Pellinore didn't see Arthur at all and therefore didn't insult him.
Afterwards Arthur mused that perhaps Pellinore was turning over a new leaf. "He didn't insult me!"
"He would have if he'd seen you," said Merlin. "I did magic at it."
Then Arthur and Merlin rode back into Caerlaeon, and everyone was glad to see Arthur, since he'd been gone for days. Arthur told them all about the crazy mystic adventures of the last few chapters, really everything since he met his biological mother, and everyone marveled about how great Arthur was for having endured such a crazy mystic adventure with no friends along, just Merlin.
In which Arthur reenacts the Massacre of the Innocents
As our story opens, Arthur received a message from King Rience of North Wales. Remember that guy? Nobody liked him? It seems that he had been making trouble in Ireland and Wales. He may or may not have defeated Team Lot & Mister 100 in battle. Malory is cagey about that even though he asserted earlier that Team Lot & Mister 100 slew Rience. Now Malory is Mister Flippety-Floppity saying that no, Rience defeated eleven kings. Maybe not the same eleven kings as Team Lot & Mister 100, but maybe it was! Only time and further textual inconsistencies continuity errors shocking twists will tell!
Rience's methodology here was entertainingly dickish. He tried to meet the king in battle and force his surrender, and if the king wouldn't ride out to battle him, he'd just wander through the king's territory setting serfs on fire and rustling cattle. Either way, he lay out an ultimatum: the king could either shave his beard and turn it over to Rience as a symbol of his emasculation, or else Rience would also accept the king's severed head.
"This guy sounds like a real piece of work," said Arthur. "No wonder everyone hates him. I should have killed him back when I rescued Leodegrance from him."
The messenger coughed politely, as he was still waiting for Arthur's response.
"You tell that guy that he's an ass, and that I said so," said Arthur. "And I've barely gotten old enough to grow a beard, no way I'm shaving it off for him or anyone. I've met Rience in battle but never had a sit-down with him, and it sounds like I dodged a bullet there. You tell him that I want him to surrender to me, although I'm not interested in any of this thinly-veiled homoerotic ritual shaving nonsense. Now get out."
The messenger left, and everyone started tut-tutting about this turn of events. Arthur wrote RIENCE on his royal whiteboard in red marker, and underlined it.
"Anyone here know anything about Rience that I don't? Raise a hand. Merlin, I am not calling on you, I don't want to hear it." Arthur said. "You, there, Sir... uh..."
"Sir Naram, sire," whispered Sir Ulfius.
"Naram, right, a good man. Sorry, Naram. Didn't recognize you there with that helmet on."
"I'm not wearing a helmet," said Sir Naram.
"That's the spirit," said Arthur. "So, you had your hand up. You know Rience?"
"Yep," said Sir Naram.
"And? What can you tell us about him?"
"Rience, well..." Naram stared off into space, thought about it. "He's tough," he finally said.
"Great, thanks," said Arthur. He wrote TOUGH on the whiteboard, under RIENCE.
"Okay, I think we've learned a lot today," Arthur said. "I don't doubt this crucial intelligence will prove key in defeating Rience, great job everyone." He dusted his hands off, looked around. "Merlin, you still have your hand up. I told you I don't want to hear it."
"You can't stop me," said Merlin. "I've got news for you that has nothing to do with Rience."
"Am I going to like this?" asked Arthur.
"Depends. The one who will destroy you, he's been born. It was not very long ago that he was born. His birthday is the first of May," said Merlin. "Hint, hint."
"I feel like we've already talked about this," said Arthur. "But I blocked out the details. Someone destroying me rings a bell, though."
"First of May," said Merlin.
"Okay, here's what we do. We get everyone whose birthday is the first of May," said Arthur. "All the little kids."
"Then we load them onto a boat, and we send them away to die at sea!" cried Merlin.
"What? No," said Arthur. "We should... um... darn it, I can't think of a good way to end this sentence. Fine, we'll do it your way." Inexplicable choice there, Arthur!
So that happened. Arthur called for all the boys whose birthday is the first of May to be sent to his court. Boys from all over Arthur's nation poured into Caerlaeon. Also Queen Morgawse, Lot's wife, Arthur's half-sister whom he slept with, you remember? Mordred's mother? She sent along infant Mordred, too.
All these babies showed up at court, it was so babies, totally babies. Some of them were almost a year old, some of them were a month old, some of them were less than a month old, Malory tells us, because apparently he's forgotten how birthdays work. Arthur loaded them all up on a ship and they sailed off into the ocean, where they hit a rock and the boat sprang a leak and it sank and everyone aboard drowned.
Sole survivor was Mordred, little baby doom-of-Arthur Mordred, who washed ashore and was found by a kindly fisherman and we'll hear from him again, but this story won't ever come up again, which makes you wonder what the point was.
When everyone heard about how Arthur took their sons and sent them off to die at sea, they got good and mad, although mostly people blamed Merlin for giving Arthur such lousy advice rather than the young King himself. Since they liked Arthur and they feared Merlin, they didn't rise up in revolt or complain too loudly, except for King Rience, that ass, who decided it's a good pretext to invade Logris-England-Britain.
BOOK II: Sir Balin, Lady Killer
In which we meet the Idiot Knight
As this chapter of our tale opens, Arthur was hanging out in London, no place more specific than just 'London,' when along came a knight.
"Ho, knight," said Arthur.
"Sire, I have come to recap. King Rience is making trouble," said the knight. "He's burning peasants and their thatch-roofed cottages left and right, it's a bad scene."
"Hmm, if what you say is true –"
"Are you calling me a liar?" said the knight, all indignant. "I saw it myself!"
"If what you say is true," said Arthur, ignoring him, "then I'd better do what I do best."
"What's that?"
"Call all my barons and knights together," said Arthur.
"Ooh," said the knight. "Will there be jousting?"
"You know it!"
So Arthur gathered all of his barons and knights together at Camelot, which he'd just finished furnishing and decorating, so this war-council-for-dealing-with-Rience party was also a come-check-out-Camelot party as well as a jousting tournament (JOUSTING TOURNAMENT 3!). Everybody, simply everybody showed up, including a girl who claimed to have been sent by Lile of Avelion.
"You mean Queen Lily of Avalon?"
"Enh, whatever."
She came to Arthur, this girl did, wearing an enormous fur coat, and cleared her throat to get everyone's attention. Once everyone's eyes were on her, boom, the fur coat dropped! Along with everyone's jaws!
Under the coat this girl was not completely naked. No, she wore a sword in a scabbard, with a... let's call it a harness. She explained that she labored under a curse; until some strong knight could pull her sword from its scabbard she couldn't remove the harness.
"Nothing weirdly Freudian about this," exclaimed Arthur. "I happen to be great at pulling swords from things. That's how I became king! It's a funny story really."
"The knight who saves me from this incredibly thin metaphor," said the girl, whom Malory doesn't bother to name but I'm going name Wilma because 'the maiden' is just too lame to keep repeating over and over again. "The knight who saves me must be a great knight, valorous, honorable, skilled at arms, reasonably dashing."
"You're describing me to a tee," said Arthur. "Also there are about a hundred and eighty knights within earshot who fit that description, am I right fellas? Camelot for life!"
The knights cheered.
"Yeah, we're awesome," said Arthur. "Camelot for life! Woo!"
"Anyway, I went to King Rience's court already," said Wilma. "He claimed to have a bunch of great and heroic knights also, but none of them could free me from this device."
"Okay, well, I'll give it a shot," said Arthur, rising from his seat. "Now, just so everyone is clear on this," he added, loudly to his assembled court, "I'm not claiming right here and now to be the best knight here. I'm just saying I'm good at pulling swords from things. And there's a bunch of fine fine knights who tried to pull a certain other sword from a certain other thing -- Kay, you know what I'm talking about -- and they weren't able. So I'm not going to be shocked if I'm not the specific knight who has been magically preselected to pull out this sword. If and when I don't successfully pull it out, I want you all to give it a shot. Don't think I'm going to be mad if you pull it out when I can't. I won't be. I am going to try first, though."
All the knights murmured agreement. Wilma tapped her foot.
"But," Arthur continued. "And this is a substantial but! I am confident that here at Camelot I've assembled the greatest knights in all of Christendom, so we'll get this sword out, one of us –"
"Will you just pull it out already?" interrupted Wilma. "Sire. Please. Your majesty."
So Arthur grasped the sword with both hands and gave it a tug, and it didn't come out. "Hold on," he said, and tried again, harder.
"Sire, it's not –"
"One more try!" said Arthur, and got one foot up on Wilma's hip and really threw his back into it and she cried out in pain.
"NOT SO HARD JESUS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU THIS THING IS ATTACHED TO ME!"
"Oh, sorry," said Arthur. "Ouch, that looks painful, ouch, sorry. Can we get her some leeches? Leeches over here?"
Wilma recovered and Arthur admitted that he was not the guy to pull this particular sword from this particular "stone." He asked his assembled barons and knights of the Round Table to do it, because Malory forgets that the Round Table won't get introduced until Book III.
"But fellas, look into your hearts before you try this. Do this sword-pulling with a clear conscience, no shame, no treasonous plots, no evil thoughts. Take it from me, swords in things hate evil thoughts."
"Oh, also!" Wilma had more to say. "The knight who frees me must be a clean knight, a good knight, not a villain, not already married, no children, his parents either dead or distant because I don't want to deal with in-laws, no one in his family should have a criminal record," said Wilma. She listed off a bunch of other requirements for her ideal man/magically-preselected savior, and they were about what you'd expect.
A substantial fraction of Arthur's court was, nevertheless, willing and ready to line up and try to pull the sword out. As they tried and failed, each in their turn, to pull the sword from Wilma's "scabbard," the hero (more or less) of this particular story entered the picture: Sir Balin, the Idiot Knight. Malory makes a case for Balin being fundamentally okay; he was this guy from Northumberland who killed another knight in a freak jousting accident a few Arthur-sponsored jousts ago, and it wouldn't have been such a problem except the knight he killed was Arthur's cousin (unclear whether via Uther's family, Igraine's family, or Ector's family). Also he was kind of a dimwit, hence the nickname. Malory calls him "Balin le Savage," so I'm interpreting freely here.
Sir Balin was a prisoner in Camelot, but it wasn't exactly a maximum-security sort of setup; he was more a trustee. He was permitted into the party, for instance. When he saw all the knights lined up to try to please Wilma, he wanted to participate. He was unsure whether he ought to, though, since as a prisoner he was dressed in basically rags; he lacked all the usual baron accouterments: armor, horse, weapons, serfs, mistresses, et cetera.
Wilma was disgusted on account of none of Arthur's knights can satisfy her, and nearly left in a huff; a dark pall fell over Camelot at their failure. Wilma was on her way out when Balin stopped her and asked to give it a go.
"You? Really?" she asked. "I mean really. Really. Look at you, you're clearly not rich. And I'm pretty sore from all the other men trying and failing to satisfy me."
"C'mon," said Balin. "I'm a hell of a guy once you get to know me."
"Well, you do have good upper-body muscular definition," conceded Wilma.
"Manhood is concealed within man's person," said Balin, according to Malory. "Wink, wink. I don't actually know what that means but it sounds good, you know?"
"All right, all right," said Wilma. "I'll give you a tumble. Try to draw the sword out. Take it!" And she presented herself to him.
Balin grasped the sword, and Wilma gasped. He drew it slowly and smoothly from its scabbard. She sighed in contentment as her restraints fell off of her.
"Hmm," he said, looking at it. "This is a nice sword."
"You've won me!" cried Wilma, a little put out that Balin seemed more interested in the sword than in her newly-freed self.
"Mmm-hmm," said Balin. "Still checking out this sword. Is this a mother-of-pearl inlay?"
"Okay, you've managed to completely break the mood," said Wilma, as she put on some clothes. "So never mind. Just give me the sword back and I'll be on my way. Maybe hit up the knights at Benwick, see if they're more fun."
"What? No!" said Balin. "I won this sword fair and square! I'm keeping it."
"Yeah, well, smooth move on your part," said Wilma. "Because the sword is, I don't know, cursed or something. Yeah, that's right. Cursed! You'll kill your best friend or brother or something with it! It'll ruin your life! All because you treated me badly and refused to give me the sword! It's going to happen! Don't think it won't!"
"Pshaw," said Balin.
"You'll be sorry," said Wilma. "I didn't even want the sword. I was just trying to do you a favor by taking it off your hands. You'll see. You'll be sorry."
And she stormed out.
"Well that was odd," said Sir Balin, the Idiot Knight. "It's as if she wanted something else from me but wouldn't come right out and say it."
Arthur, who witnessed this whole exchange, sputtered a bit.
"So," Balin continued, "now that I have this nice new sword I guess I'll be taking a horse and some armor and going off and having a strange adventure now."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," said Arthur. "I don't know where you got that idea. You were a prisoner, and then just now you demonstrated with magic yourself to be a worthy knight, full of virtue and so on. Those are two completely different and conflicting reasons for me to want to keep you around, and they don't cancel each other out. Are you mad?"
"No, I'm not mad at you, sire," said Balin.
"You misunderstood my question," said Arthur.
"I'm not angry with you, sire," Balin corrected himself.
"Mmm." King Arthur spent a moment just staring at Sir Balin. "You know what? You can go, I've decided. I don't want to keep a brave and virtuous knight like you against your will," said Arthur.
"Oh, God bless your majesty!" said Balin.
"Go on, get out of here!" Arthur shooed him away. "Come back soon. Go. Don't forget to write. Leave. You'll always be welcome here. Get lost."
So Balin loaded up a horse and prepared to ride off. Malory says that as he did, the rest of Arthur's court erupts into argument over whether Balin was a witch or just really stupid. It's true! Their debate was interrupted, however, by the appearance of another rider. This one needed no introduction: it was the Lady of the Lake. You remember her. Sure you do. She greeted Arthur, and Arthur greeted her.
"How are tricks?"
"Same old, same old. You?"
"About like you'd expect," said Arthur. "We're working on coming up with a plan for this whole Rience situation. That's why all this jousting is going on in the background, which we're skipping over."
"Oh, we haven't even gotten to the jousting-heavy parts yet," the Lady of the Lake assured him. "Anyway, you remember how last time we met you promised me a favor?"
"Nope," said Arthur.
"Su
re you do," said the Lady of the Lake. "It was when I gave you Excalibur."
"Excalibur?" asked Arthur. "I have no memory of that. Is there such a thing as an Excalibur?" (I do not know why Malory has Arthur do this.)
"It's the magic sword you've got at your belt right now," said the Lady of the Lake, and pointed.
"Oh, that. Right. Right. It's all coming back to me now. So you came to get that autograph after all?"
"I want a severed head," said the Lady of the Lake. "Not just any head!" she added, forestalling Arthur's next gambit. "There was a guy who just now pulled a sword from a girl's... clothing."
"Yes."
"I want his head. Or her head. Either one. I wouldn't say no to both," the Lady of the Lake said. "He killed my brother. Also she was responsible for my father's death. So, both of them are in my bad books." Malory never gets around to supplying us with the backstory on this, except for a bit a couple of paragraphs down.
"Hmm, well," said Arthur. "I'm not really prepared to decapitate either of them right this second. The one already left and the other is all fired up for some kind of adventure. Sure I can't tempt you with an autograph? Or, oh, how about an illegitimate child?"
"No dice," said the Lady.
Balin came back into the hall, ready to make his last goodbyes to Arthur and the court. He saw the Lady of the Lake, and then everything turned all slo-mo and red tint, because the Lady of the Lake killed Balin's mother, and Balin spent three years hunting for her. (See? It raises more questions than it answers.)
"Who's that and what's she talking to Arthur about?" Balin asked a nearby lady-in-waiting.
"That's the Lady of the Lake and she wants you dead," explained the lady-in-waiting.
"Not if I kill her first!" Balin screamed, and charges forward and lopped the Lady of the Lake's head off with his new magic sword.
Everyone shrieked! Court in general uproar! A dozen knights with swords pointed at Balin leaped to Arthur's defense! Arthur started shouting at Balin. "Alas for shame what the hell dude! You murdered a guest in my court! That is not cool!"
"She was bad," Balin said, as if that explained everything.
"I don't care what your excuse is," said Arthur. "Get out. Go. You're banished from my court. Now I'm going to have to take down the sign that says how my court has never had any guest get murdered. That I do not forgive." Arthur was all bereft over the Lady's death.
"Do you want us to execute him, sire?" asked a knight.
"No, I'm too bereft," said Arthur. "Just make sure he goes."
"I'm going, I'm going, jeez, you'd think I killed someone who wasn't evil or something," said Balin. He grabbed the Lady of the Lake's severed head and dashed off to his squire, and the two of them mounted up and ride off.
"Okay, now, squire," said Balin.
"I was actually thinking of getting out of the squiring business," said the squire. "Being your squire doesn't seem like a great career path."
"Squire, take this severed head and ride back with it to my hometown and tell everyone how I killed the Lady of the Lake. Also let them know I'm out of prison."
"Should I tell them how Arthur banished you?"
"Use your judgement. Now, I'm