The King Arthur Trilogy (11 page)

‘Nay, but the fiends of Hell tempted me!’ cried his mother. ‘It was their doing, not mine – and see, the madness has passed from me. Oh, sweet son of mine, have mercy, and I promise that never again will I listen to their evil whisperings in my ear.’

‘Swear!’ said Uwaine.

And shaking and shuddering under his merciless gaze, the Queen swore; and the young knight sheathed his father’s sword and turned and walked away.

Towards the end of that day came the six knights with Sir Accalon’s body and the High King’s message.

Then Morgan La Fay’s heart almost broke within her, for she had indeed loved Sir Accalon in her fashion, and it was more than her hopes of usurping the crown of Britain that lay dead upon his bier. But she hid her grief for her own safety; and knowing that if she were still at court when Arthur returned all the gold of the Hollow Hills would not buy her life, she contrived to learn from one of the knights where it was that her brother lay; and before full dawn next day she sent for her horse from the stables, and saying that she wanted none with her save certain of her ladies, she rode away.

She rode all that day and part of the night, and by noon of the next day came to the abbey where Arthur lay not yet fully mended from his wounds.

She asked of the Lady Abbess where the King might be, and was told that he was sleeping. ‘Then do not wake him,’ she said fondly. ‘But I am his sister, and have ridden far to be with him, hearing of his wounds. Therefore I will sit with him a while, and maybe wake him myself later.’

And since she was his sister, neither the holy ladies of the abbey nor the knight who kept watch before his chamber door thought to deny her. So she went in.

I cannot slay him, she thought, or only at the cost of my own life, with all these about him. But at least I can steal away Excalibur, and later maybe have him at my mercy. But when she crossed to the bed, she saw that
though Arthur was indeed asleep, he lay with Excalibur gripped in his right hand. Only one hope of harming him remained to her. The blade in his hand was naked. She looked about and found the scabbard lying on a great carved chest at the foot of the bed. She knew the powers of the scabbard as well as Merlin had done; and she took it up and hid it in the folds of her mantle. It was less than she had hoped for, but it was better than nothing.

Then she sat beside the bed for a while, lest any should look in. And presently she rose and went out, saying to those in the outer chamber that the King slept so sweetly it would be a sorry thing to wake him. And so she mounted her horse and rode away, her ladies following.

Presently Arthur awoke and found his scabbard gone. He demanded in anger to know who had come beside him while he slept. And when they told him Morgan La Fay, he cried out on them, ‘Falsely have you kept your watch over me!’

‘Sir,’ said the Lady Abbess, ‘we dared not disobey your own sister’s command.’

Then Arthur called for his armour and his horse, and for Sir Ontzlake to arm and come to him. And when Sir Ontzlake came in all haste, they rode out after Morgan La Fay.

Within a while Arthur caught sight of his sister far
ahead, with her damosels all about her, and struck spurs to his horse to ride her down. But she, finding him hard behind her, spoke in her horse’s ear, and sent it forward, fleet-footed as a Faery steed, and all her damosels streaming after her. But Arthur and Ontzlake were not to be easily shaken off, however fast she fled through the forest ways; and as she came at last skirting the margin of a dark lake among the trees, she cried out within herself, ‘Whatever comes to me, at least my brother shall not have his scabbard to protect him again!’ and flung the gleaming thing out into the centre-most depths, where it sank at once, borne down by its weight of gold and jewels.

She knew now where she must go for refuge, and in a while, riding her desperate race with the hunt hard behind, she burst out from the trees into an open valley set about with many great stones standing in the grass. And there she made a swift and urgent magic. And when the magic was made, suddenly in the blink of an eye, there were seven more great stones in the valley than there had been before; and of Morgan La Fay and her ladies, no sign.

And the King, following on, saw what had happened and, when he could not even make out which of the stones were his sister and her ladies, thought that it was the vengeance of God, and despite his anger was even a little sorry for their fate. He hunted the valley for his
lost scabbard, Sir Ontzlake helping him; but at last gave up the search and went heavily away, with none of the triumph in his heart that he felt he had a right to.

And when he had left the valley, Queen Morgan La Fay turned herself and her maidens back into their own likeness again, and said, ‘Now, my damosels, we may go where we will.’

Arthur never found his scabbard again, and so had to have another made to sheathe Excalibur. It was as rich and beautiful as the old one had been, but it had no special virtue; and from that day forward, when he was wounded he bled as other men bleed.

Arthur, with Sir Ontzlake at his side, rode wearily back to Camelot, and there Queen Guenever and all the court were greatly rejoiced to see them.

But on the very first evening of the King’s return, as they sat at meat in the Great Hall, there entered a damosel bearing a mantle of cloth of gold soft and heavy with furs and sparked with precious stones; the most splendid mantle that anyone there had ever seen. And she brought it to King Arthur and bowed before him. ‘My Lord King, your sister Morgan La Fay sends me to beg your forgiveness for the evil that she has done, and to promise you truly that the evil spirits that tempted her have departed from her; and she will seek to harm you no more, and to show her sorrow for what she
sought to do, she sends you this mantle, begging that you will wear it often, and find pleasure in it.’

Arthur looked at the mantle and saw how beautiful it was, and he thought that maybe the evil had indeed gone out of his sister – always he was over-trusting. And he put out his hand to accept the gift. But before he could touch it, there was a swift movement among the ladies in the Hall, and he dropped his hand and looked around. And the Lady Nimue, who nobody had seen enter, was standing at his side. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘do not put on the mantle, nor touch it, nor let it come near any of your knights, until you have first seen it upon the shoulders of her who brings it to you.’

Arthur looked at her a moment, and saw through her shape-shifting – maybe she let him see – that she was that Lady of the Lake whom Merlin had loved, and who had given him his sword Excalibur. And he remembered Merlin saying, ‘The Lordly Ones are not good or evil, any more than the rains that swells the barley or washes the field away, they simply
are
.’ And then he seemed to be not remembering Merlin’s voice, but hearing it afresh, speaking in his ear, ‘Trust her. Whatever she is,
you
may always trust her. For a while, she is your fate as well as mine.’

The voice was silent, and Arthur saw that his knights were looking at him strangely, as though wondering why he stood listening while no one spoke.

Then he said, ‘Lady, I accept your counsel.’ And to his sister’s messenger, ‘Damosel, I would see this mantle first upon you.’

‘Nay, sir,’ she said quickly. ‘It would ill become me to wear a king’s mantle.’

‘Nevertheless, you shall wear this one, before ever the King puts it about his shoulders,’ said Arthur, and he made a sign to two squires standing nearby; and they seized the damosel and the mantle, and by force wrapped it close about her. And in that same moment, while she screamed and struggled, there was a bright flame of fire that leapt up between the squires’ hands almost to lick the roof of the Great Hall, and of the damosel and the mantle nothing was left but a little smoking ash upon the ground.

From that time forward Morgan La Fay never dared to seek to do Arthur harm, but fled to her husband’s kingdom of Gore, to a castle of her own that she had there, and fortified it strongly, and there she stayed. And so the kingdom was rid of one more of its enemies.

JUST AS THE
High King and his knights were about to sit down to supper on the eve of Easter, one of Arthur’s squires came to him, saying that there was a stranger at the threshold who wished for speech with him but would not give his name. And Arthur looked away down the Hall and saw a young man standing in the doorway, and said, ‘Bring him to me. It may be that he will tell
me
his name.’

So the young man came up the Hall and knelt wordlessly at the King’s feet. He was a raw-boned and very ugly young man, with two sides to his face that did not match each other, so that one side of his mouth ran straight and sullen and the other lifted towards joy and laughter, and one of his black brows was level as a falcon’s wing and one flew wild and ragged like the jaunty ear of a mongrel that has just come well out of a
fight. But out from under those brows looked a pair of wide grey eyes that the King thought were the steadiest that he had ever seen.

‘Who are you?’ Arthur said. ‘And for what purpose do you come to me?’

And the young man said, ‘I am Lancelot, son of King Ban of Benwick, who fought beside you at Bedegraine. And I come because I have wished to for as long as I can remember, and because Merlin bade me, to ask for knighthood at your hands. He bade me tell you that I was his last bequest to you before he went to find his long sleep under his hawthorn tree.’

‘Knighthood you shall have, on tomorrow’s morning, the fair morning of Eastertide,’ Arthur said; and gave his hand to the ugly young man, who bent his head for a moment to touch his forehead upon it.

‘I thank you, sir,’ said Lancelot; and then he turned a little, and Arthur saw that a russet-haired young man had come quietly up behind him. ‘Sir, here stands my cousin and good friend Lional, who came with me to be my squire; but he is at least as worthy of knighthood as I am myself.’

And the King looked at the russet-haired squire, and said, ‘What says Lional as to that? Would you also be made knight upon Easter morning?’

‘I would be made knight,’ said Lional, ‘but not on Easter morning; for then how could I play squire to my
cousin Lancelot at the same time? I would not that some strange squire should see to his armour, and attend him through the ceremony.’

‘That is well spoken,’ said the King. ‘You shall serve him as squire for three days, and if you are a good squire, you shall come to your knighthood on the fourth.’

For he liked the seeming of the young man, and beside Lancelot’s own seat and the other three that waited, there were already empty places at the Round Table, whose knights had fallen during the past year; and those places must be filled. There would always be empty places, he realised suddenly, as though it were something he had not known before; and always they must be filled …

So all that night young Lancelot kept his vigil in the castle chapel, kneeling at the chancel steps with his sword and his armour laid before the altar in front of him. And all night long he prayed, and watched the moonlight through the high window move silverly across his harness, and prayed again, and thought long thoughts that he could not have shared with anyone.

Now Lancelot was as odd and ill-matching in his hidden inmost self as he was in his face for all to see. And maybe because of those strange lost years in his childhood, he always felt as though he was searching for something. He never felt he was quite like other boys;
quite like other men. He had a great and terrible hope in him, more fitted to a monk than to a knight, that one day, if he proved himself worthy, God would let him perform a miracle. But for that to happen, he would have to be the best knight in all the world. So kneeling there in the moon-whitened chapel all night long, he prayed that he should become not just the strongest and bravest and most skilled knight, but the best. He prayed that he might never do anything to stain his honour or anybody else’s; and he prayed for his miracle.

And the moon sank and the sun rose, and when the proper ceremonies of bath and arming were over, he received his knighthood from King Arthur in the Great Hall on Easter morning.

And after, two of the Queen’s ladies buckled on his knightly spurs. But Queen Guenever herself buckled on his sword-belt; and this she did partly because he was a king’s son, but mostly in kindness, because she had heard Sir Kay, the King’s foster brother and Seneschal, sneering to another knight about the newcomer’s ill looks and saying that he would not likely find a maiden’s favour to wear on his crest at the jousts and tournaments.

The buckle was stiff, and though she was well used to fastening Arthur’s sword-belt for him, the Queen found it hard to make the tang go into the right place. And Lancelot, seeing this, put his own hand to help her, and so their fingers touched – and instantly they looked
up from the buckle into each other’s eyes. And having looked, they did not know how to look away again. They both paled to curd white and the black pupils of their eyes grew enormous. For a long moment it seemed that nothing moved or sounded in the Hall, and even the fire on the hearth stopped crackling. Then they pulled their eyes away from each other, and Guenever finished securing the buckle. But her fingers were shaking.