The Once and Future King

Chapter XXVI

‘We don’t see many arrows thrilling in people’s hearts nowadays,’ remarked Lancelot one afternoon at the archery butts.

‘Thrilling!’ exclaimed Arthur. ‘What a splendid word to describe an arrow vibrating, just after it has hit!’

Lancelot said: ‘I heard it in a ballad.’

They went away and sat in an arbour, from which they could watch the young people practising their shots.

‘It is true,’ said the King gloomily. ‘We don’t get much of the old fighting in these decadent days.’

‘Decadent!’ protested his commander-in-chief. ‘What are you so gloomy about? I thought this was what you wanted?’

Arthur changed the subject.

‘Gareth is shaping well,’ he said, watching the boy. ‘It’s funny. He can’t be many years younger than you are, yet one thinks of him as a child.’

‘Gareth is a dear.’

The King put his hand on Lancelot’s knee and squeezed it affectionately.

‘Some people might say that you are the dear,’ he said, ‘so far as Gareth is concerned. It has come to be quite a legend how the boy arrived at court anonymously, so that his own brothers didn’t recognize him, and how he worked in the kitchen, and got nicknamed Beaumains when Kay wanted to be nasty, and how you were the only person who was decent to him until he did his great adventure and became a knight.’

‘Well,’ said Lancelot defensively, ‘his brothers hadn’t seen him for fifteen years. You can’t blame Gawaine for that.’

‘I am not blaming anybody. I was just saying that it was nice of you to take notice of a kitchen page, and help him along, and knight him in the end. But then, you always were nice to people.’

‘It is strange how they come here,’ said his friend. ‘I suppose they can’t keep away. Any boy with a bit of go in him feels that he has to come to Arthur’s court, even if it is to work in the kitchen, because it is the centre of the new world. That is why Gareth ran away from his mother. She wouldn’t let him come, so he ran away and came incognito.’

‘Nonsense. Morgause is a bad old woman – that’s all you can say about her. She forbade him to come to court because she hated you, but he came for all that.’

‘Morgause is my half-sister, and I have hurt her badly. It can’t be nice for a woman to have all her sons going away to serve the man she hates. Even Mordred, her last.’

Lancelot looked uncomfortable. He had an instinctive dislike for Mordred, and did not like having it. He did not know about Arthur being Mordred’s father – for that was a story which had been hushed up in the earliest days, before either he or Guenever came to court, just as Arthur’s own birth had been. But he did feel that there was something strange between the young man and the King. He disliked Mordred irrationally, as a dog dislikes a cat – and he felt ashamed of the dislike, because it was a confused principle of his to help the younger knights.

‘It must have hurt her worst of all when Mordred came,’ pursued the King. ‘Women are always fondest of their last babies.’

‘So far as I can learn, she was never particularly fond of any of them. If she was hurt by their coming to court, it was only because she hated you. Why does she?’

‘It’s a bad story. I would rather not talk about it.

‘Morgause,’ added the King, ‘is a woman – is a woman of pronounced character.’

Lancelot laughed rather sourly.

‘She must be,’ he said ‘from the way she is carrying on. I hear she is making a dead set at Pellinore’s son Lamorak now, although she is a grandmother.’

‘Who told you?’

‘It’s all over the court.’

Arthur got up and walked three steps in agitation.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘And Lamorak’s father killed her husband! And her son killed Lamorak’s father! And Lamorak is hardly of age!’

He sat down and looked at Lancelot, as if he were afraid of what he might say next.

‘All the same, that is what she is doing.’

The King suddenly and vehemently asked: ‘Where is Gawaine? Where is Agravaine? Where is Mordred?’

‘They are supposed to be on some quest or other.’

‘Not – not in the North?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where is Lamorak?’

‘I think he is staying in Orkney.’

‘Lancelot, if you had only known my sister – if you had only known the Orkney clan at home. They are mad on their family. If Gawaine – if Lamorak – O my God, have mercy on my sins, and on the sins of other people, and on the tangle in this world!’

Lancelot looked at him in consternation.

‘What are you afraid of?’

Arthur stood up for the second time, and began talking fast.

‘I am afraid for my Table. I am afraid of what is going to happen. I am afraid it was all wrong.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘When I started the Table, it was to stop anarchy. It was a channel for brute force, so that the people who had to use force could be made to do it in a useful way. But the whole thing was a mistake. No, don’t interrupt me. It was a mistake because the Table itself was founded on force. Right must be established by right: it can’t be established by Force Majeure. But that is what I have been trying to do. Now my sins are coming home to roost. Lancelot, I am afraid I have sown the whirlwind, and I shall reap the storm.’

‘I don’t understand what you are talking about.’

‘Here comes Gareth,’ said the King calmly, suddenly, and as if everything were over. ‘I think you will understand in a minute.’

While they had been talking, a messenger in leather leggings had arrived at the butts. The King had seen him out of the corner of his eye as he hastily sought Sir Gareth and handed him a letter. He had watched the boy reading the letter, once, twice, three times, and later as he spoke confusedly with the man. Now, after handing his bow to the messengers without noticing that he was doing so, Gareth was coming to them slowly.

‘Gareth,’ said the King.

The young man knelt down and took the King’s hand. He held it as if it were a banister or a life-line. He looked at Arthur with dull eyes, and did not cry.

‘My mother is dead,’ said Gareth.

‘Who killed her?’ asked the King, as if it were the natural question.

‘My brother Agravaine.’

‘What!’

The exclamation was from Lancelot.

‘My brother has killed our mother, because he found her sleeping with a man.’

‘Keep quiet, Lancelot, please,’ said the King. Then to Gareth: ‘What did they do to Sir Lamorak?’

But Gareth had not finished the first part of his story.

‘Agravaine cut off her head,’ he said. ‘Like a unicorn.’

‘The unicorn?’

‘Please, Lancelot.’

‘He killed our mother in her blood.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘I always knew he would,’ said Gareth.

‘Are you sure the news is true?’

‘It is true. It is true. It was Agravaine who killed the unicorn.’

‘Was Lamorak the unicorn?’ asked the King gently. He did not know what his nephew was talking about, but he was anxious to help. ‘Is Lamorak dead?’

‘Oh, Uncle! It says that Agravaine found her naked in a bed with Sir Lamorak, and he cut off her head. Now they have hunted Lamorak down as well.’

Lancelot was less patient than the King, because he knew fewer of the sorrows which had happened in the early days.

‘Who were they?’ he asked.

‘Mordred, Agravaine, and Gawaine.’

‘So it comes to this,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘that your three brothers have first murdered King Pellinore – who would not willingly have hurt a fly – murdered him because he killed their father by accident in a tournament – then murdered their own mother in bed – and finally butchered Pellinore’s young son Lamorak, for being seduced by their mother, who was three times as old as he was. I suppose they set upon him all against one?’

Gareth held the King’s hand tighter, and began to droop his head.

‘They surrounded him.’ he said numbly, ‘and Mordred stabbed him in the back.’