The King Arthur Trilogy (55 page)

Sir Lancelot swung left-hand from the bridge on to the tilting ground, and reined to a trampling halt, his horse scattering foam from its muzzle.

Then the King sent squires to summon Sir Lancelot before him. And Sir Lancelot set his horse pacing forward up the field and reined in again, below the stand where the King sat with Guenever the Queen at his side.

‘Sir Lancelot,’ said the King, ‘you come late to your tryst.’

And Sir Lancelot spoke up in a loud clear voice for all the company to hear, and told how Sir Meliagraunce had dealt with him in the past days. And Sir Meliagraunce would have turned his horse and been swiftly on his
way; but the King checked him. And he sat by, with a frightened and sullen face, and could make no answer when King Arthur demanded of him whether he could deny the charge.

Then Lancelot said, ‘My Lord King, this creature who calls himself a knight, and a knight of the Round Table, has sought by treachery to bring black dishonour upon my name; therefore, in place of the simple joust which was planned for today, I demand that he shall do battle with me to the uttermost!’ Which was to say, to the death, neither man being free to yield himself to the other’s mercy if he were defeated in the usual custom of a joust.

‘The demand is granted,’ said the King.

Then a fresh horse was brought for Sir Lancelot, and he and Sir Meliagraunce drew apart to the far ends of the lists, and turned, and at the trumpet’s sounding, set their spears in rest, and came thundering down upon each other. And Sir Lancelot’s spear took Sir Meliagraunce in midshield, and hove him backwards over his horse’s crupper.

Then as Sir Meliagraunce scrambled to his feet, Sir Lancelot swung down from his horse; and drawing their swords, they fell to hewing and smiting at each other, until at last Sir Lancelot got in such a blow to the side of his adversary’s helm that he went down like a poled ox.

But Sir Meliagraunce scrambled towards Sir Lancelot and clung to his knees, crying, ‘Spare my life! I yield me! I cry quarter and yield me to your mercy!’

Then Sir Lancelot did not know what to do, for this was a fight to the uttermost, and he was bound for his honour’s sake neither to ask nor to give mercy, but to kill or be killed. Yet his gorge rose at the thought of killing a man grovelling at his feet.

‘Get up!’ he said. ‘Get up and fight, if you would not shame your manhood more than you have done already!’

But the other went on grovelling and clinging and crying out, ‘I yield! I yield! Spare my life!’

‘
Get up!
’ said Sir Lancelot in an agony. ‘And I will lay aside my helmet and my shield and my left gauntlet and fight you with my left hand tied behind my back!’

Then Sir Meliagraunce ceased howling, and stumbled to his feet and cried out for all to hear, ‘My Lord the King, take heed of this offer, for I will accept it!’

There was a sick silence, and then a murmur of distaste among the watching knights, and the King said to his friend, ‘Sir Lancelot, are you set upon this?’

And Sir Lancelot said steadily, ‘I never yet went back on my word.’

So the squires came and took his helm and shield, and bound his left arm behind his back; and the two knights stood once more face to face; and a murmur ran
round the field at sight of Sir Lancelot standing there bareheaded and shieldless and one-handed, before his fully-armed opponent. Then Sir Meliagraunce swung up his sword, and Sir Lancelot stood as it were drawing him on with his bare head and shieldless left flank; then as the blade came whistling down, he side-slipped and twisted with a silver flash like a leaping salmon, swinging up his own sword Joyeux so that the two clashed and ground together and for a moment hung locked. And then the other blade was beaten aside, and Sir Lancelot’s blade took his enemy on the helmet-crest with such force that both the helmet and the head within it were cloven in two, and Sir Meliagraunce fell dead upon the trampled ground.

Then the squires came and bore his body away, leading his horse after it. And while Sir Lancelot stood leaning on his sword and wiping the sweat out of his eyes with the back of his bare hand, the King himself went to him and led him to where Sir Urre lay upon his litter under the alder trees. And he told Sir Lancelot of the knight’s wounds, and how they had all failed to heal him.

‘And indeed,’ said Arthur, ‘we had small hope of success, seeing that his wounds may be healed only by the touch of the best knight in Christendom. But now that you are returned to us, the hope rises again within our hearts.’

‘In mine also,’ said Sir Urre; and his eyes clung to Sir Lancelot’s face like the eyes of a sick dog. And his mother and sister were standing by.

‘Not me,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘this is for the best knight in Christendom. God forbid that I should think to achieve what so many good knights have failed to do!’

‘It is for the best knight in Christendom,’ the King said gently.

Sir Lancelot shook his head. ‘I was, maybe, once.’

‘Galahad is dead,’ said the King, still more gently. And then, ‘See now, you do this thing not out of any pride or presumption, but because your King commands you.’

‘Then I must obey the King’s command,’ said Sir Lancelot. He was weary to the bone, and still rank with the sweat of battle. And he knew that if he tried to do this thing, and failed, he would be shamed before all his fellows of the Round Table. But he knelt down beside the litter, and set his hands together, one bare and the other still mailed, and prayed deep in his own heart where none might hear him save the One to whom he prayed, ‘Oh God, make me Your servant and Your channel for the healing of this sick knight. By Your virtue and grace, let him be made whole through me, but never
by
me.’

And then, seeing that he still wore his right-hand gauntlet, he stripped it off, and asked Sir Urre very humbly, ‘Will you grant me now that I touch your wounds?’

‘In God’s name lay your hands upon me,’ said Sir Urre.

And Sir Lancelot touched the wounds upon his head. And as he did so, it seemed that something flowed through him, like a wind or a fire or his own heart’s blood. And the bleeding ceased beneath his hands, and the edges of the wounds drew together. And then he touched the wounds on Sir Urre’s body and again the power and the love flowed through him and the wounds closed; and lastly he took Sir Urre’s sword-hand in both of his, and felt it grow whole and strong again between his palms.

And he knew that at long last, with all his sins upon him, God had granted him the miracle he had prayed for all his life.

Sir Urre sat up, and looked about him in great wonder, then got slowly to his feet. And King Arthur and all his knights cried out in joy; and kneeling, bowed their heads and gave thanks to God for His mercy.

But kneeling still beside the empty litter, Sir Lancelot covered his face with his big swordsman’s hands, and wept like a little child that has been beaten.

TIME WENT BY
, and on the surface it seemed still that life stood at summer; but below the surface, the shadows were closing in on Britain. The shining light of Logres shone as high and clear as ever, but as a candle flares before it gutters out.

And more and more Sir Lancelot found himself remembering Sir Tristan, dead these nine years past. Sir Tristan sitting beside the fire in the Great Hall at Camelot, his little harp on his knee, turning the love between himself and Iseult of Cornwall into a harpsong of such piercing sorrow and sweetness that all his listeners wept to hear. For more and more Sir Lancelot’s love for Guenever was becoming what Tristan’s for Iseult had been, a power that dragged him where it would, as the moon drags the tides to follow it.

And always Sir Agravane and Sir Mordred watched
him and the Queen, with hatred in their hearts for both of them and for the King also; the King above all, though they made pretence that all their concern was for his sake.

One evening when another May had come round, and again the cuckoo was calling in the wooded hills about Caerleon where the court was at that time, Sir Gawain and his brothers and their half-brother Mordred were talking together in the chamber high in the North Tower of the castle where Gawain had his quarters. It was a dark, austere room, with no beauty in it save for the flames upon the hearth and the yellowish-white skin of a great snow-bear with chunks of amber for eyes, that lay slung across the low bed-place. The four Orkney brothers were gathered about the hearth, while Mordred stood by the narrow window, a little removed – he never forgot, nor allowed them to forget, that he was no full brother of theirs – and played with a tiny jewelled dagger as though it were a flower between his fingers.

‘We have all seen them together,’ said Sir Agravane. ‘We all know how often they are together, and more closely so when we do not see. The whole court knows of their love for each other; and it is foul shame that we should leave the King unwarned.’

‘The King knows!’ said Sir Gawain harshly. ‘Do you think he is a blind fool?’

Gaheris said, puzzled, ‘Then why does he do nothing?’

Sir Gareth said slowly, thinking the thing out as he went along, ‘Do you not see? He knows, but he pretends even to himself that he does not know, because so long as he does that, he need do nothing to harm the two people he loves best in the world.’

‘Well thought out, little brother,’ said Gawain, ‘but there’s more to it than that.’

Sir Agravane said shrilly, ‘And meanwhile they bring shame upon the King and our Round Table brotherhood, and upon the whole Kingdom of Logres!’

Sir Gawain kicked a smouldering log on the hearth and watched it burst into flame. ‘There are others who do that,’ he said, and glared at his brother. ‘Leave it, Agravane.’

‘You are the eldest of us, you should tell him.’

Rage and helplessness rose in Gawain and almost choked him. He could think of no way out, no way of thrusting back the evil. Even if he were indeed to tell the King – warn him – that would be to do Mordred’s work for him, in the end. ‘I will have no part in it,’ he growled in his throat. His grey-streaked red hair seemed almost to rise like the hackles of an angry hound. ‘If you do this, you will tear the Round Table asunder, for you must know that many of the knights will take sides with Sir Lancelot, while others will follow you and Mordred,
thinking that in doing that, they stand true to the King – until in your own time you will stand forth against him yourselves. There will be red war, and the end of Logres and all that we have striven for so long. And who will be for the King then?’

‘You will be for the King,’ said Gareth, ‘and I.’

‘I also,’ said Gaheris, ‘and a few more. Most of us old hounds with grey muzzles.’

Sir Mordred spoke for the first time, playing with the dagger. ‘Agravane, if you are afraid to come with me to the King my father, I will go to him alone.’

‘Nay, I go with you,’ said Sir Agravane. ‘The time has come when our liege lord must be forced to know, and to
act
!’

And a sideways, lip-licking glance passed between him and Mordred.

They turned together and left the room.

The three left by the fire looked after them. ‘There is no more that we can do,’ Gawain said. ‘God’s teeth! Even if we were to silence them this way –’ he touched the dagger in his belt – ‘their deaths would force the thing upon Arthur’s notice, and so bring the splitting of the Round Table as surely as their telling what they have to tell will do. But wae’s me, the darkness comes crowding in, my brothers.’

Mordred and Agravane found the King alone in his council chamber, sitting in his High Seat with the
dragon-head foreposts and staring at nothing. And kneeling before him as two just men who loved him and could bear to see him wronged no longer, they told him that Lancelot and his Queen were lovers.

The King heard them out in silence. Only his hands clenched more and more fiercely on the carved dragon-heads. The thing that he had always prayed would not happen was happening. He was being forced to know about his wife and his best friend; and from that must come not only darkness for the three of them, but darkness and ruin for the Kingdom of Logres.

But he would not yield to the darkness without fighting. When they had done, he rose slowly to his feet, unfurling all his great height like a banner. He had come, as the years went by, to stoop a little under the burden of his own height, as many tall men do; but he did not stoop now. He stood looking down at them as they knelt still at his feet; his nephew and his ill-begotten son.

‘Have a care how you make that accusation,’ he said. ‘For once it is made, one or the other of you must prove it in the Court of Honour, against Sir Lancelot himself. It would not be the first time that he has fought for the Queen’s innocence; and let you remember the end of that fight. And remember also the time that he fought Sir Meliagraunce with neither shield nor helmet and one hand bound behind his back, and yet Sir Meliagraunce was carried dead from the field.’

Agravane said with hurried eagerness, ‘But if evildoers are caught in their evildoing, seen by trustworthy witnesses so that the case is proved against them past all doubt, there is no need left for trial by combat.’