Arthur Rex (11 page)

“My lord,” said King Arthur, “I never heard tell of a cart the which did not have at least two wheels.”

“Indeed,” said Leodegrance, who had quaffed more than a little of the Rhenish wine brought by Kay, “and a maid hath two tits and two cheeks of her bum.”

“Therefore,” said King Arthur, “there might well be another giant’s wheel in Cameliard, the which I might take back to Caerleon for to make mine own table?”

King Leodegrance took the flagon away from his purple-stained mustaches and beard and uttered a vile blasphemy. “By God,” he cried, “that’s the very thing. You will take this very table, my lord young Arthur of Britain, as reward for delivering Cameliard from the foe.”

“Yet it is enormous,” said King Arthur.

“Will never go through a door,” said the old king. “I’ll have the bloody roof pulled off, then, and winches brought into play. Once outside, it can be put upon its edge and rolled unto Wales.”

“Let me first have a word with Merlin, who transported Stonehenge from Ireland to Salisbury Plain without human labor,” said King Arthur. “But in speaking of the enormity of this table I think rather of the number of knights needed to fill its places, an hundred or more by the look of it. Whereas I have in my service only old Sir Hector, who has in fact returned to his bucolic cottage and his hounds, and Sir Kay my seneschal. My army as you see consists of simple kerns. I have mine own self engaged all mounted enemies.”

“I did marvel, watching from the battlements this morning,” said King Leodegrance. “Never have I seen such bravery against such odds.”

“My lord,” said King Arthur, “with Excalibur I am invincible. Therefore bravery is not to be considered. I go to war only to defend Britain or such an ally as yourself. It is necessary to subdue enemies, but I get no satisfaction from the fighting itself, as I am told did Uther Pendragon. Indeed, war to me seemeth but a brutish enterprise.”

“So hath it ever seemed to me, as well,” said Leodegrance. “But with a kingdom small as mine, situated as it is on the route which must needs be taken by any force going to assault another, one necessarily prefers peace. Yet in my dreams I have often enjoyed putting thousands to a sword like Excalibur! Methinks it is natural in every man of noble birth to seek supremacy to the limits of the conditions imposed upon him by God.” These thoughts did seem to sober him to a degree, and he cleaned his face on his sleeve.

Now two small varlets took the large salver which had been piled high with beef at the axle-hole of the great wheel, and bending placed it upon the stones of the floor and then pushing it before them they did proceed to the outside crawling on their knees beneath the table top.

“My goodness, that will never do,” said Sir Kay, who had come with another flask of Rhenish to replenish King Leodegrance’s flagon. “Be cold as a jelly when it gets here.” Therefore he had brought into the hall a cart, and into it he had them put braziers of live coals and over the coals kettles filled with water, and on top of these a great trencher holding an entire side of beef, the which was thus kept warm by steam, and so it was brought to the two kings.

Leodegrance did praise Kay highly for inventing this trolley, not having ate hot meat since he had owned the round table, and he fell to with great appetite.

King Arthur however ate little, for he was much occupied with thoughts of how to use the table in the pursuance of chivalric ideals. He now understood that he had been led to it by the same destiny which guided him in all things, that indeed it was for the sake of this table that he had been directed to deliver Cameliard from its foes, for it was otherwise an inconsequential place with a king who had no vision.

“Now, Arthur,” said King Leodegrance, soon giving his empty plate to Sir Kay to fill again with meat, “I can provide you with an hundred knights to fill much of your table, leaving places but for fifty more which you might find on your own, say by means of a tournament.”

“And where, my lord, will your knights come from?” asked King Arthur, for he had seen no other person but Leodegrance since entering Cameliard, and the two kings sate alone at the vast table, and he believed that all defenders had perished from famine during the siege.

“They are mine own,” said Leodegrance, “and went away some time since, and for that reason I was ill defended.”

“Then these are a pack of poltroons!” King Arthur cried indignantly.

“Not at all,” said the older king. “They went upon a quest, you see.” And Sir Kay returned to him his plate, heaped, and he did attack it with vigor.

“Sire,” said Sir Kay to King Arthur, “your meat is going cold though I have been at some pains to serve it hot.”

“Forgive me, my dear Kay,” said Arthur and he obediently chewed a piece of beef, for he would always try to please his former brother, though in this effort he was usually unsuccessful, as now, for Kay did sigh disdainfully while looking at the vaultings of the hall.

“Indeed the quest for the Sangreal,” said Leodegrance.

“This is some fearsome beast?” asked King Arthur.

“I had supposed you a Christian,” said Leodegrance. “And you know not of the Holy Grail?”

And Arthur was ashamed, saying, “I was reared piously, my lord, but in a rustic place, remote from learned men. I am ignorant of much.”

“Well then,” said King Leodegrance, “the Grail is a mysterious thing of which little can be precisely told, except that it is holy and was associated with Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ.”

“’Tis not a splinter from the True Cross?” King Arthur asked suspiciously. “Or a thorn from the Saviour’s crown, the blood scarcely dry? Or a patch torn from St. Veronica’s handkerchief? For all these and more were sold every day by the charlatans at London.”

“Nay, none of those,” said Leodegrance. “The Sangreal is rather a vessel, though its precise nature is as yet unknown, for the reason that it has not been seen within living memory. But if it be a platter or a dish, then it was served to Our Lord at His Last Supper; or if a cup, then He drank His wine from it. Or, again, His blood was caught in it dripping from His body hanging upon the Cross, or—”

“Methinks it is strange that an hundred knights are questing for that which they do not even know the look of,” said King Arthur, who had begun to suspect that he was being guyed.

“The very mystery of it is a lure,” King Leodegrance said. “And it is the kind of thing that will be recognized when it is seen. If one has never traveled to Afric one has never seen an ocean of sand, yet one would know the desert when one reached it. As to the Grail, whatever its nature, it was brought to the British island by Joseph a rich Jew of Arimathaea to whom the Romans gave Christ’s body, and who forsaking his wealth became Christian and came to Glastonbury, where he stuck his staff into the earth and it took flower, and the tree still grows there today.”

“No doubt this quest is commendable,” said Arthur, “but my purpose in assembling a company of knights would be to right proximate wrongs. Therefore I should want my men at hand.”

“The Sangreal,” said King Leodegrance, “is peculiar in that it can not be seen except by him who is perfectly pure and without sin altogether.”

“My lord,” said Arthur, “is this not then a blasphemous idea? For as we know, only Our Saviour was perfectly sinless.”

“Indeed,” said Leodegrance smiling wryly. “Therefore my knights will return presently from this impossible quest, and you may have them along with this round table. For,” said he falling again to his meat, “I am an old man and have grown tired of these sieges. Thus I do swear fealty to you and become your vassal, incorporating Cameliard into Britain, and you must protect me henceforward.”

And Arthur did marvel at the old king’s cleverness, for if he accepted him as liege-subject he must needs take responsibility for him or violate the principles by which power could be exercised honorably, nay, even practically, for privilege is founded on duty, and if the horse carries the man, the animal is fed before the rider himself doth eat. Thus in certain respects the first comes last, and the greatest king is the loneliest.

“Further,” said Leodegrance, “if I gave you this castle along with the table, ’twould not be necessary to remove it to Caerleon.”

“And where, my lord, might you go?” asked King Arthur.

“If I might have me a chamber in some remote tower,” said Leodegrance. “But were it not that I have a daughter to look after, I should take me to a monastery, Arthur. At my age ’tis time I became pious. For some years I have yearned to put away my crown, having got too old for to feel the satisfactions of sovereignty. And I am ill. I shall pay dearly in my guts for eating and drinking so abundantly as I am doing here. Most of my teeth have gone, and my belly wars with anything but gruel. I should long since have abdicated my throne had I a son to succeed me, but Lear’s experience was a lesson to us all in the horrors of female regiment.”

“This daughter, my lord,” asked King Arthur, “doth she have hair of gold?”

And Leodegrance shrugged. “One might call her yellow-headed, though the years have dulled the brightness of youth.”

“Is she then very old?”

“The late queen could calculate better than I,” said the old king. “But I should need more fingers than I have when counting Guinevere’s years. She’s thirteen if a day, perhaps even more. She was such a pretty fool as a child. She has spots now,” said he grimacing. “Be assured I shall never allow her to vex you.”

After the meal King Arthur retired to the royal apartments which Leodegrance insisted he must occupy as liege-lord of Cameliard, and though he had little concern for such things he was aware that these rooms were much more attractive and comfortable than his own at Caerleon even after they had been redecorated for his half-sister Margawse, who of course he had not identified as being such until he had bedded her, alas! for it was a great sin. Though not, he believed, so great as if he had known a priori of this relationship, which he could not have done without questioning her previously to performing the carnal act, which firstly he had not known he would do, and secondly would have been a gross violation of the laws of hospitality, for a stranger must be offered unconditional welcome when under one’s roof.

Now Arthur regretted that the deliverance of Cameliard had taken so little time, for there was this to be said of battle: it was the best distraction from the matters of conscience that puzzle the will, and once again, as on every recent night, he slept fitfully. And he did dream as follows: that he sate upon a golden throne and was tied to the arms of it with golden chains, so that he could not move from it, and the throne was mounted not on legs but on wheels, like unto the invalids’ chairs for the cripples that take the medicinal waters at Bath, and he was on a height from which the inclined ground led to a pool of water, and even as he looked at this water and saw it boiling with all manner of serpents, the wheels on his throne began to roll down the incline towards this loathsome end, and he was powerless to halt them....

And he was awakened by Merlin, who carried neither lanthorn nor taper but rather a globe of clear glass large as an orange, with a fiery glow within it which cast a brighter light than had ever been seen.

“Merlin, art thou in my dream?” asked the king.

“You are not dreaming now, Sire,” said Merlin. “Though I am always something of an apparition.”

And King Arthur did chide him. “I have seen little of thee lately in any form.”

Then Merlin spoke sternly. “You are no longer a boy, and it would not be proper for me to attend you constantly, extricating you from every difficulty, for then I should be the king, and you the retainer.”

And King Arthur was ashamed, murmuring, “Perhaps thou shouldst be present to tell me that truth from time to time.”

And Merlin said more gently, “A king hath at least as many failures of nerve as a commoner, and a great king hath many more, for greatness consists not in having no weaknesses, which is impossible, but rather in using them as strengths.”

“If there is sense in what thou sayest,” said King Arthur, “it doth elude me. But perhaps I must confess to thee, Merlin, as in fact I have done to no other, not even my confessor, and with that failure compounding the sin, that I have committed the beastly sin of incest, than which there is none more foul unless it be the incestuous sodomy which the Angles and Saxons are said to commit with their sons.” And he told Merlin of his bedding with his half-sister Margawse.

“Well,” said the wizard when King Arthur had done, “what are crimes to this religion of Jesus of Nazareth are of indifference to Nature, Sire, and though I expect you shall find me blasphemous, let me say that Nature was here first and will be here last. Beyond that, you were in innocent ignorance of your blood-tie to this woman, though it might be said, in a philosophy unknown to you, that you found her peculiarly attractive owing to her resemblance to your mother, which would then make it finally a form of the love which killed Narcissus, as indeed is all incest ultimately, as well as homophile sodomy for that matter.”

“Again thou speakest too cryptically for me,” said King Arthur. “And with a suggestion of the fiendish, which is no doubt due to thy demoniac paternity—but then, for that very same reason, because thou art without the scheme of normal things, I can confide in thee. I fear I have brought down a curse upon myself by performing (however unknowingly) this unspeakable act, the which shall ruin me one day.”

“As undoubtedly it will,” said Merlin, weighing his mysterious light in his hand. And King Arthur shrank away in despair. “But, Sire, the curse which shall ruin you eventually is the selfsame which ruins all men, irrespective of their actions good or evil, and that is Time, which is the issue of an incestuous act performed by God on reality.”

“There is this to be said of thy metaphysic, Merlin,” said King Arthur. “Whenever it is not totally obscure, it is altogether immoral. And it is astonishing to me to hear thee, an atheistical demi-demon, speak of God.”

Merlin smiled, and in the radiance of his light he looked more angelic than devilish. “It is finally only the fiend who doth truly worship God, as the felon adores the hangman, for the one is defined by the other. But enough of this materialism. Do consider my light, which draws its power by abstraction.” He gestured with his globe.