The Once and Future King

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.’)