The Once and Future King

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 you 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.’