The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

by John Steinbeck

  "No, you are not," said Lancelot. "You are going to fight me."

  "I know you, Lancelot," said the man. "This woman, my wife, has betrayed me. She is unfaithful. It is my lawful right to slay her."

  "Not so," the lady said. "He is a jealous man. He eats and sleeps in jealousy and sees wrong in everything. I have a young cousin, young enough to be my son, and my husband is jealous of this child. He imagines foul things. Save me, Sir Lancelot, for my husband is without mercy."

  "I will protect you," he said.

  Then the husband said, "Sir, I respect you, and I will do whatever you say."

  The wife cried, "Oh, be careful, sir! I know him. He is treacherous."

  "You are under my protection, lady. He cannot hurt you. Now let us go along."

  When they had gone on for a time, the husband shouted, "Look behind you. Here come armed men."

  Lancelot swung about, and at that moment the man leaped at his wife and slashed her head from her body, and he bent down, spitting and cursing over her headless trunk.

  Then, because this was foreign and frightening to him, rage overcame Lancelot, who was ordinarily a cool, calm man. He drew his sword and his face was black with ferocity and his eyes vindictive as the eyes of a snake.

  The husband fell to the earth and clasped Lancelot's knees, crying and praying for mercy, while the knight tried to push him back to get a cut at him. But he buried his head against Lancelot's legs and sobbed like a great baby.

  "Stand and fight," Lancelot raged.

  "I will not--I plead mercy on your knighthood."

  "Listen. I will disarm. I will fight you in my shirt."

  "No--Mercy."

  "I will tie one arm."

  "Never--I plead mercy. You have sworn to give mercy."

  Then Lancelot, sick with disgust and sickened by his own rage, broke free and leaned against a tree, trembling and feverish. The lady's head, dirty and blood-splashed, grinned at him from the road where it had fallen.

  "Tell me my punishment. I will do anything," the husband cried. "Only leave me my life."

  Then Lancelot's cruelty became cold. "I will tell you," he said. "You will take this body on your back and the head in your hand. You will never leave it, day or night. When you come to court, take it to Queen Guinevere. No matter how it may disgust her, tell her what you have done. She will tell you your punishment."

  "I promise on my faith."

  "Your faith! It was a shameful hour when you were born. You will obey, because if you do not I will hunt you down and tear you to pieces. Now pick it up. No, do not lay it on the horse. Take it on your back."

  He watched the man ride heavily away with the swaying corpse embracing him from behind. And Lancelot breathed deeply with his mouth open to keep from vomiting, for his rage and his cruelty had sickened him. He sat on the ground under a tree while evening came--too weak to move, too ill to find a better resting place.

  Evening ground-walking birds thronged the path, turning over leaves for bugs, quarreling and chattering. They paid no heed to the sitting knight. One, a chief bird with a cockade and an air of command, marched belligerently to his ironclad foot and picked at it sharply and looked up sharply as though daring him. And Lancelot smiled because he remembered doing the same thing and possibly for the same reasons.

  As though the unanswered challenge of the chief bird had cleared the air of suspicion, the small and quiet emerged from the wood, but their smallness did not mean that they were meek--only cautious. Each one had war against others and endless difficulties with his fellows: matters of property, treasure trove, violations of respect for size and age and strength--mice and moles, ferrets, weasels, and small snakes, hurrying to some shelter now the night was coming. Government among a single kind was hard enough. Among many kinds it was impossible, and always had been, for the small creatures were not peaceful or kindly or cooperative. They were as quarrelsome and as selfish, as greedy and vainglorious, as sneaky and pompous and unpredictable as humans, wherefore it is hard to understand how they get their eating and breeding done at all, let alone increasing, building nests and burrows, preening fur and feathers, sharpening beak and claw, storing food and guarding it, and still having time to quarrel and snap and curse one another, and only occasionally taking time to love and to die.

  With the coming darkness one kind crept away and other kinds emerged, changing workers in the structure of the world. With the darkling, dimpsy dusk, the night-eyed took possession; lean quiet hunters and furtive catchers and nibblers and coasting murderers chuckling and hooting according to their kind. Among the trees the bats flitted in restless pendulum flight, their voices thin and high and brittle, penetrating teeth. They brought a night chill with them and pinned the darkness up so that the stars could show. So many lives were about, and all with friends and enemies, that Sir Lancelot felt alone and lonely in his heart, darkened and chilled also, and no stars shone in him. It was a new, strange feeling to him, for he had not ever been lonely since the rupture of the earth when Queen Elaine died and he had to put it together again without love. He shivered all over at once with that chill everyone knows as the signal that a witch is walking with waves of spells going out ahead. Sir Lancelot crossed the fingers of both hands and wet his lips for a paternoster should one be needed. And he knew the witch was near because the night people disappeared or froze into motionless invisibility, and then he heard human footsteps approaching and a warm voice that sang:

  "Awaken not, my love,

  It is not day.

  This night will never end,

  This night, my love,

  Will never end,

  Will never, never end."

  The song ceased. A damsel approached in the dim evening. "My lord," she said, "I heard you call."

  "I did not call, lady."

  "I heard a loneliness."

  "I did not call," he said.

  She seated herself beside him.

  "I felt enchantment like a mivvering of the mind," he said. "Are you an enchantress?"

  "I am what Sir Lancelot wants of me."

  "You know my name?"

  "Better than any other name of all the names. Better than the name of Guinevere the queen."

  He started like a fly-plagued horse. His arms felt cold against him.

  "What power has she over you?" she asked.

  "The power of a queen to whom my knighthood is dedicated."

  "And your heart? Is it dedicated?"

  "My heart is only a small pumping engine, lady," he said sullenly. "My heart stays in its place and does its work. I have heard of hearts that left their posts and wandered wailing like truant ghosts, of hearts that have broken, of yearning, laughing, playful hearts, of wishful and of lonely hearts. Perhaps there are such hearts. My own is a slow, steady pump. In combat it speeds to give me what I need. It never speaks, never shirks. My heart is dedicated only to its work."

  "Perhaps you do not listen," the damsel said. "I heard it from a distance saying your quest was finished and your way was opened back to Guinevere."

  "Then I must lesson it. I do not wish even my little toe to speak behind my back, let alone my heart. Lady, what are you up to, gossiping with my heart like servants at a well? Who are you? What do you want of me? If you are an enchantress, your art will have told you that my fingers are crossed."

  "Have you ever seen me?"

  He leaned near and gazed at her in the thickening night. "No--I don't remember you."

  "Do you find me fair?"

  "Yes, you are fair, very fair, but that may be enchantment. Tell me what you wish." His voice was impatient.

  She leaned close--so close that her dark eyes were large and he saw the night sky and the stars reflected in them. Then the surfaces trembled with the tears of her effort and the stars lost their sharpness and he saw the shapes of little monsters moving in the double sky he looked into. He saw a crab crawling sideways, its claws outstretched, and a scorpion with whipping tail, a lion and a goat and fishes t
hat swam from constellation to constellation. He knew he was growing drowsy.

  "What do you see?" she asked softly.

  "Those signs enchanters use to tell fortunes."

  "Good. Now see your fortune."

  Her eyes became one turbulent pool of dark water and then, below, a face was formed and it moved toward the surface and grew clear--a clean, chiseled face, deeply cut chin, and cool eyes, careful eyes, and a mouth strong and full-lipped but twitching at the corners with amusement. Then one eyelid dipped for a moment, the mouth parted, and lips moved as though whispering--then the face grew rigid, a painted face, a representation of a face. The cool eyes were sculptured eyes, the brows minute chisel cuts.

  "You see a face," the soft voice said.

  "I see a face."

  "Do you recognize it?"

  "Yes."

  "Is it clear?"

  "Very."

  She panted with effort. "Look closely, sir. There is your fate, for all your life--your love, your only love."

  "It cannot be."

  "It is. And I offer thanks to the things of air and fire and water, the good helpers. Now you may come from the vision. It is fixed for all time and it cannot change. You have become mine--husband, lover, slave. Come from the spell, my darling dear."

  "I don't think I was ever in a spell, my lady."

  "That's the way it seems when it is over. Perhaps you won't remember what you saw, but I know you saw my face, and you are mine."

  Now Lancelot looked sharply at her and he was deeply troubled, for he saw a poor demented girl trying to move the world with a straw. He wondered if it would not be kind to agree with her, to get her to a priest to exorcise the demons of insanity. And then he thought of that broad-backed dwarf who had taught him arms and other things.

  "A lie is a good and valuable thing," he said. "A wonderful precious thing to hold in reserve. But never use this jewel until you have exhausted every truth. Truth is common stuff, ready to your hand, but lies you have to make yourself, and you can't be sure they are any good until you have used them--and then it's too late."

  Lancelot said gently to the girl, "Damsel, I could agree with what you have said, but a moment of peace is not worth anything. Sometime you may learn to make great enchantments, but now--well--a little necromancy is a dangerous thing."

  She started to her feet. "You are lying," she cried. "You saw my face. You are caught."

  "No, damsel. I did not see your face. I saw Guinevere the queen. And that is foolish because it is impossible that I could ever love the queen dishonorably and bring dishonor and shame to my friend and liege king and befoul my knighthood."

  "You saw my face," the damsel cried. "My spell was the strongest there is."

  "Your spell was weak and staggering like a newborn colt," said Lancelot. "It is true that you have learned to make pictures in your eyes, but silly pictures, foolish things. They will only get you laughed at. You made me see Queen Guinevere at the stake with faggots piled about her for treason against the king. What foolishness is that? And if that were not nonsense enough, I saw myself in full armor riding in a cart pulled by oxen through a swamp. That would be funny if it were not insulting. I think you had better go home and learn to do magic with thread on a torn shirt. Maybe someday you can go on quest with some young, well-thought-of knight."

  She was strangely silent, and after a while Sir Lancelot said, "I am sorry to hurt your feelings, my dear. And I must go. I have an agreement to be in Arthur's court at Whitsuntide and the time is near. Is there anything I can do for you before I go? Some little favor?"

  She came close to him and spoke in a whispering voice, and the whites of her eyes showed in the starlight and made her seem blind. "There is, my lord," she said. "One little service only you can do for me."

  "Tell me. I will do it."

  "Nearby there is a noble chapel called Perilous and in it a dead knight lies wrapped in a shroud and beside him a sword. It is guarded by giants and fearful monsters. Bring me that sword if you can."

  "How will I find it in the dark?"

  "It is not far. Go along the path until you see a light. I will wait here for you."

  He stumbled away in the darkness and he was sad for her. He found the light, a candle burning in a little hut, but with a rude cross set over the door. Inside, there was a figure covered with white cloth, while on the whitened walls grotesque faces were painted by a childish hand. Beside the shrouded figure lay a wooden sword. Sir Lancelot stooped to pick it up and raised the shroud enough to see that it was a rag dummy dressed in a man's clothing. And his heart was heavy when he went back to the damsel.

  She had moved to a clearing and her face was wild and childlike under the stars. "Did you get the sword?" she called.

  "Yes, my lady."

  "Give it to me."

  "It is not seemly for a damsel to carry a sword."

  "Ha! You have escaped. Had you given me the sword you would never have seen Guinevere more."

  He dropped the stick with its tied-on cross guard to the ground.

  "Give me a token, my lord," she said.

  "What token do you wish?"

  "A kiss--I will treasure it." She moved to him as though she walked in sleep, her face upturned, her lips parted, and he could hear her pounding heart.

  Then some movement, some instinct deep in the fighting man, caused him to seize her wrist and shake the long slender knife from her fingers.

  She put her face in her hands and wept.

  "Why did you want to kill me? I had not harmed you."

  "I am lost," she said. "You would have been mine and no one else could have you."

  "And, Sir Lancelot, now I telle the: I have loved the this seven yere, but there may no woman have thy love but quene Gwenyvere; and sytthen I myght nat rejoyse the nother thy body on lyve, I had kepte no more joy in this worlde but to have thy body dede. Than wolde I have bawmed hit and sered hit, and so to have kepte hit my lyve dayes; and dayly I sholde have clypped the, and kyssed the to my heart's content dispyte of quene Gwenyvere."

  King Arthur held Whitsun court at Winchester, that ancient royal town favored by God and His clergy as well as the seat and tomb of many kings. The roads were clogged with eager people, knights returning to stamp in court the record of their deeds, of bishops, clergy, monks, of the defeated fettered to their paroles, the prisoners of honor. And on Itchen water, pathway from Solent and the sea, the little ships brought succulents, lampreys, eels and oysters, plaice and sea trout, while barges loaded with casks of whale oil and casks of wine came tide borne. Bellowing oxen walked to the spits on their own four hooves, while geese and swans, sheep and swine, waited their turn in hurdle pens. Every householder with a strip of colored cloth, a ribbon, any textile gaiety, hung it from a window to flap its small festival, and those in lack tied boughs of pine and laurel over their doors.

  In the great hall of the castle on the hill the king sat high, and next below the fair elite company of the Round Table, noble and decorous as kings themselves, while at the long trestle boards the people were as fitted as toes in a tight shoe.

  Then while the glistening meat dripped down the tables it was the custom for the defeated to celebrate the deeds of those who had overcome them, while the victor dipped his head in disparagement of his greatness and fended off the compliments with small defensive gestures of his hands. And as at public penitence sins are given stature they do not deserve, little sins grow up and baby sins are born, so those knights who lately claimed mercy perchance might raise the exploits of the brave and merciful beyond reasonable gratitude for their lives and in anticipation of some small notice of value.

  This no one said of Lancelot, sitting with bowed head in his golden-lettered seat at the Round Table. Some said he nodded and perhaps dozed, for the testimony to his greatness was long and the monotony of his victories continued for many hours. Lancelot's immaculate fame had grown so great that men took pride in being unhorsed by him--even this notice was an honor. And sinc
e he had won many victories, it is possible that knights he had never seen claimed to have been overthrown by him. It was a way to claim attention for a moment. And as he dozed and wished to be otherwhere, he heard his deeds exalted beyond his recognition, and some mighty exploits once attributed to other men were brought bright-painted out and laid on the shining pile of his achievements. There is a seat of worth beyond the reach of envy whose occupant ceases to be a man and becomes the receptacle of the wishful longings of the world, a seat most often reserved for the dead, from whom neither reprisal nor reward may be expected, but at this time Sir Lancelot was its unchallenged tenant. And he vaguely heard his strength favorably compared with elephants, his ferocity with lions, his agility with deer, his cleverness with foxes, his beauty with the stars, his justice with Solon, his stern probity with St. Michael, his humility with newborn lambs; his military niche would have caused the Archangel Gabriel to raise his head. Sometimes the guests paused in their chewing the better to hear, and a man who slopped his metheglin drew frowns.

  Arthur on his dais sat very still and did not fiddle with his bread, and beside him sat lovely Guinevere, still as a painted statue of herself. Only her inward eyes confessed her vagrant thoughts. And Lancelot studied the open pages of his hands--not large hands, but delicate where they were not knobby and scarred with old wounds. His hands were fine-textured--soft of skin and very white, protected by the pliant leather lining of his gauntlets.

  The great hall was not still, not all upturned listening. Everywhere was movement as people came and went, some serving huge planks of meat and baskets of bread, round and flat like a plate. And there were restless ones who could not sit still, while everyone under burden of half-chewed meat and the floods and freshets of mead and beer found necessity for repeated departures and returns.

  Lancelot exhausted the theme of his hands and squinted down the long hall and watched the movement with eyes so nearly closed that he could not see faces. And he thought how he knew everyone by carriage. The knights in long full floor-brushing robes walked lightly or thought their feet barely touched the ground because their bodies were released from their crushing boxes of iron. Their feet were long and slender because, being horsemen, they had never widened and flattened their feet with walking. The ladies, full-skirted, moved like water, but this was schooled and designed, taught to little girls with the help of whips on raw ankles, while their shoulders were bound back with nail-studded harnesses and their heads held high and rigid by painful collars of woven willow or, for the forgetful, by supports of painted wire, for to learn the high proud head on a swan's neck, to learn to flow like water, is not easy for a little girl as she becomes a gentlewoman. But knights and ladies both matched their movements to their garments; the sweep and rhythm of a long gown informs the manner of its moving. It is not necessary to inspect a serf or a slave, his shoulder wide and sloping from burdens, legs short and thick and crooked, feet splayed and widespread, the whole frame slowly crushed by weights. In the great hall the serving people walked under burdens with the slow weight of oxen and scuttled like crabs, crooked and nervous when the weight was gone.