The King Arthur Trilogy (64 page)

‘Also that if I heard of him never more in this life, I was to pray for his soul,’ said Bedivere in his brown hermit’s habit.

Lancelot shook his head. He was too spent and weary to think, but he had looked to find Arthur here, or to be shown his grave.

‘But this is Avalon,’ he said again.

And the old Archbishop saw his bewilderment, and answered him kindly, never knowing that he did so almost in the words that Merlin had spoken to the
young Arthur on the day that he received Excalibur. ‘Avalon of the Apple Trees is not like to other places. It is a threshold place between the world of men and the Land of the Living. Here we are in the Avalon of mortal men. But there is another Avalon. The King is here but he is gone beyond the mist.’

Merlin would have understood what he meant; but Merlin was thirty years and more asleep beneath his magic hawthorn tree, and Sir Lancelot was too weary to understand.

But he knew that he had come to the end of his journeyings.

‘Will you receive me into your fellowship?’ he said at last. ‘And give shelter and grazing to my horse, for he has served me well.’

‘That will we, and gladly,’ said Sir Bedivere.

And the old Archbishop said, ‘Welcome, my son.’

So Sir Lancelot laid by his knightly harness, he who had been the best of all the knights of Christendom, and took upon him the brown habit that the others wore.

When the full month had gone by, and there was no word from Sir Lancelot, the war-host waiting at Dover made ready to depart, as he had bidden them. But Sir Bors himself, and Sir Ector of the Marsh, Sir Blamore and Sir Bleoberis and certain others of Sir Lancelot’s kin and closest friends chose to remain in Britain and seek until
they found him if he lived, or gained sure word of his fate if he were dead. And so they parted and, singly, they rode Britain from end to end, seeking their lost leader.

And so one day Sir Bors happened on the chapel and its little gathering of huts between two hills, and the ancient apple trees snowy with blossom, for it was spring; and a warhorse grazing quietly below the chapel, among the lesser apple trees that grew there. And he heard a little bell ringing to Mass.

And when he hitched his horse to the lower branch of the tree beside the chapel, and went to answer the call of the bell, there within were three brown-clad brethren; and one of them, so old that only the life in his brilliant eyes seemed still to bind him to the world of men, was the Archbishop, and one was Sir Bedivere, and one was Sir Lancelot of the Lake. Sir Bors knew that his search was finished. And after they had shared Mass together, he begged the Archbishop that he might join them.

So Sir Bors also changed his knightly gear for a rough brown habit, and loosed his horse to graze beside Lancelot’s, and turned him to a life of prayer and fasting for what remained of his days.

And within half a year came Sir Blamore and Sir Bleoberis, and by little and little, certain others of the old lost brotherhood of the Round Table. And when in due time the ancient Archbishop died, Sir Lancelot, whom he had made a priest while he yet lived, stepped
into his place, and celebrated the Mass for the rest as he had done, and for all who chanced to pass that way.

So they continued for seven years, living in prayer and poverty and giving their help and comfort to all who sought it; and keeping the last light of Logres alive as they kept the honey-wax candles burning on the rough altar, while the darkness flowed in over the rest of the land. For though Constantine, Duke of Cornwall and a young and distant kinsman of Arthur, had taken the High Kingship and led his troops to battle under the dragon banner, he was not Arthur, and there was little that he could do against the Sea Wolves, and the Old People from the mountains and the North.

And the seven years went by; and then one night, and three times in the same night, Lancelot dreamed that Guenever lay dying, and that she called to him, not to come to her while she lived, but to come none the less, with seven of the brethren, and a horse-bier, to fetch her body away to Avalon for burial.

So he arose, and woke the others, and they made a horse-litter of willow saplings, and chose out the two of their warhorses that were oldest and wisest and most gentled with age; and then they set out for Almesbury, the eight of them walking barefoot all the way.

And though from Avalon to Almesbury is but thirty miles, yet the journey took them three days, for they were growing old, and no longer strong to walk long
distances as they had used to be. And when they reached Almesbury and came to the nunnery, Guenever had died quietly in the night before their coming.

And when Sir Lancelot was brought to the chamber where she lay, still in her habit, with her hands folded on her breast, those who stood about them saw how he looked long into her face, and did not weep, but gave one great heavy sigh that sounded as though it might have been the going out of his own soul.

Next morning the body of Lady Guenever was laid upon the horse-litter, and with Lancelot and the brethren walking four on either side, they set out to bear her back to Avalon.

And when they reached the little abbey church, they made her a grave before the altar, and wrapped her close in softest silk that the sisters of the nunnery had made ready for her, and Sir Lancelot himself sang her funeral Mass. And they laid her in her quiet grave and strewed the flowers of late summer over her, and made an end.

But from that day, Sir Lancelot began to sicken like an old, tired hound. He scarcely ate or drank, and grew gaunt as a shadow, pining and dwining away. And within six weeks from the time that he laid the Lady Guenever in her grave, he too was dead.

And while he lay awaiting burial, before the altar, Sir Ector of the Marsh his half-brother, who had for seven
years been seeking him, came to Avalon, and saw torches burning in the church, through the windy autumn dusk, and heard the sound of slow and stately chanting. And he dismounted, and hitched his horse to the lowest fruit-laden branch of the ancient apple tree that grew beside the place, and drawn by something, he scarcely knew what, went in through the open door.

Inside he saw brown-clad brethren kneeling in the wind-fretted torchlight, and one who lay before the altar with his big bony hands folded on his breast. And he knelt down just within the door, and waited. And in a while, when the chanting ended, and the brethren rose and turned to see who the newcomer might be, then he knew them in the same instant that they knew him. And the old man who had been Sir Bors came to him gently, holding out his hands.

And Sir Ector looked among them, from Sir Bedivere to Sir Bleoberis and the rest, and asked, ‘Have you any word of Sir Lancelot? I have sought him these seven years and more.’

‘Your search is over,’ said Sir Bors, and led him towards the altar, the others standing back to let him through as though he had some special right. Then he was standing beside the body that lay there, looking down at it. And for three full heart-beats of time even then, he did not know whose it was, for Lancelot had so wasted away over the past weeks that scarce might any man know him for
Sir Lancelot of the Lake, foremost among all the knights of Christendom.

Then as he stood wondering, while the autumn wind swooped round the chapel and the torchlight flared and guttered, he saw that the hands folded on the dead man’s breast were a swordsman’s hands and a horseman’s hands, and the gaunt face with its two sides that did not match with each other was the face of Lancelot his brother.

Sir Ector gave a choking cry and flung aside his sword and shield so that they fell with a clash and clangour upon the rough paved floor. And the great sorrowing words rushed from his heart into his throat and seemed to choke there, and then broke free.

‘There, Sir Lancelot, there thou liest, thou that were never matched of earthly knight’s hand. And thou were the courtliest knight that ever bore shield. And thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse. And thou were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman. And thou were the kindest man that ever struck with sword. And thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights. And thou wast the meekest man and the gentlest that ever sat in hall among ladies. And thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever set spear in rest.’

And he knelt, and kissed his brother upon the forehead,
and with grief and weariness fell half-swooning beside him.

So Sir Lancelot also was grave-laid, and his great tortured heart found peace at last.

Sir Bedivere and several of the brotherhood remained at the little church and its hermitage all the rest of their days, gathering others to them, so that at last the place became an abbey again; and later still, mighty and beautiful stone buildings arose where the little wattle church and its surrounding bothies had been. And men began to call it Glastonbury.

But Sir Bors and Sir Ector, Sir Bleoberis and Sir Blamore went afar off, into the Holy Land, and there died upon a Good Friday for God’s sake.

And save for a valiant glimmer here and there, the darkness flooded in over Britain.

But Sir Lancelot had once said to the King his friend, while they walked at sunset in the narrow orchard below the walls of Camelot, ‘We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side of the dark.’

And indeed he had spoken truth, for the stories of Arthur and his knights are told and re-told even to this day.

Some time early in the fifth century AD – history books used to say AD 410, but now the experts think that probably there were a few auxiliary troops left in Britain a good deal later than that – the last Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain to defend Rome itself, and the British were left to hold off the invading Saxons as best they could. In the end they failed, but they put up such a fight that it took the Saxons around two hundred and fifty years to complete their occupation; and they never did take over all of the Western country. But none the less, the withdrawal of Rome was the beginning of what we call ‘the Dark Ages’ chiefly because so little record of them has survived.

It is to some time early in these Dark Ages that King Arthur belongs.

Many people believe, as I do, that behind the legends of King Arthur as we know them today, there stands a real man. No king in shining armour, no Round Table, no fairy-tale palace at Camelot, but a Roman-British war leader, who when the dark tide of the barbarians came flooding in, did all that a great leader could do to hold them back and save something of civilisation.

But if the hero-tale had never grown up, and gathered to itself the mass of Celtic myth and folklore and the medieval splendours that we know now as the legends of King Arthur, we should have lost something beautiful and mysterious and magical out of our heritage. All down the ages, the stories have been told and told again, most splendidly of all by Sir Thomas Malory in
Morte d’Arthur
.

In
The Sword and the Circle
I have followed Malory in the main, but I have not followed him slavishly – no minstrel ever follows exactly the songs that have come down to him from the time before. Always he adds and leaves out and embroiders and puts something of himself into each retelling. And some of the stories in this retelling of mine are not to be found in Malory at all.

So – I have based the first story, of Vortigern and Merlin, Utha and Igraine and the dragon-light in the sky, upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
British History.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
comes from a Middle English poem.

For
Tristan and Iseult
I have turned back to a much earlier version, which Malory doesn’t seem to have known, by
Godfrey of Strasburg. But this story is in outline the same as the still older Irish tragedies of
Deirdre and the Sons of Usna
and
Diarmid and Grania.

Geraint and Enid
is from the ancient Welsh book,
The Mabinogion.

Sir Gawain and the Loathely Lady
is based on a Middle English ballad.

The early part of Sir Percival’s adventures are loosely based on another Early English poem with a few incidents from the
Conte de Graal,
but the end is largely my own invention – and why not, when the story of
Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight
seems to have come entirely out of Malory’s own head?

The story of how the Knights of the Round Table went questing for the Holy Grail, as we have known it for the past eight hundred years or so, stands out on its own from among all the rest of the Arthurian legends, because above them all, it is a Christian story and carries within it the things of the Spirit that seemed especially important to the people of the Middle Ages. At one level it is the story of King Arthur’s knights searching for the cup of the Last Supper; on a deeper level, like
The Pilgrim’s Progress,
it is an account of Man’s search for God. But the medieval Christian story
is shot through with shadows and half-light and haunting echoes of much older things; scraps of the mystery religions which the legions carried from end to end of the Roman Empire; above all, a mass of Celtic myth and folklore. For, despite its medieval French and German and English tellings and re-tellings, the Grail Quest, like all the other Arthurian legends, is Celtic in its beginnings. The Celts also had their quest stories, their unexplained happenings and shifting forests and beckoning lights. They had their cup (only for them it was a cauldron) and spear and sword and stone, which were the four treasures of Anwn, that strange realm which was both the World of the Dead and the World of Faery.