The Once and Future King

Chapter XXIII

The spring came slowly, the new menage settled down, and Elaine arranged a tournament for her chevalier. There was to be a prize of a fair maid and a jerfalcon.

Five hundred knights came from all parts of the kingdom to compete in the tournament – but the Chevalier Mal Fet knocked down anybody who would stand up to him, with a kind of absent-minded ferocity, and the thing was a failure. The knights went away puzzled and frightened. Not a single person had been killed – he spared everybody indifferently as soon as he had knocked them down – and, by the Chevalier at any rate, not a single word had been spoken. The defeated knights, jogging home with their bruises, missed the conviviality which usually happened on tournament evenings, wondered who the taciturn champion could be, and talked superstitiously among themselves. Elaine, smiling bravely until the last of them had gone, went up to her room and cried. Then she dried her eyes and set out to find her lord. He had vanished as soon as the fighting was over, for he had got into the habit of going away by himself at sunset every evening – she did not know where.

She found him on the battlements, in a blaze of gold. Their shadows, and the shadow of the tower on which they stood, and all the spectres of the burning trees, stretched over the parkland in broad strips of indigo. He was looking towards Camelot with desperate eyes. His new shield, with the blazon of his incognito, was propped in front of him. The cognizance was of a silver woman on a sable field, with a knight kneeling at her feet.

In her simplicity, Elaine had been delighted by the compliment on the shield. She had never been clever. Now she realized, for the first time, that the silver woman was crowned. She stood helplessly, wondering what she could do – but there was nothing she could do. Her weapons were blunt ones, of soft metal. She could only use patience and hope and self-restraint, poor tools when matched against the heart-felt mania of love to which the ancient race was martyred.

One morning they were sitting on a green bank at the edge of the lake. Elaine was doing embroidery, while Lancelot watched his son. Galahad, a priggish, mute little boy, was playing some private game with his dolls – to which he remained attached long after most boys would have taken to soldiers. Lancelot had carved two knights in armour for him out of wood. They were mounted on wheeled horses, from which they were detachable, and they held their spears in fewter. By pulling the horses towards each other, with strings tied to the platform on which they stood, the knights could be made to tilt. They could be made to knock each other out of the saddle. Galahad did not care for them at all, but played with a rag doll which he called the Holy Holy.

‘Gwyneth will ruin that sparrow hawk,’ remarked Lancelot.

They could see one of the castle gentlewomen coming towards them at a great pace, with the sparrow hawk on her fist. Her haste had excited the hawk, which was bating continuously – but Gwyneth paid no attention to it, beyond giving it an occasional angry shake.

‘What is the matter, Gwyneth?’

‘Oh, my lady, there are two knights waiting beyond the water, and they say they have come to tilt with the Chevalier.’

‘Tell them to go away,’ said Lancelot. ‘Say I am not at home.’

‘But, sir, the porter has told them the way to the boat, and they are coming over one at a time. They say they won’t both come, but the second will come if you beat the first. He is in the boat already.’

He got up and dusted his knees.

‘Tell him to wait in the tilt yard,’ he said. ‘I will be twenty minutes.’

The tilt yard was a long, sanded passage between the walls, with a tower at each end. It had galleries looking down on it from the walls, like a racquets court, and was open to the sky. Elaine and the domestics sat in these galleries to watch, and the two knights fought beneath them for a long time. The tilting was even – each of them had a fall – and the sword-play lasted for two hours. At the end of this time, the strange knight cried: ‘Stop!’

Lancelot stopped at once, as if he were a farm labourer who had been given permission to knock off for his dinner. He stuck his sword in the ground, as if it were a pitchfork, and stood patiently. He had, indeed, only been working with the quiet patience of a farm hand. He had not been trying to hurt his opponent.

‘Who are you?’ asked the stranger. ‘Please tell me your name? I have never met a man like you.’

Lancelot suddenly lifted both gauntlets to his helm, as if he were trying to bury in them the face which was already hidden, and said miserably: ‘I am Sir Lancelot Dulac.’

‘What!’

‘I am Lancelot, Degalis.’

Degalis threw his sword against the stone wall with a clang, and began running back towards the tower by the moat. His iron feet threw echoes down the yard. He unlaced and tossed away his helm as he ran. When he had reached the portcullis of the gatehouse, he put his hands to his mouth and shouted with all his might:

‘Ector! Ector! It is Lancelot! Come over!’

Immediately he was running back towards his friend.

‘Lancelot! My dear, dear fellow! I was sure it was you. I was sure it was you!’

He began fumbling with the laces, trying to get the helm off with clumsy fingers. He snatched off his own gauntlets and hurled them, too, with a clash against the wall. He could hardly wait to see Sir Lancelot’s face. Lancelot stood still, like a tired child being undressed.

‘But what have you been doing? Why are you here? It was feared that you were dead.’

The helm came off, and went to join the rest of the discards.

‘Lancelot!’

‘Did you say that Ector was with you?’

‘Yes, it is your brother Ector. We have been looking for you for two years. Oh, Lancelot, I am glad to see you!’

‘You must come in,’ he said, ‘and refresh yourselves.’

‘But what have you been doing all this time? Where have you been hidden? The Queen sent out three knights to search for you at the beginning. In the end there were twenty-three of us. It must have cost her twenty thousand pounds.’

‘I have been here and there.’

‘Even the Orkney faction helped. Sir Gawaine is one of the searchers.’

By this time Sir Ector had arrived in the boat – Sir Ector Demaris, not King Arthur’s guardian – and the portcullis had been raised for him. He ran for the Chevalier, as if he were to tackle him at football.

‘Brother!’

Elaine had come down from her gallery and was waiting at the end of the tilt yard. She was now to welcome, as she knew well, the people who were to break her heart. She did not interfere with their greetings, but watched them like a child who had been left out of a game. She stood still, gathering her forces. All her powers, all the frontier guards of her spirit, were being called in and concentrated at the citadel of her heart.

‘This is Elaine.’

They turned to her and began to bow.

‘You are welcome to Bliant Castle.’