The two younger knights looked at him in horror; and Gareth said, ‘Sir Lancelot knighted me!’
And Gaheris said, ‘He saved me from Sir Tarquine, and always he has stood as a friend to me!’
‘Nevertheless, you shall obey the orders of your king,’ said Arthur, and his voice grated in his throat.
They stood rigid before him, and Gareth was grey-white, as though he himself were being ordered to the stake. But they had sworn fealty to the High King, and the habit of obedience and discipline was stronger in them than ever it had been in Gawain. And at last Gareth said, ‘If that is your last word, then we must obey your orders, my liege lord, but we will not take up arms against Sir Lancelot, but go forth unarmed and in robes of mourning that the Queen may know to the end our love towards her.’
‘I am with my brother in this,’ said Sir Gaheris.
‘In the name of God then, make you ready, and go forth in whatever guise you choose,’ cried the King.
And Sir Gawain, with the tears trickling into his red beard, said, ‘Grief upon me, that I was born to see this day!’ And he turned and stumbled away to his chamber, his two brothers following.
And the King returned to his caged pacing up and down.
Next morning the Queen was led forth to the open space beyond the castle walls, where the stake waited for her with brushwood piled around its foot. And her queenly garments were stripped from her so that she stood up only in her white shift. And a priest was brought to confess her that she might be shriven of her sins. And then she was led towards the stake, and lifted up upon the pyre, and bound there above the heads of the people. And all the crowd who had gathered there in sorrow or in triumph fell back, so that only her escort remained near at hand; and the two figures in their darkly hooded cloaks of Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth.
And the King stood watching from the high window in the keep, as rigid as though he too were bound to a stake. And he never saw the blink of light three times repeated from the tower of the old church opposite, in the instant that the Queen was brought out from the castle; for all his gaze was fixed upon the open space below.
A great quiet had fallen over the crowd, and the executioner’s torch was already lit. And the King was listening for something, listening with an aching intensity that seemed to hold his very heart in check. And then he heard it – the drum of horses’ hooves, far in the distance but sweeping nearer at full gallop.
Riding day and night, with many changes of horse along the way, Sir Lancelot was back from Joyous Gard, with his own fighting men behind him. Everybody knew that it was Sir Lancelot; the youngest weeping page and the executioner pausing, torch in hand, the High King in his window, and the Queen bound to her stake. They knew, even before the bright arrowhead of horsemen burst out from the narrow ways between the houses into the crowded square. He and his men had lain up in the woods overnight, while one of their number in an all-concealing cloak had entered the town and kept watch in the church tower, to signal with the sunlight on his shield the moment when the Queen was brought out clear of the castle walls.
The mailed arrowhead of horsemen drove into the crowd and through it, the early sunlight jinking on their weapons and harness; and the shouts and cries and weapon-clash and the trampling of horses’ hooves came up in a surf-roar of sound to the King in his high window; and below him the fight swirled about the pyre, small with distance but terrible. The executioner’s torch had gone down, to be trampled out beneath the horses’ hooves. He saw Lancelot’s blade rise and fall in desperate, slashing strokes, as he forced his tall destrier through to the pyre, and again the flash of Joyeux’s blade, this time slashing through the cords that bound Guenever to the stake. Far below, he saw the Queen hold out her white arms to her love, as Sir Lancelot reached from the saddle to fling a dark cloak around her. How like Lancelot, he thought, to remember that she would be stripped to her shift, and bring a woman’s cloak with him. Next instant he had caught her from her footing among the piled brushwood and dragged her across his saddlebow. Then, holding her close, swung his horse round and, with his own men closing all about him, was fighting his way out.
And then it was over, and the hoof-beats drumming away into the distance, no man following. And in the square below the castle walls the crowd were in a turmoil, and round the unlit pyre men lay dead on the stained and trampled ground. And still the High King stood as though captive in his window, torn between despair for what he knew must now come to Britain, even as Merlin had foretold, and a sick relief that Lancelot had saved the Queen.
A strange blackness came between him and the scene down in the square, between him and all the world, so that for a while he saw nothing more. But when the world came back to him again, he was still standing in the window, but holding to the deep stone transom, his forehead pressed down against his hand. And hurrying footsteps were blundering up the stair and into the chamber. He straightened himself from the window and turned, and found Sir Gawain standing before him, staring at him with blazing eyes in a terrible grey face.
Gawain said, choking on the words, ‘He has killed Gareth and Gaheris!’
‘Who?’ said Arthur. His head felt numb and would not think.
‘Sir Lancelot! He has killed Gareth and Gaheris! They are lying down there by the scaffold with their heads split open.’
The King shook his own head. He could not believe it; it must be that there was some mistake. ‘Not Gareth. Not Gaheris either. He loved Gareth best of all the Round Table after you – and me.’
‘They are lying down there with their heads split open,’ Gawain repeated; and it was as though he must fight to get enough breath to speak the words. ‘Lancelot killed them unarmed.’
‘Unarmed,’ the King said quickly, ‘and in those grey-hooded cloaks. He would have had no means of knowing them.’
‘Gareth was by half a head the tallest of your knights!’ said Sir Gawain. ‘By his height alone, no man could have failed to know him … I would not take up the blood feud for Agravane, but I take it up now for Gaheris and for Gareth. And I will not be laying it down again so long as the life is in me – or in Sir Lancelot of the Lake!’
And he flung himself down on a bench, his head in his arms, and wept gaspingly and agonisingly for the death of his brothers; and for the old love between himself and Lancelot that was now turned to hate.
And standing unnoticed in a corner, gentling his arm in its sling, Sir Mordred, who had come up behind Sir Gawain, smiled like one well content with the skilled work of his hands.
5
Two Castles
SIR LANCELOT CARRIED the Queen away through the mountains to his own castle of Joyous Gard. And there he lodged her with all honour, as befitted Arthur’s Queen.
And at Joyous Gard there gathered to him Sir Ector of the Marsh, his half-brother, and his kinsmen, Sir Bors and Sir Lional, and many more, upward half of the Round Table, both for his sake and the Queen’s.
And King Arthur would fain have let all things rest a while, that hot blood might have space to cool, and time might sort out the good from the evil. But those knights who were still of his following, Sir Gawain foremost among them, were at him night and day that Sir Lancelot was his enemy and had carried off his Queen, and he should make war upon him as he would upon any other foe within his borders. And so at last the High King sent out the summons to all his warhost; and marched upon Joyous Gard.
Sir Lancelot had word of their coming, and knew that it was Sir Gawain more than the King who was against him; for Sir Bors and the rest had told him of how he had slain Sir Gaheris and Sir Gareth, and warned him of what must follow. That had made bitter hearing, for he would have hacked off his own right hand before he knowingly did harm to either of them. But the mêlée about the stake had been too fierce to leave time for singling out two unarmed men among the surging press of knights and men-at-arms, nor for choosing where his sword-strokes landed, nor for noticing that one dark-hooded figure was taller than all the rest about the stake.
He had had no time or thought for anything but cutting his way through to save the Queen. But truly, after Gawain and the King, he loved Gareth best of all the Round Table brotherhood; and his heart seemed bleeding within him for their deaths at his hand. Now there was blood feud between him and Sir Gawain, and grief for that tore at him also. But there was no time for bewailing what had come to pass, with the King’s war-host marching north against him.
So he gathered his fighting men and called in all the folk of the valley and the village beyond the gates, and their cattle with them, and penned all safe within the castle walls, and made ready in all ways that were possible. And the King came and pitched his warcamp below the walls of Joyous Gard, so that all the valley round about was fluttering with the pennants of his nobles and their knights. And he laid siege to Joyous Gard.
For fifteen weeks the siege dragged on, while the summer passed, and the fields along the valley floor were white with barley and golden with wheat, and the great ox-wagons should have been bringing in the sheaves that the horses of the King’s war-host trampled down. But the castle was strong and well garrisoned and still well-supplied, and at the end of that time it was no nearer to falling than it had been on the first day.
And then on a day towards the edge of autumn, Sir Lancelot spoke from the ramparts with the King and Sir Gawain sitting their great warhorses below him in the open stretch between the walls and the camp.
‘My lords both,’ said Sir Lancelot, ‘you will gain no honour in this siege. You have sat here long and long, but you will not take Joyous Gard.’
‘And you will gain no honour skulking behind castle walls,’ flung back the King. ‘Do you come out and meet me in single combat, that we may end this matter. I swear that no other shall be with me.’
This was the thing of all others that Sir Lancelot had dreaded, and the chief reason why he had held back so long. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that I should encounter with the most noble king in Christendom, and he my liege lord from whose hands I received my knighthood.’
‘Out upon your fair language!’ cried the King, beside himself with grief that he could only bear by turning it into anger. ‘Know this, and believe it, that I am your enemy and always shall be; for you have slain my knights and borne away my Queen, and broken asunder the brotherhood of the Round Table and the Kingdom of Logres.’
‘The slaying of your knights, alas, I cannot deny,’ returned Sir Lancelot, ‘and among them those that were dear friends to me, for which the grief will be upon me all my days. But it was done in the saving of the life of your Queen, whom you condemned to the fire. From that fire it was, and not from you, that I bore the Queen away, as I have saved her from other dangers before now, and received thanks from both of you.’ And he leaned further out over the parapet and demanded, ‘My Lord King, look in your heart – would you indeed have had her burn?’
‘Shut your treacherous mouth!’ shouted Sir Gawain, half-mad with fury, before the King could answer. ‘Have done with this twisting of the truth; for all men know the shame of what lies between you and the Queen!’
Lancelot answered him in a lion’s roar. ‘Do you accuse the Queen, then?’
‘Nay, I speak no word against the Queen. On you lies the guilt, the false treachery to your liege lord –’
‘That is well for you,’ Sir Lancelot flung back at him, ‘for I will fight for the Queen’s innocence as I have done before, against any man save the King. And if I come out against you, Sir Gawain, beware of my coming!’
And he turned and strode away down the rampart stair, with a parting insult from the man who had so long been his friend, ringing in his ears.
And the King, with Lancelot’s question ‘Would you indeed have had her burn?’ sounding still in his own heart, wheeled his horse and rode back to the royal camp in silence, with Sir Gawain cursing and half-sobbing beside him.
Within the castle, Sir Bors and Sir Lional and Sir Ector and the rest came to Lancelot and said, ‘It is time for fighting! We who love you know that it is for love of the King that you have remained so long behind these walls, hoping for peace between you. But the King will make no peace with you; not while Sir Gawain stands at his shoulder. And to bide longer within walls after the insults that have been flung at you this day will look like fear to men who do not know you as we do. Fight now, for your right and your honour, and we are your men!’
And Lancelot knew that they spoke truth; and knew also, that with the harvest lying wrecked and ungathered, the stores within the castle must soon be sinking low.
So next morning the gates and sally-ports of the castle were flung open, and with trumpets sounding and spear-head pennants fluttering many-coloured over all, Sir Lancelot led out his knights and squires and men-at-arms to the fight.
Then from the King’s camp the trumpets crowed in reply, as fighting-cocks send their challenge one to another at dawn. And the King and his knights rode out to meet them; and the two companies rolled together like two great waves, and crashed upon each other; and all the open land below the castle was a’swirl and a’trample with battle, and the end-of-summer dust-cloud rising and billowing over all.
The whole day they fought. And in the thick of the fighting Sir Gawain, seeking Sir Lancelot, came up against Sir Lional across his way, and ran him through the body so that he dropped dead from the saddle. And Sir Bors, seeing what befell, and charging to avenge his brother, hacked down Sir Gawain, and then came shield to shield with Arthur himself. For a few straining and sweating moments they grappled together, their swords locked at the hilt, like the still centre at the heart of a whirlpool, among the surge of men and horses all about them; and then Sir Bors broke his blade free, and fetched the King a blow that pitched him down into the bloody dust under the trampling hooves of the battle. Sir Bors, plunging out of the saddle, stood over him with drawn sword, and a little gap opened as the fighting shifted, and Sir Lancelot was there.
Sir Bors shouted to him, ‘Shall I make an end to this war?’
‘Not in that way, unless you would lose your own head,’ said Sir Lancelot grimly. ‘For I will not see my liege lord either slain or shamed while I stand by!’
And he dismounted also, while Sir Bors, still sword in hand, stood back; and he helped the King to his feet again, and mounted him from his own knee back into the saddle of his snorting and trampling horse.
‘My most dear lord,’ he said, ‘for Christ’s sweet sake let us end this strife. Take back your Queen – so that you take her with love and honour, letting no more harm come to her. And I will cross the Narrow Seas to Benwick, and return no more, unless the time comes that you have need of me.’
‘The law –’ said the King, drooping in his saddle. ‘The Queen is not above the law – but must be as any poor woman –’
‘And that you have proved. But mercy is above the law. Can you not give her your mercy, as you might give it to any poor woman?’
And the King looked down into the ugly, haggard face of the knight standing at his stirrup, and the love that he had had for him and for Guenever the Queen swelled within him until it seemed that his heart must burst through his rib-cage. And he said, ‘Bring the Queen to me in tomorrow’s morning, and she shall have all honour, and her place beside me again, and my love as she has had it all these years.’
And Sir Gawain had been carried from the field to have his wounds tended; so the truce was made, and the two armies drew apart.
A little later, straight from the battle and without waiting to disarm and wash off the sweat and the blood as at other times he would have done, Sir Lancelot went to the Queen in her chamber.
‘Is the fighting over?’ she asked; for she had not dared to climb the keep stair and watch, for dread of what she would see.
‘The fighting is over. It must be over,’ said Sir Lancelot heavily. ‘Gawain has killed Lional – and many other good knights are slain. And for my sake Bors would have slain the King, if I had not stayed him.’
And the Queen lo
oked into his face, and at what she saw there she gave a low cry and held out her arms to him.
But he drew away. ‘Nay, I am still foul from the battlefield.’
‘What have you really come to tell me?’ she asked; and gestured her women from the room.
And Lancelot told her what had passed between himself and the High King.
She heard him through in silence; and when he had done, she said, ‘The glove for me and the sword for you. Do you remember Tristan and Iseult?’ And then she said, ‘How if I will not go back?’
‘You must go back,’ said Sir Lancelot. ‘Did I not tell you, Sir Bors would have slain the King for our sakes? If you return to him and take your old place, and if I go back to Benwick, then it may be that the wound that splits the Round Table apart and threatens all Logres will heal.’
‘And we shall never see each other again,’ said Guenever.
‘And we shall never see each other again,’ said Lancelot.
‘God help us both,’ said the Queen. ‘For we shall surely need it.’ And she pressed close to him, heedless of his battle-foulness and the harshness of his war-gear through the thin stuff of her gown. And she took his strange face between her hands and kissed him, once on the forehead and once on the mouth, and turned away to let him go.
Next morning early, the gates of Joyous Gard were opened wide, and Sir Lancelot, all unarmed and leading the Queen by the hand, came out. And behind him all his knights, unarmed likewise and bearing green truce-branches robbed from the castle garden. And so he led her to the King where he stood, his own nobles behind him, under an ancient hawthorn tree in the midst of the camp.