The King Arthur Trilogy (32 page)

And then King Arthur rode up, with Gawain at his side, and at sight of them Sir Kay fell silent; and the Loathely Lady, who had bowed her face, weeping, into her hands, looked up again, with a kind of pathetic and desperate pride.

‘Since one of you must indeed marry her,’ said the King, harsh in his throat, ‘here is no cause for jesting, Sir Kay!’

‘Marry her!’ cried Sir Kay. ‘Well, it shall not be I! By the boar’s head, I had sooner mate with the witch of Cit Coit Caledon!’

‘Peace, Sir Kay!’ said the King. ‘This is churl’s treatment of a lady! Mend your speech, or you shall be knight of mine no longer!’

And the other knights watched in silence, sickened and in pity. Some looked away; even Sir Lancelot pretended to be busy with some adjustment to his horse’s bridle.

But Sir Gawain looked steadily at the Lady, and something in that pathetic pride and the way she lifted her hideous head made him think of a deer with the hounds about it, and something in the depth of her bleared gaze reached him like a cry for help. And he
glared about him at his fellow knights. ‘Nay now, why these sideways looks and troubled faces? Kay was ever an ill-mannered hound! The matter was never in doubt, for last night did I not tell the King that I would marry this lady; and marry her I will, if she will have me!’

And so saying, he swung down from his saddle and knelt before her. ‘My Lady Ragnell, will you take me for your husband?’

The Lady looked at him for a moment out of her one eye, then she said in that voice so surprisingly sweet, ‘Not you, too, Sir Gawain. Ah, not you, too.’ And as he looked at her in bewilderment, ‘Surely you do but jest, like Sir Kay?’

‘I was never further from jesting in my life,’ said Sir Gawain, with stiff lips.

‘Then think you before it is too late. Will you indeed wed with one as ugly and misshapen and old as I? What sort of wife should I be for the King’s own nephew? What will Queen Guenever and her ladies say when you bring such a bride to court?’

‘No one will say anything that is not courteous to my wife,’ said Gawain. ‘I shall know how to guard you from that.’

‘Maybe so. But yourself? You will be shamed, and all through me,’ said the Lady, and wept again, more bitterly than before, so that her face was wet and blubbered and yet more hideous.

Gawain took her hand. ‘Lady, if I can guard you, be very sure that I can guard myself also,’ he said, and glared round him at the others with his fighting face upon him. ‘Now, lady, come with me back to Carlisle, for this evening is our wedding time.’

‘Truly,’ said the Loathely Lady, ‘though it is a thing hard to believe, you shall not regret this wedding, Sir Gawain.’

And she rose and moved towards the white palfrey they had brought for her, and then they all saw that there was a hump between her shoulders and she was lame in one leg, beside all else. But Sir Gawain helped her into the saddle and mounted his own horse beside her; and the King ranged up on the other side. And so, with the rest of the company strung out behind them, the knights on their horses and the huntsmen with the hounds in leash, and the hunting pony with the carcass of the deer across its back, they wended their way back to Carlisle.

Word ran ahead of them from the city gates, and the people came flocking out to see Sir Gawain and his hideous bride go by; and as they passed, the voices of the crowd sank away, and here and there men made the sign of the Cross, or an old woman cried out ‘God save us!’ in dismay. And so they came to the castle gates and rode inside.

That evening in the castle chapel, Gawain and the Lady Ragnell were married, with the Queen herself to stand
beside the bride, and the King to act as groomsman; and after, Sir Lancelot was foremost of the Round Table company to come forward to kiss the Lady’s withered brown cheek, followed by Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris, Sir Ector of the Marsh and Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors and Sir Lional and all the rest; but the words strangled in their throats when they would have wished her and Sir Gawain joy of their marriage, so that they could scarcely speak. And the poor Lady Ragnell looked down upon bent head after bent head, and at the ladies who came forward to touch her fingertips as briefly as might be, but could not bear to kiss her cheek. Only Cabal came and licked her hand with a warm wet tongue and looked up into her face with amber eyes that took no account of her hideous aspect, for the eyes of a hound see differently from the eyes of men.

At the feasting that followed in the Great Hall, the talk and laughter all along the tables was feverish and forced; a hollow pretence at gladness, and through it all Sir Gawain and his bride sat rigidly beside the King and Queen at the High Table. And when at last the feasting was over, the squires set back the tables and began to make the Hall ready for dancing. And then the company thought that now Gawain would be free for a while to leave her side and mingle with his friends. But he said, ‘Bride and groom must lead the first dance together,’ and offered his hand to the Lady Ragnell.

She took it, with a hideous grimace that was the nearest she could come to a smile, and limped forward to open the dance with him. And throughout the long and stately measure that followed, with the King’s eye upon them and Gawain’s also, no one in the Hall, not even the youngest page, dared to look as though anything was amiss.

At long last the evening wore to an end. The last measure had been danced, and the minstrels departed, the last wine-cup had been drained, and the bride and groom were escorted to their chamber high in the keep. The great chamber was full of flickering lights and shadows from the fire upon the hearth and the candles that burned in tall sconces either side of the carved and curtained bed, so that the creatures in the woodland scenes upon the walls seemed to move and come and go, and the whole chamber seemed part of some enchanted forest. And when all the company that had brought them there were gone, Gawain flung himself into the deeply cushioned chair beside the fire, and sat gazing into the flames, not looking to see where his bride might be. A sudden draught drove the candleflames sideways and the embroidered creatures on the walls stirred as though on the edge of life. And somewhere very far off, as though from the heart of the enchanted forest, he fancied he heard the faintest echo of a horn.

There was a faint movement at the foot of the bed, and the silken rustle of a woman’s skirt; and a low sweet voice said, ‘Gawain, my lord and love, have you no word for me? Can you not even bear to look my way?’

Gawain forced himself to turn his head and look at the speaker – and then sprang up in amazement; for there between the candle sconces, still wearing the Lady Ragnell’s scarlet gown, and with the Lady Ragnell’s jewels on her fingers, stood the most beautiful maiden that he had ever seen. Her skin as white as milk in the candlelight, her hair as darkly gold as corn at harvest time, her huge dark eyes waiting to meet his, and her hands held out to him while a little smile quivered at the corners of her mouth.

‘Lady,’ he said at half-breath, not sure whether he was awake or dreaming, ‘who are you? Where is my wife, the Lady Ragnell?’

‘I am your wife, the Lady Ragnell,’ said she, ‘whom you found between the oak and the holly tree, and wedded this night in settlement of your King’s debt – and maybe, a little, in kindness.’

‘But – but I do not understand,’ stammered Gawain, ‘you are so changed –’

‘Yes,’ said the maiden, ‘I am changed, am I not? I was under an enchantment, and as yet I am only partly freed from it. But now for a little while I may be with you in my true seeming. Is my lord content with his bride?’

She came a little towards him, and he reached out and caught her into his arms. ‘Content? Oh, my most dear love, I am the happiest man in all the world; for I thought to save the honour of the King my uncle, and I have gained my heart’s desire. Indeed you spoke truly when you told me I should never regret this marriage, though at the time I could not believe you.’ He drew her hard against him and kissed her, while she put her arms round his neck. ‘And yet from the first moment I felt something of you reach out to me, and something of me reach back in answer …’

In a little, the lady brought her hands down and set them against his breast and gently held him off. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘for now a hard choice lies before you. I told you that as yet I am only partly free from the enchantment that binds me. Because you have taken me for your wife, it is half broken; but no more than half broken.’

‘What is this? I do not understand.’

‘Listen,’ she said again, ‘and you shall understand all too well. I am half free of the spell, half still held by it; for half of each day I may wear my true form as I do now; for the other half I must be as I was when you took me from under my oak and holly trees. And now it is for you to say, whether you will have me fair by day and foul by night, or fair by night and foul by day.’

‘That is a hard choice indeed,’ said Gawain.

‘Think,’ said the Lady Ragnell.

And Sir Gawain said in a rush, ‘Oh, my dear love, be hideous by day, and fair for me alone!’

‘Alas!’ said the Lady Ragnell. ‘And that is your choice? I must be hideous and misshapen among all the Queen’s fair ladies, and abide their scorn and pity, when in truth I am as fair as any of them? Oh, Sir Gawain, is this your love?’

Then Sir Gawain bowed his head. ‘Nay, I was thinking only of myself. If it will make you happier, be fair by day and take your rightful place at court. And at night I shall hear your soft voice in the darkness, and that shall be my content.’

‘That was indeed a lover’s answer,’ said the Lady Ragnell. ‘But I would be fair for you; not only for the court and the daytime world that means less to me than you do.’

And Gawain said, ‘Whichever way it is, it is you who must endure the most suffering; and being a woman, I am thinking that you have more wisdom in such things than I. Make the choice yourself, dear love, and whichever way you choose, I shall be content.’

Then the Lady Ragnell bent her head into the hollow of his neck and wept and laughed together. ‘Oh Gawain, my dearest lord, now, by leaving the choice to me, by giving me
my own way
you have broken the spell completely, and I am free of it, to be my true self by night and day. And my brother also –’

‘Your brother?’ said Gawain, his head whirling.

And seeing his bewilderment, the Lady Ragnell drew him back to the great chair beside the fire, and sank down beside him on to the rushes, her arm across his knees. ‘My brother the Knight of Tarn Wathelan,’ she said. ‘Both of us were spell-drawn from our true seeming by the magic of Morgan La Fay, my brother because she thought to use him in one last attempt against the King her half-brother, me because – I have a little power of my own – I sought to withstand her.’

‘But how did you know the way to save the King?’ Gawain asked.

‘To every spell there is a key, though one that is almost beyond the power of human kind to use.’ Gawain was taking down her hair so that it fell in a curtain of harvest-coloured silk about them both. ‘I was the key to save the King; and in saving the King, it was given to me also to call to you for aid for myself and my brother. But if you had not answered my call, no one could have saved me, for the name of
that
key is Love.’

Next day there was much bewilderment but even more joy when Sir Gawain led the Lady Ragnell into the Great Hall. And the wedding feast was renewed; a true wedding feast this time, and a fitting end to the Christmas festivities.

For seven years Gawain and Ragnell knew great happiness together, and during all that time Gawain was a gentler and a kinder and a more steadfast man than ever he had been before. But at the end of that time the Lady Ragnell went from him. Some say that she died, some that she had the blood of the Lordly People in her – had she not herself said that she had a little power? – and the Lordly People cannot live for more than seven years with a mortal mate.

In one way or another way, she went; and something of Gawain went with her. He was a valiant knight still, but his old blazing temper returned upon him and he was less steadfast of purpose and less kind than he had been; and he went hollow of heart for her sake, all the remaining days of his life.

WHEN KING PELLINORE
was slain, his queen wanted no more to do with the world of men; and she took their young son Percival and disappeared with him into the wilderness. And there among the mountains and forests of Wales, she found an abandoned charcoal-burner’s bothie, and made a home for the child, where he might grow up far from wars and feuds and the cruelties of men towards men which are different from the cruelties of the animal kind.

So from that time forward until he was seventeen, the boy grew up never seeing another human face save his mother’s, knowing nothing of the outside world or the ways of men and women. At first he remembered his father’s court, the ladies smelling of musk and civet and oil of violets, whose fine gowns trailed along the floor behind them, the shine of knights in armour, the
strength of his father’s arms when he swung him up from the ground to sit upon his shoulder; the old man in the castle armoury who had begun to teach him how to cast a light spear. Above all, the splendid high-stepping horses in the stables, and the great deerhounds in the kennels who had accepted him as a friend. But little by little the memories faded until they were no more than a brightly coloured blur in the back of his head; until they were so faint that he thought they were only the memories of a dream.