Now you must know that Igraine, his mother, had borne three daughters to her first husband before ever she became Utha’s queen. And the eldest, Elaine, was married to King Nantres of Garlot, and the second, Margawse, was married to King Lot of Orkney, and the youngest, Morgan La Fay, was married to King Uriens of Gore. And the husbands of all of them were among the eleven outland kings.
Morgan La Fay was a mistress of black magic, and she sought always to do harm to Arthur her half-brother. But it was Margawse who did him the sorest harm in the end. And this was the way of it: she was sent by King Lot, her lord, no one knowing who she was, to play the spy in the High King’s court; and she was beautiful, and nearly twice as old as he was, and skilled in the sweet dark ways of temptation; and so she made him love her for one night. Merlin could have warned him, but at that one unlucky time, when he was needed most, Merlin was away about affairs of his own. So the thing happened. And nine months later, back in her own far northern home, Queen Margawse bore a son, whose father was not Lot of Orkney, but her half-brother, Arthur of Britain. And she sent word to the young High King, telling him who she was, and that she had borne their child and named him Mordred, and that one day she would send him to his father’s court.
Then Arthur knew that he had done one of the forbidden things, and that because of it, in one way or another, he was doomed. But meanwhile he had a kingdom that must be ruled and a life that must be lived as valiantly and justly and truly and joyfully as might be; and this he set himself to do.
It was not long after that the sword which he had drawn from the stone, and which had served him well in all his fighting since, broke in his hand. And from the Lady of the Lake, he received another sword: the great sword Excalibur, faery-forged for a hero and a High King, which served him all the rest of his days. And a while after that, he saw and loved Guenever, the daughter of Leodegraunce the King of Camelaird, and took her for his Queen.
Guenever brought with her for her dowry a mighty round table and a hundred of her father’s best and bravest knights to swell the strength of the High King’s own following. And the High King’s following was already strong, for champions were gathering to him from the farthest ends of his realm and even from beyond the seas. And so the brotherhood of the Round Table came into being; that great company of knights oath-bound to fight always for the Right; to protect the weak from the tyrants; strong to uphold the ways of justice and gentleness throughout the land.
Merlin saw only the beginning of that gathering, for his own fate was upon him, calling him down to his long enchanted sleep beneath a magic hawthorn tree.
So – the knights gathered, Sir Bors and Sir Lional and Sir Bedivere; from Orkney came Sir Gawain, the High King’s nephew (though he was but a few years younger than Arthur himself) and later his brothers Gaheris and Agravane and Gareth, for all the sons of Margawse left her as soon as they could draw sword – all except Mordred. And from the kingdom of Benwick across the Narrow Seas, came Sir Lancelot of the Lake, the greatest of all the brotherhood.
Each of them brought their own story, and men have told and retold them ever since; minstrels singing to the harp in a prince’s hall; monks in chilly cloisters writing upon sheets of vellum for the making of books; a Lancastrian knight called Sir Thomas Malory weaving tales and songs together in a narrow prison cell … Tales of Sir Lancelot and Elaine the Lily, of Sir Lancelot and the Queen; tales of Geraint and Enid, and Gareth and Linnet, and Gawain and the Green Knight; the long and tragic lament for Tristan and Iseult, the short and shining account of the coming of Percival. These and many and many more together make up the first part of the great story of King Arthur, which I have told in an earlier book, The Sword and the Circle.
Only a year after the coming of Percival, there follows the story of the Holy Grail, the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, and which afterwards received His blood; and how the knights of the Round Table set out in quest of the Mystery, for their souls’ sake and the sake of the kingdom. And that retelling I have called The Light Beyond the Forest.
It is a strange story, of a forest that is not like other forests, and a maimed king and magic ships and a bleeding lance, and always the Grail moving ahead like a beckoning light among the trees.
One by one the knights died in their questing, or lost heart and turned homeward, until only four were left; Sir Percival and Sir Bors, Sir Lancelot and Sir Galahad, his son. And of these four it was given only to Sir Galahad to fully achieve the quest, and in achieving it to die, for mortal man cannot come to the heart of the Mystery and yet live on in the world of men. And Sir Bors and Sir Percival, coming close behind him, achieved something of the quest, and lived on, Sir Percival for a year before he followed Sir Galahad, Sir Bors to return home. And Sir Lancelot, struggling valiantly and desperately behind them, failed the quest because of his love for Guenever the Queen, which he could not put altogether away from him, and so was allowed only a distant glimpse of the glory of the Grail and its meaning before he was turned back.
And so the great days, the shining days of the Round Table were over; and the long, many-coloured, many-stranded story of King Arthur Pendragon turns to its third part; the last and the darkest. The part which in this book I have called The Road to Camlann.
2
The Poisoned Apple
THE FLOWERING TIME that had come to Arthur’s Britain with the Grail Quest was over and past, though for a while a golden quietness lingered like the little summer that comes sometimes when the days are growing shorter and the autumn is already well begun.
The knights had returned to sit at their old places at the Round Table – those of them who returned at all. But many of them did not come back, and among them some of the bravest and the best. And a new generation of young knights came in to take their places: men who had never known the early days, the shining days of high adventure, of young champions gathering about a young High King, with the battle to save Britain and champion the Right still in front of them.
And among this wave of new men, his mother Queen Margawse, who had kept him always at her side, being now dead, came Mordred, half-brother to Gawain and Gaheris, Agravane and Gareth. Mordred, who was own son to the High King.
And with his coming, it seemed that the waiting dark began to gather itself, ready for the time of creeping in …
Mordred was very like his father to look upon, but cast in a lighter and a slighter mould. Whereas Arthur was brown-skinned, and had been fair-headed like a hayfield at harvest time before his hair became streaked with grey, Mordred had the pallor of something reared in a dark cellar far from the light and air. Pale skin, pale hair, eyes pale and opaque and veined with brilliant blue like turquoise matrix, so that no man could ever see what went on behind them; a voice light and pleasant and somehow pale too. He was a leader of men in his way, though it was not the way of his father, but he could set fashions that men would follow; fashions for wearing black garments, for playing with a flower or a feather between his fingers; a fashion for thinking and secretly speaking ill of the Queen with a shrug of the shoulders and a little laugh.
Mordred had nothing against the Queen herself, but he had not been at court seven days before his subtle mind had divined the love between Guenever and Lancelot, the foremost of the King’s knights and his dearest friend, and how the King himself took care not to know, never to recognise, even to himself, that that love existed.
Guenever was the weak place in the King’s defences; Lancelot and Guenever together were the way through which he might be reached and brought to ruin, and all that he stood for with him. And Mordred hated his father the High King and coveted his throne, as Margawse, his mother and Arthur’s half-sister, had taught him to do through all his childhood and his growing years.
The older and truer knights, Gawain foremost among them, held out against the new fashion. But without anyone knowing how it happened, save Mordred himself, and maybe Agravane the mischief-maker, who from the first was his follower and r
ight-hand man, it was not long before many of the newcomers were whispering among themselves that Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenever were betraying the King by their love for each other, or that Guenever was betraying both of them; and that in any case the King should be told.
For a while it seemed that having raised the small evil wind, there was little more that Mordred could do with it; for Sir Lancelot also heard the whispers, and he said to Sir Bors his cousin, ‘Now I am thinking it is once more time that I was gone from court for a while.’
‘That may indeed be so,’ said Sir Bors. ‘Yet I think it is no time for one of your far-riding quests, lest when you are far from us and no man knowing where, the Queen may have sudden need of you.’
And they looked each other in the eye as old comrades-in-arms, neither speaking Mordred’s name. And Lancelot said, ‘That was in my mind also. Therefore, while the court is here in London I shall go only so far as Windsor, and beg shelter of the hermit there, he that was once of our company, Sir Brassius. None save you shall know where I am gone. But if the Queen has need of me, do you send me instant word.’
‘That will I,’ said Sir Bors.
And Sir Lancelot of the Lake donned his armour and sent for his horse and, as he had done to save the reputation of the Queen so many times before, rode away.
And when he was gone, the Queen took to wearing all her jewels and laughing a great deal, to show to all men and women that she cared nothing for Sir Lancelot’s going, and was as happy with him far away as she was when he was near at hand. And when he had been gone a while, she made ready to give a private supper party in her own apartments to a few chosen knights of the Round Table.
She bade come to her feast Sir Gawain of Orkney and his brothers Gaheris, Agravane and Gareth, Sir Mordred, Sir Bleoberis the Standard Bearer, Sir Ector of the Marsh and Sir Bors and Sir Kay the Seneschal, Sir Lucan, Sir Mador de la Porte and his cousin Sir Patrice, and a certain Sir Pinel the Wild, cousin to that Sir Lamorack who had been slain in blood feud by the Orkney brothers far back in the years before the coming of the Grail. These and others, twenty in all, the Queen bade to come and sup with her.
And she set herself to order and make ready a feast that should do honour to her guests.
Now all his life Sir Gawain had a great love for fruit, especially apples. This was known to all men and, wherever he was a guest, his host would take pains to see that fruit was set upon the table for his pleasure. So now, though it was late in the year, the Queen took much trouble to come by some of the little golden long-biding apples that are withered and sweet as honey at Christmas, enough to fill a dish to set close by Sir Gawain’s place at table.
So then, the Queen held her feast, and those who were bidden to it made merry at her table, while her harper played for them beside the fire of scented logs. But among her guests, Sir Pinel hated the Orkney brothers, Gawain the leader of them most of all, for the sake of his kinsman Sir Lamorack, and for long and long he had brooded upon ways to do them harm; though he had done no more than brood until Sir Mordred came to court. And Sir Pinel also knew of Sir Gawain’s love of apples …
And when the main part of the feasting was over, the wine still went round, and they fell to eating dried apricots and little honey-and-almond cakes and the like. And then as chance would have it, Sir Gawain and Sir Patrice both reached for an apple in the same instant; and Sir Gawain in courtesy held back his hand for Sir Patrice to take first. And Sir Patrice took the biggest and finest apple from the top of the pile.
If any had been watching, they might have seen that Sir Pinel began a sudden movement of protest, then checked into frozen stillness, staring down at the half-eaten honey-cake in his hand. They might have seen for an instant the trace of a startled frown between Sir Mordred’s pale brows, before he took up his wine cup with a faint shrug, as one saying within himself, ‘Ah well, these things happen.’
But nobody chanced to be looking their way.
And Sir Patrice ate the apple to the core, and threw the core into the fire, where it sent up a little hissing spurt of blue flame. And in the same instant he began to choke; and choking and clutching at his throat struggled to rise, then fell sprawling backwards upon the rush-strewn floor.
The men nearest to him sprang to his aid; but he was already dead, and beyond their help.
‘Poison!’ someone cried.
Mordred, kneeling among those beside the body, remembered small dark hints of his own, dropped into Sir Pinel’s ear; remembered also that quickly frozen movement, and knew well enough that the poisoned apple had been meant for Sir Gawain, and who had poisoned it. It would have been better to have had his half-brother Gawain out of the way. Sir Gawain, living, would always be a danger to his plans and was a loyal man to Arthur. But Sir Patrice’s death would serve his own purposes well enough, he thought. For the Queen had provided the apples and so suspicion must fall on her – if it were given a little guidance – and with suspicion must come danger; and when word of that danger reached Sir Lancelot, it would fetch him hot-foot back to her aid. Somewhere among all that, though he had no time as yet to see where, must lie the chance to work evil against the King and father whom he hated.
And getting to his feet, he too cried, ‘Poison!’ in a voice of horror, his face turned full upon the Queen.
Then a great uproar broke out in the Queen’s chamber, with Sir Mador in the midst of it all, crying that his cousin had been foully slain, and that he would have blood for it, until Sir Gawain shouted him down. ‘Whoever did this thing, the poison was meant for me, and not for Sir Patrice! All men know the fondness that I have for apples –’
‘All men, and all women!’ shouted back Sir Mador.
‘What mean you by that?’ demanded Sir Gawain. ‘Now by God’s teeth, speak clear!’
And a second time, into the sudden silence, Sir Mordred whispered, ‘Poison!’ as one who cannot believe the horror of his own thoughts, his brilliant blue eyes wide upon the Queen, who had risen and stood as though turned to stone in their midst.
And Sir Mador looked around him at the crowding knights, and said, ‘I will speak clear! No matter who the poison was meant for, I have lost a kinsman and a friend by it, and in the Queen’s apartments. And before you all, I accuse the Queen of his death. Since none but she and her household have had access to the food upon this table!’
And the knights standing all about, Sir Pinel among them, looked aghast at the Queen and at each other. And not one of them spoke up in Guenever’s defence, for save Sir Pinel and Sir Mordred there was not one but had suspicion of her in his heart.
And standing in their midst, Queen Guenever began to sway. Soundless and white to the lips, she slid to the ground in a swoon so deep that it was as though she also were dead.
Then while her maidens came running to tend her, word was sent to the King; and he came straightway, and strode in through the doorway just as she sighed and opened her eyes.
‘I have heard a wild story,’ said the King. ‘Let someone now tell me the truth of it.’
And the knights parted, that he might see Sir Patrice lying dead upon the floor. And standing rigidly beside his slain kinsman, Sir Mador de la Porte repeated his accusation against the Queen.
The Queen, who had risen wavering to her feet once more with the help of her maidens, gazed wildly from her lord’s face to the face of her accuser. ‘Before God,’ said she, ‘I am innocent of this sin!’ and held out beseeching hands.
Arthur crossed the floor and took her hand in his, and holding it, looked about him at his knights. ‘This is a hideous matter,’ he said, ‘but as to your Lady the Queen’s part in it, you have heard her swear that she is innocent. Do you accept that?’
‘No, my Lord King,’ said Sir Mador bluntly, ‘I do not accept it.’ And no other man spoke at all.
‘Then it seems that we must put the case to trial in the Court of Honour,’ said Arthur. ‘If I were not the King, I would gladly take my lady’s quarrel upon myself and prove her inno
cence in single combat against all accusers. But I am the King, and so bound by the law to be a just judge and not a champion in any such trial. But, Sir Mador, I make no doubt that another will take my place and give you battle in the Queen’s name, rather than that she should suffer death unjustly.’
But no knight stood forward to take the Queen’s cause upon himself, to prove her innocence in single combat; for to uphold her cause before God’s judgement, doubting that it was indeed a rightful one, would be a terrible thing to do, and might set one’s very soul in peril.
‘My Lord King,’ said Sir Mador after a long pause, ‘there is no one here who will fight for the Queen. Therefore name me a day on which I shall have justice.’
And with the Queen’s hand still strong-held in his, the King said steadily, ‘Not all the knights of the Round Table are here within this chamber, nor even at court this day. Fifteen days from now, Sir Mador, do you come armed and mounted to the meadows below Westminster. It may be that one will come against you as the Queen’s champion; then may God be with the Right. And if none comes, then shall my Queen be ready, that same day, to receive judgement of death upon her.’
‘I am content,’ said Sir Mador.
And silently the knights went their separate ways, bearing the body of Sir Patrice among them.
And when the King and Queen were alone, Arthur asked his wife to tell him all she knew of what had happened.
‘Truly I know nothing,’ said Guenever, ‘but that I had a bowl of apples set for Sir Gawain, and Sir Patrice took the finest apple and ate, and died; and that, before God, I am innocent!’
‘That I believe,’ said the King, ‘but my belief is not enough. Where is Lancelot, who has been your champion since first he was made knight?’
Guenever shook her head. ‘Would to God and His sweet mother that I knew; for if I might get word to him, he would surely come and play the champion’s part for me now.’