The Once and Future King (#1-4)

by T. H. White

  He had not come back out of condescension to the Queen. The cruel explanation that he had ‘given her up’ so as to save his soul, and that he had now returned from a sense of dramatic magnanimity, was not the true one. It was more complicated.

  This knight’s trouble from his childhood – which he never completely grew out of – was that for him God was a real person. He was not an abstraction who punished you if you were wicked or rewarded you if you were good, but a real person like Guenever, or like Arthur, or like anybody else. Of course he felt that God was better than Guenever or Arthur, but the point was that he was personal. Lancelot had a definite idea of what he looked like, and how he felt – and he was somehow in love with this Person.

  The Ill—Made Knight was not involved in an Eternal Triangle. It was an Eternal Quadrangle, which was eternal as well as quadrangular. He had not given up his mistress because he was afraid of being punished by some sort of Holy Bogy, but he had been confronted by two people whom he loved. The one was Arthur’s Queen, the other a wordless presence who had celebrated Mass at Castle Carbonek. Unfortunately, as so often happens in love affairs, the two objects of his affection were contradictory. It was almost as if he had been confronted with a choice between Jane and Janet – and as if he had gone to Janet, not because he was afraid that she would punish him if he stayed with Jane, but because he felt, with warmth and pity, that he loved her best. He may even have felt that God needed him more than Guenever did. This was the problem, an emotional rather than a moral one, which had taken him into retreat at his abbey, where he had hoped to feel things out.

  Still, it would not be quite right to say that he had not come back from some motives of magnanimity. He was a magnanimous man. He was a maestro. Even if God’s need for him was the greater in normal times, now it was obvious that his first love’s need was pressing. Perhaps a man who had left Jane for Janet might have had enough warmth inside him to return for Jane, when she was in desperate need, and this warmth might be compared to pity or to magnanimity or to generosity – if it were not unfashionable and even a little disgusting to believe in these emotions nowadays. Lancelot, in any case, who was wrestling with his love for Guenever as well as with his love for God, came back to her side as soon as he knew that she was in trouble, and, when he saw her radiant face waiting for him under shameful durance, his heart did turn over inside its habergeon with some piercing emotion – call it love or pity, whichever you please.

  Sir Mador de la Porte’s heart turned over at the same time – but it was too late to draw back. His face went crimson inside its helm, where nobody could see it, and he felt a warm glow under the straw fillet which padded his skull. Then he went back to his own corner and spurred his horse.

  There is something beautiful about the way in which a broken lance sails into the air. Down below it, on the ground, there is much bustle going on. The lazy motion with which the lance goes up, turning over silently and languidly as it goes, contrasts with this. It seems superior to earthly considerations and does not seem to be moving fast. The fast movement – which was, in this case, Sir Mador dismounting backwards and upside down – is going on underneath the lance, which performs its own independent pirouette in graceful detachment, and comes down elsewhere, when everybody has forgotten it. Sir Mador’s lance came down on its point, by some ballistic freak, just behind the king—of—arms who was holding the black pug. When the latter turned round later on, and found it upright behind him, looking over his shoulder as it were, he gave a start.

  Sir Lancelot dismounted, so as not to have the advantage of a horse. Sir Mador got up and began doing some wild swipes at the enemy with his sword. He was over—excited.

  It took two knockouts to finish Sir Mador. The first time he was down, when Lancelot was coming towards him to accept his surrender, he became flustered and thrust at the towering man from below. It was a foul blow, for it went into the groin from underneath, just at the point where armour must necessarily be weakest. When Lancelot had withdrawn, to let Mador get up if he wanted to go on fighting, it was seen that the blood was streaming down his cuisses and greaves. There was something terrible about the patient way in which he withdrew, although he had been badly stabbed in the thigh. If he had lost his temper it would have been easier to bear.

  The Queen’s champion knocked Sir Mador down harder the second time. Then he jerked off his helm.

  ‘All right,’ said Sir Mador. ‘I give in. I was wrong. Spare my life.’

  Lancelot did a nice thing. Most knights would have been satisfied with winning the Queen’s case, and would have left it at that. But Lancelot had a sort of methodical consideration for people – he was sensitive to things which they might be feeling, or might be likely to feel.

  ‘I will spare your life,’ he said, ‘only if you promise that nothing is to be written about this on Sir Patrick’s grave. Nothing about the Queen.’

  ‘I promise,’ said Mador.

  Then, while the defeated advocate was being carried away by some leeches, Lancelot went to the royal box. The Queen had been released immediately, and was there with Arthur.

  Arthur said: ‘Take off your helm, stranger.’

  They felt a swelling of love when he took it off, and compassion to see the hideous well—known face again, while he stood in front of them, bleeding hard.

  Arthur came down from the box. He made Guenever get up, and took her hand, and led her down into the arena. He made a regular bow to Sir Lancelot, and pulled Guenever’s hand so that she curtsied too. He did this in front of his people. He spoke in the old—fashioned talk, and said with a full voice: ‘Sir, grant mercy of your great travail that ye have had this day for me and for my Queen.’ Guenever, behind her smiling, loving face, was sobbing as if her heart would burst.

  Chapter XXXVIII

  It so happened that the Patrick accusation was cleared up next day, when Nimue arrived with a second—sighted explanation. Merlyn, before letting her lock him up in the cave, had given the Matter of Britain into her hands. He had made her promise – it was all that he could do – that she would watch over Arthur herself, now that she knew his own magic. Then he had gone meekly to his imprisonment, casting a last, long doting look upon her. Nimue, though scatterbrained and unpunctual, was a good girl in her way. She turned up a day late, told how the apple had come to be poisoned and went back to her own concerns. Sir Pinel confirmed the statement by running away the same morning, leaving a written confession, and everybody had to admit that it was a lucky thing Sir Lancelot had been about.

  It was not so lucky for the Queen. She was alive and saved, it was true – but the unbelievable happened. In spite of the tears, in spite of the fountain of feeling which had sprung between them once again, Lancelot persisted in remaining loyal to his Grail.

  Well for him, she exclaimed – she was growing madder every day, and it hurt people to watch it – well for him to wrap himself in his new delight. He had a grand feeling, no doubt, a compensation of vigour and clarity and uplifting of the heart. Perhaps his famous God did give him something which she could not give. Perhaps he was happier with God, and would soon begin doing miracles left and right. But what about her? He was not considering what she got out of God. The position was exactly the same, she railed at him, as if he had left her for another woman. He had taken the best of her, and now that she was old and worthless he had gone elsewhere. He was behaving with the beastly selfishness of Man, taking all he could get from one quarter, and then, when that was used, going to another. He was a sneak—thief. And to think that she had believed in him! She did not love him any more now, would not let him come near her if he were to pray for it on bended knees. As a matter of fact, she had despised him even before the search for the Grail began – yes, despised him, and had determined to throw him over. He was not to think that he was deserting her: it was quite the contrary. She was tossing him away, like a dirty clout, because she felt nothing but contempt for him. For his poses and swelled head and meanness and chi
ldishness and conceit. For his futile little God, and his goody—goody lies. To tell him the truth, and really she felt no further interest in concealing it, there was a young knight at court who was already her lover: had been her lover long before the Grail! He was a much finer young man than Lancelot. What would she want with a sour husk when she had a rosy boy at her feet who worshipped her, yes, worshipped the ground she trod on? Lancelot had better return to Elaine, to the mother of his famous son. Perhaps they would be able to say their prayers together, one frump with the other frump, all night. They could talk about their baby, their Galahad, who had found the loathsome Grail, and they could laugh at her if they liked, yes, they were welcome to laugh at her, laughing because she had never managed to bear a son.

  Then Guenever would begin the laughing – while always one part of her looked out from the eye windows, and hated the noise which she was making – and the tears would come after the laughter, and she would weep with all her heart.

  A strange feature was that Arthur, who wanted to arrange a tournament in celebration of the Queen’s acquittal, fixed upon a place near Corbin as the spot where the tournament was to be held. The place may have been Winchester or Brackley, where one of the four surviving English tilting grounds is to be found. It does not matter where it was – what does matter is that Corbin was the castle where the now childless Elaine lived out her lonely middle age.

  ‘I suppose you will go to this tournament?’ asked the Queen fiercely. ‘I suppose you will go to be near your trull?’

  Lancelot said: ‘Jenny, couldn’t you forgive her? She is probably ugly as well as miserable now. She never had much to fall back on.’

  ‘The generous Lancelot!’

  ‘If you don’t want me to go,’ he said, ‘I won’t. You know I have never loved any human being except you.’

  ‘Only Arthur,’ said the Queen. ‘Only Elaine. Only God. Unless there are some others I haven’t heard about.’

  Lancelot shrugged his shoulders – one of the stupidest things to do, when the other party wants to have a fight.

  ‘Are you going?’ he asked.

  ‘I going? Am I to watch you flirting with that turnip? Certainly I shan’t go, and I forbid you to go either.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will tell Arthur that I am ill. I could say that my wound has not healed yet.’

  He went to find the King.

  Everybody had started for the tournament, and the court was empty, when Guenever changed her mind. Perhaps she had kept Lancelot behind so as to be alone with him, and, finding that it was no good being alone with him, had reversed her decision – but we do not know the reason.

  ‘You had better go,’ she said. ‘If I keep you here you will say it was because I was jealous, and you will cast it in my teeth. Besides, there may be a scandal if you stay with me. And I don’t want you. I don’t want to see your face. Take it away. Go!’

  ‘Jenny,’ he said reasonably, ‘I can’t go now. There will be much more of a scandal if I do go after all, when I have said that my wound prevents me. They will think that we have had a quarrel.’

  ‘Let them think what they please. The only thing I tell you is that you are to go, before you drive me mad.’

  ‘Jenny,’ he said.

  He felt that his heart was breaking in two pieces, and that the madness which she had given him once before might well be coming again. Perhaps she noticed this too. At all events, she suddenly relented in her manner. She saw him off to Corbin with a loving kiss.

  ‘I promise I will come back,’ he had said, and now he was keeping his promise. It was unthinkable that he should go to the tournament without visiting Elaine. He had not only promised to return to her, but he was the repository of all the last messages of their only son, now dead or at least translated. The cruellest man could hardly have refused to visit her with such messages.

  He would lodge at Corbin, tell her about Galahad, and fight in the tournament disguised. He would explain to Arthur that he had pleaded the wound so as to come unexpectedly, in disguise, because that was one of the new—fashioned things to do. This subterfuge would be assisted by the fact of his staying at Corbin Castle, instead of at the actual place of the tournament. It would prevent any scandal about a last—minute quarrel with the Queen.

  He was surprised to find, as he rode up the avenue to the moat, through the cheval de frise, that Elaine was waiting for him on the battlements, in the same attitude as that in which he had left her twenty years before. She met him at the Great Gate.

  ‘I was waiting for you.’

  She was plump and dumpy now, rather like Queen Victoria, and she received him faithfully. He had said that he would come back and here he was. She had expected nothing else.

  With her next words she stabbed him to the heart.

  ‘You will be staying for good now,’ said she, hardly as a question. It was in this way that she had construed his answer when they parted all that time ago.

  Chapter XXXIX

  If people want to read about the Corbin tournament, Malory has it. He was a passionate follower of tournaments – like one of those old gentlemen who nowadays frequent the cricket pavilion at Lord’s – and he may have had access to some ancient Wisden, or even to the score—books themselves. He reports the celebrated tournaments in full, with the score of each knight, and the name of the man who bowled him over, or how knocked out. But the accounts of old cricket matches are inclined to be boring for those who did not actually play in them, so we must leave it unreported. The only things which are apt to be dull in Malory are the detailed score—sheets, which he gives two or three times – and even they are not dull for anybody who knows the form of the various smaller knights. It is sufficient for our purposes to say that Lancelot hit the other side all round the field – his skill had come back to him since the Grail – and that he would have carried his sword after the innings of a lifetime, if the wound which he got from Sir Mador had not broken out afresh. It is strange that he should have played well on this occasion – for he was distracted by the triple misery of Guenever and God and Elaine – but great performances have been given by others in similar circumstances. Finally, when he had made thirty or forty in spite of the old wound (and, incidently, he had knocked out Mordred and Agravaine), three knights set upon him at the same time, and the spear of one of them penetrated his defence. It broke, leaving the head of the spear in his side.

  Lancelot withdrew from the field while he could still sit his horse, and galloped away, lolling in the saddle, to find a place where he could be alone. When he was badly hurt he had this instinct for solitude. To him, there was something private about death – so that, if he had to die, he tried to get a chance of doing it by himself. Only one knight went with him – he was too weak to shake him off – and it was this knight who helped him to draw the spearhead from his ribs, and who eased him when he finally fainted by ‘turning him into the wind.’ It was also this knight who brought the distracted Elaine to his bedside, after he had been put to bed.

  The importance of the Winchester tournament did not lie in any particular feat of arms, nor even in Lancelot’s grievous hurt – for he eventually recovered from it. Where it did touch the lives of our four friends was in a circumstance which remains to be told. For Lancelot, suddenly faced with the unlucky Elaine’s unfounded conviction that he was going to stay with her for ever, had faltered in telling her the truth. Perhaps he was a weak man in most ways – weak to have taken Guenever from his best friend in the first place, weak to have tried to exchange his mistress for his God, and weakest of all to have helped Elaine by telling her he would come back. Now, in the face of the poor lady’s simple hope, he had lacked the courage to break her illusion with an immediate blow.

  One of the troubles in dealing with Elaine, in spite of her simplicity or ignorance, was that her nature was a sensitive one – more sensitive than Guenever’s, in fact, although she lacked the power of that bold and extraverted queen. She had been sensitive eno
ugh not to overwhelm him with welcomes when he came home from his long absence: not to reproach him – she had never felt that she had reason to reproach him: and, above all, not to suffocate him with pity for herself. She had held her heart with a firm hand while they waited at Corbin for the tournament, carefully hiding the long years during which she had hoped for her lord, and her absolute loneliness now that their son was gone. Lancelot had known quite well what she was hiding. Uncertain and sensitive himself, he had forgotten about the way in which their peculiar relationship had started. He had begun to blame himself exclusively for Elaine’s sorrows.

  So, when she did make her small request, after having spared him so many tears and welcomes, what could he do but seek her pleasure? He had still to tell her that her unflinching hope was baseless. He was putting it off. Feeling like an executioner who knows that he must kill tomorrow, he had tried to give a little joy today.

  ‘Lance,’ she said before the tournament, asking her strange favour humbly and childishly, ‘now that we are together, you will wear my token at the fight?’

  Now that we are together! And in her tone of voice he had read a picture of twenty years’ desertion, realizing for the first time that during all that period she had been following his career of chivalry like a schoolchild doting on the batsman Hobbs. The poor bird had been picturing all the fights – almost certainly picturing them quite wrong: nourishing a starved heart on second—hand accounts in secret: wondering whose token was in the place of honour today. Perhaps she had been telling herself for twenty years that some day the great champion would fight under a favour of her own – one of those ridiculous ambitions with which the wretched soul consoles itself, for lack of decent fare.