The Once and Future King

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 pangs 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.’