The Once and Future King

Chapter XLI

The new kind of life went on at Camelot in spite of the suicide. Nobody could have called it a specially happy kind – but people are tenacious of life, and will go on living. It was not all of it a plot-like life: most of it was just story – one thing after the other – a chain of unnecessary accidents. One ridiculous accident which happened about this time is worth mentioning, not because it had any consequences or antecedents, but because it was somehow the sort of thing which happened to Lancelot. He behaved about it in his own way.

He was lying on his stomach in a wood one day, with what sad thoughts nobody knows, when a lady archer came by, who was hunting. It does not say whether she was a masculine sort of lady with a moustache and gentlemen’s neckwear, or whether she was one of those scatterbrains from the film world who do archery because it is so cute. Anyway, she saw Lancelot, and she thought he was a rabbit. On the whole she must have been one of the masculine ladies, for, although it is a pretty trait to shoot at men in mistake for rabbits, it would have been unusual for a film star to hit the mark. Lancelot, bounding to his feet with about six inches of arrow embedded in his rump, behaved exactly like Colonel Bogey – driven into on the second tee at golf. He said passionately: ‘Lady or damsel, what that thou be, in an evil time bare ye a bow; the devil made you a shooter!’

In spite of the wound in his backside, Lancelot fought in the next tournament – an important one, because of several things which happened at it. The true tension at court – which was apparent to everybody except Lancelot, who was too innocent to be conscious of such things – began to show itself clearly at the Westminster jousts. For one thing, Arthur began to assert his position in their wretched triangle. He did this, poor fellow, by suddenly taking the opposite side to Lancelot in the grand mêlée. He set upon his best friend, and tried to hurt him, and lost his temper. He did nothing unknightly, and, as it happened, did no harm to Lancelot. But the strange turn of feeling was there all the same. Before and afterwards they were friends. But just for that one moment of anger Arthur was the cuckold and Lancelot his betrayer. Such is the apparent explanation – an unconscious recognition of their relationship – but there may have been another thought behind it. It was a long time since Arthur had been the happy Wart, long since his home and his kingdom had been at their fortunate peak. Perhaps he was tired of the struggle, tired of the Orkney clique and the strange new fashions and the difficulties of love and modern justice. He may have fought against Lancelot in the hope of being killed by him – not a hope exactly, not a conscious attempt. This just and generous and kind-hearted man may have guessed unconsciously that the only solution for him and for his loved ones must lie in his own death – after which Lancelot could marry the Queen and be at peace with God – and he may have given Lancelot the chance of killing him in fair fight, because he himself was worn out. It may have been. At all events, nothing came of it. There was the blaze of temper, and then their love was fresh again.

Another important feature of the tournament was that Lancelot, with innocent idiocy, alienated the Orkneys finally and for good. He unhorsed the whole clan except Gareth, one after the other, and Mordred and Agravaine he unhorsed twice. Only a saint could have been fool enough to have saved their lives so often in rescues from Dolorous Towers and so on – but to cap it by knocking them down at will, at such a time, was the policy of a natural. Gawaine, it is true, was decent enough to refuse to have a hand in plots against Lancelot’s life, and Gaheris was dull. But from this day on it was only a question of time, as between the fashionable party of Mordred and Agravaine and the safety of the commander-in-chief.

A third straw in the wind was that Gareth fought on Lancelot’s side at Westminster. The peculiar cross-plays of sentiment were noticed by everybody – the King against his second self, and Gareth against his own brothers. With such an undertow there was evidently a storm to come. It came characteristically, from a quarter which nobody had suspected.

There was a cockney knight called Sir Meliagrance, who had never been happy at court. If he had lived in the earlier days, when a man was judged as a man, he might have got along well enough. Unfortunately he belonged to the later generation, of Mordred’s fashions, and he was judged by the new standards. Everybody knew that Sir Meliagrance was not quite out of the top drawer. He knew it himself – the top drawer had been invented by Mordred – and the knowledge did not make him happy. Beside all this, Sir Meliagrance had a special cause for misery which had poisoned society for him. He was desperately, hopelessly – and had been ever since he could remember – in love with Guenever.

The news came while Arthur and Lancelot were at the nine-pin alley. They had got into the habit of going off to this unfashionable spot every day to cheer themselves with a little conversation.

Arthur was saying: ‘No, no, Lance. You never understood poor Tristram at all.’

‘He was a cad,’ said Lancelot obstinately.

They were talking in the past tense because Tristram had finally been murdered, while playing the harp to La Beale Isoud, by the exasperated King Mark.

‘Even if he is dead,’ added the knight.

But the King shook his head vehemently.

‘Not a cad,’ he said. ‘He was a buffoon, one of the great comic characters. He was always getting himself into extraordinary situations.’

‘A buffoon?’

‘Absent-minded,’ said the King. ‘That is the great comic affliction. Look at his love affairs.’

‘You mean Isoud White-Hands?’

‘I firmly believe that Tristram got those two girls completely mixed up. He goes mad on La Beale Isoud, and then forgets all about her. One day he is getting into bed with the other Isoud when something about the action reminds him of something. It dawns on him that there are two Isouds, not one – and he is terribly upset about it. Here am I getting into bed with Isoud White-Hands, he says, when all the time I was in love with La Beale Isoud! Naturally he was upset. And then being nearly murdered in his bath by the Queen of Ireland. There was a light of high comedy about that young man, and you ought to forgive him for being a cad.’

‘I –’ began Lancelot, but at that moment the messenger arrived.

He was a small, breathless boy with an arrow-slit in his jupon, under the right armpit. He held the rent together with his fingers and talked fast.

It was about the Queen, who had gone a-Maying – for it was the first of May. She had started early, as the custom was, intending to be back by ten o’clock, with all the dewy primroses and violets and hawthorn blooms and green-budding branches which it was proper to gather on such a morning. She had left her bodyguard behind – the Queen’s knights, who all bore the vergescu as their badge of office – and had taken with her only ten knights in civilian clothes. They had been dressed in green, to celebrate the festival of spring. Agravaine was among them – he had attached himself to Guenever lately, to spy on her – and Lancelot had been left out on purpose.

Well, they had been riding home cheerfully, all chattering and bloomy and branchy, when Sir Meliagrance had leaped up at their feet, in an ambush. The top-drawer business had preyed on his mind till he had determined to be ungentlemanly in earnest, if everybody accused him of being so. He had known that the Queen’s party was unarmed, and that Lancelot was not with them. He had brought a strong force of archers and men-at-arms to take her captive.

There had been a fight. The Queen’s knights had defended her as best they could with swords and falchions, until they were all wounded, six of them seriously. Then Guenever had surrendered, to save their lives. She had made a bargain with Sir Meliagrance – whose heart was not really in the business of being a blackguard – that, if she called her defenders off, he must promise to take the wounded knights with her to his castle, and he must let them sleep in the anteroom of her chamber. Meliagrance, loving Guenever, flinching at his own half-hearted wickedness, and knowing the hopelessness of forcing his beloved against her will, had agreed to terms. The poor fellow had never been cut out to be a villain.

In the confusion of getting the sorry procession of hurt men slung across their horses, the Queen had kept her head. She had beckoned the little page, who had a fresh and fast pony, and she had secretly slipped him her ring, with a message for Lancelot. When he saw his opportunity, he was to gallop for his life – and he had done so, with the archers after him. Here was the ring.

Lancelot, half-way through the story, was already shouting for his armour. By the time it was told Arthur was kneeling at his feet, strapping on the greaves.