The King Arthur Trilogy (18 page)

And while they still heard the beat of the palfrey’s hooves, a page brought word to the King that the dwarf who had come with Beaumains last year stood in the forecourt, with a warhorse and a fine sword, and said that he waited for his master.

So, followed by most of the company in the Hall, Beaumains strode out, and greeting the dwarf as an old henchman, took and buckled on the sword, and mounting the great warhorse, rode away, the dwarf following on his sturdy cob.

And Sir Lancelot, sending for his own horse and his
war gear, armed and mounted and in a while rode after him.

But he did not ride alone, for Sir Kay also had sent for his horse and armour, saying, ‘I also will ride after my kitchen knave, though not to give him knighthood, but a good drubbing for thrusting himself forward in this way!’

‘Better you bide at home, man, and eat your dinner,’ said Sir Gawain. But Sir Kay was too angry to listen; and Sir Lancelot only smiled a little, his twisted half-sad smile inside his helmet.

Riding hard and alone – Lancelot had fallen behind a little to keep clear and watch what happened – Sir Kay caught up with Beaumains just as Beaumains caught up with the damosel. ‘Beaumains!’ he shouted. ‘Hi! You kitchen knight, if you want to leave your cooking-pots and play at chivalry, here I come to teach you the game!’

And Beaumains pulled his horse round, and said in a voice quite different from the voice that anyone had heard him use before, ‘First learn that game yourself! Sir Kay, I know you for an ungentle knight. Therefore,
beware of me
!’

Then Sir Kay set his spear in rest and spurred straight in upon him. But Beaumains, having no spear, drew his sword and at the last instant, wrenched his horse aside and struck up the other’s spear with the flat of the blade,
then thrust the sword point under the fluted rim of the other’s shoulder-piece, and tipped him from the saddle, with a wound trickling red into the summer dust. Then Beaumains dismounted, and taking up Sir Kay’s spear and shield, swung back into the saddle and rode on his way.

Many small cruelties and injustices had been repaid with that blow.

And Sir Lancelot also dismounted, made sure that the wound was not serious, and heaving Sir Kay on to his horse again, patted the beast’s neck, saying, ‘Take him home. You have more sense than he has.’

Then he too remounted and rode on.

Meanwhile Beaumains had again overtaken the damosel; but he got no kind greeting, for indeed though she was fair enough to look upon, her name, which was Linnet, was the gentlest thing about her. ‘How dare you come following after me?’ she cried. ‘Get back to your kitchen, Beaumains. Aye, I know your name, given to you by the knight you have felled by a foul blow. Given because your hands are so big and coarse – hands for plucking geese and turning a spit!’ And then, growing shriller yet, ‘At least ride further off from me, for you stink of greasy cooking.’

‘Say what you will,’ said Beaumains steadily, ‘I shall not turn back, your adventure is mine to achieve, given
to me by the High King, and I shall not swerve aside from it while the life is in me!’

‘Achieve my adventure, you kitchen knight?’ she jibed. ‘Nay, but before long you shall meet with such a foe that you would give all the rich broth you ever supped in Arthur’s kitchens rather than stand your ground against him!’

‘I shall do the best I may, and we will see how it turns out,’ said Beaumains gently; and rode on, a little behind the damosel.

Before long they came to a dead thorn tree, from whose branches hung a black spear and a black shield. And under the tree sat a huge knight all in black armour, his raven warhorse grazing nearby.

‘Now flee away down the valley before that knight can mount his horse,’ said Linnet, ‘for that is the Black Knight of the Black Lands, and none may stand against him.’

‘My thanks for your warning,’ said Beaumains, and held straight on as though she had not spoken it.

And when they drew near, the Black Knight got to his feet, and said, ‘Damosel, is this your champion, brought from King Arthur’s court?’

‘Nay, Sir Knight, this is but a greasy scullion, who follows me whether I will or no. Therefore I beg of you, teach him to turn back from me; for I am sick of the kitchen smell of him.’

‘Why then,’ said the knight, whistling up his black charger, ‘I will knock him out of that fine saddle, for a kitchen knave has no right but to go on foot – and his horse is a fine one and will be of use to me.’

‘You make mightily free with my horse,’ said Beaumains, ‘and indeed he is yours if you can take him! Come then and try, or stand aside and let us pass, this damosel and I.’

‘Nay,’ said the Black Knight, ‘that is not a fitting thing – that a kitchen knave should ride against her will with a fine lady.’

‘That would depend on the kitchen knight and on the lady,’ said Beaumains, stung out of his usual steady quietness. ‘But indeed I am no scullion, but a gentleman born, and of nobler blood than you!’

Then the Black Knight mounted his horse and took down his shield and spear from the dead thorn tree, and the two rode apart the proper distance and turned and thundered towards each other; and the black spear shattered on Beaumains’s shield; but Beaumains’s spear took his foe in a joint of his armour, piercing through mail and flesh, and the Black Knight pitched from the saddle all tumbled like an arrow-shot bird. When she saw the Black Knight lying dead, the damosel wrenched her palfrey round, and striking her heel fiercely into its flank, rode off without a word.

But Beaumains dismounted, and stripped off the dead knight’s armour – beautiful plain black armour with a blue-purple sheen where the sun caught it and put it on. Only he kept his own sword and Sir Kay’s spear. And while he was securing the last buckle with the help of his dwarf, Sir Lancelot, who had sat his horse quietly at a little distance, looking on, came up. ‘And do you judge that you have earned your knighthood now?’

His vizor was up, and Beaumains looked him straight in his odd twisted face and smiled. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, and knew that he had been right; there was nobody else from whom he would choose to receive his knighthood.

‘I also, with all my heart,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘But first tell me your name – I will keep it under my helmet for so long as you wish.’

‘Sir,’ said Beaumains, ‘I am Gareth, youngest son of King Lot of Orkney – youngest son but one of Queen Margawse.’

There was a little silence in the forest clearing, and somewhere afar off sounded the alarm call of a jay.

‘How comes it, then, that of Sir Gawain, and Sir Gaheris and Sir Agravane, all your brothers, none of them knew you when first you came to court?’

‘It was eight years since any of them had seen me; and even a brother changes between nine and seventeen,’ said Beaumains, who was now Gareth, simply. ‘But truly, I think Gawain felt something for me from the first,
for he has shown me kindness in this past year, even as you.’

‘Kneel then, Gareth of Orkney,’ said Lancelot.

And when the young man knelt before him with his bright sandy head bent, Lancelot gave him the light buffet between neck and shoulder which, when vigil and ceremony were stripped away, was all that was really needed for the making of a knight.

‘Rise, Sir Gareth, and go on your way; when you return you will surely find a place at the Round Table, for already you begin to be a worthy knight.’

Then Sir Gareth got up, and put on his helmet and mounted the black horse, leaving his dwarf to lead his own. And he and Sir Lancelot parted, one to ride back to Camelot, the other to ride on after the Lady Linnet.

When Gareth caught up with the damosel, she cried out on him, shrill as a hawk, ‘You need not think to be my accepted knight because you have killed a better knight with a coward’s blow! Faugh! Ride downwind of me, for your smell sickens me! But at least I shall not have to suffer that long, for in a while we shall meet with a champion who will treat you even as you have treated him whose armour you wear. Therefore flee while you may!’

‘I do not flee from any man,’ said Gareth, ‘nor, while the life is in me, do I leave off from following you until the adventure is accomplished.’

Before long as they rode, the damosel angrily in front, Sir Gareth a little behind and his dwarf bringing up the rear, they heard the beat of horses’ hooves and a crashing in the undergrowth, and out on to the track ahead of them rode a knight all in green; green surcoat over his armour, green shield and spear, green housings on his horse, and the crest of cut silk that topped his helmet fluttering green like young beechleaves in spring-time.

‘God’s greeting to you, damosel,’ he said, reining across the way. ‘Is that my brother the Black Knight who rides with you?’

‘Nay,’ said Linnet, ‘it is a mere kitchen knave who has slain him most foully and stolen his armour.’

‘Then you slew a good knight,’ said the man in green, ‘and I shall slay you, in payment for the foul blow!’

‘No foul blow,’ Gareth said, ‘I slew him in fair fight – indeed the advantage was to him, for I had no armour but my jerkin. So did I take his armour which was mine by right, as the spoils of conquest.’

Then the two set their spears in rest, and fell to most furious jousting, there upon the woodland track, until their spears were all in splinters and they betook them to their swords. And when Gareth unhorsed the Green Knight they fought on foot. And all the while the damosel Linnet mocked the Green Knight and cried out upon him for being so slow to finish off a mere scullion
in stolen armour, until in his rage he struck such a blow at Gareth that his shield was hacked in half.

Then Gareth shook the broken halves from his arm and, taking both hands to his sword, leapt in upon his foe, swinging the bright blade high, and brought it down in such a buffet upon the green-crested helm that he dropped like a stoned hare, and lay half stunned, with his wits away. And lying so, he cried quarter.

‘Whether you have quarter of me is for the damosel to decide,’ said Gareth, standing over him. ‘For, unless she plead for you, you shall surely die.’

‘Then he must die,’ said Linnet, ‘for never will I plead with a scullion!’

‘Fair Sir Knight,’ said the fallen man, ‘spare my life, and I will forgive you the death of my brother; I will be your man, and my thirty knights who follow me.’

‘Willingly will I spare it, if the damosel begs me.’ And slowly Gareth raised his sword as though for the death stroke, the eyes of the Green Knight straining up after the blade.

‘Stop!’ cried Linnet. ‘Do not slay him! I beg it of you, you – kitchen knave!’

Gareth lowered his sword, and bowed his head to her in all courtesy. ‘It could have been asked more kindly, but you have asked it, damosel, and it is my pleasure to do your will.’ Then to the fallen man, he said, ‘Sir Knight of the green harness, I give you your life. Go free and
get you to Camelot, your thirty knights with you. Swear allegiance of King Arthur and tell him that the Knight of the Kitchen sent you to him.’

‘Truly I thank you for your mercy,’ said the Green Knight. ‘But the day draws on to evening. Come back with me to my manor and rest for the night; and in the morning we will go our ways, I and my knights to Camelot, and you and the damosel on the road of your adventure.’

So that night they lodged with the Green Knight; and the damosel cast scorn upon Sir Gareth and would not suffer him to eat with her at the same table. ‘Shame it is, to see you treat this scullion as an honoured guest,’ said she.

But the Green Knight said, ‘Worse shame would it be to treat him with dishonour, for he has proved himself a better fighting man at least than I am.’ And he set Sir Gareth to eat at a side table, but himself ate there with him.

Next morning they set out upon their separate ways. And as before, Linnet jibed at Sir Gareth for his kitchen smell and big hands, and bade him ride downwind of her. And as before, Sir Gareth bore it all quietly, giving her no angry retort, but saying only, ‘Damosel, you are uncourteous to mock me so; for I have served you well till now, and it may be that I shall serve you better in time to come.’

‘That,’ said the damosel, ‘we shall see!’ But for the first time she looked at him as though he were human, and she herself a little puzzled; and she bit at her lower lip.

Presently the track they followed led out from the trees, and in the distance rose the walls and towers and crowding roofs of a fine city; and between the woodshore and the city was a fair meadow, newly scythed, and all about the meadow stood pavilions of dark blue silk, and all among the pavilions wandered knights and ladies in trailing silks and damasks of the same deeply glowing blue, and pages walking slender gaze-hounds whose collars were of fine blue leather, and squires exercising horses in rich trappings of the like colour. And in the midst of the meadow was a pavilion bigger and finer than all the rest, a blue spear standing upright beside the entrance, and a blue shield propped against it.

‘Now indeed it is time for you to flee,’ said the damosel, ‘for there is the pavilion of Sir Persant of Inde, who men call the Blue Knight, one of the greatest champions in all the world, and his five hundred knights camped about him; and even Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain would be hard put to face him under arms; therefore I bid you again to flee while there is yet time for fleeing.’

But she spoke a little less harshly than before.

‘Almost it seems as though you do indeed fear for my skin,’ said Sir Gareth; and there was a flicker of easy laughter in his voice, as he snapped his vizor shut.

‘Nay, your skin is no concern of mine; but the castle where my sister is besieged is not seven miles from here, and the dread grows on me that you may be overcome, now that we are so near.’ And then it was as though she heard what she had said, accepting him for her champion after all. And she looked at him quickly, but could see nothing of his face behind his closed vizor; and she said with her breath, still half angry, caught in her throat, ‘Now what manner of man are you? A gentleman indeed? Or a mere spiritless creature of dumpling-broth after all? For never did woman treat knight so shamefully as I have treated you, and yet always you have answered me courteously and never departed from my service.’