The Once and Future King (34 page)

‘Nay,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘…for once shamed may never be recovered.’

In the castle of Benwick, the French boy was looking at his face in the polished surface of a kettle—hat. It flashed in the sunlight with the stubborn gleam of metal. It was practically the same as the steel helmet which soldiers still wear, and it did not make a good mirror, but it was the best he could get. He turned the hat in various directions, hoping to get an average idea of his face from the different distortions which the bulges made. He was trying to find out what he was, and he was afraid of what he would find.

The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life – even when he was a great man with the world at his feet – he was to feel this gap: something at the bottom of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand. There is no need for us to try to understand it. We do not have to dabble in a place which he preferred to keep secret.

The Armoury, where the boy stood, was lined with weapons of war. For the last two hours he had been whirling a pair of dumb—bells in the air – he called them ‘poises’ – and singing to himself a song with no words and no tune. He was fifteen. He had just come back from England, where his father King Ban of Benwick had been helping the English King to quell a rebellion. You remember that Arthur wanted to catch his knights young, to train them for the Round Table, and that he had noticed Lancelot at the feast, because he was winning most of the games.

Lancelot, swinging his dumb—bells fiercely and making his wordless noise, had been thinking of King Arthur with all his might. He was in love with him. That was why he had been swinging the poises. He had been remembering all the words of the only conversation which he had held with his hero.

The King had called him over when they were embarking for France – after he had kissed King Ban good—bye – and they had gone alone into a corner of the ship. The heraldic sails of
Ban’s fleet, and the sailors in the rigging, and the armed turrets and archers and seagulls, like flake—white, had been a background to their conversation.

‘Lance,’ the King had said, ‘come here a moment, will you?’

‘Sir.’

‘I was watching you playing games at the feast.’

‘Sir.’

‘You seemed to win most of them.’

Lancelot squinted down his nose.

‘I want to get hold of a lot of people who are good at games, to help with an idea I have. It is for the time when I am a real King, and have got this kingdom settled. I was wondering whether you would care to help, when you are old enough?’

The boy had made a sort of wriggle, and had suddenly flashed his eyes at the speaker.

‘It is about knights,’ Arthur had continued. ‘I want to have an order of Chivalry, like the Order of the Garter, which goes about fighting against Might. Would you like to be one of those?’

‘Yes.’

The King had looked at him closely, unable to see whether he was pleased or frightened or merely being polite.

‘Do you understand what I am talking about?’

Lancelot had taken the wind out of his sails.

‘We call it Fort Mayne in France,’ he had explained. ‘The man with the strongest arm in a clan gets made the head of it, and does what he pleases. That is why we call it Fort Mayne. You want to put an end to the Strong Arm, by having a band of knights who believe in justice rather than strength. Yes, I would like to be one of those very much. I must grow up first. Thank you. Now I must say good—bye.’

So they had sailed away from England – the boy standing in the front of the ship and refusing to look back, because he did not want to show his feelings. He had already fallen in love with Arthur on the night of the wedding feast, and he carried with him in his heart to France the picture of that bright Northern King, at supper, flushed and glorious from his wars.

Behind the black eyes which were searching intently in the kettle—hat there was a dream which had come to him the previous night. Seven hundred years ago – or it may have been fifteen hundred according to Malory’s notation – people took dreams as seriously as the psychiatrists do today, and Lancelot’s had been a disturbing one. It was not disturbing because of anything it might mean – for he had not the least idea of its meaning – but because it had left him with a sense of loss. This was what it was.

Lancelot and his young brother, Ector Demaris, had been sitting in two chairs. They got out of these chairs and were mounted on two horses. Lancelot said: ‘Go we, and seek that which we shall not find.’ So they did. But a Man or a Power set upon Lancelot, and beat him and despoiled him, and clothed him in another array which was full of knots, and made him ride on an ass instead of on the horse. Then there was a beautiful well, with the fairest waters he had ever seen, and he got off his ass to drink out of it. It seemed to him that there could be nothing in the world more beautiful than to drink of this well. But as soon as he stooped his lips towards it, the water sank away. It went right down into the barrel of the well, sinking and sinking from him so that he could not get it. It made him feel desolate, to be abandoned by the water of the well.

Arthur and the well, and the dumb—bells which were to make him worthy of Arthur, and the ache in his tired arms from swinging them – all these were at the back of the boy’s mind as he tilted the tin hat backward and forward between his fingers, but there was a more insistent thought in his head also. It was a thought about the face in the metal, and about the thing which must have gone wrong in the depths of his spirit to make a face like that. He was not a self—deceiver. He knew that whichever way he turned the morion, it would tell him the same story. He had already decided that when he was a grown knight he would give himself a melancholy title. He was the eldest son, so he was bound to be knighted, but he would not call himself Sir Lancelot. He would call himself the Chevalier Mal Fet – the Ill—Made Knight.

So far as he could see – and he felt that there must be some reason for it somewhere – the boy’s face was as ugly as a monster’s in the King’s menagerie. He looked like an African ape.

Lancelot ended by being the greatest knight King Arthur had. He was a sort of Bradman, top of the battling averages. Tristram and Lamorak were second and third.

But you have to remember that people can’t be good at cricket unless they teach themselves to be so, and that jousting was an art, just as cricket is. It was like cricket in many ways. There was a scorer’s pavilion at a tournament, with a real scorer inside it, who made marks on the parchment just like the mark for one run which is made by the cricket scorer today. The people, walking round the ground in their best frocks, from Grand Stand to Refreshment Tent, must have found the fighting very like the game. It took a frightfully long time – Sir Lancelot’s innings frequently lasted all day, if he were battling against a good knight – and the movements had a feeling of slow—motion, because of the weight of armour. When the swordplay had begun, the combatants stood opposite each other in the green acre like batsman and bowler – except that they stood closer together – and perhaps Sir Gawaine would start with an in—swinger, which Sir Lancelot would put away to leg with a beautiful leg—glide, and then Lancelot would reply with a yorker under Gawaine’s guard – it was called ‘foining’ – and all the people round the field would clap. King Arthur might turn to Guenever in the Pavilion, and remark that the great man’s footwork was as lovely as ever. The knights had little curtains on the back of their helms, to keep the hot sun off the metal, like the handkerchiefs which cricketers will sometimes arrange behind their caps today.

Knightly exercise was as much an art as cricket is, and perhaps the only way in which Lancelot did not resemble Bradman was
that he was more graceful. He did not have that crouching on the bat and hopping out to the pitch of the ball. He was more like Woolley. But you can’t be like Woolley by simply sitting still and wanting to be so.

The Armoury, where the small boy who was later to be Sir Lancelot was standing with his morion, was the largest single room in the castle of Benwick. It was to be the room in which this boy was to spend most of his waking hours for the next three years.

The rooms of the main castle – which he could see from the windows – were mostly small, because people can’t afford to build for luxury when they are making a fortification. Round the inner fort with its small rooms there was a wide byre, or shell—keep, into which the castle herds were driven during a siege. This was surrounded by a high wall with towers, and, on the inner side of this wall, the big rooms which were needed for stores, barns, barracks, and stables were built. The Armoury was one of these rooms. It stood between the stables, for fifty horses, and the cowsheds. The best family armour – the bits which were actually in use – was kept in a little room in the castle itself, and it was only the arms of the troops, and the spare parts of the family stuff, and the things which were needed for gymnastics, practice, or physical training, which reposed in the Armoury.

Under the raftered ceiling, and the nearest to it, there hung or leaned a collection of bannerettes and pennoncels, blazoned with the Ban charges – France Ancient, as they are now called – which would be needed on various occasions. Along the wall there were tilting lances, resting horizontally on nails so that they should not warp. These looked like bars for exercise in a gymnasium. In one corner a collection of old lances which had already warped or got injured in some way, but which might still be useful for something, were standing upright. A rack, running the whole length of the second main wall, held the infantry issue of mail habergeons with mittens, spears, morions, and Bordeaux swords. King Ban was fortunate in living at Benwick, for the Bordeaux swords were local and particularly
good. Then there were harness—barrels, in which the armour was packed in hay for expeditions overseas – some of it was still packed from the last expedition, and a curious mixture it was. Uncle Dap, who looked after the Armoury, had been unpacking one of the barrels to make an inventory of its contents – and had gone away in despair on discovering ten pounds of dates and five loaves of sugar in it. It must have been some sort of honey sugar, unless it was loaf sugar brought back from the Crusades. He had left his list beside the barrel, and this recorded, among other articles: a salade garnessed with golde, iij peire gantelez, a vestment, a mesbooke, an auter cloth, a peir of brigandines, a pyssyng basin of silver, x schertes for my Lord, a jakete of leather, and a bagge of chessmen. Then, in an alcove formed by the harness—barrels, there was a set of shelves which formed the dispensary for sick armour. On the shelves there were huge bottles of olive oil – nowadays they prefer a mineral oil for armour, but they did not understand such niceties in Lancelot’s time – together with boxes of fine sand for polishing, bags of brigandine nails at eleven shillings and eightpence the twenty thousand, rivets, spare rings for chain mail, leather skins for cutting new straps and bases for the knee harness, together with a thousand other details then fascinating, but now lost to us. There were gambesons like the pads which the goalkeeper wears in hockey, or like the quilted protections which Americans have at football. In various corners there were pushed, so as to leave a free space in the middle of the room, a collection of gymnastic apparatus such as quintains and so on, while Uncle Dap’s desk stood near the door. On the desk there were splattering quill pens, blotting sand, sticks for beating Lancelot when he was stupid, and notes, in unutterable confusion, as to which jupons had lately been pawned – pawning was a great institution for valuable armour – and which helms had been brought up to date with a glancing surface, and whose vambrace stood in need of repair, and what had been paid to whom for fforbeshynge which when. Most of the accounts were wrongly added up.

Three years may seem a long time for a boy to spend in one
room, if he only goes out of it to eat and sleep and to practise tilting in the field. It is even difficult to imagine a boy who would do it, unless you realize from the start that Lancelot was not romantic and debonair. Tennyson and the Pre—Raphaelites would have found it difficult to recognize this rather sullen and unsatisfactory child, with the ugly face, who did not disclose to anybody that he was living on dreams and prayers. They might have wondered what store of ferocity he had against himself, that could set him to break his own body so young. They might have wondered why he was so strange.

To begin with, he had to spend the weary months charging against Uncle Dap, with a blunt spear under his arm. Uncle Dap, armed cap—à—pied, would sit on a stool – and Lancelot, with the morne—headed spear, would charge and charge against him, learning the best lodges on armour for a point. Then there were lonely hours with poises, with many other hours out of doors – before he was even allowed to touch real arms – in which he learned various kinds of throwing, casting with the sling—stick or the casting spear, and tossing the bar. After that, after a year of toil, there was his promotion to the pel—quintain. It was a stake driven upright in the ground, and he had to fight against it with sword and shield – rather like shadow—boxing, or using a punch—ball. He had to use arms for this exercise which weighed twice as much as the ordinary sword and shield. Sixty pounds was considered a good weight for the arms used on the pel—quintain – so that, when he did come at length to the usual weapons, he would wield them featly. They would seem light by comparison. The final stage of breaking to the cricket standard was by mock combats. In these at last, and after all the bitter setbacks of discipline, he was allowed to fight battles which were nearly real ones, against his brother and cousins. The combats were held under strict rules. They might begin with a cast of the spear blunted, followed by seven strokes with the sword, point and edge rebated, ‘without close, or griping one another with the handles, upon paine of punishment as the judges for the time being shall thinke requisite.’ It was not lawful in these matches to foin – that is, to make a thrust
of the point. Finally there was swashbuckling. The now vigorous boy might go at his companions harum—scarum, with sword and buckler.

If you have been down in one of the old—fashioned diving suits which used to be standard in the Royal Navy before frogmen and free diving came along, you will know why divers move slowly. A diver has forty pounds of lead on each foot and two plaques of lead – each weighing fifty pounds – one on his back and one on his chest. These are apart from the weight of the suit and the helmet. Except when he is in the sea, he weighs twice as much as a man. When he has to step over a rope or an air—tube on deck, it is hard work – like climbing a wall. If you push him from in front, the weight behind him tends to take over, so that he might fall backwards. The same thing happens vice versa. Practised divers become adept at dealing with these handicaps, and can hoist those forty pound feet up and down the ship’s ladder fairly nimbly – but an amateur half kills himself with the mere toil of movement. Lancelot, like the diver, had to learn to be nimble against the force of gravity.

Knights—in—armour were like divers in more ways than one.

Apart from their helmets and encumbrances and the difficulty of breathing, they had to be dressed in their suits by kind and careful assistants. They had to rely on these assistants to do it properly. A diver puts his life in the hands of the ratings who are dressing him. These young men, like pages or squires, mother him with great tenderness and concentration and with a sort of protective respect. They always address him by his title, not by his name. They say, ‘Sit down, diver,’ or ‘Now the left foot, diver,’ or ‘Diver Two, can you hear me on the inter—com?’

It is good to put your life in other people’s hands.

Three years of it. The other boys did not worry, for they had other things to think about – but for the ugly one it was the whole of an obscure and mystic life. He had to perfect himself for Arthur as somebody who was good at games, and he had to think about the theories of chivalry even when he was in bed at night. He had to teach himself to possess a sound opinion
on hundreds of disputed points – on the proper length of weapons, or the cut of a mantling, or the articulation of a pauldron, or whether cedarwood was better than ash for spears, as Chaucer seems to have believed.

Here is a short example of the problems of chivalry, which he thought about in his early times. There was a knight once called Reynaud de Roy, who had a tilting match with another one called John de Holland. Reynaud purposely fastened his tilting helm – the huge straw—padded drum which sometimes fitted over the helmet proper – so that it was loose. When John of Holland’s spear struck it, it simply fell off. This meant that the helm came off Reynaud, instead of Reynaud coming off his horse. An effective trick, but a dangerous one – the whole of chivalry argued about it for a long time, some saying that it was unsporting, some that it was fair but too risky, and some that it was a good idea.

Three years of discipline made Lancelot not a merry heart and a capacity for singing tirra—lirra. Out of a lifetime which at his age must have seemed to stretch little more than a week ahead, he gave thirty—six months to another man’s idea because he was in love with it. He supported himself meanwhile on daydreams. He wanted to be the best knight in the world, so that Arthur would love him in return, and he wanted one other thing which was still possible in those days. He wanted, through his purity and excellence, to be able to perform some ordinary miracle – to heal a blind man or something like that, for instance.