Lancelot and the Lord of the Distant Isles

by Patricia Terry

  Guenevere ran out onto the field, right up to an astonished Lancelot, and cried, “My dear friend, stop! The king has declared himself satisfied that I am innocent, and with his consent I ask you to spare this knight.”

  Cardoas did not insist that the fight be prolonged! He needed help leaving the field, so serious were his wounds, but he said that to be defeated by Lancelot was an honor in itself. The squire brought Lancelot his horse, and Galehaut escorted the queen back across the field to thunderous cheers and applause. Lancelot received a hero’s welcome. Three worthy knights defeated in such a short time, and it would have been shorter still, had Lancelot been less scrupulous! King Arthur himself came to hold his stirrup and would have embraced him, but Lancelot drew back.

  The false Guenevere and Bertolay the Old were brought before the king. They knew that by the rules they could expect to receive the punishment that would have been meted out to the queen, had she been proven guilty. And they had asked for her death. Yet Arthur was moved by the woman’s beauty and by her remarkable resemblance to his true wife. Seeing how terrified she was, he said he would be lenient, but only if they told him the truth behind their deception.

  “My lord,” said Bertolay the Old, “this lady is more innocent than I am. Despite my age, I have not lost my ambition. One day I received a visit from Morgan the Fay. She told me that about the time King Leodagan’s daughter left for Camelot, her half-sister disappeared from view. It was generally supposed that she had traveled with the queen. In fact, the girl had gone mad with rage at not being the one to wed the king, and her mother, despondent seeing the dreadful outcome of her sin, secluded herself and her daughter in a convent. In time, the seneschal’s adulterous wife passed away, while her daughter languished, not truly cured, but no longer visibly mad. The venom of her envy never left her. Morgan had long been aware of the circumstances and now came to me with a scheme to put the young woman on the throne. I was easily persuaded to be her accomplice.”

  The king replied, “As you may know, Morgan is my sister. I have not seen her for many years, not since before my marriage, but she has always hated Guenevere. Still, I never thought she would do anything to harm her! Morgan has always been a woman of fierce powers and with a scheming mind. No doubt she worked her magic on you both. I shall send you back to her, under guard, so that she can punish your failure as she will.”

  With that he dismissed them and turned to Guenevere, asking her forgiveness for having allowed himself to be so dreadfully misled. “Only my soul’s salvation,” he said, “is more important to me than you are!”

  “That is as it should be, my dear lord.”

  Deeply humiliated, the barons of Carmelide came to take leave of the king. No, they assured him, King Leodagan had not known their true reason for visiting Logres; it had been easy to give the ailing old man another explanation for the journey. They had themselves been tricked by the impostor. But now the whole story would come out, since they would have to account for the absence of Bertolay. They were understandably fearful of King Leodagan’s reaction, but Arthur did not offer to help them in any way. Never again would the barons of Carmelide be allowed to present a case in his court.

  Gradually life in Carduel returned to normal. The queen seemed to bear her husband no ill will for his readiness to doubt her, although many thought her exceedingly charitable. Gawain, too, was soon reconciled with the king. But Lancelot remained angry, staying at court only to be close to Guenevere. Galehaut took some encouragement from his mood, and tried to interest him in the plan he himself held dear. One afternoon, as the two of them were riding in the forest nearby, they stopped to let their horses rest near a brook, glad enough to sit quietly for a while. Galehaut thought the moment propitious to speak of their future.

  “By your birth,” he reminded Lancelot, “you are far nobler than I am – your father was a king, and mine a poor prince. It’s time that you reclaimed your inheritance. Surely you wish to be avenged on Claudas! And I want nothing more than to help you do it. You know that since I met you I have lost all desire for warfare. But this is different. Enough of my men are still here in Logres to form an army large enough to deal with Claudas, assuming we can find him. They will be as eager as I am to fight for your cause. Why should you not have lands and wealth of your own? And how can you let your mother’s suffering remain unpunished?”

  Lancelot was silent for a moment. It was not as if he hadn’t thought about this before, especially since Galehaut had first proposed his plan to recapture Benoic. But Benoic was, for him, a foreign country. “King Ban, my father, died too soon for me to recall his face or the sound of his voice. I have no memories of my mother, only of the Lady of the Lake, my true mother, whose love and wisdom have always been with me. I can’t think of myself as the son of Queen Elaine. And yet why should Claudas continue to enjoy the kingdom he stole by treachery? I know it is my duty to restore my father’s honor.” His voice trailed off. “But if that land were really mine, I would be obliged to live there, as its king, at least for some of the time. I would rather stay where I am!”

  “Do you think the queen would not wish you to have a kingdom of your own? Wouldn’t she want you to claim what is rightly yours? Or perhaps she would think that would not be to her advantage.”

  “I have dreamed sometimes of conquering Benoic, but not in the way that you propose. I need to do it by myself, through my prowess and my merit; I need to win by my reputation alone. That, not an army, must drive Claudas away. And, in any case, I can undertake nothing without the encouragement of my lady the queen.”

  “Whatever your plans,” said Galehaut, “I pray that God will let me see them come to fruition. I will do what I can, even attempt to convince the queen to help – although I doubt, to tell the truth, that she would want you in a position of authority. She likes to have you accessible as you are now, and would be afraid that responsibility and power would rob her of your company. And I know your heart as well: you would hardly wish to have a measure of lordship that might compromise or diminish her love.”

  Lancelot sighed and answered, “You know me very well, my dearest lord.”

  A few days later, the queen invited Galehaut for a private conversation. She began by asking whether he thought she had been wrong to be so quickly reconciled with the king, “who, after all, showed little concern for my honor.”

  Galehaut reminded her of his offer to establish her in Sorelais if she had had to separate from the king, “and that would have been the happiest solution for the three of us. But once the pretender was discredited and sent away in disgrace, I think you would have been badly judged if you had refused to forgive the king.”

  “And now there is no way for me to accept your truly generous offer, and trade my life here as queen for a better one. Of course, if Lancelot could remain here at court. . .” She sighed – “But he is so stubbornly estranged from the king.”

  “Lancelot’s heart is so true that he can forget neither an injury nor a favor, no matter how small. And he expects others to be like him. He said he had done so much in the king’s service that Arthur should have welcomed the chance to do something for him in return – not that anything could be comparable to Lancelot’s saving his kingdom! He should have dismissed the charges against you as soon as Lancelot asked him to!”

  But Guenevere was more interested in her immediate plans than in understanding Lancelot’s behavior. “I’m sure he would listen to you, as he has done in the past.”

  “Then as now, my lady, I would persuade him to my harm. If Lancelot were to stay here, I would have two choices. I could return to Sorelais, my own country, where I am needed, but without the pleasure I’ve always felt at being there. The world is empty for me without Lancelot. Or I could stay here, where everything belongs to King Arthur, and watch my companion suffer because he can be with you only now and then, and watch him waste his valor on someone else’s battles.”

  “What would you have him do instead?”

 
“Concern himself with recovering his birthright! Why should Claudas continue in possession of Lancelot’s lands? I have offered to be his ally in this undertaking, but he prefers to dream of one day being restored there without a fight. If this were your desire as well as mine, I’m sure he would feel differently.”

  “Perhaps,” she replied, “this is not the time for him to be thinking of kingship” – and with that she dismissed a course of action that held no appeal for her. “Let us strike a bargain. You will try to convince him that since I do not have a grievance against Arthur, he should not either. If you are successful, Lancelot can at least come and go as he likes, without feeling as reluctant as he does now. But if the king urges him to rejoin the Round Table, I will secretly ask Lancelot not to agree.”

  Against his will, but seeing no alternative, Galehaut began his task of diplomacy. In this he was aided by Gawain, in whom Arthur’s recent conduct still rankled but who considered that since in the end no harm had been done, it was important to have harmony at court. Gawain reported that the king was deeply grieved by Lancelot’s rejection and no longer took pleasure in anything. Lancelot remained adamant for a while, but when King Arthur himself pleaded to have his friendship once again, only his friendship, with no obligations of any kind, the knight was forced to yield. A great feast was held to celebrate their reconciliation. The queen and all her ladies were magnificently dressed, Guenevere in an iridescent blue tunic set off by the ermine lining of her dark purple cloak. The Lady of Malehaut was everywhere at once. The king seemed perfectly content to have Lancelot and Galehaut at his side, and asked nothing further. In any case, Guenevere, keeping her promise to Galehaut, had requested that Lancelot refuse should the king ask him to rejoin the Round Table.

  Still, King Arthur had not lost sight of that much-desired possibility. Wary of approaching Lancelot directly, he appealed to the queen, who then reported their discussion to Galehaut. Arthur had asked her to speak for the throne, and when she tried to refuse, had told her that the very life of his kingdom depended on Lancelot. Without him, rulers of the unconquered border lands would feel emboldened. The knights of the Round Table had lost their confidence and sense of purpose; they could not be counted on to defend the realm themselves. The way things were, nothing prevented Lancelot from going to live in Sorelais, even if he no longer felt ill will toward the king. Should Guenevere decline to help, Arthur would consider her disloyal to him and to the realm! “What would you have me do?” she asked Galehaut, though it was hardly a question. “I know your deepest feelings, but how can I refuse my lord the king? It would truly be a kind of treason.”

  Galehaut was not surprised. In his heart he had always known that, sooner or later, this would happen. Guenevere promised that he and Lancelot would be as much together as they were before, but her words sounded hollow, even to herself. Although he was sure that the queen would be more than happy to have Lancelot commit himself to Arthur’s household, Galehaut, fair-minded, could not, in all honesty, see how she could prevent it. Suddenly there appeared before his eyes the white wall in the chapel with three black circles left upon it, and he wondered if he would live even that long.

  On Easter Sunday, after High Mass, the queen, seconded by Galehaut, brought her appeal to the recalcitrant knight. In the interest of the kingdom, in the name of the good will – indeed the love – that the king had always felt for him, in recognition of the earnest desire of Sir Gawain and all his fellow-knights at court, out of respect for her duty as queen, mindful of the great and enduring love she shared with the most valorous knight in the world, and with the assurance that he would not be separated from his companion Galehaut, she begged, even implored, Lancelot to return to his rightful place at the Round Table.

  He felt himself softening at the sound of her pleading voice. He looked at the grave face of Galehaut, and their eyes locked in unspoken agreement. Lancelot, at long last, said yes.

  They went before the assembled court, where Guenevere addressed a similar, although less personal, appeal to Lancelot. Without a word, he stepped forward and fell to his knees in front of the king. The great hall was utterly silent; no one breathed. Then Lancelot humbly thanked the king for the offer of friendship he had made a few weeks earlier, and expressed the wish to be seated once again at the Round Table.

  King Arthur was elated by this turn of events, not imagining that it might involve any danger to himself. Galehaut was all too aware of the irony. Arthur raised the kneeling knight by the hand, kissed him on the lips, and said, “I thank you, dear friend, and welcome you back to the Round Table. I swear to you, on this holy day, that I will never more, to the best of my ability, give you cause for anger or departure from this court.”

  BOOK TEN: THE DEATH OF GALEHAUT

  IT WAS HARD FOR GALEHAUT TO endure the court’s celebration at having fully regained Lancelot. He, of course, was made equally welcome, and pretended to be light-hearted, although his companion surely knew his true feelings. Several days of festivities culminated in a hunt with almost every knight in the court participating. A great boar had recently been sighted in the forest, and there was much excitement about the challenge it presented. Galehaut made the excuse of an old wound troubling him and did not take part. Lancelot rode with Gawain, Yvain, and a few others.

  The morning was cool, and the paths, with the early mist just beginning to rise, looked attractively mysterious. Game was abundant, so the knights were lured in various directions. Lancelot heard a horn call from the left and thought it might mean that the boar had been spotted. Hoping to have the honor of the prize, he galloped in the direction of the sound, but saw nothing. After a while the horn sounded again, and, later on, still another time, always leading him deeper into the forest. He was about to turn back, when he caught a glimpse of a horse running loose, and, around a bend, he saw, right in front of him, what seemed to be its rider, lying on the path. He quickly dismounted to see if he could help, tied his horse to a tree and bent over the prone figure. At that moment, six mounted knights burst out of the forest and surrounded him! They leapt off their horses, saying nothing at all, and before he could reach his sword, they had wound a rope tightly around his arms.

  Perhaps they thought it would be easy to subdue a man armed only for hunting. If so, they completely misjudged their quarry. There was no way to fasten the rope before Lancelot had thrust it aside and hurled himself toward them as if he were in combat armor. In his frenzy he seemed capable of breaking out of their circle, and they were more than a little impeded by their eagerness to take him alive. But fearing to lose him altogether, they brought him down with a sword thrust deep into his left shoulder, and he fainted from shock and pain. They tossed him onto his horse’s back and led him away; he was fortunate to be spared awareness of the journey.

  Hours later, he found himself in bed in an elegant room, feeling strangely at peace. His shoulder was heavily bandaged, and only vaguely could he remember what had happened to him. A woman was sitting beside him. Her air of agelessness, her beauty, the care he saw written in her eyes, all brought to mind the Lady of the Lake. She told him, however, that she was Morgan the Fay, and that some of her knights had found him roped and bound to his horse. They had scattered a band of would-be abductors and brought him to her castle. Her doctors had seen to his wound, and had insisted that he must have complete rest for a few days or he might lose the use of his arm. He would feel very weak, since he had bled profusely. “I am most happy to offer hospitality to so distinguished a guest,” she said. “I know that you are Lancelot of the Lake.”

  The knight recalled how he had gone out hunting and been attacked by armed men when he was defenseless. The thought of such a trap made him so furious that his face turned crimson and he began struggling to get up. Morgan put a cool hand on his forehead and begged him not to undo the doctors’ good work. “My men said that those who attacked you did not escape unharmed, and whoever sent them will not be pleased with their work! They would have been hunted down and
brought to justice, but it was more important to bring you quickly to a place where you could be taken care of.”

  “I apologize, my lady,” said Lancelot. “I have not yet thanked you for your kindness. And I must ask you to do me a further service. Would you send someone to tell King Arthur and my friends at his court that I am safe with you? They must be worried that I am not back from the hunt.”

  “My messenger is already on his way,” she claimed.

  It was a long time before Lancelot’s companions realized that he was missing. When the hunting ended in the late afternoon, the knights returned to the castle in small groups. Those who had been with Lancelot early in the day had seen him galloping off by himself, and they supposed he was late returning because he had gone further than anyone else. Galehaut, however, was already anxious, and when night came he could not conceal his agitation. Surely his friend must have met with an accident! It would be like him to try to bring down a boar all by himself! But nothing could be done until morning.

  At first light, search parties fanned out through the forest. They rode all day long, carrying hunting horns with which to signal each other, but the horns were never put to use. Galehaut returned late in the evening, unable to speak to anyone, so overwhelming was his anguish. He spent little time in the great hall, where the absence of Lancelot and speculations about his fate were the only possible topics of conversation. Arthur was there, despondent; the queen had long since retired to her apartments. She felt that she wanted to die and yet could not bring herself to believe that anything had happened to Lancelot. The days wore on with no news, and gradually the searches were abandoned.