The Once and Future King (#1-4)

by T. H. White

  ‘It is a cart,’ said the Queen. ‘It will be something to do with the provisions of the castle.’

  ‘There is a knight in the cart,’ said the girl, ‘a knight in armour. I suppose somebody is taking him away to be hanged.’

  In those days it was considered disgraceful to ride in a cart.

  Later, they saw that there was a horse trotting behind the cart – which was coming at a great gallop – with its reins dangling in the dust. Later still they were horrified to see that all the entrails of the horse were dangling in the dust also. It was stuck full of arrows like a porcupine, and trotted along with a strange look of unconcernedness. Perhaps it was numbed by shock. It was Lancelot’s horse, and Lancelot was in the cart, beating the cart—horse with his scabbard. He had fallen into the ambush as expected, had spent some time trying to get at his assailants – who had escaped the heavy dismounted iron man easily, by jumping over hedges and ditches – and then he had set out to walk the rest of the way, in spite of his armour. Meliagrance had counted on the impossibility of such a walk, for a man dressed in an equipment which may have weighed as much as himself – but he had not counted on the cart which Lancelot commandeered. A measure of the great man’s anxiety about the Queen on this occasion is that he is said to have swum his horse across the Thames at the beginning of the ride, from Westminster Bridge to Lambeth, in spite of the fact that, if anything had gone wrong, his armour would certainly have drowned him.

  ‘How dare you say it was a knight going to be hanged?’ exclaimed the Queen. ‘You are a hussy. How dare you compare Sir Lancelot to a felon?’

  The wretched girl blushed and held her tongue, while Lancelot could be seen throwing his reins to the terrified carter, and storming up the drawbridge, shouting at the top of his voice.

  Sir Meliagrance heard of the arrival just as Lancelot was bursting in at the Great Gate. A flustered porter, taken by surprise, tried to shut it in his face, but received a blow on the ear from the iron fist, which knocked him flat. The gate swung open, undefended. Lancelot was in one of his rare passions, possibly on account of the sufferings of his horse.

  Meliagrance, who had been overseeing some men—at—arms while they broke up the wooden sheds on the Great Court as a precaution against Greek Fire, lost his nerve. He sprinted for the back stairs and was already kneeling at the Queen’s feet, while Lancelot was raging round the Porter’s lodge, demanding the Queen.

  ‘What is the matter now?’ asked Guenever, looking at the extraordinary, vulgar man who sprawled before her – a look, curiously enough, not without affection. After all, it is a compliment to be kidnapped for love, especially when all ends happily.

  ‘I yield, I yield!’ cried Sir Meliagrance. ‘Ow, I yield to you, dear Queen. Save me from that Sir Lancelot!’

  Guenever was looking radiantly beautiful. It may have been the Maying, or the compliment which the cockney Knight had paid her, or some premonition such as comes to women before their joy. At any rate she was feeling happy, and she bore no grudge against her captor.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, cheerfully and wisely. ‘The less noise there is about this, the better for my reputation. I will try to calm Sir Lancelot.’

  Sir Meliagrance positively whistled with relief, he sighed so hard.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘That’s the old cock sparrer – ahem! ahem! Beg pardon, I’m sure. Will it please your gracious Majesty to stye the night at Meliagrance Castle, when you ‘ave been and calmed Sir Lancelot, for the sike of your wounded knights?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the Queen.

  ‘You could all go awai in the morning,’ urged Sir Meliagrance, ‘and we could sye no more abaht it. It would be more regular like. You could sye you was here on a visit.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the Queen, and she went down to Lancelot while Sir Meliagrance mopped his brow.

  He was standing in the Inner Court, shouting for his enemy. When Guenever saw him, and he saw her, the old electric message went between their eyes before they spoke a word. It was as if Elaine and the whole Quest for the Grail had never been. So far as we can make it out, she had accepted her defeat. He must have seen in her eyes that she had given in to him, that she was prepared to leave him to be himself – to love his God, and to do whatever he pleased – so long as he was only Lancelot. She was serene and sane again. She had renounced her possessive madness and was joyful to see him living, whatever he did. They were young creatures – the same creatures whose eyes had met with the almost forgotten click of magnets in the smoky Hall of Camelot so long ago. And, in truly yielding, she had won the battle by mistake.

  ‘What is all the fuss about?’ asked the Queen.

  They had a light, bantering tone. They were in love again.

  ‘You may well ask.’

  Then he added in an angrier voice, and flushing: ‘He has shot my horse.’

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ said the Queen. Her voice was gentle. It was the first voice he remembered. ‘Thank you for coming so fast and so bravely. But he has given in, and we must forgive him.’

  ‘It was shameful to murder my poor horse.’

  ‘We have made it up.’

  ‘If I had known you were going to make it up,’ said Lancelot rather jealously, ‘I would not have nearly killed myself in coming.’

  The Queen took his bare hand. The gauntlet was off.

  ‘Are you sorry,’ she asked, ‘because you have done so well?’

  He was silent.

  ‘I don’t care about him,’ said the Queen, blushing. ‘I only thought it would be better not to have a scandal.’

  ‘I don’t want a scandal any more than you do.’

  ‘You must do as you please,’ said the Queen. ‘Fight him if you like. You are the one to choose.’

  Lancelot looked at her.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘so ye be pleased, I care not. As for my part, ye shall soon please.’

  He always fell into the grandeur of the High Language, when he was moved.

  Chapter XLIII

  The wounded knights were laid on stretchers in the outer room. The inner room, where Guenever slept, had a window with iron bars. There was no glass.

  Lancelot had noticed a ladder in the garden, which was long enough for his purpose – and, although they had made no assignation, the Queen was waiting. When she saw his crumpled face at the window, with the inquisitive nose against the stars, she did not think it was a gargoyle or a demon. She stood for a few heartbeats, feeling the wild blood surge in her neck, then went silently to the window – the silence of an accomplice.

  Nobody knows what they said to each other. Malory says that ‘they made either to other their complaints of many divers things.’ Probably they agreed that it was impossible to love Arthur and also to deceive him. Probably Lancelot made her understand about his God at last, and she made him understand about her missing children. Probably they fully agreed to accept their guilty love as ended.

  Later, Sir Lancelot whispered: ‘I wish I might come in.’

  ‘I would as fain.’

  ‘Would you, madam, with all your heart that I were with you?’

  ‘Truly.’

  The last iron bar, as he broke it out, cut the brawn of his hand to the bone.

  Later still, the whispers faltered, and there was silence in the darkness of the room.

  Queen Guenever lay long in bed next morning. Sir Meliagrance, anxious to get the whole affair safely ended as soon as possible, fussed in the antechamber, wishing she were gone. For one thing, he was not anxious to prolong his own torture, by keeping the Queen under his roof, whom he loved and could not have.

  At last, partly to hurry her off and partly out of a lover’s uncontrollable curiosity, he went into the bedroom to wake her up – a proceeding which was possible in the days of the levee.

  ‘Mercy,’ said Sir Meliagrance, ‘what ails you, Ma’am, to sleep so long?’

  He was looking at his lost beauty in the bed, and pretending not to do s
o. The blood of Lancelot’s cut hand was all over the sheets.

  ‘Traitress!’ cried Sir Meliagrance suddenly. ‘Traitress! You are a traitor to King Arthur!’

  He was beside himself with rage and jealousy, believing himself deceived. He had been assuming, since his own enterprise had gone agley, that the Queen was a pure woman; and that he, in seeking to enjoy her, was in the wrong. Now he saw that all the time she had been cheating him, only pretending to be too virtuous to love him, and meanwhile sporting with her wounded knights under his very nose. He had jumped to the conclusion that the blood had come from a wounded knight – otherwise why should she have insisted on having them in the antechamber? The wildest envy was mixed with his rage. He never saw the bars of the window, which had been replaced as carefully as possible.

  ‘Traitress! Traitress! I accuse you of high treason!’

  The yells of Sir Meliagrance brought the hurt knights hobbling to the door – the commotion spread – tire—women and serving maids, pages, turf boys, a couple of grooms, all came with excitement to the scene.

  ‘They are all false,’ cried Sir Meliagrance, ‘all or some. A wounded knight hath been here.’

  Guenever said, ‘That is untrue. They can prove it.’

  ‘It is a lie,’ the knights shouted. ‘Choose which of us you will fight. We will fight you.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ yelled Sir Meliagrance. ‘Away with your proud language. A wounded knight ‘as been sleeping with ‘er Majesty!’

  And he kept on pointing to the blood, which was certainly good evidence, until Sir Lancelot arrived among the now sheepish bodyguard. Nobody noticed that his hand was in a glove.

  ‘What is the matter?’ asked Lancelot.

  Meliagrance began telling him, wildly, gesticulating, seizing with excitement upon a fresh person to tell. He was like a man crazy with grief.

  Lancelot said coldly: ‘May I remind you about your own conduct towards the Queen?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I don’t care. I know a knight was in this room last evening.’

  ‘Be careful what you say.’

  Lancelot looked at him hard, trying to warn him and to bring him to his senses. They both knew that this accusation must end in trial by combat, and Lancelot wanted to make him realize with whom he would have to fight. Sir Meliagrance did realize this eventually. He looked at Lancelot with unexpected dignity.

  ‘And you be careful too, Sir Lancelot,’ he said quietly. ‘I know you are the best knight in the world, but be careful ‘ow you fight in a wrong quarrel. God might strike a stroke for justice, Sir Lancelot, after all.’

  The Queen’s true lover set his teeth.

  ‘That must be left to God,’ he said.

  Then he added, very meanly: ‘So far as I am concerned, I say plainly that none of these wounded knights was in the Queen’s room. And if you want to fight about it, I will fight you.’

  Lancelot was, in the end, to fight for the Queen at the stake three times: first in the good quarrel of Sir Mador, second in this very doubtful quibble of words with Sir Meliagrance, and third in a quarrel which was wrong altogether – and each fight brought them nearer to destruction.

  Sir Meliagrance threw down his glove. He was so certain of the truth of his assertion that he had become obstinate, as people do in violent arguments. He was prepared to die rather than withdraw. Lancelot took the glove – what else could he do? Everybody began attending to the paraphernalia of a challenge, the usual sealing of the gages with signets and so on, and the fixing of the date. Sir Meliagrance grew quieter. Now that he was caught in the machinery of justice, he had time to reflect, and, as usual, his reflections went the opposite way. He was an inconsistent man.

  ‘Sir Lancelot,’ he said, ‘now that we are fixed to have a fight, you won’t do nothing treacherous to me meanwhile?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Lancelot looked at him in genuine amazement. His heart was like Arthur’s. He was always getting himself into trouble – as, for instance, by unhorsing the Orkneys at Westminster – through underestimating the wickedness of the world.

  ‘We will be friends till the battle?’

  The old warrior felt his long—accustomed pang of shame. He was to fight this man for saying what was practically true.

  ‘Yes,’ he said enthusiastically, ‘friends!’

  He moved towards Meliagrance with an uprush of remorse.

  ‘Then we will have peace for now,’ said Meliagrance in a pleased voice. ‘Everything above board. Would you like to see my castle?’

  ‘Indeed I should.’

  Meliagrance led him all over the castle, from room to room, until they came to a chamber with a trapdoor. The board rolled and the trap opened. Lancelot fell sixty feet, landing on deep straw in a dungeon. Then Meliagrance ordered one of the horses to be hidden, and went back to the Queen to tell her that her champion had ridden ahead. Lancelot’s well—known habit of abrupt departures lent colour to the story. It seemed to Meliagrance the best way of ensuring that God should not choose the wrong side of this quarrel – for Meliagrance was muddled with his standards too.

  Chapter XLIV

  The second trial by combat was as sensational as the Mador one had been. For one thing, Lancelot arrived, at the last moment, by a still narrower margin. They had waited for him, and given him up, and persuaded Sir Lavine to fight in his place. Sir Lavine was actually riding into the lists when the great man came at full gallop, on a white horse which belonged to Meliagrance. He had been held captive in the dungeon until that morning – when the girl who brought him his food had finally liberated him in the absence of her master, in exchange for a kiss. He had suffered some complicated scruples about this kiss: but had decided in the end that it was permissible.

  Meliagrance went down at the first charge, and refused to get up.

  ‘I yield,’ he said. ‘I’m a gonner.’

  ‘Get up, get up. You have not fought at all.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ said Sir Meliagrance.

  Lancelot stood over him in perplexity. He owed him a thrashing for the business of the horse, and for the treachery of the trapdoor. But he knew that the man’s accusation was essentially right, and he did not like the idea of killing him.

  ‘Mercy,’ said Sir Meliagrance.

  Lancelot turned his eyes sideways to the Queen’s pavilion, where she sat under the Constable’s ward. Nobody could see this look of inquiry because of the great helm.

  Guenever saw it, however, or felt it in her heart. She turned her thumb down, over the edge of the box, and secretly jabbed it downward several times. Meliagrance, she thought, was a dangerous man to keep alive.

  There was great silence in the arena, while everybody waited without breath, leaning forward and looking upon the combatants like a circle of vultures whose prey is not yet dead. Everybody was waiting for the coup de grâce, like the people at a Roman amphitheatre or at a Spanish bullfight, and everybody was sure that Lancelot would give it. The accusation of Meliagrance had been, in their opinion, much more serious than the accusation of Mador – and they thought, like Guenever, that he deserved to perish. For in those days love was ruled by a different convention to ours. In those days it was chivalrous, adult, long, religious, almost platonic. It was not a matter about which you could make accusations lightly. It was not, as we take it to be nowadays, begun and ended in a long week—end.

  The spectators saw Lancelot hesitating over the man, then heard his voice coming muffled by the helm. He was making proposals.

  ‘I will give you odds,’ he was saying, ‘if you will get up and fight me properly, to the death. I will take off my helm and all the armour on the left side of my body, and I will fight without a shield, with my left hand tied behind my back. That will be fair, surely? Will you get up and fight me like that?’

  A sort of high, hysterical squeal came from Sir Meliagrance, who could be seen crawling towards the King’s box and making violent gestures.

  ‘Don’t forget
what’e said,’ he was shouting. ‘Everybody ‘eard ‘im. I accept ‘is terms. Don’t let ‘im go back on ’em. No harmour for the left side, no shield or ‘elm, and ‘is left hand tied behind ‘is back. Everybody ‘eard! Everybody ‘eard!’

  The King cried, ‘Ho and abide!’ The heralds and kings—at—arms came down the lists, and Meliagrance was silenced. Everybody felt shame on his behalf. In the distasteful stillness, while he muttered and insisted that the terms should be observed, reluctant hands disarmed Sir Lancelot and tied him. They felt they were helping at the execution of somebody whom they loved very much, for the odds were too heavy. When they had bound him and given him his sword, they patted him – pushing him forward towards Meliagrance with these rough pats, and turning away their faces.

  There was a flash in the sandy lists, like a salmon jumping a weir. It was Lancelot showing his naked side to draw the blow. And, as the blow came, there was the click of changing forms – the same click as comes in the kaleidoscope when the image alters. The blow which Meliagrance was giving had changed to a blow which Lancelot was giving.

  Sir Meliagrance was dragged out of the field by horses. His helm and head were in two pieces.

  Chapter XLV

  Well, that is the long story of how the foreigner from Benwick stole Queen Guenever’s love, of how he left her for his God and finally returned in spite of the taboo. It is a story of love in the old days, when adults loved faithfully – not a story of the present, in which adolescents pursue the ignoble spasms of the cinematograph. These people had struggled for a quarter of a century to reach their understanding, and now their Indian Summer was before them. Lancelot had given his God to Guenever, and she had given him his freedom in exchange. Elaine, who had never been more than an incidental part of the muddle, had achieved a peace of her own. Arthur, whose corner of the triangle was the least fortunate from a personal point of view, was not entirely wretched. Merlyn had not intended him for private happiness. He had been made for royal joys, for the fortunes of a nation. These, for the time of their sunset, Lancelot’s two sensational victories had restored. Fashion and modernity and the rot at the Table’s heart were in hiding, and his great idea was on the move once more. He was inventing Law as Power. Nor had Arthur cause for private reproach. He had kept himself aloof from the pains of Guenever and Lancelot, unconsciously trusting them not to bring the matter to his consciousness, not from motives of fear or of weak connivance, but from the noblest of motives. The power had been in the King’s hands. He had been in the position of a husband who could, by a single command, solve the problem of eternal triangles by reference to the headman’s block or to the stake. His wife and her lover had been at his mercy – and that was the reason, not any reason of cowardice, why his generous heart had been determined to remain unconscious.