The Once and Future King

Chapter XXVII

Gawaine and Mordred came straight to Camelot from their foray among the Old Ones, but Agravaine did not come with them. They had quarrelled as soon as Lamorak was dead, or rather, as soon as they had found time to realize what had happened. The murder of Queen Morgause had not been done on purpose. Agravaine had done it on the spur of the moment – in his outraged passion, he said – but they knew by instinct that it was from jealousy. So they had raised the old charge against him, that he was only a fat bully whose noblest employment was the killing of defenceless people or women, and they had left him, weeping, after a furious scene. Gawaine, who now remembered all his adoration for their peculiar mother – an adoration which the queen-witch had wished on each of her sons – rode to the King’s court in gloomy penitence. He knew that Arthur would be furious about the way in which young Lamorak had been killed, for the boy had been the third best knight of the Table, and yet he was not ashamed of having killed him. To his mind Lamorak deserved death, like a felon, because he and his father had injured the Orkney clan. He knew that the whole court would look at him sideways on account of his mother’s murder, and how the old talk would be revived about that woman whom he had slain himself in temper, when he was young. Even this did not dismay him much. But he was penitent and miserable because his own dear Orkney mother was gone – he was only beginning to realize how it had happened – because he had hurt Arthur’s ideal, and because he was generous in his own heart. He hoped that the King would hang him, or send him into exile, or punish him severely. He went into the royal chamber with a sulky shame.

Mordred walked into the room behind Gawaine, as if nothing had happened. He was a thin wisp of a fellow, so fair-haired that he was almost an albino: and his bright eyes were so blue, so palely azure in their faded depths, that you could not see into them. He was clean-shaven. It seemed that there was no part of him which you could catch hold of, neither his hair, nor his eyes, nor his whiskers. Even the colour had been washed out of him, it seemed, so as to leave no handle. Only, in the skeletal, pink face, the brilliant eyes had crows’ feet round them – a twinkle which you could assume to be of humour, if you liked, or else of irony, or merely of screwing up those sky-blue pupils so as to look far and deep. He walked with an upright carriage, both ingratiating and defiant – but one shoulder was higher than the other. He had been born slightly crooked – a clumsy delivery by the midwife – like Richard III.

Arthur was waiting for them, with Guenever and Lancelot on either hand.

The burly, red-haired Gawaine knelt down clumsily on one knee. He did not look at the King, but spoke to the floor.

‘Pardon.’

‘Pardon,’ said Mordred also – but he, kneeling beside his half-brother, looked the King between the eyes. He had a noncommittal voice, beautifully modulated – its words might have meant the opposite of what they said.

‘You are pardoned,’ said Arthur. ‘Go away.’

‘Go?’ asked Gawaine. He was not sure whether he was being banished.

‘Yes, go. We can meet at dinner. But go, now. Leave me, please.’

Gawaine said roughly: ‘The half of yon was done by sore ill fortune.’

This time Arthur’s voice was neither tired nor miserable.

‘Go!’

He stamped his foot like a war-horse, pointing to the door as if he would throw them out of it. His eyes flashed from his face, like a sudden flame of green ash, so that even Mordred got up quickly. Gawaine was startled and stumbled out of the door in confusion, but the crooked man recollected himself before he left. He made a play-actor’s bow, a low, luxurious simulacrum of humility – then, straightening himself up, he looked the King in the eye, and smiled, and went.

Arthur sat down, trembling. Lancelot and Guenever looked at each other over his head. They would have liked to ask why he was going to forgive his nephews, or to protest that it was impossible to pardon matricides without damaging the Round Table. But they had never seen Arthur in his royal rage before. They felt that there was something in it which they did not understand, so they held their peace.

Presently the King said: ‘I was trying to tell you something, Lance, before this happened.’

‘Yes.’

‘You two have always listened to me about my Table. I want you to understand.’

‘We will do our best.’

‘Long ago, when I had my Merlyn to help, he tried to teach me to think. He knew he would have to leave in the end, so he forced me to think for myself. Don’t ever let anybody teach you to think, Lance: it is the curse of the world.’

The King sat looking at his fingers, and they waited while the old thoughts ran sideways across his hands like crabs.

‘Merlyn,’ he said, ‘approved of the Round Table. Evidently it was a good thing at the time. It must have been a step. Now we must think of making the next one.’

Guenever said: ‘I don’t see what is wrong with the Round Table, just because the Orkney faction chooses to get murderous.’

‘I was explaining to Lance. The idea of our Table was that Right was to be the important thing, not Might. Unfortunately we have tried to establish Right by Might, and you can’t do that.’

‘I don’t see why you can’t do it.’

‘I tried to dig a channel for Might, so that it would flow usefully. The idea was that all the people who enjoyed fighting should be headed off, so that they fought for justice, and I hoped that this would solve the problem. It has not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Simply because we have got justice. We have achieved what we were fighting for, and now we still have the fighters on our hands. Don’t you see what has happened? We have run out of things to fight for, so all the fighters of the Table are going to rot. Look at Gawaine and his brothers. While there were still giants and dragons and wicked knights of the old brigade, we could keep them occupied: we could keep them in order. But now that the ends have been achieved, there is nothing for them to use their might on. So they use it on Pellinore and Lamorak and my sister – God be good to them. The first sign of the fester was when our chivalry turned into Games-Mania – all that nonsense about who had the best tilting average and so forth. This is the second sign, when murder begins again. That is why I say that dear Merlyn would want me to start another thinking, now, if only he were here to help.’

‘It is something like idleness and luxury unmanning us – the strings have gone slack and out of tune.’

‘No: it is not that at all. It is simply that I have kept a rod in pickle for my own back. I ought to have rooted Might out altogether, instead of trying to adapt it. Though I don’t know how the rooting could have been done. Now the Might is left, with nothing to use it on, so it is working wicked channels for itself.’

‘You ought to punish it,’ said Lancelot. ‘When Sir Bedivere killed his wife you made him carry her head to the Pope. You ought to send Gawaine to the Pope now.’

The King opened his hands and looked up for the first time.

‘I am going to send you all to the Pope,’ he said.

‘What!’

‘Not exactly to the Pope. You see, the trouble is – as I see it – that we have used up the worldly objects for our Might – so there is nothing left but the spiritual ones. I was thinking about this all night. If I can’t keep my fighters from wickedness by matching them against the world – because they have used up the world – then I must match them against the spirit.’

Lancelot’s eye caught fire, and he began to watch the other man attentively. At the same moment Guenever withdrew into herself. She glanced quickly at her lover, a covert glance, then gave a new, reserved attention to her husband.

‘If something is not done,’ went on the King, ‘the whole Table will go to ruin. It is not only that feud and open manslaughter have started: there is the bold bawdry as well. Look at the Tristram business with King Mark’s wife. People seem to be siding with Tristram. Morals are difficult things to talk about, but what has happened is that we have invented a moral sense, which is rotting now that we can’t give it employment. And when a moral sense begins to rot it is worse than when you had none. I suppose that all endeavours which are directed to a purely worldly end, as my famous Civilization was, contain within themselves the germs of their own corruption.’

‘What is this about sending us to the Pope?’

‘I was speaking metaphorically. What I mean is, that the ideal of my Round Table was a temporal ideal. If we are to save it, it must be made into a spiritual one. I forgot about God.’

‘Lancelot,’ said the Queen in a peculiar voice, ‘has never forgotten.’

But her lover was too interested to notice her tone.

‘What do you intend to do?’ he asked.

‘I thought we could start by trying to achieve something which would be helpful to the spirit, if you see what I mean. We have achieved the bodily things: peace and prosperity: now we lack work. If we invent another bodily employment, a temporal employment – mere empire building or something like that – we shall be faced by the same problem again, probably worse, as soon as it has been achieved. But why can’t we pull our Table together by turning its energies to the spirit? You know what I mean by the spirit. If our Might was given a channel so that it worked for God, instead of for the rights of man, surely that would stop the rot, and be worth doing?’

‘A Crusade!’ exclaimed Lancelot. ‘You are going to send us to the rescue of the Holy Sepulchre!’

‘We could try that,’ said the King. ‘I hadn’t exactly thought of it, but it might be a good thing to try.’

‘Or we could look for relics,’ cried his commander, who was quite on fire. ‘If all the knights were looking for a piece of the True Cross, they might not even need to fight. I mean, if we were to go on a Crusade, we should still be using force: we should be putting the Might into a channel against the infidels. But if we really and truly banded the whole Table together to search for something which belonged to God himself, why, that would be infinitely worth doing – and, although we should be busy, there might be no need for fighting at all. If it comes to that, we needn’t necessarily look for one thing alone. Why, if all our knights – one hundred and fifty men, all specialists in questing, like detectives – if all our knights were to turn their energies to the quest for things which belonged to God – why, we might find hundreds and hundreds of things which would be of huge value. The Round Table might have been positively invented and trained just for that object. We might find some new gospels, even. The whole of Christianity might be helped by what we did. Think of a hundred and fifty men all trained for the search! And it is not too late to try. The True Cross was found in 326, but the Holy Shroud was not discovered at Lirey until 1360! We might find the spear which killed Our Lord!’

‘I was thinking of that.’

‘We must look for manuscripts particularly.’

‘Yes.’

‘We must fare forth everywhere, to the Holy Land, to every place! We shall be like my dear de Joinville!’

‘Yes.’

‘I think,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘this is the most splendid idea you have ever had!’

‘I am afraid of it,’ said the King, and this time it was his voice which sounded strange. ‘I thought, in the night time, that perhaps it was aiming too high. If people reach perfection they vanish, you know. It may mean the end of the Table. Supposing somebody were to find God?’

But Lancelot’s mind was not made for metaphysics. He did not notice the change in Arthur’s voice. He began to hum to himself the great Crusader’s hymn:

                          Lignum crucis,

                          Signum ducis,

                          Sequitur exercitus …

‘We could search for the Holy Grail!’ he cried triumphantly.

It was at this moment that a messenger arrived from King Pelles. Sir Lancelot was wanted, he said, to knight a young man at an abbey. He was a fine young fellow, seemly and demure as a dove. He had been educated in a convent. His name, said the messenger, was thought to be Galahad.

Queen Guenever stood up, and sat down. She opened her hands, and closed them again. She knew that Sir Lancelot was going to his son by another woman – but she hardly minded that.