The King Arthur Trilogy

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  In the courtyard of the Castle of Case he dropped to the ground, and asked the first person he saw, ‘Where is the Queen?’

  ‘She was weary, and has gone to her bed,’ said Dame Brissen. But he was deaf and confused with the gale and the beating of his own heart, and he had scarcely seen her at Corbenic, and so he did not know her for Elaine’s nurse, nor think it strange that she should be there.

  ‘Come you first into the Hall, and drink a cup of wine by the fire,’ said the old woman, ‘for you are wet and must be weary with hard riding on such a night as this.’

  He followed her; and there was warmth and quiet in the Hall, and no light but the flame-flicker of burning apple logs on the hearth. And then there was a crystal cup of warm spiced wine in his hands, and he drank it; and as soon as he had done so, a warm glow spread through him and it was as though he saw everything through a golden haze, and a great joy swelled in his breast because Guenever was so near …

  ‘Come now,’ said Brissen, and led him up a winding stair.

  The great chamber above the Hall was in black darkness, so that he could not even see the window slits. He said, ‘Guenever?’ and walked forward into the dark.

  In the morning when he woke, the cobweb grey of dawn was seeping in through the chinks in the shutters; and he turned to find the Queen his love in the bed beside him. And saw instead that Elaine lay there still asleep. Then a great bewilderment rose within him; and as he remembered all that had happened the bewilderment changed to grief and rage.

  He shouted, ‘Traitress!’ and sprang from the bed and caught up his sword from the chest where it lay, and drew it from its sheath. ‘You have betrayed me! I will kill you for this!’

  And Elaine woke, and lay looking up at him with frightened eyes, never seeking to move as he stood over her with the naked sword.

  ‘I have lived too long, and now I am shamed!’ he said. And then, as still she did not answer, he cried out again like one in mortal pain, ‘Elaine, why did you do this thing to me?’

  ‘Because of the prophecy,’ she said then, ‘because we have to make Galahad, who shall heal my father and lift the shadow from this land and achieve the Quest of the Grail. And because – oh, Lancelot, I did it all for love of you; because I might not live without you, and save in courtesy you never looked my way!’

  And she knelt up in the great bed, weeping.

  Then Lancelot flung his sword into the corner, and said, but as though the words strangled in his throat, ‘I will not kill you. It was not your fault, and I forgive you. See – I will kiss you to show that I forgive you.’ And he took her in his arms and kissed her awkwardly between the brows.

  But when she tried to kiss him in return, the grief and horror rose again in him, and with a great cry he sprang for the window, and flinging back the shutters leapt out. He landed in a bed of late sad roses, and sprang up, bleeding where the thorns had lashed his face and body – for he was clad only in his shirt – and still making his strange heartbroken outcry, ran for the half-fallen wall at the foot of the castle garden; and scrambled over, and fled on, down the rocky hillside and across the dried-out river, and was lost in the dun shadows of the autumn woods.

  Christmas passed, and Easter, and the woods were shouting with cuckoos. But no word of Lancelot came back to Camelot; and then when a year was gone by, Sir Bors his cousin determined to wait no longer, but to go seeking him. And in his search, it happened by chance that he came to the Castle of Corbenic, and there he was made welcome by King Pelles, and by his daughter, the Lady Elaine.

  And the Lady Elaine carried a very young baby in her arms.

  And when, bowing before her in all courtesy, Sir Bors came to a closer view of the babe, it stirred from sleep and opened its eyes at him; and he recognised the wide grey eyes in its small sleep-crumpled face; and he looked at Elaine, startled, and knew that the babe at her breast never had those eyes from his mother.

  And the Lady Elaine smiled a little, both proudly and sadly, and said, ‘Yes, Sir Knight, this is Lancelot’s son as well as mine; and his name is Galahad, and he shall be a better knight even than his father, for he shall be the perfect knight of all Christendom.’

  ‘Sir Lancelot?’ said Bors. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘He was here,’ said the Lady Elaine. ‘Alas, no more.’ And she told Sir Bors how Sir Lancelot had come to Corbenic, and how he had run mad and fled into the forest, and no one had been able to find him or gain any word of him since.

  Then Sir Bors was sorely grieved; and next morning after hearing Mass he rode sadly away, turning his horse’s head back towards Camelot.

  And back at court, when the Queen asked him if he had gained any news of Lancelot, he told her no, not wishing to cause her the grief that his news must bring. Yet the thing was too heavy and too sore in his breast for him to carry it alone, and so in a while he told Sir Ector of the Marsh and Sir Owain the Bastard and certain others; and a secret once told to two or three is a safe secret no more; and so, none knowing quite how it came about, it began to be known through the court that Sir Lancelot had a son by King Pelles’s daughter, and that he had run mad. And so it came to the Queen after all.

  For a while, Guenever herself was half mad with grief and anger, which tore at her all the worse because she must keep it hidden, while King Arthur, forced to stand by and pretend even to himself – above all to himself – that she was but grieving for the loss of a friend, came near to breaking his own heart without anybody noticing.

  And so another year, and part of a third year went by; and though Sir Ector and Sir Gawain and many others of the Round Table rode out in search of him, none brought back any word.

  Then one day – it was Candlemas, and the first chill snowdrops were in flower in the tangled garden of Corbenic Castle – the Lady Elaine and her maidens came out into the garden to pass an idle hour. They had a ball of gilded leather to play with, for it was too cold to sit in the overgrown arbour or stroll to and fro along the half-lost paths. And in a while, as they played, tossing the ball from one to another, it fell into the midst of a clump of bushes by the old half-empty well at the garden’s foot. One of the maidens ran to fetch it, and came back without it, and with her eyes wide in her startled face.

  ‘Madam!’ she said. ‘There is a wild man asleep by the well! – oh, madam, it must be the Man of the Woods, let us run away!’

  ‘Nay,’ said Elaine, ‘first I will look upon him for myself.’ And a great quietness came upon her. It was as though she knew, even before she parted the bushes and stood beside the well …

  She knew him at once; Sir Lancelot lying there with his head pillowed on his arm, asleep with the deep-spent exhaustion of a creature that has been run far and fast by the hounds. He was gaunt as a wolf after a famine winter, clad only in the rags of the shirt that he had been wearing when he disappeared into the forest, and the skin of some animal bound about him; and his hair was grey.

  And Elaine sank to the ground beside him, weeping as though her heart must surely break.

  Then came Brissen her nurse, and bent over her, saying, ‘Do not wake him, for it may be that the dregs of the madness are still there, and if you rouse him now, he may run mad again.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ whispered Elaine. ‘Oh, my love, my love, what shall we do?’

  ‘I will cast a sleeping spell upon him, so that he shall not wake for an hour,’ said the old nurse. ‘And while he sleeps, we will bear him within doors, out of this cold, and lay him in the tower chamber, where he may be warmed and cared for.’

  So she wove her magic, a small magic made with the fingertips and a singing-charm. And the maidens brought a fine deer-skin rug, and they muffled Lancelot in it, and bore him by a private stair into the tower chamber, and laid him on the bed there. And while some kindled scented apple logs in the brazier to warm him, Elaine and her old nurse stripped him of his rags, and bathed and salved his hurts. He was scarred and gashed like an old hunting dog, with the thin silver scars of ancient spea
r wounds from his knightly days, and the bruises and briar scratches he had got only that morning, and one great scar, scarce healed over and still darkly purple, on his flank.

  ‘That was a boar’s tusk,’ said Dame Brissen, ‘and must have come near to letting out the life.’

  And Elaine wept again as she looked upon him; the gaunt man lying on his deer-skin, the famine hollows under his ribs and the scars he carried, and the marks of grief on his sleeping face.

  Then they laid him under warm covers, and left him with Dame Brissen to watch beside him, while Elaine went to tell her father that Lancelot was with them once more.

  And save for Elaine herself, the King her father, her old nurse and her maidens, no one in Corbenic knew who lay in the tower chamber.

  The magic sleep that Brissen had laid upon him passed back into true sleep, and it was not until far on into the next day that Sir Lancelot awoke. He lay looking straight above him at the canopy of the bed, where a white hart with a golden crucifix glimmering between its antlers ran endlessly through a green silk-worked forest, pursued by white hounds. There was a deep frown between his eyes, and they were shadowed with bewilderment, but the madness that had held him two years and more was all gone from them, and they were clear again. In a while, he began to look about him, and as Elaine came swiftly from where she had been sitting in the window embrasure, to bend over him, he strained up on to his elbow and cried out to her, ‘How did I come here? For God’s sweet sake, lady, tell me how did I come here?’

  ‘Sir,’ said Elaine, ‘I scarcely know. There have been stories in these last months, of a man of the woods … If you were he, as you look to be, you have been wandering through the Waste Land like a madman, your wits all gone. But yesterday your wanderings brought you back to Corbenic, and we found you sleeping by the well in the garden. But now the madness is passed, lie still, and eat and sleep, and soon you shall be well again.’ And almost before she had done speaking, he was asleep once more.

  For two weeks Sir Lancelot lay in the great bed, tended by the Lady Elaine and her old nurse. For two weeks he lay gazing up at the white hart for ever fleeing from the white hunting dogs; then as he grew stronger, sitting in the carved and cushioned chair in the window and gazing out on the wintry countryside. He was courteous and grateful in all things to the Lady Elaine; but she had hoped that he would come to show her more than courtesy and gratitude; and he never did. Nor did he ever ask to see his son.

  And when he was strong enough to ride, he asked for clothes and a horse, and took his leave of King Pelles, and of Elaine the Lily.

  ‘My father would give us a castle,’ said Elaine, ‘and I will love you always. I will live for you if that pleases you even a little. I will die for you if by that I can serve you better.’

  ‘Neither live nor die for me,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘One day there will come another knight who will love you as I cannot.’

  And the Maimed King on his gilded couch said nothing, for Galahad was born, and to him that was the only thing that truly mattered.

  And Elaine watched from the ramparts as Sir Lancelot rode away. And she wept no more, for it was as though all her tears were dried up, like the living rain that never fell on the Waste Land.

  Sir Lancelot rode straight back to Camelot, and all the court rejoiced and marvelled to see him return to them out of his long, lost darkness. Only the Queen, though she stood beside her lord the King to welcome him back, showed no joy in his coming.

  For three days she nursed her coldness towards him. But after that she could bear it no longer, and sent one of her maidens with word that the Queen would speak with him in her own apartments. There was nothing strange in such a summons, for often Guenever would invite those she liked best among the Round Table knights to come and talk with her in her chambers or in the castle garden, or ride hawking with her or hear the music of her harper. But Sir Lancelot knew that no pleasantly idle hour was before him, and his heart beat hard in his throat as he climbed the stair to the Queen’s apartments.

  The Queen’s maidens were gathered about the fire, playing with a gaze-hound puppy and listening to the music of a little Welsh harp played by an old grey harper in their midst. But the Queen had drawn aside into the tall west window of the chamber to catch the last light of the evening on her embroidery. She glanced up as Sir Lancelot entered, and moved her hand towards the wall-seat opposite her. Then she went on with her stitching. She was working a fiery crimson dragon upon golden damask; a new shield-cover for the King.

  The window embrasure was almost like a little room in the thickness of the wall, full of the pale clear winter sunshine, while the rest of the chamber was already shadowy. Even the struck notes of the harp sounded shadowy. Sir Lancelot knelt at the Queen’s feet, holding himself still, until at last she looked up from her stitching, and said in a small clear voice as though she were speaking to a stranger, ‘And so you have come back to us, Sir Lancelot.’

  ‘I have come back,’ Lancelot said. ‘It has been a long time.’

  She saw his grey hair and the marks of grief on his strange crooked face, and her heart whimpered over him. But she only agreed, ‘It has been a long time,’ and pulled a new strand of scarlet thread from the tangle beside her. ‘Truly, I wonder that you have come at all.’

  ‘I had to,’ said Sir Lancelot.

  ‘I do not see why. Surely once your senses returned to you, you had all that you could wish for at Corbenic. They say King Pelles’s daughter is very fair, and indeed it must be so, that they call her Elaine the Lily.’

  ‘She is very fair,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘but it is you that I love.’

  And that was the first time that ever the words had been spoken between them. And while the sudden silence lasted, the harper struck three lingering chords on his harp.

  Then Guenever said, ‘It is Elaine that you gave your son to.’

  And Sir Lancelot said, ‘Guenever, it was not as you think. They brought me a ring like the one you wear, and told me that you bade me come. They gave me something to drink; and the room was wolf-dark. And I thought that it was you.’

  The thread of scarlet silk snapped in Guenever’s hand, and she looked up from her embroidery and met his gaze; and so they remained looking at each other. And not another word was spoken between them at that time.

  But from that day forward, the love between Lancelot and Guenever was changed from what it had been before. It was stronger than ever, but it was no longer as simple as it had been, for doubt and jealousy and regret had been added to it; and before long, guilt, for it was from that time that they gave up trying to keep apart from each other. And from their coming together, there came sorrow and loss and darkness, upon themselves and upon Arthur and upon Arthur’s kingdom, even as Merlin had foretold before he went to his own darkness under his magic hawthorn tree.

  And Elaine? After Sir Lancelot was gone she drooped and dwindled away like a lily starved of the sun and rain. And the spring went by, and summer ripened and fell. And the snowdrops came again in the castle gardens; and when the second summer came, she knew, and all those about her, that her life was almost sped. Then she sent Galahad to a certain abbey, bidding the nuns of the place to care for him and bring him up in the ways of God; and when he grew older, to see that he was schooled by men who could train him in all things fitting to a knight.

  And she spoke to her father and her old nurse and all those about her, telling them what she would have them do when the life was gone from her. Weeping, they promised that all things should be as she wished. Then she called for parchment and ink and quill, and she wrote a letter. And when the letter was written, there was nothing more that she must do, and so, like a bird taking wing, her spirit flew from her body and was gone.

  Then her attendants did all that she had bidden them. They dressed her in her finest silken gown, and laid her in a litter, with the rolled parchment in her hands, and bore her from the Waste Land and away through the late summer forest, until they came to the loop
ing narrow waterway that joined itself at last to the broad river that flowed past Camelot on its way to the sea. And there they made ready a barge hung all over with black, and laid her in it, scattering the flowers of late summer over all; and with one old dumb manservant to steer the barge, they left her to the river.

  And the river carried her on until it joined the other that flowed by Camelot, and still on, through dark stretches over-arched by alder trees and out into open meadow stretches between banks thick with meadowsweet and tall purple loosestrife, until the barge came to rest at last, against the bank below Camelot town.

  Arthur and the Queen were speaking together at a window that looked far down upon the river – the same window where she and Lancelot had spoken together after his long absence – and they saw the black-draped barge come down on the quiet silver flood, and settle into the bank above the bridge. And Arthur called to Sir Kay, ‘See you that black barge? It is in my mind that there is a strangeness about it. Take Sir Bedivere and Sir Agravane, and go and look more closely, and bring me back word.’

  So Sir Kay went, and the other two with him; and in a while he returned and said, ‘Sir, in that barge there lies the body of a fair damosel, and there is no one else in the barge but an ancient man at the steerboard, who will speak no word; and indeed I think that he is dumb.’

  ‘Here is a strange thing indeed,’ said the King. ‘We will come now and look upon the body of this lady.’ And he held out his hand to the Queen, and together, with many knights following, they went down through the narrow streets of Camelot town where the swallows still darted among the eaves, and across the water meadow to the river bank. And there lay the black barge at rest, and in it the body of the lady, clothed in cloth-of-silver, and with her fair hair parted and combed upon her breast, and she lying as though she smiled in her sleep.