The King Arthur Trilogy

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘I do not like to turn from my chosen road,’ said Galahad, ‘but assuredly I shall not pass by.’ And he flicked the reins, and rode on, making sure of his weapons as he went, while the old man, wagging his head and grumbling to himself about the rashness of youth, hobbled on into the forest.

  When Galahad drew near to the castle, a mounted page came out to meet him, and bending his wild-eyed mare side-on across the track, demanded to know his business, in the name of the lords of the castle.

  ‘I seek only to learn the custom of this place,’ said Sir Galahad peaceably.

  ‘Bide here, and truly you may learn it, and find the lesson little to your taste,’ said the page insolently, and, making his mare dance and snort, he wheeled about and rode full gallop back to the castle.

  Galahad sat his horse in the dust of the track and waited, and in a little while there burst out from the castle seven armed and splendidly mounted knights, who shouted to him, as with one voice, ‘Sir knight, put up your guard, for the answer to the question that you ask is death!’ And all seven together, they set their lances in rest and came charging straight down upon him.

  Sir Galahad pricked forward to meet them, and felled the firstcomer with a blow that came near to breaking his neck. Six more lance points rang against his shield, but he remained as firm as ever in the saddle, and the shield was not even scratched, though the weight of the thrusts flung his horse back on its haunches. He flung aside his own splintered lance, and drew his sword, and the fight went on; one against seven, so that the seven thought to have an easy victory. Yet it seemed that the lone knight did not know how to tire, and their weapons could not scathe him; and when the fight had raged till noon, and the seven were all sore wounded and weary beyond lifting sword arm, a cold fear fell upon their hearts, and they turned and fled.

  Galahad sat his weary horse to watch them go; and when the dusk had sunk behind them, he turned to the castle bridge; and there in the gateway stood an old man in the habit of a priest, who held out to him a bunch of massive keys.

  ‘Sir,’ said the old man, ‘this castle is yours now, by right of conquest, and all within it, to do with as you will.’

  So Galahad rode into the castle; and as soon as he was within the walls, a great crowd of maidens came thronging about him, many-voiced and fluttering as bright birds in a cage, crying, ‘Welcome! Sir knight, we have waited long and long for one to come who could free us from our captivity!’

  And while some took his horse, others led him to the inner court, and helped him to unarm as though they had been his squire. And when he was unhelmed, a maiden tall and fair beyond all the rest came out through an inner door, carrying an ivory horn, wonderfully carved and bound about with gold. She held the horn out to Sir Galahad, saying, ‘Gentle sir, let you sound this, to summon all the knights who will hold their lands from you, now that you are lord of this castle. Then, when they are gathered here before you, let you have them swear on the crosses of their swords that the old evil custom of this place shall never return to it again.’

  Sir Galahad took the horn, and stood with it in his hands. ‘First, do you tell me what custom that is; and why so many maidens are captive here.’

  The old priest took up the story.

  ‘Ten years ago, the knights who today you vanquished and put to flight came to this castle asking hospitality of Duke Lynoor, the lord of all these parts. Now the Duke had two daughters; and as soon as they saw them, these same knights would each and every one have had the eldest and most beautiful for his lady. So there burst out a great quarrel among the knights and between them and the Duke. And the Duke and his son were slain, and the maidens made captive. Then the knights, having other things to think of, ceased their quarrel among themselves and made common cause to seize the castle treasure, and summoning all the fighting men of these parts, they fell to waging war on their neighbours, until they had forced them all to submit and become their vassals. Then the Duke’s elder daughter said to them, “In truth, my lords, as this castle was captured because of a maiden, so, because of other maidens, it shall be lost again; and one knight shall be the downfall of seven.”

  ‘At this, the seven knights were greatly enraged. And from that day forward, in revenge for her words, and also that none should have the chance to bring them true, they have taken and held captive every maiden to pass beneath the castle walls.’

  ‘And the Duke’s daughters?’ said Galahad, and looked towards the maiden who had brought him the ivory horn.

  ‘Nay,’ said the maiden, ‘my sister is dead long since. I was but a child when they came.’

  Then Sir Galahad set the horn to his lips and winded a call that sent the echoes flying ten forest leagues away.

  Presently, men came from far and wide to answer the summons. And when all were gathered, he said to the Duke’s younger daughter, ‘Lady, this castle is mine by right of conquest, to do with as I will. So now I make a gift of it to you.’

  And he caused all the assembled knights to swear fealty to her, and to take oath upon the crosses of their swords, that never again should the old evil customs return to the castle, and that all the captive maidens should at once be set free and sent in safety to their own homes.

  And that night he supped and slept in the castle, which was no longer called the Castle of Maidens; and next morning after hearing Mass, he rode out again on his way.

  But now the story leaves Sir Galahad a while, and tells of Sir Lancelot.

  4

  Sir Lancelot Fails His Testing

  FOR MANY DAYS after parting from his companions, Sir Lancelot rode alone through the forest, waiting with an open heart for God to tell him what to do and whither to turn his horse’s head. But indeed it seemed to him that in that forest there was neither time nor place, so that a man might ride many days towards the sunset, and find himself at the last back in the place from which he had set out; almost, he might bide quiet beneath a tree and let the forest shift around him, like the country of a dream.

  And then one morning he came down to a stream, and found a big warhorse that he thought he knew grazing on the bank, its bit slipped free and its reins carefully knotted up to be out of its way. And sitting with his back to an alder tree, helmet off and his yellow head tipped back against the rough bark, Sir Percival, whistling soft and full-throated to a blackbird, and the blackbird whistling back as though they were old friends. But, indeed, Sir Percival was friends with all furred and feathered things.

  He got to his feet when he saw Sir Lancelot ride out from the woodshore, slowly, as men move in armour, and they greeted each other; and when Sir Lancelot had turned his own horse loose to graze beside the other, they sat down again together beneath the alder tree. And Percival asked if he had seen or heard anything of Sir Galahad.

  ‘Neither sound nor sight,’ said Lancelot.

  Percival sighed.

  ‘Were you seeking him?’

  ‘I was hoping we might ride together a little while,’ Percival said, ‘but it was a foolish hope.’

  It seemed to Lancelot that the knight beside him was young to be riding errant and alone in the dark forest. And yet that was foolishness, for Percival had shown himself in the jousting to be no green boy. He was older than Galahad by at least a year, and no one would be thinking Galahad young to ride errant, no matter through what dark forest.

  ‘Would I serve, until we can come by word of Sir Galahad?’ he said. There was a smile in his voice; and if it was a crooked smile, that was hidden in the shadow of his helmet.

  And Percival said, ‘If it be not Sir Galahad, there is none that I would rather ride with.’

  So when they went on again, they rode together.

  For many days they kept each other company, and then one evening, in a wild dark country of rocks and twisted low-growing trees, they met with a knight bearing a great white shield blazoned with a blood-red cross; and because the device was strange to them, they did not know him for Sir Galahad, lately come from freeing the Cas
tle of Maidens.

  Sir Lancelot called out to him to know his name, but Sir Galahad never answered, for indeed he was away inside himself in some desert solitude of his own, as was often the way with him, and had no thought to come back and greet and be greeted by other men.

  So when he did not answer, but would have ridden on across their path, Sir Lancelot called out a warning; and when still he neither checked nor answered, shouted the final challenge, ‘Joust!’ and couching his lance, rode straight at him. Galahad looked round, then, and swung his horse to meet the charge; and the lance took him full on the shield and shattered into a score of pieces; but he remained rock-firm in the saddle, and his own lance in the same instant took Sir Lancelot under the guard, and hove him clean over his horse’s crupper, but did him no other harm. Then Percival came thundering down upon the unknown knight, but Sir Galahad wrenched his horse aside, and as the other missed his thrust, took him with the sideways lance stroke as he hurtled past, and swept him from the saddle, so that he plunged down all asprawl beside Sir Lancelot, not knowing if it was day or night.

  And Sir Galahad went back to the solitude within himself, and turned his horse and rode away.

  By the time the two he had felled had gathered themselves together and caught their horses and remounted, he was long out of sight.

  ‘We have no hope of catching him now,’ said Percival, ‘and this wilderness of rocks is no good place for us, with the dusk coming down. Let us turn back to the hermitage we passed a while since, and beg shelter for the night.’ For truth to tell, his bruises ached.

  But Sir Lancelot was in a deeper pain. For this was the first time since he took valour that ever he had been unhorsed. And again, and achingly, he was remembering the words on Galahad’s sword. Two things were most dear to him in life; one was his love for the Queen, and one was knowing that he was the best knight in the world; not merely the strongest, but the best, and not only that other men should say it of him, but that he should know it of himself. And the knowledge was beginning to grow most painfully within him that of these two things, he could not have both.

  Sir Percival felt the trouble in his companion, and said, quick and warm, ‘It was surely a chance stroke.’

  Lancelot shook his head, ‘It was as clean a fall as ever I saw one knight give another. That is why I must press on after him. I must know who he is –’

  ‘Wait until morning,’ Percival said, ‘and then we will seek him together.’

  ‘No,’ said Lancelot, ‘I must know – I must find out –’

  ‘Then God go with you,’ said Percival, ‘but I will ride no further this night.’

  So they parted, and Percival turned back to the hermitage, while Lancelot pushed on through the rocks and the stunted trees and the gathering dusk, after the glimmer of a crimson cross on a white shield.

  When it was full dark, he came to a rough stone cross that stood on the edge of wild heath country at the parting of two ways; and close beyond it saw an ancient chapel. He dismounted, and, leading his horse, walked towards the chapel, for he hoped there might be someone there who could tell him which way the knight had gone. But when he had looped the reins over a branch of the ancient hawthorn that grew beside the place, and turned himself to look more closely at the chapel, it was no more than a ruin, with nettles growing thick about the door sill; and coming within the porch, he found a rusty iron grille to bar his way.

  And yet the place could not be deserted after all, for light flooded out to him through the grille, and within, he could see an altar richly hung with silken cloths; and before the altar, six candles glimmered crocus-flamed in a branched silver candlestick. But no man moved within the lighted sanctuary – nothing stirred save the night wind blowing from the heath; and though a great longing came upon him to go in and kneel before the altar, there was no way in. No way at all.

  For a long time he knelt there outside the grille, hoping that someone would come, but no one came, and at last he rose and turned away, and unhitching his horse from the thorn branch, led it back as far as the wayside cross, unsaddled it and turned it loose to graze. Then he unlaced his helm and set it on the ground, unbuckled his sword belt, and lying down with his head on his shield, fell into a fitful sleep full of ragged dreams and uneasy wakings, and always the vision of the knight with the white shield glimmering far ahead of him, out of reach.

  By and by, as he lay so, a late moon began to rise; and by its light he saw coming towards him along the track two palfreys with a litter slung between them; and in the litter a knight, sick or wounded, and moaning aloud in his pain. The mounted squire who led the foremost palfrey halted close beside the cross. And the knight broke out from his dumb moaning into piteous words: ‘Sweet God in Heaven, shall my sufferings never cease? Shall I never see the Holy Cup which shall ease this weary pain?’ And he stretched out his hands in anguished pleading.

  And all the while, Sir Lancelot lay without speech or movement, so that he seemed to be asleep, yet seeing all that went on. And lying so, he saw the silver candlestick issue from the chapel, no hand carrying it, and with its six tapers burning clear and still, move towards the cross. And behind the candles, floating in the same way, lightly as a fallen leaf floats on still water, came a silver table; and on the table, half veiled in its own light, so that his eyes could not fully look upon it, the Grail that he had seen in Arthur’s court at the feast of Pentecost.

  No thunder this time, no sunbeam, but the great stillness, and the blaze of white light.

  And when he saw the wonder coming towards him, the sick knight tumbled himself from his litter, and lay where he fell, his hands stretched out to it, crying, ‘Lord, look on me in Thy mercy, and by the power of this holy vessel grant me healing from my sickness!’

  And with his eyes fixed upon the light, he dragged himself towards it, until he could touch the silver table with his hands. And even as he did so, a great shudder ran through him, and he gave a sobbing and triumphant cry, ‘Ah, God! I am healed!’

  And with that cry, it was as though he sank into sleep.

  And all the while, in his strange half-waking state, Sir Lancelot saw and heard, yet could feel nothing. He watched the Grail come, and stay a while, and presently move back into the chapel again; and he knew that it was the Grail of his quest, and his heart should have leapt in awe and exultation, and he should have been kneeling in worship beside the other knight; and still he could feel nothing. It was as though his spirit within him was turned to lead.

  When the Grail was gone back into the chapel again, and the six-branched candlestick after it, and there was no light but the moon, the knight of the litter awoke, strong again and filled with life as though he had never known a day’s sickness; and his squire came from where he had been waiting at a little distance all the while, and said, ‘Sir, is it well with you?’

  ‘It is well and more than well with me, thanks be to God!’ said the knight. ‘But I cannot but wonder how it is with yonder man who lies sleeping at the foot of the cross, and did not rouse once at the marvel that has been here this night.’

  ‘Surely it must be some wretch who has committed a great sin, so that God deemed him unworthy of the mystery that you have been allowed to share,’ said the squire.

  And he brought the knight’s armour, which had lain beside him in the litter, and helped him to arm. But when it came to the helm, the squire came across to where Sir Lancelot lay, and took up his helm, and his sword Joyeux that lay beside him, and caught and saddled his horse, and took all to his master. ‘You will make better use of these, for sure,’ said he, ‘than that worthless knight who must have forfeited all right to such honourable gear. Now mount, my lord, and let us ride.’

  So the knight mounted Sir Lancelot’s horse, and the squire again leading the litter palfreys, they rode away.

  Soon after, Sir Lancelot stirred and sat up, like a man rousing from deep sleep; and at first he wondered whether he had indeed seen, or only dreamed, what had happened. Then he
got up and went back to the chapel. But the grille was still across the doorway, and though the tapers glimmered within, he could see no sign of the Grail.

  For a while he stood there, waiting, he did not know for what, and hoping – hoping – And then there came a voice from somewhere, maybe out of his own heart. It was a cold and terrible voice that said, ‘Lancelot, harder than stone, more bitter than wood, more barren than the fig tree, get thee gone from this holy place, for thy presence fouls it.’

  And he turned away, and stumbled back to the foot of the wayside cross, weeping as he went, for what he had lost without ever finding it. And so he saw that his horse and sword and helm were gone, and he knew that it was all bitter truth and none of it a dream. And he crouched down at the foot of the cross, and came near to breaking his heart within him.

  The day dawned at last, sun up, and the sky ringing with lark-song above the open country. Sir Lancelot had always taken great joy in such mornings; but now he felt that nothing could ever bring him joy again; and he turned away from the wayside cross and the chapel and the open heathland, and set out again through the dark forest, unhorsed and unhelmed, and with his sword sheath hanging empty at his side.

  The day was still short of noon when he came upon a small wattle-built woodland church, in which a solitary priest was making ready for the service. He went in and knelt down, and heard Mass; and when it was over, begged the priest for counsel, in the name of God.

  ‘What manner of counsel do you seek?’ asked the holy man. ‘Is it that you would make your confession?’

  ‘I have sore need to do that,’ said Lancelot.

  ‘Come then, in the name of God.’

  He led him to the altar, and the two of them knelt down side by side.

  Then the priest asked Lancelot his name, and when he heard that the stranger with the crooked grief-stricken face was Sir Lancelot of the Lake, he said, ‘Then, sir, if all I have heard of the foremost of Arthur’s knights be true, you owe God a great return, for that He has made you the man you are.’