The King Arthur Trilogy (22 page)

And Elaine? After Sir Lancelot was gone she drooped and dwindled away like a lily starved of the sun and rain. And the spring went by, and summer ripened and fell. And the snowdrops came again in the castle gardens; and when the second summer came, she knew, and all those about her, that her life was almost sped. Then she sent Galahad to a certain abbey, bidding the nuns of the place to care for him and bring him up in the ways of God; and when he grew older, to see that he
was schooled by men who could train him in all things fitting to a knight.

And she spoke to her father and her old nurse and all those about her, telling them what she would have them do when the life was gone from her. Weeping, they promised that all things should be as she wished. Then she called for parchment and ink and quill, and she wrote a letter. And when the letter was written, there was nothing more that she must do, and so, like a bird taking wing, her spirit flew from her body and was gone.

Then her attendants did all that she had bidden them. They dressed her in her finest silken gown, and laid her in a litter, with the rolled parchment in her hands, and bore her from the Waste Land and away through the late summer forest, until they came to the looping narrow waterway that joined itself at last to the broad river that flowed past Camelot on its way to the sea. And there they made ready a barge hung all over with black, and laid her in it, scattering the flowers of late summer over all; and with one old dumb manservant to steer the barge, they left her to the river.

And the river carried her on until it joined the other that flowed by Camelot, and still on, through dark stretches over-arched by alder trees and out into open meadow stretches between banks thick with meadowsweet and tall purple loosestrife, until the barge came to rest at last, against the bank below Camelot town.

Arthur and the Queen were speaking together at a window that looked far down upon the river – the same window where she and Lancelot had spoken together after his long absence – and they saw the black-draped barge come down on the quiet silver flood, and settle into the bank above the bridge. And Arthur called to Sir Kay, ‘See you that black barge? It is in my mind that there is a strangeness about it. Take Sir Bedivere and Sir Agravane, and go and look more closely, and bring me back word.’

So Sir Kay went, and the other two with him; and in a while he returned and said, ‘Sir, in that barge there lies the body of a fair damosel, and there is no one else in the barge but an ancient man at the steerboard, who will speak no word; and indeed I think that he is dumb.’

‘Here is a strange thing indeed,’ said the King. ‘We will come now and look upon the body of this lady.’ And he held out his hand to the Queen, and together, with many knights following, they went down through the narrow streets of Camelot town where the swallows still darted among the eaves, and across the water meadow to the river bank. And there lay the black barge at rest, and in it the body of the lady, clothed in cloth-of-silver, and with her fair hair parted and combed upon her breast, and she lying as though she smiled in her sleep.

‘This is a sorry sight,’ said the King. And he asked the old man who she was, but could get no answer.

And the Queen said softly, ‘How fair she is. Like a lily cut down by an early frost.’

And then they saw the letter in the lady’s hands that lay folded on her breast; and the King climbed aboard the barge and gently took the parchment and broke the seal and read what was written within.

‘Most noble knight, Sir Lancelot, my most dear lord, now has death taken me as you would not. I loved you truly, I that men called Elaine the Lily; and therefore to all ladies I make my moan, and beg them pray for me. Give me honourable burial and pray for my soul, Sir Lancelot, as you are a true knight above all knights.’

And that was all.

Now Sir Lancelot was among those who had come down with the King and Queen; and he had taken one look at the lady’s face and then stood as though turned to stone and deep-rooted there in the riverside grass. And when Arthur had done reading the letter and while all the company were murmuring for sorrow, he covered his face with his hands and groaned. And when he took his hands away, he said, ‘My Lord Arthur, I am sorry at heart for the death of this lady. God knows I never desired her death, but I could not love her as she loved me.’

‘Love comes as it chooses, or does not come; nor can it be fettered,’ said the King, half as though he answered Sir Lancelot, and half as though he spoke to his own heart.
And he gave orders for the bestowing of the lady’s body until the time of her burial, and turned away.

And as the Queen turned also, she said to Sir Lancelot, ‘You might have shown her something of gentleness, to save her life.’

And Sir Lancelot felt the world reel under him, for he was in many ways a simple man, and he never understood women, least of all the Queen.

Next day the Lady Elaine was buried worshipfully in the Church of Saint Stephen, and Sir Lancelot offered the Mass Penny for her soul, and strewed the last of the summer’s roses and strands of honeysuckle on her grave.

And when all was done, the old dumb servant turned again to the river where the barge waited for him, and pushed off from the bank, and poled back upstream.

And Sir Lancelot was left with a new grief and a new guilt to carry. He thrust it deep down into himself and grew a scar over it; but he carried it all his days.

THE YEARS WENT
by and the years went by, and the names on the high backs of each seat at the Round Table changed as knights died in battle or upon some hazardous quest and new young knights took their places. And among the lost names were those of King Pellinore and his son Lamorack, slain in a family feud by Gaheris and Agravane in vengeance for the death of their father King Lot of Orkney. And after that, four seats beside the Seat Perilous were empty for a while; for though King Arthur knew that he must bow to the old laws of the blood feud, he sent both slayers away on a long and difficult quest by way of penance. And his heart was sore within him, and he wished that he still had the good counsel of Merlin beside him.

That year, on the Eve of All Hallows, the knights gathered about the Round Table were deeply aware of
the empty places in their midst. For on that night of the year, the time of Ingathering, when the cattle were brought in to their winter quarters, many people set a place at their table and left it empty for the ghosts of their dead if they should come wandering home in search of shelter for the dark months ahead.

On this particular Hallowe’en, winter was coming in with a gale of wind and rain that beat like dark wings about the walls of Camelot; and at the height of the storm, just as they were ending supper, a squire entered with word that a stranger stood outside, asking shelter for himself and his horse.

‘Bring him in,’ said the King, ‘on this night of the year all men are welcome at all firesides.’

And so the stranger came in. A tall man, and dark, dark as the storm outside as he came into the torchlight; wet and windblown, he might have been some creature of the storm. Yet about him there was a great stillness.

He came up the Hall, and as he thrust back the heavy folds of his cloak, all men saw that he carried under its shelter a harp in its bag of finely broidered mare’s skin.

‘God’s greeting to you,’ said the King as the man knelt at his feet. ‘Both for your own sake and for the sake of the harp you carry, for a harper with a new song to sing, a new tale to tell is most welcome on such a night as this. Eat and drink, and warm yourself, and then maybe of
your courtesy you will wake the magic of the harpstrings for us.’

‘That will I, most willingly,’ said the stranger.

He was given a place beside the hearth, and food freshly brought from the kitchen, and a cup of wine. And when he had eaten and drunk and his cloak had ceased to steam in the warmth of the fire, he took his harp from its bag; a beautiful harp of black bog-oak with strings of findruim, the white Irish bronze, and began to tune it, and when every string sang true, he asked, ‘Now, what would you have, my Lord King? A song of war? Or hunting? Or love?’

‘Any song, so that it be a new one,’ said the King.

‘Love,’ said Queen Guenever, who had come in with her ladies to listen.

The harper was silent a little, his face in the firelight looking as though he listened to something very far off, or deep within himself, as his enquiring fingers woke random note after random note from the shining strings. Then he said, ‘I will give you the tale of Tristan and his lady Iseult.’

Then there was a murmuring and a stirring of interest up and down the Hall, for Sir Tristan’s name and his reputation as a knight-at-arms were known to many there. They settled themselves to listen, and sometimes telling it as a story, sometimes letting it drift into song in time to the haunting harp-music, and
then back to story again, the harper wove for them this tale.

When King Marc of Cornwall was young and new to his kingship, there was war between Cornwall and Ireland. And word of it came to another King, Rivalin of Lothian. And for no other reason than that it was the sea-faring season and he thought it time his young men were blooding their spears, he called out his ships and his warbands and they coasted round Britain to King Marc’s aid. Then together they won a great victory over the Irish; and when all was over, King Marc gave his sister in marriage to Rivalin for a bond between their two peoples.

For a year Rivalin lived happily with his Cornish princess, but at the end of that time, bearing their son, she died. And for Rivalin it was as though the sun went out. For a long while he could not bear even to look at the child. He called him Tristan which means Sorrow, and gave him to the Queen’s old nurse to rear. And when the boy was seven, he took him from the nurse and gave him to a young knight called Gorvenal to train as a prince should be trained. And from the first, Gorvenal loved him as a much younger brother, and taught him to ride and handle sword and spear and hawk and hound, to sleep hard and bear pain unflinching, to think for himself and to keep his word, and many other lessons
beside. And from somewhere deep within himself he learned to play the harp so that it was as though he played upon the very heartstrings of those who heard him.

One day when Tristan was sixteen years old, he and Gorvenal were sitting beside the fire; and Gorvenal looked across at the boy who was leaning elbows on knees and gazing into the heart of the flames. ‘What do you see in the fire?’ asked Gorvenal.

‘I see far countries,’ said Tristan.

And Gorvenal knew that this was the time he had long expected. ‘Tristan,’ he said, ‘I too have been thinking of far countries. Here in Lothian there is no man now who can outmatch you in the princely skills – but for a prince to be foremost among his father’s subjects might be a somewhat easy glory, after all.’

‘I do not care for easy glory,’ said Tristan.

And next day he went to his father and asked him for a ship, that he might go seeking adventure.

The King his father agreed, and the ship was made ready, and when the sailing weather came after the winter storms, Tristan and Gorvenal and a handful of young companions set sail.

Now it had long been in Tristan’s heart to visit his mother’s country, for his old nurse had often told him stories of the land and its magic; and so they made the long coastwise voyage and came at last to the southern
coast of Cornwall; and there they landed and bought horses and rode north towards Tintagel.

So they came at torch-lighting time to Tintagel Castle on its rocks high above the sea, and stood at last before King Marc in his Great Hall. And he and Tristan looked at each other and their hearts warmed together in that first moment. Then the King greeted his guests and asked them from what land they came.

‘From Lothian,’ said Tristan.

And the King looked at him more closely, as though suddenly he were seeing another face within his, and said, ‘Did ever you see my sister, the Queen of Lothian?’ and then he sighed. ‘Fool that I am, you would not have been born when she died.’

‘I was born on the day she died,’ said Tristan. ‘I am her son.’

And the King put his arms round him, and would have wept, had he been a man for tears.

For two years Tristan and his companions were of King Marc’s court; and as it had been in Lothian, so it was in Cornwall, there was no one who could ride swifter on the hunting trail than Tristan or master him at sword play; the King’s harper could not make music so sweet, and he could throw any wrestler in the kingdom.

And then a sore trouble fell upon the land; and this was the way of it.

The war with Ireland, that had first brought Rivalin
from Lothian, had flared again a few years later, and the patched-up peace had left Cornwall pledged to pay a yearly tribute to Ireland in corn and cattle and slaves. Cornwall had paid the tribute for a year or two, and then both sides had let the matter drop. But now the Queen of Ireland’s own brother, the Morholt, mightiest of champions, sent word that the time had come for paying the old debt, and that because it had been owing fifteen years, it must be paid all in slaves; one child in every three born in Cornwall in all those years. If they would not pay, then let them make ready to defend themselves in battle, for he was coming with a fleet of ships – or else let them find a champion to fight him, the Morholt, in single combat.