The Once and Future King

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 Barthobmeus 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 gladdened 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?’