Bogey--driven into on the second tee at golf.  He
said passionately: "Lady or damsel, what that thou be, in an evil time
bare ye a bow; the devil made you a shooter!"

In spite of the wound in his backside, Lancelot fought in the next
tournament--an important one, because of several things which happened
at it.  The true tension at court--which was apparent to everybody
except Lancelot, who was too innocent to be conscious of such
things--began to show itself clearly at the Westminster jousts.  For
one thing, Arthur began to assert his position in their wretched
triangle.  He did this, poor fellow, by suddenly taking the opposite
side to Lancelot in the _grand mle_.  He set upon his best friend,
and tried to hurt him, and lost his temper.  He did nothing unknightly,
and, as it happened, did no harm to Lancelot.  But the strange turn of
feeling was there all the same.  Before and afterward they were
friends.  But just for that one moment of anger Arthur was the cuckold
and Lancelot his betrayer.  Such is the apparent explanation--an
unconscious recognition of their relationship--but there may have been
another thought behind it.  It was a long time since Arthur had been
the happy Wart, long since his home and his kingdom had been at their
fortunate peak.  Perhaps he was tired of the struggle, tired of the
Orkney clique and the strange new fashions and the difficulties of love
and modern justice.  He may have fought against Lancelot in the hope of
being killed by him--not a hope exactly, not a conscious attempt.  This
just and generous and kind-hearted man may have guessed unconsciously
that the only solution for him and for his loved ones must lie in his
own death--after which Lancelot could marry the Queen and be at peace
with God--and he may have given Lancelot the chance of killing him in
fair fight, because he himself was worn out.  It may have been.  At all
events, nothing came of it.  There was the blaze of temper, and then
their love was fresh again.

Another important feature of the tournament was that Lancelot, with
innocent idiocy, alienated the Orkneys finally and for good.  He
unhorsed the whole clan except Gareth, one after the other, and Mordred
and Agravaine he unhorsed twice.  Only a saint could have been fool
enough to have saved their lives so often in rescues from Dolorous
Towers and so on--but to cap it by knocking them down at will, at such
a time, was the policy of a natural.  Gawaine, it is true, was decent
enough to refuse to have a hand in plots against Lancelot's life, and
Gaheris was dull.  But from this day on it was only a question of time,
as between the fashionable party of Mordred and Agravaine and the
safety of the commander-in-chief.

A third straw in the wind was that Gareth fought on Lancelot's side at
Westminster.  The peculiar cross-plays of sentiment were noticed by
everybody--the King against his second self, and Gareth against his own
brothers.  With such an undertow there was evidently a storm to come.
It came characteristically, from a quarter which nobody had suspected.


There was a cockney knight called Sir Meliagrance, who had never been
happy at court.  If he had lived in the earlier days, when a man was
judged as a man, he might have got along well enough.  Unfortunately he
belonged to the later generation, of Mordred's fashions, and he was
judged by the new standards.  Everybody knew that Sir Meliagrance was
not quite out of the top drawer.  He knew it himself--the top drawer
had been invented by Mordred--and the knowledge did not make him happy.
Beside all this, Sir Meliagrance had a special cause for misery which
had poisoned society for him.  He was desperately, hopelessly--and had
been ever since he could remember--in love with Guenever.

The news came while Arthur and Lancelot were at the nine-pin alley.
They had got into the habit of going off to this unfashionable spot
every day to cheer themselves with a little conversation.

Arthur was saying: "No, no, Lance.  You never understood poor Tristram
at all."

"He was a cad," said Lancelot obstinately.

They were talking in the past tense because Tristram had finally been
murdered, while playing the harp to La Beale Isoud, by the exasperated
King Mark.

"Even if he is dead," added the knight.

But the King shook his head vehemently.

"Not a cad," he said.  "He was a buffoon, one of the great comic
characters.  He was always getting himself into extraordinary
situations."

"A buffoon?"

"Absent-minded," said the King.  "That is the great comic affliction.
Look at his love-affairs."

"You mean Isoud White-Hands?"

"I firmly believe that Tristram got those two girls completely mixed
up.  He goes mad on La Beale Isoud, and then forgets all about her.
One day he is getting into bed with the other Isoud when something
about the action reminds him of something.  It dawns on him that there
are two Isouds, not one--and he is terribly upset about it.  Here am I
getting into bed with Isoud White-Hands, he says, when all the time I
was in love with La Beale Isoud!  Naturally he was upset.  And then
being nearly murdered in his bath by the Queen of Ireland.  There was a
light of high comedy about that young man, and you ought to forgive him
for being a cad."

"I----" began Lancelot, but at that moment the messenger arrived.

He was a small, breathless boy with an arrow-slit in his jupon, under
the right armpit.  He held the rent together with his fingers and
talked fast.

It was about the Queen, who had gone a-Maying--for it was the first of
May.  She had started early, as the custom was, intending to be back by
ten o'clock, with all the dewy primroses and violets and hawthorn
blooms and green-budding branches which it was proper to gather on such
a morning.  She had left her bodyguard behind--the Queen's knights, who
all bore the vergescu as their badge of office--and had taken with her
only ten knights in civilian clothes.  They had been dressed in green,
to celebrate the festival of spring.  Agravaine was among them--he had
attached himself to Guenever lately, to spy on her--and Lancelot had
been left out on purpose.

Well, they had been riding home cheerfully, all chattering and bloomy
and branchy, when Sir Meliagrance had leaped up at their feet, in an
ambush.  The top-drawer business had preyed on his mind till he had
determined to be ungentlemanly in earnest, if everybody accused him of
being so.  He had known that the Queen's party was unarmed, and that
Lancelot was not with them.  He had brought a strong force of archers
and men-at-arms to take her captive.

There had been a fight.  The Queen's knights had defended her as best
they could with swords and falchions, until they were all wounded, six
of them seriously.  Then Guenever had surrendered, to save their lives.
She had made a bargain with Sir Meliagrance--whose heart was not really
in the business of being a blackguard--that, if she called her
defenders off, he must promise to take the wounded knights with her to
his castle, and he must let them sleep in the anteroom of her chamber.
Meliagrance, loving Guenever, flinching at his own half-hearted
wickedness, and knowing the hopelessness of forcing his beloved against
her will, had agreed to terms.  The poor fellow had never been cut out
to be a villain.

In the confusion of getting the sorry procession of hurt men slung
across their horses, the Queen had kept her head.  She had beckoned the
little page, who had a fresh and fast pony, and she had secretly
slipped him her ring, with a message for Lancelot.  When he saw his
opportunity, he was to gallop for his life--and he had done so, with
the archers after him.  Here was the ring.

Lancelot, half-way through the story, was already shouting for his
armour.  By the time it was told Arthur was kneeling at his feet,
strapping on the greaves.




_Chapter XLII_

When the mounted archers rode back crestfallen, saying that they had
been unable to shoot the boy, Sir Meliagrance knew what was going to
happen.  He was distracted with misery, not only because he knew that
he had been acting unwisely and wickedly, but also because he was
genuinely in love with the Queen.  He still had a kick in him, however,
and he saw that after having gone so far it was too late to retreat.
Lancelot would be bound to come in answer to the message, and it was
necessary to gain time.  The castle was not ready for a siege--but, if
it could be got ready, there would be a fair prospect of making terms
with the besiegers, considering that the Queen would be inside.  So
Lancelot must be stopped at all costs, until the castle had been put in
posture of defence.  He guessed correctly that Lancelot would come
riding helter-skelter to the Queen's aid, as soon as he could get
himself armed.  The best way of stopping him would be with a second
ambush, at a narrow glade in the wood which he would have to ride
through--a glade so narrow that archers would certainly be able to kill
his horse, if not to pierce his armour.  Since the Troubled Times, all
roads had been cleared of undergrowth for the distance of a bowshot on
either side--but this glade, on account of peculiarities in the
terrain, had been overlooked.  And a well-shot arrow at fair range
could penetrate the best armour, as Meliagrance knew.

So the ambush was sent out post-haste, and everything within the castle
was at sixes and sevens.  Herdsmen were driving beasts into the
keep--and all the beasts strayed, or got muddled with each other, or
would not go through gates.  Pump boys were feverishly bringing water
to the great tubs--it was one of those futile castles, which appear to
have originated in Ireland, whose bailey was without a well.  Maids
were running about on the verge of hysterics--for Sir Meliagrance, like
many people out of the wrong drawer, was determined to receive his
captive Queen in a way which would be above criticism.  They were
making boudoirs for her, and taking the tapestries out of his bachelor
bedroom to go in hers, and polishing the silver, and sending to the
nearest neighbours for the loan of gold plate.  Guenever herself,
ushered into a small waiting-room while the state apartments were made
ready for her reception, added to the confusion by insisting on
bandages and hot water and stretchers for her wounded men.  Sir
Meliagrance, running up and down stairs with cries of "Yes, Ma'am, in
'arf a minute" or "Marian, Marian, where the 'ell have you put the
candles?" or "Murdoch, take them sheep out of the solar this instant,"
found time to lean his forehead against the cold stone of an embrasure,
to clutch his bewildered heart, to curse his folly, and further to
disarrange his already disordered plots.

The Queen was the first to get her affairs in order.  She only had the
bandaging to arrange, and naturally her wants were the earliest to be
attended.  She was sitting with her waiting-women at one of the windows
of the castle, a sort of calm-centre in the middle of the whirlwind,
when one of the girls called out that something was coming down the
road.

"It is a cart," said the Queen.  "It will be something to do with the
provisions of the castle."

"There is a knight in the cart," said the girl, "a knight in armour.  I
suppose somebody is taking him away to be hanged."

In those days it was considered disgraceful to ride in a cart.

Later, they saw that there was a horse trotting behind the cart--which
was coming at a great gallop--with its reins dangling in the dust.
Later still they were horrified to see that all the entrails of the
horse were dangling in the dust also.  It was stuck full of arrows like
a porcupine, and trotted along with a strange look of unconcernedness.
Perhaps it was numbed by shock.  It was Lancelot's horse, and Lancelot
was in the cart, beating the cart-horse with his scabbard.  He had
fallen into the ambush as expected, had spent some time trying to get
at his assailants--who had escaped the heavy dismounted iron man
easily, by jumping over hedges and ditches--and then he had set out to
walk the rest of the way, in spite of his armour.  Meliagrance had
counted on the impossibility of such a walk, for a man dressed in an
equipment which may have weighed as much as himself--but he had not
counted on the cart which Lancelot commandeered.  A measure of the
great man's anxiety about the Queen on this occasion is that he is said
to have swum his horse across the Thames at the beginning of the ride,
from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth, in spite of the fact that, if
anything had gone wrong, his armour would certainly have drowned him.

"How dare you say it was a knight going to be hanged?" exclaimed the
Queen.  "You are a hussy.  How dare you compare Sir Lancelot to a
felon?"

The wretched girl blushed and held her tongue, while Lancelot could be
seen throwing his reins to the terrified carter, and storming up the
drawbridge, shouting at the top of his voice.

Sir Meliagrance heard of the arrival just as Lancelot was bursting in
at the Great Gate.  A flustered porter, taken by surprise, tried to
shut it in his face, but received a blow on the ear from the iron fist,
which knocked him flat.  The gate swung open, undefended.  Lancelot was
in one of his rare passions, possibly on account of the sufferings of
his horse.

Meliagrance, who had been overseeing some men-at-arms while they broke
up the wooden sheds on the Great Court as a precaution against Greek
Fire, lost his nerve.  He sprinted for the back stairs and was already
kneeling at the Queen's feet, while Lancelot was raging round the
Porter's lodge, demanding the Queen.

"What is the matter now?" asked Guenever, looking at the extraordinary,
vulgar man who sprawled before her--a look, curiously enough, not
without affection.  After all, it is a compliment to be kidnapped for
love, especially when all ends happily.

"I yield, I yield!" cried Sir Meliagrance.  "Ow, I yield to you, dear
Queen.  Save me from that Sir Lancelot!"

Guenever was looking radiantly beautiful.  It may have been the Maying,
or the compliment which the cockney Knight had paid her, or some
premonition such as comes to women before their joy.  At any rate she
was feeling happy, and she bore no grudge against her captor.

"Very well," she said, cheerfully and wisely.  "The less noise there is
about this, the better for my reputation.  I will try to calm Sir
Lancelot."

Sir Meliagrance positively whistled with relief, he sighed so hard.

"That's right," he said.  "That's the old cock sparrer--ahem! ahem!
Beg pardon, I'm sure.  Will it please your gracious Majesty to stye the
night at Meliagrance Castle, when you 'ave been and calmed Sir
Lancelot, for the sike of your wounded knights?"

"I don't know," said the Queen.

"You could all go awai in the morning," urged Sir Meliagrance, "and we
could sye no more abaht it.  It would be more regular like.  You could
sye you was here on a visit."

"Very well," said the Queen, and she went down to Lancelot while Sir
Meliagrance mopped his brow.


He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy.  When
Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the old electric message went between
their eyes before they spoke a word.  It was as if Elaine and the whole
Quest for the Grail had never been.  So far as we can make it out, she
had accepted her defeat.  He must have seen in her eyes that she had
given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself--to
love his God, and to do whatever he pleased--so long as he was only
Lancelot.  She was serene and sane again.  She had renounced her
possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did.
They were young creatures--the same creatures whose eyes had met with
the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so
long ago.  And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake.

"What is all the fuss about?" asked the Queen.

They had a light, bantering tone.  They were in love again.

"You may well ask."

Then he added in an angrier voice, and flushing: "He has shot my horse."

"Thank you for coming," said the Queen.  Her voice was gentle.  It was
the first voice he remembered.  "Thank you for coming so fast and so
bravely.  But he has given in, and we must forgive him."

"It was shameful to murder my poor horse."

"We have made it up."

"If I had known you were going to make it up," said Lancelot rather
jealously, "I would not have nearly killed myself in coming."

The Queen took his bare hand.  The gauntlet was off.

"Are you sorry," she asked, "because you have done so well?"

He was silent.

"I don't care about him," said the Queen, blushing.  "I only thought it
would be better not to have a scandal."

"I don't want a scandal any more than you do."

"You must do as you please," said the Queen.  "Fight him if you like.
You are the one to choose."

Lancelot looked at her.

"Madam," he said, "so ye be pleased, I care not.  As for my part, ye
shall soon please."

He always fell into the grandeur of the High Language, when he was
moved.




_Chapter XLIII_

The wounded knights were laid on stretchers in the outer room.  The
inner room, where Guenever slept, had a window with iron bars.  There
was no glass.

Lancelot had noticed a ladder in the garden, which was long enough for
his purpose--and, although they had made no assignation, the Queen was
waiting.  When she saw his crumpled face at the window, with the
inquisitive nose against the stars, she did not think it was a gargoyle
or a demon.  She stood for a few heartbeats, feeling the wild blood
surge in her neck, then went silently to the window--the silence of an
accomplice.

Nobody knows what they said to each other.  Malory says that "they made
either to other their complaints of many divers things."  Probably they
agreed that it was impossible to love Arthur and also to deceive him.
Probably Lancelot made her understand about his God at last, and she
made him understand about her missing children.  Probably they fully
agreed to accept their guilty love as ended.

Later, Sir Lancelot whispered: "I wish I might come in."

"I would as fain."

"Would you, madam, with all your heart that I were with you?"

"Truly."

The last iron bar, as he broke it out, cut the brawn of his hand to the
bone.

Later still, the whispers faltered, and there was silence in the
darkness of the room.


Queen Guenever lay long in bed next morning.  Sir Meliagrance, anxious
to get the whole affair safely ended as soon as possible, fussed in the
antechamber, wishing she were gone.  For one thing, he was not anxious
to prolong his own torture, by keeping the Queen under his roof, whom
he loved and could not have.

At last, partly to hurry her off and partly out of a lover's
uncontrollable curiosity, he went into the bedroom to wake her up--a
proceeding which was possible in the days of the levee.

"Mercy," said Sir Meliagrance, "what ails you, Ma'am, to sleep so long?"

He was looking at his lost beauty in the bed, and pretending not to do
so.  The blood of Lancelot's cut hand was all over the sheets.

"Traitress!" cried Sir Meliagrance suddenly.  "Traitress!  You are a
traitor to King Arthur!"

He was beside himself with rage and jealousy, believing himself
deceived.  He had been assuming, since his own enterprise had gone
agley, that the Queen was a pure woman; and that he, in seeking to
enjoy her, was in the wrong.  Now he saw that all the time she had been
cheating him, only pretending to be too virtuous to love him, and
meanwhile sporting with her wounded knights under his very nose.  He
had jumped to the conclusion that the blood had come from a wounded
knight--otherwise why should she have insisted on having them in the
antechamber?  The wildest envy was mixed with his rage.  He never saw
the bars of the window, which had been replaced as carefully as
possible.

"Traitress!  Traitress!  I accuse you of high treason!"

The yells of Sir Meliagrance brought the hurt knights hobbling to the
door--the commotion spread--tire-women and serving maids, pages, turf
boys, a couple of grooms, all came with excitement to the scene.

"They are all false," cried Sir Meliagrance, "all or some.  A wounded
knight hath been here."

Guenever said, "That is untrue.  They can prove it."

"It is a lie," the knights shouted.  "Choose which of us you will
fight.  We will fight you."

"No, you won't," yelled Sir Meliagrance.  "Away with your proud
language.  A wounded knight 'as been sleeping with 'er Majesty!"

And he kept on pointing to the blood, which was certainly good
evidence, until Sir Lancelot arrived among the now sheepish bodyguard.
Nobody noticed that his hand was in a glove.

"What is the matter?" asked Lancelot.

Meliagrance began telling him, wildly, gesticulating, seizing with
excitement upon a fresh person to tell.  He was like a man crazy with
grief.

Lancelot said coldly: "May I remind you about your own conduct towards
the Queen?"

"I don't know what you mean.  I don't care.  I know a knight was in
this room last evening."

"Be careful what you say."

Lancelot looked at him hard, trying to warn him and to bring him to his
senses.  They both knew that this accusation must end in trial by
combat, and Lancelot wanted to make him realize with whom he would have
to fight.  Sir Meliagrance did realize this eventually.  He looked at
Lancelot with unexpected dignity.

"And you be careful too, Sir Lancelot," he said quietly.  "I know you
are the best knight in the world, but be careful 'ow you fight in a
wrong quarrel.  God might strike a stroke for justice, Sir Lancelot,
after all."

The Queen's true lover set his teeth.

"That must be left to God," he said.

Then he added, very meanly: "So far as I am concerned, I say plainly
that none of these wounded knights was in the Queen's room.  And if you
want to fight about it, I will fight you."

Lancelot was, in the end, to fight for the Queen at the stake three
times: first in the good quarrel of Sir Mador, second in this very
doubtful quibble of words with Sir Meliagrance, and third in a quarrel
which was wrong altogether--and each fight brought them nearer to
destruction.

Sir Meliagrance threw down his glove.  He was so certain of the truth
of his assertion that he had become obstinate, as people do in violent
arguments.  He was prepared to die rather than withdraw.  Lancelot took
the glove--what else could he do?  Everybody began attending to the
paraphernalia of a challenge, the usual sealing of the gages with
signets and so on, and the fixing of the date.  Sir Meliagrance grew
quieter.  Now that he was caught in the machinery of justice, he had
time to reflect, and, as usual, his reflections went the opposite way.
He was an inconsistent man.

"Sir Lancelot," he said, "now that we are fixed to have a fight, you
won't do nothing treacherous to me meanwhile?"

"Of course not."

Lancelot looked at him in genuine amazement.  His heart was like
Arthur's.  He was always getting himself into trouble--as, for
instance, by unhorsing the Orkneys at Westminster--through
underestimating the wickedness of the world.

"We will be friends till the battle?"

The old warrior felt his long-accustomed pang of shame.  He was to
fight this man for saying what was practically true.

"Yes," he said enthusiastically, "friends!"

He moved towards Meliagrance with an uprush of remorse.

"Then we will have peace for now," said Meliagrance in a pleased voice.
"Everything above-board.  Would you like to see my castle?"

"Indeed I should."

Meliagrance led him all over the castle, from room to room, until they
came to a chamber with a trap-door.  The board rolled and the trap
opened.  Lancelot fell sixty feet, landing on deep straw in a dungeon.
Then Meliagrance ordered one of the horses to be hidden, and went back
to the Queen to tell her that her champion had ridden ahead.
Lancelot's well-known habit of abrupt departures lent colour to the
story.  It seemed to Meliagrance the best way of ensuring that God
should not choose the wrong side of this quarrel--for Meliagrance was
muddled with his standards too.




_Chapter XLIV_

The second trial by combat was as sensational as the Mador one had
been.  For one thing, Lancelot arrived, at the last moment, by a still
narrower margin.  They had waited for him, and given him up, and
persuaded Sir Lavine to fight in his place.  Sir Lavine was actually
riding into the lists when the great man came at full gallop, on a
white horse which belonged to Meliagrance.  He had been held captive in
the dungeon until that morning--when the girl who brought him his food
had finally liberated him in the absence of her master, in exchange for
a kiss.  He had suffered some complicated scruples about this kiss: but
had decided in the end that it was permissible.

Meliagrance went down at the first charge, and refused to get up.

"I yield," he said.  "I'm a gonner."

"Get up, get up.  You have not fought at all."

"I shan't," said Sir Meliagrance.

Lancelot stood over him in perplexity.  He owed him a thrashing for the
business of the horse, and for the treachery of the trap-door.  But he
knew that the man's accusation was essentially right, and he did not
like the idea of killing him.

"Mercy," said Sir Meliagrance.

Lancelot turned his eyes sideways to the Queen's pavilion, where she
sat under the Constable's ward.  Nobody could see this look of inquiry
because of the great helm.

Guenever saw it, however, or felt it in her heart.  She turned her
thumb down, over the edge of the box, and secretly jabbed it downward
several times.  Meliagrance, she thought, was a dangerous man to keep
alive.

There was great silence in the arena, while everybody waited without
breath, leaning forward and looking upon the combatants like a circle
of vultures whose prey is not yet dead.  Everybody was waiting for the
_coup de grce_, like the people at a Roman amphitheatre or at a
Spanish bull-fight, and everybody was sure that Lancelot would give it.
The accusation of Meliagrance had been, in their opinion, much more
serious than the accusation of Mador--and they thought, like Guenever,
that he deserved to perish.  For in those days love was ruled by a
different convention to ours.  In those days it was chivalrous, adult,
long, religious, almost platonic.  It was not a matter about which you
could make accusations lightly.  It was not, as we take it to be
nowadays, begun and ended in a long week-end.

The spectators saw Lancelot hesitating over the man, then heard his
voice coming muffled by the helm.  He was making proposals.

"I will give you odds," he was saying, "if you will get up and fight me
properly, to the death.  I will take off my helm and all the armour on
the left side of my body, and I will fight without a shield, with my
left hand tied behind my back.  That will be fair, surely?  Will you
get up and fight me like that?"

A sort of high, hysterical squeal came from Sir Meliagrance, who could
be seen crawling towards the King's box and making violent gestures.

"Don't forget what 'e said," he was shouting.  "Everybody 'eard 'im.  I
accept 'is terms.  Don't let 'im go back on 'em.  No harmour for the
left side, no shield or 'elm, and 'is left hand tied behind 'is back.
Everybody 'eard!  Everybody 'eard!"

The King cried, "Ho and abide!"  The heralds and kings-at-arms came
down the lists, and Meliagrance was silenced.  Everybody felt shame on
his behalf.  In the distasteful stillness, while he muttered and
insisted that the terms should be observed, reluctant hands disarmed
Sir Lancelot and tied him.  They felt they were helping at the
execution of somebody whom they loved very much, for the odds were too
heavy.  When they had bound him and given him his sword, they patted
him--pushing him forward towards Meliagrance with these rough pats, and
turning away their faces.

There was a flash in the sandy lists, like a salmon jumping a weir.  It
was Lancelot showing his naked side to draw the blow.  And, as the blow
came, there was the click of changing forms--the same click as comes in
the kaleidoscope when the image alters.  The blow which Meliagrance was
giving had changed to a blow which Lancelot was giving.

Sir Meliagrance was dragged out of the field by horses.  His helm and
head were in two pieces.

_Chapter XLV_

Well, that is the long story of how the foreigner from Benwick stole
Queen Guenever's love, of how he left her for his God and finally
returned in spite of the taboo.  It is a story of love in the old days,
when adults loved faithfully--not a story of the present, in which
adolescents pursue the ignoble spasms of the cinematograph.  These
people had struggled for a quarter of a century to reach their
understanding, and now their Indian Summer was before them.  Lancelot
had given his God to Guenever, and she had given him his freedom in
exchange.  Elaine, who had never been more than an incidental part of
the muddle, had achieved a peace of her own.  Arthur, whose corner of
the triangle was the least fortunate from a personal point of view, was
not entirely wretched.  Merlyn had not intended him for private
happiness.  He had been made for royal joys, for the fortunes of a
nation.  These, for the time of their sunset, Lancelot's two
sensational victories had restored.  Fashion and modernity and the rot
at the Table's heart were in hiding, and his great idea was on the move
once more.  He was inventing Law as Power.  Nor had Arthur cause for
private reproach.  He had kept himself aloof from the pains of Guenever
and Lancelot, unconsciously trusting them not to bring the matter to
his consciousness, not from motives of fear or of weak connivance, but
from the noblest of motives.  The power had been in the King's hands.
He had been in the position of a husband who could, by a single
command, solve the problem of eternal triangles by reference to the
headsman's block or to the stake.  His wife and her lover had been at
his mercy--and that was the reason, not any reason of cowardice, why
his generous heart had been determined to remain unconscious.

The Indian Summer was within their grasp, gossip was silenced,
discourtesy put down.  The Orkney faction could only grumble, a distant
and almost subterranean complaint.  In the scriptoria of the abbeys,
and in the castles of the great nobles, the harmless writers scribbled
away at Missals and Treatises of Knighthood, while the limners
illuminated the capital letters and carefully drew blazons of arms.
The goldsmiths and silversmiths hammered away, with small hammers, at
gold leaf.  They twisted gold wire and inlaid interlacements of the
wildest complexity on the crosiers of the bishops.  Pretty ladies kept
robins and sparrows for pets, or tried very hard to teach their magpies
to talk.  Housewives of a provident turn of mind filled their cupboards
with treacle as a medicine for bad air, and with home-made plasters
called Flos Unguentorum for the rheumatics and muskballs to smell.
They provided against Lent by purchasing dates, and green ginger of
almonds, and herrings at 4s. 6d. the horse-load.  Falconers and
austringers abused each other's hawks to their hearts' content.  In the
new law courts--for Fort Mayne was over--the lawyers were as busy as
bees, issuing writs for attainder, chancery, chevisance, disseisin,
distraint, distress, embracery, exigent, fieri facias, maintenance,
replevin, right of way, oyer and terminer, scot and lot, Quorum
bonorum, Sic et non, Pro et contra, Jus primae noctis, and Questio quid
juris?  Thieves--it is true--could be hanged for stealing goods to the
value of one shilling--for the codification of Justice was still weak
and muddled--but that was not so bad as it sounds, when you remember
that for a shilling you could buy two geese, or four gallons of wine,
or forty-eight loaves of bread--a troublesome load for a thief in any
case.  In the country lanes the mere lovers, who were not gentles,
walked in the sunsets with their arms round each other's waists, so
that they gave the impression of a capital X when seen from behind.

Arthur's Gramarye was at peace, and the joys of peace stretched before
Lancelot and Guenever.  But there was a fourth corner in the puzzle.

God was Lancelot's totem.  He was the other person of their battle, and
now He chose the final moment to step across the path.  The small boy
who looked in the kettle-hat, and who dreamed of well-water which
always slipped away from his lips, had cherished an ambition to do some
ordinary miracle.  He had managed a sort of miracle, when he rescued
Elaine from her tub by being the best knight in the world--before he
was trapped by Elaine on that terrible evening so that he broke his
taboo.  For a quarter of a century he had remembered the night with
grief, and it had been with him through all the searches for the Grail.
Before it, he had thought himself a man of God.  Since then, he had
been a swindle.  Now the time had finally come to a head, when he was
to be forced to face his doom.

There was a knight from Hungary called Sir Urre, who had received
wounds in a tournament seven years before.  He had been fighting with a
man called Sir Alphagus, whom he had killed after getting these
wounds--three of them on the head, four on the body and on the left
hand.  The mother of the dead Alphagus had been a Spanish witch, and
she had put an enchantment on Sir Urre of Hungary, so that none of the
wounds could ever heal up.  All the time they were to go on bleeding,
turn about, until the best knight in the world had tended them and
salved them with his hands.

Sir Urre of Hungary had long been carried from country to
country--perhaps it was a sort of hemophilia--searching for the best
knight who would be able to help him.  At last he had braved the
channel to reach this foreign, northern land.  Everybody had told him,
everywhere, that his only chance was Lancelot, and in the end he had
come to seek.

Arthur, who always felt the best of everybody, was sure that Lance
would be able to do it--but he thought it fair that every knight of the
Table should have a try.  There might be a hidden excellence lurking
somewhere, as had happened before.

The court was at Carlisle at the time, for the feast of Pentecost, and
it was arranged that everybody should meet in the town meadow.  Sir
Urre was carried there in a litter and laid on a cushion of gold cloth,
for the attempt at healing to begin.  A hundred and ten knights--forty
were away on quests--stood round him in ordered ranks, in their best
clothes, and there were carpets laid down, and pavilions set up for the
great ladies to watch.  Arthur loved his Lancelot so much that he
wanted him to have a splendid setting, in which his crowning
achievement could be done.


This is the end of the book of Sir Lancelot, and now we are to see him
for the last time in it.  He was hiding in the harness-room of the
castle, whence he could spy the field.  There were plenty of leather
reins in the room, hanging orderly among the saddles and the bright
bits.  He had noticed that they were strong enough to bear his weight.
He was waiting there, hidden, praying that somebody--Gareth
perhaps?--would be able to do the miracle quickly: or, if not, that
they would overlook him, that his absence would not be noticed.

Do you think it would be fine to be the best knight in the world?
Think, then, also, how you would have to defend the title.  Think of
the tests, such repeated, remorseless, scandal-breathing tests, which
day after day would be applied to you--until the last and certain day,
when you would fail.  Think also that you know of a good reason for
your failure, which you have tried to hide, tried pathetically to hide
and overlook, for five and twenty years.  Think that you are now to go
out, before the largest and most honourable gallery that can be
assembled, to make a public demonstration of your sin.  They are
expecting you to succeed, and you are to fail: you are to publish the
deceit which you have practised for a quarter of a century, and they
will all immediately know the reason for it--that reason of shame which
you have sought to conceal from your own mind, and which, when it has
remembered itself in the silence of your empty chamber, has pricked you
into a physical motion of your head to throw it off.  Miracles, which
you wanted to do so long ago, can only be done by the pure in heart.
The people outside are waiting for you to do this miracle because you
have traded on their belief that your heart was pure--and now, with
treachery and adultery and murder wringing the heart like a cloth, you
are to go out into the sunlight for the test of honour.

Lancelot stood in the harness-room as white as a sheet.  Guenever was
out there, he knew, and she was also pale.  He twisted his fingers and
looked at the strong reins, and prayed as best he could.


"Sir Servause le Breuse!" cried the heralds, and Sir Servause stepped
forward--a knight far down the list of competitors.  He was a shy man,
interested only in natural history, who had never fought with anybody
in his life.  He went over to Sir Urre, who was groaning from all the
handling, and he knelt down and did his best.

"Sir Ozanna le Cure Hardy!"

It went on like that down the full list of a hundred and ten, whose
gorgeous names are given by Malory in their proper order, so that you
almost see the fine cut of their heavy brigandines, the tinctures of
their blazons, and the gay colour in each panache.  Their feathered
heads made them look like Indian braves.  The plates of their sabatons
clinked as they walked, giving the firm, exciting ring of spurs.  They
knelt down, and Sir Urre winced, and it was no good.


Lancelot did not hang himself with the reins.  He had broken his taboo,
deceived his friend, returned to Guenever, and murdered Sir Meliagrance
in a wrong quarrel.  Now he was ready to take his punishment.  He went
to the long avenue of knights who waited in the sun.  By the very
attempt to evade notice, he had brought on himself the conspicuous
place of last.  He walked down the curious ranks, ugly as ever,
self-conscious, ashamed, a veteran going to be broken.  Mordred and
Agravaine moved forward.

When Lancelot was kneeling in front of Urre, he said to King Arthur:
"Need I do this, after everybody has failed?"

"Of course you must do it.  I command you."

"If you command me, I must.  But it would be presumptuous to try--after
everybody.  Could I be let off?"

"You are taking it the wrong way," said the King.  "Of course it is not
presumptuous for you to try.  If you can't do it, nobody can."

Sir Urre, who was weak by now, raised himself on an elbow.

"Please," he said.  "I came for you to do it."

Lancelot had tears in his eyes.

"Oh, Sir Urre," he said, "if only I could help you, how willingly I
would.  But you don't understand, you don't understand."

"For God's sake," said Sir Urre.

Lancelot looked into the East, where he thought God lived, and said
something in his mind.  It was more or less like this: "I don't want
glory, but please can you save our honesty?  And if you will heal this
knight for the knight's sake, please do."  Then he asked Sir Urre to
show him his head.


Guenever, who was watching from her pavilion like a hawk, saw the two
men fumbling together.  Then she saw a movement in the people near, and
a mutter came, and yells.  Gentlemen began throwing their caps about,
and shouting, and shaking hands.  Arthur was crying the same words
again and again, holding gruff Gawaine by the elbow and putting them
into his ear.  "It shut like a box!  It shut like a box!"  Some elderly
knights were dancing around, banging their shields together as if they
were playing Pease Pudding Hot, and poking each other in the ribs.
Many of the squires were laughing like madmen and slapping each other
on the back.  Sir Bors was kissing King Anguish of Ireland, who
resented it.  Sir Galahalt, the hault prince, had fallen over his
scabbard.  Generous Sir Belleus, who had borne no grudge for having his
liver cut open on that distant evening beside the pavilion of red
sendal, was making a horrible noise by blowing on a grass blade held
edgewise between his thumbs.  Sir Bedivere, frightfully repentant ever
since his visit to the Pope, was rattling some holy bones which he had
brought home as a souvenir of his pilgrimage: they had written on them
in curly letters, "A Present from Rome."  Sir Bliant, remembering his
gentle Wild Man, was embracing Sir Castor, who had never forgotten the
Chevalier's knightly rebuke.  Kind and sensitive Aglovale, the forgiver
of the Pellinore feud, was exchanging hearty thumps with the beautiful
Gareth.  Mordred and Agravaine scowled.  Sir Mador, as red as a turkey
cock, was making it up with Sir Pinel the poisoner, who had come back
incognito.  King Pelles was promising a new cloak all round, on him.
The snow-haired Uncle Dap, so old as to be absolutely fabulous, was
trying to jump over his walking-stick.  The tents were being let down,
the banners waved.  The cheers which now began, round after round, were
like drumfire or thunder, rolling round the turrets of Carlisle.  All
the field, and all the people in the field, and all the towers of the
castle, seemed to be jumping up and down like the surface of a lake
under rain.

In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself.
This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from
the others.  The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle.
"And ever," says Malory, "Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child
that had been beaten."



EXPLICIT LIBER TERTIUS




_Incipit Liber Quartus_

THE 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 for Mr. Pontifex a course of the larger mammals.
Don't let him think he is taking them medicinally....'"




_Chapter I_

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,
trying 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 rooftops."

"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
time 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 themselves."

"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 Lancelot!"


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.




_Chapter II_

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 themselves 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 his 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
_haut 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.
Ye 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 passions!"

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 flicker.  He moved across the cloister to kiss
Mordred gently, smiling upon them all.




_Chapter III_

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
ciel un dieu, par terre une desse_"  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 themselves 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 themselves 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 themselves 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
stories 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 Jumiges 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 ils 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 champlev 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 themselves--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 ideal 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 would 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 his armour--which was almost as bad as a boxer
hiding 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 his 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
"_Requiem aeternum 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-Hee!" 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 Merlin'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?




_Chapter IV_

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 Guenever,

  "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 say!  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."

But 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 Gard 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, returned 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 clean 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 young.  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 tell 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 a 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 eye.

"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 real 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."




_Chapter V_

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 disputacious 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 something, 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 why 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 rumours 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 result."

"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, I 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 you 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 rigour of the laws which you yourselves have set in motion."




_Chapter VI_

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 have gone off hunting."

Gareth 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 then 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.




_Chapter VII_

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 cut 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-chief
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 wall.  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 genius
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 Pit, 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 copy-cat.  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 themselves, 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 used 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 us 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 King!" "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."




_Chapter VIII_

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 Bathsheba,
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 Sir 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 shame-faced
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 outsetting 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 her 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.

"I 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 strange 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 spurring 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 mle!"

"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
will 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 straighten 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 themselves in 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 Gillimer, Sir Reynold's three brothers, Sir Damas, Sir
Priamus, Sir Kay the Stranger, Sir Driant, Sir Lambegus, Sir Herminde,
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.




_Chapter IX_

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 gellid 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 chess-players
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 mantel-piece,
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--pied, and they were in cuir-bouill, 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:

  Traitor knight
  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 employment 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:

  Traitor knight
  Come out to fight.
  Yah!  Yah!  Yah!


"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."




_Chapter X_

"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 themselves 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 jackets 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 Gawaine's rumble, 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 I
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 time.

"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 themselves not in
the right.  I speak for the Queen, not for my own worship."

"Well, well, Sir Lancelot."

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

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

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

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

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

Gawaine flung back his head.

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

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

"A noble speech."

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

Mordred whispered: "It was against our heart."

Lancelot tried one last effort of persuasion.

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

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

The old knight's patience broke.

"Hold your tongue!"

Gawaine was flaming on the instant.

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

"It would need more..."

Again the nuncio intervened.

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

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

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

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

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

"If it is the King's judgment, I shall accept it."

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

"Arthur..."

"Speak to the King by his title."

"Sir, is this true?"

But the old man only bowed his head.

"At least let me hear it from the King's mouth!"

Mordred said: "Speak, father."

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

"Speak."

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

"But can't it be ended?"

"Gawaine says..." he began faintly.

"Gawaine!"

"Justice..."

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

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

The silence became absolute.

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

"Gawaine," he asked painfully, "don't follow me.  I will accept the
banishment.  I will live in my French castles.  But don't follow me,
Gawaine.  Don't keep the war 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 passed 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.




_Chapter XI_

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 needle-woman, the
other half of her brain moving idly among her troubles.  She wished she
was not at Carlisle.  It was too near the north--which was Mordred's
country--too far away from the securities of civilization.  For
instance, she would have liked to be at London--in the Tower, perhaps.
She would have liked, instead of this dreary expanse of snow, to be
looking out from the Tower windows at the fun and bustle of the
metropolis: at London Bridge, with the staggering houses all over it,
which were constantly tumbling off into the river.  She remembered it
as a bridge of great personality, what with the houses and the heads of
rebels on spikes and the 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 their heads out of windows, or letting down buckets into the
river on long ropes, or throwing out slops, or hanging the washing, or
screaming to their children when the drawbridge was going to be pulled
up.

For that matter, it would have been nice merely to be in the Tower
itself.  Here, in Carlisle, everything was as still as death.  But
there, in the Conqueror's tower, a constant ebb and flow of cockneys
would be livening the frost.  Even Arthur's menagerie, which he now
kept in the Tower, would be giving a comfortable background of 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 blackbirds who was greedy."

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

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

"They will come back, no doubt."

"Yes, madam."

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

"They say Sir Lancelot has been brave."

"Sir Lancelot always was a brave gentleman, madam."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, ma'am."

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

"And what did Sir Gawaine say?"

"Sir Gawaine said: 'Leave thy babbling and come off, and let us ease
our hearts.'"

"And did they?"

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

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

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

"I wonder he was not killed."

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

"Alas, Sir Gawaine!"

"Yes, he could have killed him there and then."

"But he didn't."

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

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

"We may depend."

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

"He was the chief of all."

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

"Certainly, madam.  I was thinking the same myself."

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

"There, madam.  The days seem to draw out."

"Yes: we shall have the spring soon."

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

"And what did the King say about the business?"

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

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

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

"Well, it isn't a very cheerful letter, is it, madam?"

"No, it isn't."

"I remember having a letter once--but there, they say bad news travels
the fastest."

"Everything is letters now--now that the court is empty, and the world
split, and nobody left but the Lord Protector."

"Ah, 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 Sir Mordred means to do wrong,
do you, Agnes?"

"He is a dark one."

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

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

"Mordred has never broken the laws."

"That is because he is too cunning."

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

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

They sewed away.

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

"I wish he had."

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

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

"Are you frightened of Sir Mordred, Agnes?"

"Yes, madam, that I am."

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

"He is a sly one.  Maybe he is listening now."

"Agnes!"

Guenever dropped her needle as if she had been struck.

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

But the Queen remained frozen.

"Go to the door.  I believe you are right."

"Oh, madam, I couldn't do that."

"Open it at once, Agnes."

"Madam, but suppose he is there!"

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

"If you open it, he will go away."

"But we must give him time to go away."

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

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

"Madam, what shall I say?"

"Say, 'Shall I open the door?'  Then I will say, 'Yes, I think it is
time to go to bed.'"

"I think it is time to go to bed."

"Go on."

"Very good, madam.  Shall I begin?"

"Begin, yes, quickly."

"I don't know as I can do it."

"Oh, Agnes, please be quick!"

"Very well, madam.  I think I can do it now."

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

"I am going to open the door!"

"It is time to go to bed!"

Nothing happened.

"Now open it," said the Queen.

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


"Good evening, Agnes."

"Oh, sir!"

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

"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 feather-pated 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 know 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 fingers
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 king!  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?"




_Chapter XII_

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 ae month."

"Lancelot was always strong.  The years don't seem to touch him."

"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 time.  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 bonnetless.  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 letters 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 Thrashers 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.




_Chapter XIII_

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 themselves 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 spelling 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 unfrequently 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 I 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.




_Chapter XIV_

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 roy 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 Barham 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 discover 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 in 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 themselves 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 Ball 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 and 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 almost
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 head.  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 his 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 I 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'lt 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 cat-nap 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 Flodden 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 their 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






[End of The Once and Future King, by T. H. White]
