The Once and Future King (#1-4)

by T. H. White

  ‘I never wear favours,’ he had said, truthfully.

  She had not pleaded or complained, and she had truly tried to hid her disappointment.

  ‘I will wear yours,’ he had said immediately. ‘I shall be proud to wear it. And, besides, it will help my disguise very much. Just because everybody knows that I don’t wear favours, it will be a splendid disguise to wear one. How clever of you to think of it! And it will make me fight better. What is it to be?’

  It was a scarlet sleeve embroidered with large pearls. You can do good embroidery in twenty years.

  A fortnight after the Winchester tournament, while Elaine nursed her hero back to life, Guenever was having a scene with Sir Bors at court. Being a woman—hater, Bors always had instructive scenes with women. He said what he thought, and they said what they thought, and neither of them understood the other a bit.

  ‘Ah, Sir Bors,’ said the Queen, having sent for him in great haste as soon as she heard about the red sleeve – Bors being one of Lancelot’s closest relations. ‘Ah, Sir Bors, have ye heard say how falsely Sir Lancelot hath betrayed me?’

  Bors noted that the Queen was ‘nigh out of her mind for wrath,’ blushed deeply, and said with exaggerated patience: ‘If anybody has been betrayed, it is Lancelot himself. He has been mortally wounded by three knights at once.’

  ‘And I am glad,’ cried the Queen, ‘glad to hear it! A good thing if he dies. He is a false traitor knight!’

  Bors shrugged his shoulders and turned his back, as much as to say that he was not going to listen to talk like that. The whole of his back, as he went to the door, showed what he thought about women. The Queen rushed after him, to retain him by force if necessary. She was not going to be cheated of her scene as easily as that.

  ‘Why should I not call him a traitor,’ she shouted, ‘when he bore the red sleeve upon his head at Winchester, at the great jousts?’

  Bors, afraid that he was going to be physically assaulted, said: ‘I am sorry about the sleeve. If he had not worn it as a disguise, perhaps people would not have set upon him three to one.’

  ‘Fie on him,’ exclaimed the Queen. ‘He got a good thrashing anyway, in spite of all his pride and boasting. He was beaten in fair fight.’

  ‘No, he was not. It was three to one, and his old wound broke out too.’

  ‘Fie on him,’ repeated the Queen. ‘I heard Sir Gawaine say in front of the King that it was wonderful how much he loved Elaine.’

  ‘I can’t stop Gawaine saying things,’ retorted Sir Bors hotly, desperately, pathetically, furiously, and with terror. Then he went out and slammed the door, leaving the honours about even.

  At Corbin, Elaine and Lancelot were holding hands. He smiled feebly at her and said in a pale voice: ‘Poor Elaine. You always seem to be nursing me back from something. You never seem to have me, except when I am only half alive.’

  ‘I have you for good now,’ she said radiantly.

  ‘Elaine,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

  Chapter XL

  When the Ill—Made Knight came back from Corbin, Guenever was still in a rage. For some reason she was determined to believe that Elaine had become his mistress again, possibly because this seemed to be the best way of hurting her lover. She claimed that he had only been pretending about his religious feelings – as was shown by his immediately going off with Elaine when he had the chance. This, she said, had been at the back of his mind all along. He was a sham, and a weak sham at that. They had hysterical scenes together, about his weakness and shamness, alternating with other scenes of a more affectionate kind, which were necessary to counter—balance the idea that she had been in love with a sham man all her life. She began to look healthier, even beautiful again, as a result of these quarrels. But two lines came between her eyebrows, and she had a frightening eye sometimes, which glittered like a diamond. Lancelot began to have a dogged look. They were drifting.

  Elaine had been explained to, and it was Elaine who now struck the only strong blow of her life. She struck it unintentionally, by committing suicide.

  A death—barge came down the river to the capital, since rivers were the highways of the day, and it was moored beneath the palace wall. She was in it – the plump partridge who had always been helpless. Probably people commit suicide through weakness, not through strength. Her gentle efforts to guide the hand of destiny, by decoying her master with feeble tricks or by reticent considerations – these had not been strong enough to be recognized in the despotism of life. Her son had gone, and her lover, and there was nothing left. Even the promise to return had failed her futile grasp. It had once been something to live for, a handrail – not a particularly sumptuous handrail, but sufficiently serviceable to keep her upright. She had been able to make do. Never having been a high—handed or demanding girl, she had been able to make a little go a long way. But now even the little was gone.

  Everybody went down to see the barge. It was not a lily maid of Astolat they saw, but a middle—aged woman whose hands, in stiff—looking gloves, grasped a pair of beads obediently. Death had made her look older and different. The stern, grey face in the barge was evidently not Elaine – who had gone elsewhere, or vanished.

  Even if Lancelot was a weak man, or a Games—Maniac, or that infuriating creation, a person who consistently tries to be decent, he does not seem to have had an easy time of it. With his inherited tendency to madness, and his fantastic face, the confusion of his loyalties and moral standards, it must have been difficult enough to keep the balance of life without the various blows which were given to him above the bargain. He could have supported even the extra blows if he had been blessed with a callous heart. But his heart had been made as a match for Elaine’s, and now it was unable to bear the burden which hers had been forced to lay down. All the things which he might have done for the poor creature, but which it was now too late to do, and all the shameful questions about responsibility which go with the irrevocable, united in his mind.

  ‘Why were you not kinder to her?’ cried the Queen. ‘Why could you not have given her something to live for? You might have showed her some bounty and gentleness, which would have preserved her life.’

  Guenever, who did not yet realize that Elaine had come between them more effectively than ever, said this quite spontaneously, and she meant it. She was overwhelmed with pity for her rival in the barge.

  Chapter XLI

  The new kind of life went on at Camelot in spite of the suicide. Nobody could have called it a specially happy kind – but people are tenacious of life, and will go on living. It was not all of it a plot—like life: most of it was just story – one thing after the other – a chain of unnecessary accidents. One ridiculous accident which happened about this time is worth mentioning, not because it had any consequences or antecedents, but because it was somehow the sort of thing which happened to Lancelot. He behaved about it in his own way.

  He was lying on his stomach in a wood one day, with what sad thoughts nobody knows, when a lady archer came by, who was hunting. It does not say whether she was a masculine sort of lady with a moustache and gentlemen’s neckwear, or whether she was one of those scatterbrains from the film world who do archery because it is so cute. Anyway, she saw Lancelot, and she thought he was a rabbit. On the whole she must have been one of the masculine ladies, for, although it is a pretty trait to shoot at men in mistake for rabbits, it would have been unusual for a film star to hit the mark. Lancelot, bounding to his feet with about six inches of arrow embedded in his rump, behaved exactly like Colonel Bogey – driven into on the second tee at golf. He said passionately: ‘Lady or damsel, what that thou be, in an evil time bare ye a bow; the devil made you a shooter!’

  In spite of the wound in his backside, Lancelot fought in the next tournament – an important one, because of several things which happened at it. The true tension at court – which was apparent to everybody except Lancelot, who was too innocent to be conscious of such things – began to show itself clearly
at the Westminster jousts. For one thing, Arthur began to assert his position in their wretched triangle. He did this, poor fellow, by suddenly taking the opposite side to Lancelot in the grand mêlée. He set upon his best friend, and tried to hurt him, and lost his temper. He did nothing unknightly, and, as it happened, did no harm to Lancelot. But the strange turn of feeling was there all the same. Before and afterwards they were friends. But just for that one moment of anger Arthur was the cuckold and Lancelot his betrayer. Such is the apparent explanation – an unconscious recognition of their relationship – but there may have been another thought behind it. It was a long time since Arthur had been the happy Wart, long since his home and his kingdom had been at their fortunate peak. Perhaps he was tired of the struggle, tired of the Orkney clique and the strange new fashions and the difficulties of love and modern justice. He may have fought against Lancelot in the hope of being killed by him – not a hope exactly, not a conscious attempt. This just and generous and kind—hearted man may have guessed unconsciously that the only solution for him and for his loved ones must lie in his own death – after which Lancelot could marry the Queen and be at peace with God – and he may have given Lancelot the chance of killing him in fair fight, because he himself was worn out. It may have been. At all events, nothing came of it. There was the blaze of temper, and then their love was fresh again.

  Another important feature of the tournament was that Lancelot, with innocent idiocy, alienated the Orkneys finally and for good. He unhorsed the whole clan except Gareth, one after the other, and Mordred and Agravaine he unhorsed twice. Only a saint could have been fool enough to have saved their lives so often in rescues from Dolorous Towers and so on – but to cap it by knocking them down at will, at such a time, was the policy of a natural. Gawaine, it is true, was decent enough to refuse to have a hand in plots against Lancelot’s life, and Gaheris was dull. But from this day on it was only a question of time, as between the fashionable party of Mordred and Agravaine and the safety of the commander—in—chief.

  A third straw in the wind was that Gareth fought on Lancelot’s side at Westminster. The peculiar cross—plays of sentiment were noticed by everybody – the King against his second self, and Gareth against his own brothers. With such an undertow there was evidently a storm to come. It came characteristically, from a quarter which nobody had suspected.

  There was a cockney knight called Sir Meliagrance, who had never been happy at court. If he had lived in the earlier days, when a man was judged as a man, he might have got along well enough. Unfortunately he belonged to the later generation, of Mordred’s fashions, and he was judged by the new standards. Everybody knew that Sir Meliagrance was not quite out of the top drawer. He knew it himself – the top drawer had been invented by Mordred – and the knowledge did not make him happy. Beside all this, Sir Meliagrance had a special cause for misery which had poisoned society for him. He was desperately, hopelessly – and had been ever since he could remember – in love with Guenever.

  The news came while Arthur and Lancelot were at the ninepin alley. They had got into the habit of going off to this unfashionable spot every day to cheer themselves with a little conversation.

  Arthur was saying: ‘No, no, Lance. You never understood poor Tristram at all.’

  ‘He was a cad,’ said Lancelot obstinately.

  They were talking in the past tense because Tristram had finally been murdered, while playing the harp to La Beale Isoud, by the exasperated King Mark.

  ‘Even if he is dead,’ added the knight.

  But the King shook his head vehemently.

  ‘Not a cad,’ he said. ‘He was a buffoon, one of the great comic characters. He was always getting himself into extraordinary situations.’

  ‘A buffoon?’

  ‘Absent—minded,’ said the King. ‘That is the great comic affliction. Look at his love affairs.’

  ‘You mean Isoud White—Hands?’

  ‘I firmly believe that Tristram got those two girls completely mixed up. He goes mad on La Beale Isoud, and then forgets all about her. One day he is getting into bed with the other Isoud when something about the action reminds him of something. It dawns on him that there are two Isouds, not one – and he is terribly upset about it. Here am I getting into bed with Isoud White—Hands, he says, when all the time I was in love with La Beale Isoud! Naturally he was upset. And then being nearly murdered in his bath by the Queen of Ireland. There was a light of high comedy about that young man, and you ought to forgive him for being a cad.’

  ‘I –’ began Lancelot, but at that moment the messenger arrived.

  He was a small, breathless boy with an arrow—slit in his jupon, under the right armpit. He held the rent together with his fingers and talked fast.

  It was about the Queen, who had gone a—Maying – for it was the first of May. She had started early, as the custom was, intending to be back by ten o’clock, with all the dewy primroses and violets and hawthorn blooms and green—budding branches which it was proper to gather on such a morning. She had left her bodyguard behind – the Queen’s knights, who all bore the vergescu as their badge of office – and had taken with her only ten knights in civilian clothes. They had been dressed in green, to celebrate the festival of spring. Agravaine was among them – he had attached himself to Guenever lately, to spy on her – and Lancelot had been left out on purpose.

  Well, they had been riding home cheerfully, all chattering and bloomy and branchy, when Sir Meliagrance had leaped up at their feet, in an ambush. The top—drawer business had preyed on his mind till he had determined to be ungentlemanly in earnest, if everybody accused him of being so. He had known that the Queen’s party was unarmed, and that Lancelot was not with them. He had brought a strong force of archers and men—at—arms to take her captive.

  There had been a fight. The Queen’s knights had defended her as best they could with swords and falchions, until they were all wounded, six of them seriously. Then Guenever had surrendered, to save their lives. She had made a bargain with Sir Meliagrance – whose heart was not really in the business of being a blackguard – that, if she called her defenders off, he must promise to take the wounded knights with her to his castle, and he must let them sleep in the anteroom of her chamber. Meliagrance, loving Guenever, flinching at his own half—hearted wickedness, and knowing the hopelessness of forcing his beloved against her will, had agreed to terms. The poor fellow had never been cut out to be a villain.

  In the confusion of getting the sorry procession of hurt men slung across their horses, the Queen had kept her head. She had beckoned the little page, who had a fresh and fast pony, and she had secretly slipped him her ring, with a message for Lancelot. When he saw his opportunity, he was to gallop for his life – and he had done so, with the archers after him. Here was the ring.

  Lancelot, half—way through the story, was already shouting for his armour. By the time it was told Arthur was kneeling at his feet, strapping on the greaves.

  Chapter XLII

  When the mounted archers rode back crestfallen, saying that they had been unable to shoot the boy, Sir Meliagrance knew what was going to happen. He was distracted with misery, not only because he knew that he had been acting unwisely and wickedly, but also because he was genuinely in love with the Queen. He still had a kick in him, however, and he saw that after having gone so far it was too late to retreat. Lancelot would be bound to come in answer to the message, and it was necessary to gain time. The castle was not ready for a siege – but, if it could be got ready, there would be a fair prospect of making terms with the besiegers, considering that the Queen would be inside. Sir Lancelot must be stopped at all costs, until the castle had been put in posture of defence. He guessed correctly that Lancelot would come riding helter—skelter to the Queen’s aid, as soon as he could get himself armed. The best way of stopping him would be with a second ambush, at a narrow glade in the wood which he would have to ride through – a glade so narrow that archers would certainly be able to k
ill his horse, if not to pierce his armour. Since the Troubled Times, all roads had been cleared of undergrowth for the distance of a bowshot on either side – but this glade, on account of peculiarities in the terrain, had been overlooked. And a well—shot arrow at fair range could penetrate the best armour, as Meliagrance knew.

  So the ambush was sent out post—haste, and everything within the castle was at sixes and sevens. Herdsmen were driving beasts into the keep – and all the beasts strayed, or got muddled with each other, or would not go through gates. Pump boys were feverishly bringing water to the great tubs – it was one of those futile castles, which appear to have originated in Ireland, whose bailey was without a well. Maids were running about on the verge of hysterics – for Sir Meliagrance, like many people out of the wrong drawer, was determined to receive his captive Queen in a way which would be above criticism. They were making boudoirs for her, and taking the tapestries out of his bachelor bedroom to go in hers, and polishing the silver, and sending to the nearest neighbours for the loan of gold plate. Guenever herself, ushered into a small waiting—room while the state apartments were made ready for her reception, added to the confusion by insisting on bandages and hot water and stretchers for her wounded men. Sir Meliagrance, running up and down stairs with cries of ‘Yes, Ma’am, in ‘arf a minute’ or ‘Marian, Marian, where the ‘ell have you put the candles?’ or ‘Murdoch, take them sheep out of the solar this instant,’ found time to lean his forehead against the cold stone of an embrasure, to clutch his bewildered heart, to curse his folly, and further to disarrange his already disordered plots.

  The Queen was the first to get her affairs in order. She only had the bandaging to arrange, and naturally her wants were the earliest to be attended. She was sitting with her waiting—women at one of the windows of the castle, a sort of calm—centre in the middle of the whirlwind, when one of the girls called out that something was coming down the road.