The King Arthur Trilogy (14 page)

‘Surely that man is broader across the shoulders than Sir Kay?’ said Sir Ector. ‘Well, we will see if his buffet can match mine!’

And Sir Lancelot tipped him out of the saddle to join Sir Segramour.

‘By my faith,’ said Sir Uwaine, ‘that is not Sir Kay! Surely he has slain Sir Kay and stolen his armour!’

And he rode hard against Sir Lancelot – and knew nothing more for some while.

Then Sir Gawain fewtered his spear and came against Sir Lancelot full tilt. And Sir Lancelot, kindling his horse in the last instant before the strike-home, as few
horsemen but he knew how to do, brought down Sir Gawain and his horse together.

Then Sir Lancelot rode quietly on; and he smiled to himself inside his helmet, and thought, Well, that is four bruising falls that I have saved Sir Kay, anyway. And he thought also, God give him joy who made this spear, for I never had a better in my hand!

And the four knights gathered their wits and aided each other and caught their horses. ‘That was assuredly not Sir Kay,’ said Sir Segramour.

And Sir Gawain said, ‘I am thinking that it was Sir Lancelot. He was but three days at court after his knighting, but I mind me how he did at the jousts on the second day, and I know him by his riding.’

And they continued on their way, for they were heading for Camelot to keep Christmas at Arthur’s court.

And Sir Lancelot rode on through the wintry forest, seeking whatever adventure might befall him, while the winter wore on and the snow came and lay thick upon the ground and the straining branches of the trees, and the wind howled like a wolf pack in the long dark nights.

One day when the winter was nearly spent, he came upon the strangest of all the adventures that he met with in that year of lone riding; so strange that ever after
when he looked back upon it, it was like looking back upon a dream.

And the beginning of the adventure was this; that as he rode along a forest track, he met with a damosel muffled close against the cold, who looked into his face – for he rode with his vizor open, as did most men except in time of fighting – and cried out, ‘Ah, Sir Lancelot! Now Christ in his gentleness be praised that we are met!’

‘How comes it that you know my name?’ said Lancelot, who was growing accustomed to being mistaken for Sir Kay by the device on his shield.

‘Last Easter I was at King Arthur’s court, to watch my brother at the jousting on the day after you were made knight.’ And in her desperate eagerness she twisted her hands in his bridle as though to draw him after her, so that his horse was startled and began to dance.

‘Softly,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘what is it that you would with me?’

‘Ah, Sir Knight, I sorely need your help – and for that same brother. For this very day he fought with an evil knight, Sir Gilbert the Bastard. And Sir Gilbert he slew, but my brother was sore wounded, and the wound will not cease from bleeding so that now he lies upon death’s threshold. And there dwells in the forest not far from here a sorceress called Allewes, and when in despair I went to her for help, she laughed at me, and said the
blood-flow would not cease until I could find a knight valiant enough to go into the Chapel Perilous, where Sir Gilbert’s body now lies, and bring out the sword that lies there and a piece of the cloth that covers the body. Then if the sword be touched to the wound, and the cloth bound about it after, the bleeding shall cease, and my brother be made whole again.’

‘That is a marvellous thing,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘but who is your brother?’

‘Sir, he is Sir Meliot de Logure.’

At that, Lancelot was silent a moment, remembering the young knight who had been at Camelot only a short while when he himself came from Benwick, and who, it was whispered, was kin of some kind of Nimue the Lady of the Lake. And the hairs stirred a little on the nape of his neck, and the sense of being in a dream thickened about him.

But he said at last, ‘Then he is my brother in the fellowship of the Round Table, and assuredly I will do all that is in my power to aid him.’

‘Then, sir,’ said the maiden, ‘let you follow this track, for it will bring you to the Chapel Perilous. And I will wait here until you come again. And pray God that you
do
come again; for if you do not, then there is no knight living who may achieve this adventure.’

Then Sir Lancelot rode on, following the track where the ice was melting in the ruts, and the half-thawed snow
falling from the branches of the trees. And in a while he came to a clearing in the forest beside the way; and in the midst of the clearing a grey and mournful chapel set among night-dark yew trees. Sir Lancelot dismounted and tied his horse to the narrow gate, and went into the churchyard. And then he saw, hanging from the twisted branches of the greatest and oldest tree that grew beside the chapel door, many shields, upside down in token of death. And he saw also, standing among the yew trees, more than thirty knights in black armour and with drawn swords in their hands; taller by a head than any mortal man; and their vizors were open and their faces bare, the faces of the long dead, and he saw that they grinned and gnashed their teeth at his coming, but no smoke of breath came from them upon the cold air. And fear rose like a cold fog in Lancelot, and again, and more strongly, the hair crawled on the back of his neck. But he drew his sword and readied his shield before him, and advanced steadily upon them like a man advancing into battle.

And at his coming, they gave back and scattered, their feet leaving no track upon the puddled snow; and Sir Lancelot passed through them and entered the chapel.

Within, the place was dimly lit by one lamp that hung from the vaulted roof; and beneath the lamp, a dead man lay upon his bier, covered by a pall of crimson silk. And it seemed to him that the cold of that place was ten
times deeper than the raw winter’s cold outside, for it ate into the very soul.

He drew his sword and, stooping beside the bier, cut a long strip from the crimson silk that covered the stark shape. And as he did so, the pavement tilted under him as though the earth had quaked beneath the chapel, and the lamp swung on its chain, casting weird shadows about the place so that for the moment it seemed full of dark wings, and almost it was as though Sir Gilbert’s body stirred beneath the crimson pall. And Sir Lancelot’s heart sprang racing into his throat.

But the earth steadied and the lamp hung quiet once more; the dark wings were gone, and the dead man lay still beneath his pall. And Sir Lancelot sheathed his blade, and as he did so, saw a splendid sword lying beside the bier. He took it up, and with the strip of crimson silk crumpled in his shield hand in the hollow of his shield, he stepped out into the grey light of the snowy churchyard.

The black knights still stood there, waiting among the yew trees; and they spoke to him in one voice, and that a terrible one. ‘Knight, Sir Lancelot, lay down that sword, or you shall die!’

‘Whether I live or die,’ said Lancelot, ‘words shall not win this sword from me. Fight me for it, if you will.’

And as they had done at his first coming, they fell back before him, leaving no tracks in the snow; and
so he came again to the gate where his horse was tied. But beside his horse, a strange damosel waited for him, nothing of her face showing in the shadow of her hood but the darkness of her two great eyes. And she said in a voice as soft and cold as the snow, ‘Sir Lancelot, pray you leave that sword behind you; you will die for it else.’

‘I leave it not, even for your pleading,’ said Sir Lancelot.

And the damosel gave a little laugh with music in it like the chiming of icicles. ‘How wise you are! For if you had left that sword at my pleading, you would never have come to Arthur’s court nor seen Queen Guenever again. Now, in token that there is no ill-will between us, do you kiss me but once, and go your way.’

‘Nay!’ said Sir Lancelot, already reaching for his horse’s bridle. ‘God forbid!’

Then the damosel let forth a high wailing cry, and seemed to grow thin and shaken as though the wind blew through her very bones. ‘Alas! I have had all my labours in vain. For many times I have seen you in my dreams, in running water by day and in the fire at night, and grown to love you; and it was I who raised the Chapel Perilous to entrap you and web you round with my spells as the spider webs the blundering crane-fly with her silk; and had you kissed me, you would have lain this moment dead in my arms, and been mine for all time, you who are the flower of all King Arthur’s
knights. But there is that in you which is too strong for me, and you have torn through all my spells. Have pity on me, now that I am torn and broken …’

Then Lancelot guessed that she must be the sorceress Allewes, of whom Sir Meliot’s sister had told him; and he crossed himself strongly. ‘Now God preserve me from your subtle crafts,’ he said, and rounding from her to his horse, mounted and rode away.

He followed the track by which he had come, until at last he found Sir Meliot’s sister standing where he had left her. And when she saw him she clasped her hands and wept for joy. Then she set her hand, lightly this time, on his horse’s bridle, and led him to her brother’s castle nearby, where Sir Meliot lay upon his bed with the physician and his squires standing helplessly about him, and the red life-tide still ebbing from the wound in his flank.

Sir Lancelot crossed to the bedside, and drawing the sword that he had brought from the Chapel Perilous, laid the blade against the streaming wound, then wiped and cleaned it with the strip of crimson silk, and at once the blood-flow ceased and the edges drew together, and Sir Meliot sighed, and sat up on the bed as well and whole as ever he had been.

And for one shaken heartbeat of time, Sir Lancelot wondered whether this was his miracle; the miracle that he had prayed so long and hard that one day God would
allow him to perform. But then he knew that this was something of quite a different sort. This was magic and enchantment. And it came to him also, that if ever he were allowed to work his miracle he would know it by something in himself, some knowledge that the power of God had passed through him like flame and a high wind.

He had broken a spell, no more than that.

But still, he was glad that he had saved Sir Meliot, his fellow of the Round Table. And the three of them were joyful together, and he remained with them several days. But when the snow melted, he said to Sir Meliot, ‘I must be on my way; for it ill befits one on a quest to sleep seven nights in a goose-feathered bed; and there are matters yet to be adventured before I return to Arthur’s court at Eastertide. Come you back to court also at that time, that we may meet again.’

Far and wide through the forest country rode Sir Lancelot, and by marshways where the land was half water and flamed at sunset under the crying and calling of the geese as they began their northward flight, and up into the high moors and the mountains of the West, and back to the forest ways again, while the world woke from winter into spring around him, and the celandines starred the wayside banks and the wild cherry foamed into blossom, and the larks tore his heart with the sweetness of their singing high above the cultivated
land. And he met with so many adventures that if a weaver of tales were to tell them all, the telling would never be done. And he made for himself a name on men’s lips, though he was still but nineteen, a name like a banner, such as men weave into a harp-song for warriors and women to tell their children by the fire.

And in the last days before Easter, he rode back to Camelot.

When he came into the Great Hall, bareheaded but still in Sir Kay’s armour, Sir Gawain and Sir Ector of the Marsh, Sir Uwaine and Sir Segramour saw indeed who it was who had felled them all with one spear, and there was a gale of laughter among them. And then Sir Kay, with his colour making two red spots on his cheekbones, told how Sir Lancelot had rescued him, and of the exchanging of their armour and how he had ridden home in peace, none daring to interfere with him in Sir Lancelot’s harness. He could not find laughter, as the others could, in the story against himself, but he told it none the less; and Sir Lancelot felt as though he had been forgiven for something, and laid his arm for a moment across the Seneschal’s shoulders.

And then came in King Bagdemagus, and Sir Meliot de Logure, and behind them the knights whom Lancelot had rescued from Sir Tarquine, and the knights whom he had overcome and bidden yield themselves to King
Arthur or to the Queen, until there was scarce room for all of them in the Great Hall.

It should have been the proudest and most triumphant moment of Sir Lancelot’s life, as he came forward and knelt to the High King. But the Queen had also come into the Hall to welcome him back and to receive the freed captives and vanquished knights who he had sent to her; and she sat beside the King in a gown of golden damask, her eyes brighter in the torch-light than the jewels about her neck.

‘We have heard of your deeds these many months past,’ said the King. ‘You have indeed proved yourself, and no man now will question your right to receive knighthood so young.’

And the Queen leaned forward a little, and said, ‘The time has seemed long while you were away, and we are glad that you are come home.’

And Lancelot moved to kneel before her with a suddenly pounding heart. It was for her that he had ridden away on his year-long quest, and now the year was over, and he had come back; and Guenever was still here, and nothing was changed.