The Once and Future King

Chapter XXXIII

Arthur could not stand much more of this.

‘It is disgusting,’ he exclaimed indignantly. ‘I don’t like to listen to it. Why should a good, kind, dear person be tortured like that? It makes me feel ashamed inside, even to hear of it. What’

‘Hush,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘I am very glad that I gave up love and glory. And, what is more, I was practically forced to do it. God did not take such pains for Gawaine or Lionel, did he?’

‘Bah!’ said King Arthur, in the tone which Gawaine had used before him.

Lancelot laughed.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s a convincing remark. But perhaps you had better hear the end of the story.

‘I lay down by the water of Mortoise that evening, and a dream came which told me to go in a ship. The ship was there when I woke up, sure enough; and when I went inside it there was the most lovely smell and feeling and food to eat and – well, whatever you can think of. I was “fulfilled with all things that I thought on or desired.” I know I can’t explain to you about the ship at this hour, because, for one thing, it is fading from me now that I am with people. But you mustn’t think just of incense in the ship, or precious cloths on it. There were these, but they were not the loveliness. You must think of a tar smell too, and the colours of the sea. Sometimes it was quite green, like thick glass, and you could see the bottom. Sometimes it was all in big, slow terraces, and the water fowl who were flying along the top vanished in the hollows. When it was stormy, the huge fangs of the breakers gnawed at the rocky islands. They made white fangs on the cliffs, not as they burst up, but as the water streamed down. At night, when it was calm, you could see the stars reflected on the wet sands. There were two stars quite close together. The sands were all ribbed, like the roof of your mouth. And there was the smell of seaweed, the noise of the lonely wind. There were islands with little birds on them like rabbits, but their noses were rainbows. The winter was the best thing, because then there were the geese on the islands – long smoke lines of them singing like hounds in the cold streak of morning.

‘It is no good being indignant about what God did to me at the beginning, Arthur, for he gave me far more in return. I said: “Fair Sweet Father Jesu Christ, I wot not in what joy I am, for this joy passeth all earthly joys that ever I was in.”

‘A strange feature about the ship was that there was a dead woman in it. She had a letter in her hand which told me how the others had been getting on. It was stranger still that I was not frightened of her for being dead. She had such a calm face that she was company for me. We felt a sort of communion together in the ship and in the sea. I don’t know what I was fed on.

‘When I had been in this ship with the dead lady for a month, Galahad was brought to us. He gave me his blessing, and let me kiss his sword.’

Arthur was as red as a turkey cock.

‘Did you ask for his blessing?’ he demanded.

‘Of course.’

‘Well!’ said Arthur.

‘We sailed in the holy ship for six months altogether. I got to know my son very well in that time, and he seemed to care for me. Quite often, he said the most courteous things. We had adventures with animals on the out islands all that time. There were sea weasels which whistled beautifully, and Galahad showed me cranes flying along the water, with their shadows flying under them, upside down. He told me that the fishing people call a cormorant the Old Black Hag, and that ravens live as long as men. They went cronk, cronk, high in the air, and came tumbling down for fun. One day we saw a pair of choughs: they were beautiful! And the seals! They came along beside the music of the ship, and talked like men.

‘One Monday we came to a forest land. A white knight rode down to the shore and told Galahad to come out of the boat. I knew that he was being taken away to find the Holy Grail, so I was sad that I couldn’t go too. Do you remember, when you were little, how children used to pick up sides for a game and perhaps you wouldn’t be picked at all? It felt like that, but worse. I asked Gahalad to pray for me. I asked him to pray God to hold me in his service. Then we kissed each other and said good-bye.’

Guenever complained: ‘If you were in a state of grace, I can’t understand why you should have been left.’

‘It is difficult,’ said Lancelot.

He opened his hands and looked between them on the table.

‘Perhaps my intentions were bad,’ he said at length. ‘Perhaps, inside myself, unconsciously, you could say, I had not a proper purpose of amendment …’

The Queen was subtly radiant as she listened.

‘Nonsense,’ she whispered, meaning the opposite. She pressed his hand warmly, and Lancelot took it away.

‘When I prayed to be held,’ he said, ‘perhaps it was because …’

‘It seems to me,’ said Arthur, ‘that you are allowing yourself the luxury of a needlessly tender conscience.’

‘Perhaps. At all events, I was not picked.’

He sat, watching the sea heaving between his hands, and hearing the wooden clatter of gannets on an island cliff.

‘The ship took me out to sea again,’ he said at length, ‘on a big wind. I did not sleep very much, and I prayed a great deal. I asked that, in spite of not being picked, I might be allowed to get some tidings of the Sangreal.’

In the silence which fell on the room, they pursued their separate thoughts. Arthur’s were of the pitiful spectacle – the show of an earthly, sinful man, but the best of them, plodding along behind these three supernatural virgins; his doomed, courageous, vain toil.

‘Funny,’ said Lancelot, ‘how the people who can’t pray say that prayers are not answered, however much the people who can pray say they are. My ship took me at midnight, in a great gale, to the back side of Carbonek Castle. Strange, also, that it should have been the very place I was heading for when I started.

‘The moment the ship came alongside, I knew that I was to be granted a part of my desire. I couldn’t see it all, of course, because I was not a Galahad or Bors. But they were very kind to me. They went out of their way to be kind.

‘It was black as death behind the castle. I put on my armour and went up. There were two lions at the entry of the stairs, who tried to bar my way. I drew my sword to fight them, but a hand struck me on the arm. It was silly of me, of course, to trust in my sword, when I could have trusted in God. So I blessed myself with my numb arm and went in, and the lions didn’t hurt me. All the doors were open except the last one, and there I kneeled down. When I prayed, it opened.

‘Arthur, this must seem untrue as I tell it. I don’t know a way of putting it in words. Behind the last door there was a chapel. They were at Mass.

‘Oh, Jenny, the beautiful chapel with all its lights and everything! You would say: “The flowers and the candles.” But it was not these. Perhaps there were none.

‘It was, oh, the shout of it – the power and the glory. It seized on all my senses to drag me in.

‘But I couldn’t go in, Arthur and Jenny – there was a sword to stop me. Galahad was inside, and Bors, and Percivale. There were nine other knights, from France and Danemark and Ireland: and the lady from my ship was there as well. The Grail was there, Arthur, on a silver table, and other things! But I was forbidden to go in, for all my yearning at the door. I don’t know who the priest was. It may have been Joseph of Arimathaea, it may have been – oh, well. I did go in to help him – in spite of the sword – because he was carrying what was too heavy to be carried. I only wanted to help, Arthur, as God was my witness. But a breath smote my face at the last door like a blast from a furnace, and there I fell down dumb.’