I sought. Guys, do you know who my parents are?" he asked them.
Ector and Ulfius were nonplussed. "Your biological father was King Uther," said Ector.
"And your mother was Queen Igraine," said Ulfius. "There's actually a hilarious story about your conception..."
"Not now!" snapped Arthur. "Queen Margawse is Igraine's daughter, right?"
"Right," said Ector.
"I'm Igraine's son, you say, right?" Arthur asked. "Biological son. Nothing against my adoptive mother, your wife, Dad."
Ector nodded. "Right," said Ulfius.
"So when Margawse and I slept together, you didn't think it might be a good idea to say something?!"
"Well, we thought you knew, and were just, you know, being weird," said Ector.
"Your dad –" started Ulfius.
"– His biological dad –" broke in Ector.
"Yeah," said Ulfius. "Uther, well, Uther did some crazy stuff like that. A lot. One time, this is a funny story, one time he got Merlin to magically disguise us..."
"Okay, great," said Arthur. "That's great. That's just fine and dandy. This kind of thing just makes a guy want to stab his own eyes out. Is Queen Igraine still around? Can I speak with her?"
"Do you really want to?" asked Ulfius.
"I imagine so," said Ector. "You are the king, after all."
"Yeah, okay, so, get Igraine here, because I want to meet her."
Malory doesn't say where Queen Igraine spent the twenty years or so since we last saw her (prior to Uther's death) but she showed up pretty quickly and she brought along her second-youngest daughter, Morgan le Fay, the one who got such good grades in necromancy school. But then! As soon as Morgan le Fay and Igraine arrived at Arthur's court, and before anyone said two words of greeting, Sir Ulfius stood up and started hurling invective.
He'd been waiting for a chance to bawl out Igraine for a long time. He got all red-faced and would have been violent maybe if no one were there to stop him, but as it was he just shouted a lot. The upshot of it is that Ulfius blamed Igraine for the massacre/battle against Team Lot & Mister 100.
If Igraine had shown up and endorsed Arthur at or after his coronation, then Lot and the others would surely have accepted him as king. After all, the bulk of their protest had been that Arthur was Sir Ector's adopted son whose parentage was entirely unknown and whose claim to the throne was solely through Merlin's sword-and-stone nonsense.
Ulfius bottled up this rage, but it all came boiling out now. He called her traitress and a causer of war and false to God and threatened to murder anyone who defended her.
Igraine rebutted his verbal assault, saying that she'd defend herself without it coming to violence she hoped, what with it being a patriarchal society wherein she was forbidden to fight. She'd like to think that some man (her son, maybe?) might have been moved to defend her. The tale of Arthur's conception, she said, was a hilarious anecdote, which Ulfius knew as well as she did, since he was there for most of it, and besides it was Merlin who made it possible.
Arthur, at this point, considered asking about the details of this hilarious anecdote everyone kept mentioning, but decided against it.
But, to Arthur's chagrin, Igraine retold it for everyone present, Arthur's whole court: Uther's lechery, Merlin's false mustaches, Gorlas conveniently dying three hours before Arthur's conception, and Uther marrying Igraine afterwards.
By the end of it everyone was pretty grossed out, even Ulfius, and the wind had gone out of his sails some. He grumbled that Merlin was the real grade-A monster here; Merlin was the one to blame for it.
"I know!" Igraine was all weepy. "I bore Uther a child, and then thanks to Merlin, I never got to see him again or raise him or find out what became of him."
Then Merlin stepped forward, and took Igraine by one hand, and Arthur by the other, and put their hands together, which was a touching little scene. Merlin got away with not explicitly apologizing, and Arthur cried and Igraine cried and Ector introduced himself to Igraine as Arthur's adoptive father and then they cried together, and then Arthur called for another big party.
Eight days of partying later (Kay and the caterers Griflet and Lucan were busy) a boy rode up, with a dead knight. The boy explained that the knight was Sir Miles, the boy was Miles's squire, and a guy out in the woods set up a tent out in the woods by the fountain...
"...nothing good ever happens at that fountain," Arthur muttered.
"And at that tent," the boy continued, "the villainous guy killed Sir Miles, and I'm hoping someone can avenge him? Or better yet I can get knighted myself and I'll go avenge him? My name's Griflet, by the way."
"We already have a Sir Griflet," said Arthur. "He's one of the caterers. He just got mentioned a couple of lines up."
"That's me!" said the boy. "It's a continuity error!"
"Hmm, if it's a continuity error then I'd better knight you," said Arthur. He looks Griflet up and down. "You're awfully young, though. The Sir Griflet who fought so bravely at the massacre/battle against Team Lot & Mister 100 wasn't so young."
"I'll age, I promise," said Griflet.
"It is indeed a continuity error, sire," said Merlin. "Best to knight him and be done with it. He'll be a fine knight right up until he dies trying to stop your best friend from preventing the death of your wife."
"Why do I let you say anything ever?" Arthur asked Merlin. "Griflet, fine, you can be a knight. Get over here and kneel down. Sword!"
Someone handed Arthur a sword, and he did the usual shoulder-tap bit on the boy. Thus knighted, Sir Griflet was all fired up to ride off and try to kill the knight who slew Sir Miles, but Arthur stopped him.
"Promise to come right back after the fight, win or lose!" Arthur commanded Griflet. Which strikes me as a little odd, I mean, if he lost he'd likely die.
But Griflet swore that promise, took a sword and armor and a horse, and rode back to the fountain. As he'd told Arthur, someone had pitched a tent there, and all the knight's stuff was just sitting out on the grass.
Griflet grabbed a spear and banged it against the knight's shield where it lay on the ground. When the knight came out from the tent and tried to get him to knock off the racket, Griflet challenged him to a joust.
"What? Why?" asked the knight.
"You don't remember me?"
"No."
"You killed my master, Sir Miles?"
"Doesn't ring a bell."
"It was like twenty minutes ago!"
"Oh. Oh, right, Sir Miles. You're that kid. Listen, kid, you're way too young for me to want to kill you, and you're also way to young for me to lose to you in a fight."
"I don't care," said Griflet, "I want to joust you."
"Fine, fine, your funeral," said the knight. "Which one is the joust? I can never remember."
"It's the one where we're on horses and strike one another with spears!" Griflet was a little annoyed by the knight's attitude.
"Oh, man, I hate that one. Of all the knightly methods of contention it's my least favorite. You'll probably defeat me easily," said the mystery knight, and he dressed for a joust and mounted up and they hefted spears.
The two knights ran at one another. Griflet's spear was shaky while the other knight's aim was true, and boom, Griflet was dehorsed and left semiconscious with a big gaping spear wound, and his horse got knocked down too.
"Yeah, I lied before. I'm actually a great jouster. I told you it was a bad idea," said the mystery knight. "Ha! Dumb kid." But he felt a little bad about beating on Sir Griflet, who might have grown up to be a great knight eventually, so he got down off his horse and helped Griflet up. The kid was bleeding pretty badly, but the mystery knight loaded him up on his horse, and sent him back to Arthur's court.
In Arthur's court they quickly administered first aid and bandages and leeches! Everyone worried that young Sir Griflet wouldn't make it, but then he made it!
But this was a very eventful day! We aren't done yet. Tax collectors showed up: twelve elderly men from Rome, asking fo
r Arthur's taxes for Caesar. And by "asking" I mean "demanding, with an undertone of threatening."
"Well," Arthur said, "you guys are messengers, and I don't believe in killing the messenger, so I'm not going to hurt you, I'm just going to say that my answer is a categorical get bent to all Roman Emperors. All taxes paid by me shall be paid using the medium of sword-blows, and you guys picked a real bad time, because I'm upset about this whole Griflet thing anyways."
The tax collectors stormed off, warning that this wasn't the end of it, just wait until Book V, and Arthur stewed and sulked. He told one of his men to get all his best combat gear together, and a horse, and the next morning he strapped on his armor and took his spear and went riding around looking for trouble.
Trouble was not long in the coming, for before Arthur'd wandered too far he came across Merlin, chased by three churls.
"Churls! Scat!" shouted Arthur, and rode into them waving his spear around. The churls scattered, and Arthur felt much better.
"Ha, Merlin," said Arthur. "You're all Captain Magic and Weird Trickery Man, and here you would have been murdered by churls if I hadn't happened along."
"Yeah, that wouldn't have happened," said Merlin. "You're going to die before I am, also God hates you."
"Stop talking!" snapped Arthur. "You are the worst buzzkill ever, Merlin."
Merlin and Arthur walked along like this for a while, with Merlin making dire predictions and Arthur trying to laugh it off, and then they came to the fountain.
"Crap," said Arthur. "This fountain." He shook his head. "This fucking fountain."
The mystery knight