But seeing him Sir Mordred did call the Saxons to arms, and they soon formed a line the which stretched to the horizon on each side, and behind it were several more, for in number they were twenty thousand, and each man was armed with a lance and a sword and an ax, and the iron boss on his round shield protruded six inches and it served as a weapon as well.
But seeing this array King Arthur was not dismayed, for he believed that these foreigners did not understand his pacific intention. And he rode to where Mordred was, and he held his banner high with both hands so that Mordred could see he did not approach him in hostility.
And to his son he said, “My dear Mordred, this is a strange place to see thee.”
Now notwithstanding that he had twenty thousand armed men with him, Sir Mordred did greatly fear his father, whom lately he had watched swipe off King Mark’s head with one blow, and he well knew that Excalibur was yet invincible. And he could not ignore that decisive truth, for unless King Arthur were killed he would have achieved nothing. And though the king held the banner with both hands Mordred did not believe he could smite his father so powerfully that he would not be able to seize Excalibur before he died and to kill his bastard.
Therefore Sir Mordred offered him no attack, but rather he greeted him courteously, saying, “King Arthur, sire of Britain and myself, good day.”
“Mordred,” said King Arthur, “thou shouldst know that Mark hath gone home to Cornwall. I urge thee to urge thine Angles and Saxons to do as much and thus to avoid dying today on the blessed soil of Britain.”
“Well,” said Mordred, “Mark did not travel far, but rather met with great mishap beyond yon hill, and the flower of Cornwall alas! hath withered and died.”
“Can this be so?” said King Arthur. “These are most mournful news! For Mark was not a caitiff at heart, but misguided, a victim of his own inordinate humors, but for which he might have been a worthy man.” And then seeing Mordred’s derisive smile he said, “Yet he brought this unhappy end upon himself! Now, I would avoid further bloodshed here. I have no quarrel with the Saxons, and long ago I drove them from this land and wreaked no revenge on them thereafter. I desire no part of Germany, and if they leave Britain now I shall love them.”
“They are poor fellows,” said Mordred, “and their land is arid and they have nought to eat at home, and as you can see they have no clothes but coarse hides.”
“I see them armored cap-à-pie,” said Arthur, “but if they be naked underneath, then we shall furnish them with good British woolens. And from my granaries they may take so much corn as they need; and from my herds, fat beeves and stout ewes. And they may eat their fill and take more food home to Saxony, for I accept thy word for their plight though their breastplates do bulge in massive convexity.”
“But food alone doth not make the man,” said Mordred, “nor doth clothing which is merely warm meet their need. They would be gentlemen and wear velvet robes and silken hose and gold ornaments.”
“Well, I think overmuch of these be effeminate,” said King Arthur, “but perhaps so adorned they would be less warlike. Therefore I shall open to them my treasury at Caerleon, for which indeed I have ever had little use, for all Britons are naturally rich, even unto my churls, who till the most fertile soil in the world, and they have no wants the which God doth not supply them, and when early in my reign I sought to abolish serfdom, no serf would leave his master in the entire realm, for he loved him too much.”
And Sir Mordred was sickened to hear this, for he knew that it was too true!
And yet he said, “Methinks the lower classes be depraved! Do they not go to fairs and consort with gamesters and strumpets?”
“Yea, they do this sometimes,” said King Arthur. “For men in their station require the odd holiday. And while in the zeal of youth I sought to outlaw all debauchery I soon came to understand that in moderation it doth serve a salubrious purpose amongst the lower orders, who can never be expected to live on the stern principles of knights.”
“Such as adultery?” asked Mordred. “Yea, that is true! To sin one must be of an higher sensibility, above the herd but below the angels. And do you not hold the very image of Her who was married to the cuckold St. Joseph?”
Now King Arthur was sorely tried by Mordred’s blasphemous and obscene taunts, but he was stayed by his own guilty conscience towards his bastard.
“Mordred,” said he, “the Germans, and the late Cornishmen as well, are only pawns in thy game with me, I know full well. Thou hast been ill used all thy life, and I regret that with all mine heart! But I believed it needful for my reign not to acknowledge thee as my illegitimate issue. For I did think that the sovereign must be beyond reproach.”
And then the tears fell from King Arthur’s eyes. “But shalt thou permit me belatedly to give thee that which thou hast been denied all these years? Before my assembled knights I shall acknowledge thee as my son and embrace thee as the first Prince of Wales!”
“Now that your wife hath been proved an whore,” asked Mordred, “and your first knight hath crowned you with antlers? I thank you not, Father.”
And despite the vileness of this answer King Arthur was touched in the quick of his heart to be so addressed.
“Yea, mine own son,” he cried, “I am thy father and I would do anything I could for thee. The very throne of Britain be thine! Mordred, my dear, put down thine arms and send away thy foreign confederates, and I shall abdicate in thy favor.”
Now Mordred’s own heart leapt, and not in love or in virtuous joy, but rather in the realization that he was now very near to getting the means to kill King Arthur, for he would not that power be given him, but rather he wished virilely to seize it.
Therefore he said, “Well, Father, this is a fine speech and very cunning. But can I trust you to keep your promise if I send my Germans home? For I have learned that power comes only to him who already hath a deal of it, and not to him who is unarmed and naked.”
“Nay, my son,” said King Arthur. “All power comes from God, and He distributes it through His love.”
“Then, Father,” said Sir Mordred, “in proof of your love for me shall you dismount and taking your sword from its scabbard lay it upon the ground?”
Now King Arthur, who was sincere in his promise to abdicate and give his crown to Mordred, and who using all of his faith had come to love him, was nevertheless not yet so trustful of his bastard that he would readily put Excalibur down whilst Mordred stayed mounted and armed before an army of twenty thousand barbarians, whose savage steeds could scarce be restrained during this colloquy. And these horrid Saxons were themselves biting their lips, and the froth at their mouths was bloody, for heated by the slaughter of the Cornishmen they lusted to slay Arthur’s fine knights and tear their smoking hearts out and eat them, for these Germans were ferocious as wild beasts.
“Well,” said King Arthur, “I trust thee, my dear Mordred, but canst thou control yon bloodthirsty lot? For that reason I did never consort with foreigners much, and when thou hast assumed the throne I urge thee to spurn such alliances with un-Christian folk. Let the British knight, always outnumbered but never vanquished, be sufficient for thy needs.”
“Father,” said Mordred, “I am afraid that I require some earnest of your good intentions. Else I might think you merely a prating old man, clutching at the shreds of your rule beyond your proper time.”
And it was finally this stinging insult, rather than his real or supposed love for Mordred, that caused King Arthur to dismount and to take Excalibur from its jeweled scabbard and to lay it upon the earth.
Now Mordred was so thrilled to see this as to tremble violently in vicious glee. And indeed he was all but shaken from his saddle, and therefore he could not ride down King Arthur with his horse, the which he had planned to do so soon as his father was disarmed. And the king was nearer the sword than he and could pluck it up in a trice and kill him.
Therefore Mordred dismounted and taking out his own sword he threw it at Kin
g Arthur’s feet.
“Now, Sire,” said he, “may I not chide you for your delay? For there, freely given, is mine own earnest! And now I shall send my Germans away.” And directing King Arthur’s attention to them he cried to them in the Anglo-Saxon tongue for to attack and do much killing and gain much plunder. And King Arthur, who did not understand this coarse language and knew only melodious British and the tongue of God, which was Latin, was amazed to see these Germans give to their horses the heads, and their charge began.
But quickly he understood that his bastard had tricked him feloniously, and he turned to seize up Excalibur from the earth.
But Mordred had acted the sooner, and he already held the magic sword, and when King Arthur turned to him he ran his father through the bosom till caught by the hilt the blade could go no farther.
And then King Arthur fell, with the sword in him, and it was held so tightly by his muscles and bones that Mordred could not withdraw it, and therefore Mordred ran away like the coward he was. And King Arthur’s banner, the which displayed an image of the Virgin, fell onto the ground.
And so the battle began, and when the scribes say it was started by the sting of a serpent, they were not in error, for that snake was Mordred.
Now twenty thousand Angles and Saxons charged the knights of the Round Table, who were in the number of an hundred eight and forty (for Galahad was ill and sleeping, and Mordred was the foe), but when the charge was over, ten thousand Germans lay bleeding dead on the gory field of Salisbury, while but fifty of King Arthur’s knights had fallen, and all of them struck from behind.
And Sir Launcelot, with but his left hand, skewered ten Saxons at a time on the end of his lance, and then he hurled them all away dead and he pierced ten more. And many times he did this. And Sir Percival, who broke his lance after killing two hundred Germans with it, then drew his sword and holding it at the level of the neck he rode along the Saxon ranks lopping off heads as if he were in a wheat field with a scythe. And soon there were so many severed heads upon the field and so much blood that a thousand Germans did slip and fall into it and they could not get a footing in their heavy armor and they every one drowned with their snouts in this gore.
Now the horses’ hoofs tore all the grass from the field and turned the earth to dust, and a great cloud of it obscured the sun, and the day became night, and the darkness was a place of crashing steel and terrible cries from men and animals, but the dust was settled by the torrents of blood which poured from the bodies when the flesh was hacked and limbs were severed. And when the sun reappeared the field was as a lake of red mud, and everywhere were enmired dead men in whole or in pieces.
And Sir Launcelot’s cousins Bors and Lionel killed many hundreds of Angles and Saxons, and Sir Bedivere did fell whole ranks at a time, and Sir Kay did himself kill scores, for being Arthur’s knight of least prowess was yet to be a great champion amongst foreigners, and he ran through Saxons as he had once spitted capons.
Yet the dastardly enemy did surround some knights two hundred to one, and while those in front distracted an hero, those behind did hamstring him with axes, and when he fell they filled every part of his body with blades till there was room for no more. And so eventually perished an hundred of the knights of the Round Table, the finest men on earth, who never fought except for the cause of good.
And after three hours there were left only fifty of King Arthur’s men, and only one thousand Saxons, and all the horses on both sides had gone down, and all fought on foot.
Now amongst these bodies lay King Arthur, and he was not dead though mortally wounded by the hand of his bastard son Mordred, the most wicked man who ever breathed. And Mordred was hiding behind one of the great stones at Stonehenge, where he watched everybody else killing one another, for this gave him great pleasure, and he looked forward to the hour, which must come soon, when all other noblemen would be dead and he would be unique in his existence, and emperor of all of Britain and Germany as well.
Now lying in his swoon of death King Arthur was visited by the ghost of Sir Gawaine his late nephew.
And seeing him as a shade King Arthur said, “My dear Gawaine, I am unhappy to see thee thus! I had hoped that thou, left behind, might assume the throne when I died, and preserve it against the great felon Mordred.”
“Nay,” said Sir Gawaine’s ghost, “I can do nothing palpably, Uncle, for my body lies rotting and provideth dinner for the worms. I have come to give you spiritual succor.”
“Alas!” said King Arthur, “we shall all join thee soon in Purgatory, Gawaine, for methinks we have today gone the noble Pyrrhus one better! For he survived his terrible victory, whereas I am dying. But Mordred liveth!”
“Then you must not die yet, Uncle,” said the ghost of Sir Gawaine. “You have one duty left.”
“Yea,” said King Arthur, “to kill mine own son. Well, I think I can not, Gawaine. Perhaps there was some justice in the triumph of perfect evil over imperfect virtue, which is to say, of tragedy over comedy. For have I not been a buffoon?”
“Uncle,” said the shade of Sir Gawaine, “there is no man who hath not believed the same of himself in very bad times, and verily we are all fools for we live but temporarily, and beneath our armor we wear human skin, which is to say, motley. But the difference between a great man and a mere entertainer is that the former doth seek to please no audience but God, and thus he goeth against the mean instincts of humanity: the prevarications of vanity, the sentimentalizing of envy, the cowardice of greed, the slothful molesting of the weak, for all these are to celebrate nothing and to despise everything. And though man be eternally contemptible, he should not be contemptuous of that which he can achieve.”
“Methinks I have achieved nothing, Gawaine!” King Arthur cried. “For amongst our company we had every human failing, and have we been better, except in rhetoric, than these barbarians, in killing whom we die ourselves?”
“Yea!” said the ghost of Sir Gawaine. “For can we not say, without the excessive pride which is sinful, that we lived with a certain gallantry?”
Now despite the grim conditions of this interview King Arthur could not but be some amused by the obsession of Sir Gawaine even as a ghost.
“Dost mean we none of us mishandled ladies?” smiling said he to the shade of his brave nephew.
“What I meant rather,” said Sir Gawaine’s solemn spirit, “is that we sought no easy victories, nor won any. And perhaps for that we will be remembered.”
And then his ghost did vanish, and King Arthur awakened. And he saw about him all the carnage. And he could not rise, for he was so weak, and from his bosom protruded the handle of Excalibur. And again he did swoon, and in his sleep there came to him the Lady of the Lake.
And to her he said, “Lady, surely you have come to take back your sword, the which hath killed me.”
But the lady said, “Nay, King Arthur, thou art not dead yet. Thou shalt rise and use Excalibur one time more, and then thou shalt return it to me in the proper way.”
“Lady,” said King Arthur, “I would ask why you attended me only in the beginning of my reign and thereafter no more? And methinks you led Merlin away as well, leaving me altogether without magical counsel. Lady, I could have used some! For ’twas reality that brought me down, and I had no defense against it.”
“King Arthur,” said the Lady of the Lake, who was gleaming in white samite, “the passions are not real, but rather fantastic. Thou couldst not have done better than thou didst.”
“Yet,” said King Arthur, “was I wise to tolerate the friendship between Launcelot and Guinevere for so many years? I know that I thereby connived in a Christian sin.”
“Address me not in Christian sentiments,” said the Lady of the Lake, “the which I find too coarse for fine kings. Thine obligation was to maintain power in as decent a way as would be yet the most effective, and a Camelot without Guinevere, a Round Table without Launcelot, were inconceivable, as would be an Arthur who put to death his best friend an
d his queen. All human beings must perform according to their nature.”
Now King Arthur did wonder at this speech, and he said, “Then the will is not free? And can we not choose to be either good or evil, but are selected for whichever?”
“This is the wrong question,” said the Lady of the Lake, “being political and not concerned with the truth. And do not chide me for abandoning thee, my dear Arthur, for I am here now, and I urge thee to rise and to do what is necessary for the completion of thy legend.” And then she vanished in a shimmer of whiteness.
And King Arthur awoke, and from his breast he pulled Excalibur, as he had in the beginning pulled the first sword from the stone, and wondrously he bled no more.
And then he went to look for Mordred.
BOOK XXII
How Sir Galahad joined the battle and whom he fought; and how Sir Percival fell; and how King Arthur fought Sir Mordred; and how the king returned Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake and then was borne away by three ladies in a barge.
NOW THROUGH ALL THIS AWFUL BATTLE, Sir Galahad had lain in a swoon of illness in the wood, and he was not long for this world, and though he was the greatest knight of all he had taken no part in this greatest battle of all time.
And there was now only a remnant left of the noble company of the Round Table, and among them were his father Sir Launcelot and his best friend Sir Percival, and brave sirs Lionel and Bors, and that good man Sir Bedivere, and gallant Sir Kay the seneschal. And all the other gallant knights were now dead. And of the Angles and the Saxons there remained three hundred.
Now of Arthur’s remaining knights all were wounded but sirs Launcelot and Percival, and each of these had killed a thousand Germans without being touched. And Sir Launcelot, who believed that all of his life had been but a waiting for this day, was only disappointed to find so few of the enemy yet standing, for the more fighting he did, the stronger he grew, and after five hours he had more prowess than that with which he had begun. And never in the history of the world had there been such a knight as Sir Launcelot, and many Saxons fell dead before they felt his sword, for they could not endure his blazing eyes, and his armor streamed with the bright blood of his enemies, and his sword was white-hot and charred the flesh which it cut.