The King Arthur Trilogy (35 page)

And when that was done, he leaned down from the saddle and gave the kneeling young man in the golden armour a light blow between neck and shoulder. ‘Rise, Sir Percival of Wales.’

So they returned to Camelot, with Sir Kay bringing up the rear and nursing his bruises. And when Percival had told his story to the rest of the assembled knights, and the five of them had been unarmed, and all went to take their places, there indeed was Sir Percival’s name shining in fair new gold on the tall back of his waiting seat, the seat between Sir Gawain’s and the Seat Perilous.

Sir Percival looked at the name, and then at Sir Gawain; and a stiffness came over his face. Gawain saw it, and said steadily, ‘Aye, I am Gawain of Orkney, and yonder are my brothers Gaheris and Agravane and Gareth.’

Sir Percival looked at the other three, with the stiffness still in his face; and the other three looked back. And the talk about the Table drifted into silence. All knew that it was for Sir Percival to take up the old feud or leave it lying. And for a long moment Sir Percival himself did not know which he was going to do. He had told his mother that it must be as God willed; but now it seemed that God was leaving the choice to him. And after three slow heartbeats of time, he made it. ‘God’s greeting to you, sirs – I pray you grant me your friendship.’

‘That will I,’ said Sir Gareth warmly. ‘God’s welcome to our midst.’

‘And I,’ said Sir Gawain. ‘And here’s my hand on it.’

‘And I,’ said Sir Gaheris, bringing his own hand down with an open-palmed crash upon the table.

Even Sir Agravane smiled thinly.

And on the surface, that was all. But all those about the Table knew well enough what lay beneath. That what their youngest knight had really said was, ‘My father killed yours and you killed mine; and nothing can change that. Therefore let us leave the old feud sleeping.’

And that the Orkney brothers had said, ‘We understand, and we accept the peace-making.’

Later that day, the King said to the captain of his knights, ‘Gawain was right when he said that it took more than the slaying of one robber and the unhorsing of the King’s Seneschal to make a knight. But now I think the boy has proved his worth in a more difficult way.’

‘It cannot have been easy to leave the old feud lying,’ Lancelot agreed.

They were walking together in the narrow orchard below the western walls of the castle, the autumn sunset making a bonfire blaze beyond the distant hills. There were fallen apples lying in the grass, and a few still clinging to the trees that were almost bare of leaves. When they had first come out through the postern gate, the broad loop of the river below had been flashing back the singing gold of the westering sun. But now the mist was rising …

Arthur said suddenly, ‘Do you remember Merlin?’

Lancelot thought. ‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘but not well. I only saw him once, when I was a boy in Less Britain before ever I became your man. It was he that sent me to you.’

‘He said once – it was when Guenever came to me and brought the Round Table for her dowry, and when we first gathered to it as a brotherhood – he said then, that when Percival came to join us, it would be as though he were a herald.’

‘A herald?’

‘A sign, then. For by his coming we should know that within less than a year the Mystery of the Holy Grail would come – will come, upon us here at Camelot, bringing the final flowering and fruiting time of Logres; and the knights will leave the Round Table and ride out upon the greatest quest of all.’

‘We shall come together again,’ said Lancelot, trying to console him.

‘Some of us,’ said the King. ‘But it will not be the same; never the same again.’ He narrowed his eyes into the blazing sky over the western hills. ‘We shall have done all that is in us to do. For Britain, for the kingdom of Logres. For all that we have fought and built for and tried to make secure … We shall have served our purpose; made a shining time between the Dark and the Dark. Merlin said that it would be as though all things
drew on to the golden glory of the sunset. But then it will all be over.’

Lancelot said, ‘We shall have made such a blaze, that men will remember us on the other side of the Dark.’

And the mist was rising, rising now all round the orchard, creeping almost among the feet of the apple trees and shutting out all things beyond, so that they might have been on an enchanted island.

Merlin’s remembered voice, clear across twenty years and more, was in Arthur’s memory, and it was the day that he received Excalibur. ‘Away over yonder – away to the West – there lies Ynys Witrin, the Glass Island; Avalon of the Apple Trees, that is the threshold between the world of men and the Land of the Living …’ Merlin’s voice seemed actually in his head. ‘And not far off is Camlann, the place of the last battle … Nay, but that is another story, for another day as yet far off …’

The voice faded, and he was back in the orchard below Camelot, and it was not Merlin with him, but Lancelot. And the voice in his ears was his own. ‘It grows late,’ he said, ‘let us be going in to the feasting, to make welcome our newest-come knight of the Round Table.’

ON EVERY SIDE
, Camelot climbed, roof above coloured roof, up the steep slopes of the hill. About the foot of the hill the river cast its shining silver noose; and at the highest heart of the town rose the palace of King Arthur. And in the Great Hall of Arthur’s palace stood the Round Table, which could seat a hundred and fifty knights, each with his name written in fairest gold on the high back of his chair behind him: the Knights of the Fellowship of the Round Table, which had been formed long ago when Arthur was new and young to his kingship, for the spreading of justice and mercy and chivalry and the upholding of right against might throughout the land.

Wherever the knights might be at other times – for they had lives of their own to lead, and quests of their own to follow – it was their custom always to gather to
the King for the great feast days of the Church. And so one Pentecost Eve they were assembled and just sitting down to supper, when a maiden came riding into the Hall on a horse all lathered with sweat from the speed that she had made.

And she called upon Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who was the greatest of all the Round Table knights, to ride with her, in the name of King Pelles, whom she served.

‘What thing is it that King Pelles wants of me?’ asked Sir Lancelot.

‘That you shall know in good time.’

Sir Lancelot sat looking at his big bony sword hand on the table, while the past stirred within him, and his heart twisted a little with old sorrows and new foreshadowings. Then he rose from his place, all his companions looking on, and called for a squire to saddle his horse and another to bring his armour.

And he rode with the maiden as she asked, down from the palace and across the three-spanned bridge, and into the green young-summer mazes of the forest.

Soon he found that they were following a path that he had never followed before in all the years that he had known those forest ways; and after a league or less it brought them out into a broad clearing that was strange to him also; where the grey buildings of a nunnery sat peacefully among orchards and herb gardens beside the way. As they drew near, the gates were opened as if
those within had been watching for them; and convent servants came to take Sir Lancelot’s horse, while others led him to a fair and high-ceilinged guest chamber.

There was a bed in the middle of the chamber, and on it two knights lay asleep, and looking at their russet-brown heads burrowed into the pillows, Sir Lancelot saw that they were two young kinsmen of his, Bors and Lional, who he supposed must be on their way to the Round Table gathering. He laughed, and shook each by the shoulder to rouse them, and they plunged awake, reaching for their daggers before they saw who it was.

And while they were still exclaiming and greeting each other, the abbess and two of her nuns came into the chamber, bringing with them a very young man. At their coming, the laughing and the horseplay ceased; and a great quiet came with them into the chamber.

‘Sir Lancelot,’ said the abbess, ‘we bring you this boy whom we have raised up and loved as our own, ever since his mother died, before he stood as tall as a sword-blade from the ground. Now it is time that he becomes a knight, and his grandsire, King Pelles, would have him receive his knighthood from your hand.’

And the quiet closed in again after her words; and in the midst of it Sir Lancelot and the boy stood and looked at each other.

Now Sir Lancelot of the Lake was an ugly man, with an ugliness such as women love. His dark face under
the thick badger-streaked hair looked as though it had been put together in haste, so that the two sides of it did not match. One side of his mouth was grave with heavy thought, while the other lifted in joy; one eyebrow was level as a falcon’s wing and the other flew wild like a mongrel’s ear. He had lived forty-five summers and winters in the world, and loved and sorrowed and triumphed and fought to the utmost, and every joy and sorrow and striving had set its mark on him.

The boy’s face was pale and clear, waiting for life to touch it, and his hair made a smooth cap as of dark silk on his head. He was like his mother, Elaine, the daughter of King Pelles; and Sir Lancelot saw that in the first moment that they turned to each other. But the look which had made men call Elaine ‘The Lily’ in him made them think of a spear-blade or a still tall flame.

Yet from the strong chaos of Sir Lancelot’s face, and the waiting quietness of the boy’s, the same wide grey eyes looked long and steady out at each other.

And Sir Bors and Sir Lional, watching, exchanged quick startled glances.

‘What is your name?’ said Sir Lancelot, at last.

‘Galahad,’ said the boy.

There was a sudden wild weeping deep down in Lancelot where no one but he could know of it. All the years of his manhood he had loved Guenever, King Arthur’s queen, and for her sake had never looked
towards another woman. But there had been a time, long ago, when King Pelles’ daughter had set her love on him and, being desperate, had won him to her by a trick for just one night. And of that one night she had borne a son, and called him Galahad.

‘My name also was Galahad, before I gained my second name that now men call me by,’ said Lancelot. And then knew that he need not have said it, for his son already knew.

To the lady abbess he said, ‘Madam, let him keep his vigil in the church tonight, and it shall be as his grandsire wishes in the morning.’

So that night Galahad kept his vigil, kneeling before the high altar of the nunnery church; and when the birds woke to their singing in the first light of Pentecost morning, Sir Lancelot dubbed him knight.

‘Now come with us to King Arthur’s court,’ he said, when it was done.

But the abbess shook her head. ‘Not yet. Go you back to Camelot; and when it is the right time, he will come.’

So Sir Lancelot and his young cousins rode back to Camelot alone. And all the way Sir Lancelot looked straight between his horse’s ears and spoke not one word.

When they reached Camelot, the King and Queen had gone with all their court to hear morning Mass, and it was too late to join them. So the three knights went into the Great Hall to wait for their return. And there they found a most strange thing.

This was the way of it.

Long before, when the Fellowship was formed, Merlin the old and wise, the master of secret knowledge, who had taught Arthur those things which a king should know, had made for him by magic arts the Round Table with its places for a hundred and fifty knights. But no more than a hundred and forty-nine had ever sat down at that table, while always the last seat remained empty. And this seat was called the Seat Perilous, for no man might sit in it that disaster did not befall him. Now Merlin, who had forgotten his wisdom and given his heart to an enchantress because she smiled at him and was beautiful, slept where she had locked him in a magic hawthorn tree; and for twenty years and more, Arthur and his brotherhood had sat at his Round Table with the empty seat among them. And some of those who had sat there in the early years were dead now, and new young knights come to fill their places; and others were scarred by old battles and had grey in their hair that had been black or gold or brown when first they gathered there. And still the Seat Perilous remained empty and waiting.

But now the sun falling through one of the high windows touched the carved and beautiful chair, and on its high back something glinted in the light. And drawing near, the three knights read, in letters that seemed that moment to have been set there in new-fired gold: ‘Four hundred and fifty years have passed since the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. And on the day of Pentecost this seat shall find its master.’

‘That is today,’ said Sir Lancelot, at half breath.

And Sir Bors, scarce knowing why he did so – and he was not one to do things without clear reason – spread his cloak over the back of the Seat Perilous, so that the words were hidden until their moment came.