The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

  Sir Lyonel looked quickly at Sir Lancelot and marveled that the noise had not awakened him from his tranced sleep. And Lyonel had caught the calm courage, and he thought how glad and proud he would be awakening to find his nephew victorious over so great a knight. He slipped quietly away to do this deed for his uncle. Quickly he mounted and rode out and called the victor to combat. The huge man leaped lightly to his saddle, but Sir Lyonel charged him so savagely that he drove knight and horse clear around, but did not unseat him. When he returned to run again, the big man was sitting quietly looking at him.

  "Now that was well struck," he said. "And now I see you I am amazed. You are hardly more than a boy in size and still you rocked me more than any man has in my memory. Let us make peace, sir. You are too good a man to tether like these cattle."

  Lyonel looked toward the apple tree where his uncle still slept and he said proudly, "I will gladly make peace when you have surrendered to me and released your prisoners and begged for mercy. I promise you mercy."

  The big knight regarded him with wonder. "If you had not given me such a stroke, I would think you insane," he said. "Why you are less than half of me. First a man-sized stroke and then man-sized words. Come, let us be friends. It would plague my conscience to hurt such a good little man as you."

  "Yield," said Sir Lyonel. "Yield or fight."

  "I won't do either," said the knight.

  Lyonel spurred his horse and plunged in with leveled spear.

  In mid-course the big knight dropped his spear and cast off his shield and, as Sir Lyonel's point wavered uncertainly, ducked under the spear, and his right arm, thick as a hawser, circled the young knight's waist and tore him from his saddle. Lyonel fought helplessly against the embrace that tightened about his chest and crushed him until the blood pounded to bursting behind his eyes and he spiraled off into a swoon.

  And when his aching senses returned he was face down and bound, bumping along on his own horse bunched with the other three prisoners. After a time they came to a lowering house, moated and walled, and on its oaken gate Lyonel saw many shields nailed up. He knew many of the devices and some were the signs of the fellowship of the Round Table and among them the shield of his older brother, Sir Ector de Marys.

  Lyonel was thrown on the stone floor of a dim room and his captor stood over him, saying, "The others have gone to the dungeon, but you I have spared for your bravery and because you nearly unseated me. Come now, yield to me and give me your promise of loyalty and I will release you."

  Sir Lyonel rolled painfully and looked up. "Who are you and why have you taken those knights whose shields I saw?"

  "My name is Sir Tarquin."

  "That name has a sound of tyranny, sir."

  "You will judge how properly. I have a hatred too big for most men, so heavy that even I am weighed down by it. I hate a knight who killed my brother. In honor of my hatred I have killed a hundred knights and captured more, and all preparing to meet my enemy. But you I love and I will make peace with you if you will gain me."

  "Whom do you hate?"

  "Sir Lancelot. He slew my brother, Sir Carados."

  "It was a fair fight?"

  "What matter? He killed my brother and I will kill him. Will you give me your parole?"

  "No," said Lyonel.

  Then rage darkened Sir Tarquin and he stripped armor and underclothing from the young knight and he beat his naked body with thorns until the blood flew and he shouted, "Yield!"

  "No," said Lyonel, and the thorns tore at his flesh again until from loss of blood he paled and fainted, and then Sir Tarquin, raging and foaming, threw him down the dark stairs to the dungeon floor among his other prisoners. His brother, Sir Ector, was there, and many others who knew him. And when they had wiped his wounds and brought his senses back, he told them weakly how he had left Lancelot sleeping. And the prisoners cried out, "No one else may beat Sir Tarquin. You did wrong not to waken him. If Lancelot does not find us we are doomed." And the prisoners moaned in the darkness of the dungeon and wept in helpless misery. But Lyonel remembered the calm, sleeping face and he said softly to himself, "I must be patient. He will come. Sir Lancelot will come."

  Now leve we thes knyghtes presoners,

  and speke we of sir Lancelot de Lake that lyeth

  undir the appil-tre slepynge.

  The afternoon was thick with heat, the blue sky milky from damp. The high white crowns of thunderheads looked over the hills to the northeast and muttered in the distance. The still, hot, humid air brought flies, sticky and sluggish. A congress of rooks barreled over, rolling and playing--cawing one another to new flying exploits, and when they saw the horse tied to the apple tree they circled low and inspected the sleeping knight, but a jackdaw tried to gain them and they flew away in disgust. The deserted daw alighted and cautiously inspected the horse and the sleeping man; then reassured, he strode forward like a heavy-shouldered fighter. A great sword lying beside the knight drew the attention of the bird. He tried to remove a red jewel from the pommel, but a rushing black cloud of wings and beak whirled in and drove the thief away. A huge and ancient raven regarded the scene, hopped sideways with wings half spread, then, reassured, approached the sleeping figure with hopscotch jumps, croaking softly to himself. His purple-black feathers were crusty with age. Hopping close, he turned his noble head sideways, inspected the face with one eye and then the other. The feathers under his throat ruffled out and vibrated. "Hahg," he croaked softly. "Dead--Curse!--Dog!--Rat!--A page Christas, alack. Morgan--Morgan!" The great bird sprang aside and the wings of power jerked him into the air, and he flapped powerfully toward a cavalcade, iridescent, warm, in the distance, where four queens rode in slow and unreal pageantry, four queens robed in velvet and crowned, and four armed knights supported a green silken canopy on their spear tips to protect the ladies from the sun. The Queen of the Outer Isles came first, golden of hair as well as of crown, eyes blue as slate when the sea changes, high-colored cheeks of fast warm blood, her cloak sea-blue lined with sea-gray, her palfrey dappled as a spume-flecked rock. Next came the Queen of North Galys, red of hair, green-eyed, green-robed, with purple under color in her face, and her horse was red-roan as her hair was roan. The Queen of Eastland followed her--ashen-haired but warm as ashes of roses, eyes of hazel, clothed in a robe of pale lavender. Her horse was white as milk.

  Last came Morgan le Fay, Queen of the land of Gore, sister of King Arthur. Black of hair, of eye, of robe, and a horse as black and shining as Satan's heart. Her cheeks were white, the living white of white rose, and her midnight cloak was blacker for its points of ermine.

  Before and following the queens under their canopy rode armored men, rigid and with visors closed. The pageant moved silently without beat of hoof or clink of mail. It took its way against the thunderheads and toward a ditched and ramparted hill called Maiden's Castle, and shunned by daylight folks as a place of ghosts and a cover for witches whereon a turreted castle might rise in a night and be gone by morning. Only those schooled and proved in necromancy foregathered there.

  The great raven dropped from the sky and lighted on the black trappings of Morgan's black steed and he croaked softly to his mistress, and cocked his head when she questioned him.

  "Croak," he said. "Dog!--Pig!--Death!--Pretty--Pretty--Lady!"

  Then Morgan shrilled laughter. "A tidbit, sisters," she cried. "A honeyed plum." She threw the raven into the air and he led the way toward the apple tree where Lancelot slept.

  The wind of afternoon printed its invisible shape on the grass and flowers of the plain where the four unearthly queens dismounted and moved cautiously toward the apple tree. Lancelot's tethered war horse snorted and stamped, laid back his ears, and showed the whites of his eyes, for horses are particularly sensitive to cracks and breaches in normality. And still the knight slept, although his face twitched and his right hand opened and slowly closed.

  "It cannot be a natural sleep," said Morgan quietly. "I wonder whether some other has control of
him." She stood over him, looking down. "No," she said. "No enchantment here--only weariness, month weariness, year weariness." She raised her black eyes and saw her lovely sister queens licking their lips like wolves about a bleeding slaughter.

  "You know him then?"

  "Of course," said she of the Outer Isles. "It is Lancelot."

  "I told you it was a sweetmeat. But sisters of the earth should not bite sisters. I know that we will strive for him. But let it not be with tooth and claw. Also, I know you well enough, my dears, to be sure you will not share."

  The Queen of North Galys asked sweetly, "What do you propose?"

  Now Lancelot's body shuddered, his head turned back and forth like a man in fever, and he licked his lips and groaned.

  From under her cloak Morgan brought out a small, long-necked bottle of lactucarium, iridescent with age. She unstoppered it and, leaning down, poured a few thick black drops on Lancelot's lips, and as he licked his lips and grimaced at the bitterness, Morgan le Fay spread a soft-spoken hood of magic words over him and he drew a deep, shuddering breath and sank into a sable sleep. Morgan did not speak softly now, for there was no chance of his awakening. "This I propose," she said. "That we carry this prize with us to Maiden's Castle and then compete for him, but with such silken subtlety that when the winner grasps the prize the dove will think he has chosen the falcon's talons. Is it a bargain, sisters?"

  The others laughingly agreed, for each one thought that in this kind of tournament she had no peer. Then Lancelot was laid upon his shield and two knights carried him between them. The stately progress moved like figures painted on a wall toward the prodigious prehistoric fortress on the hill. The sun went down as they entered the narrow approach between a steep wall of earth and stars flickered to life as they crossed narrow causeways over the deep successive ditches. It was night when they emerged on the ramparted summit, a grassy pasturage, rock-strewn with the midden of a thousand years of building and destroying. Then, as the parade of queens crossed the great enclosure, a castle built itself on the southern point, rose course by course to battlements, and towers sprouted from the corners. As it was completed, lights shone from slitted windows and sentries mushroomed between the castellations. When they came to the place where a moat should be, there was a moat with stars reflected in its waters and the dim white hulls of slow-moving swans. And at the entrance a drawbridge grew suddenly and then crashed down, the iron cage of the portcullis clanked slowly up, and the brass-studded leaves of the gates creaked open, and when the pageantry had entered, the drawbridge raised, the portcullis rattled down, gates closed, and then the castle became insubstantial and then transparent like a thin cloud, and the wind dispersed the shreds, leaving a rock-strewn plateau with sheep grazing under the stars.

  Sir Lancelot crawled painfully awake out of unconsciousness compounded of drugs and enchantment. In the darkness his head throbbed with flashing light and he was cold with dampness creeping into his marrow. His searching hand discovered that he was disarmed and dressed only in the light jacket and pants he wore under his mail. Exploring further, his fingers found a cut stone floor coated with cold greasy moisture, while his nose made out the smells of old suffering and fear and hopelessness and filthy death, the sour odors that penetrate the walls of dungeons.

  He sat up painfully and embraced his knees, trying to penetrate the fusty darkness. He put out his hand and then drew it back, fearing to know what his fingers might find. For a long time he sat drawn into himself, trying to make as small a target as possible for the fear that waited in the darkness around him. Then he heard light footsteps approaching and he closed his eyes tightly and made a passionate child's prayer for protection, and when he looked again he was blinded by the flame of a single candle. It was a moment before he could make out the damsel holding it, who said to him, "What cheer, Sir Knight?"

  He considered this question carefully--studied stone walls without windows and the thick oaken door with a small iron grille and a lock as big as a shield, and then he glanced back at the maiden. "What cheer indeed!" he said.

  "It was only a manner of speaking, sir. My father says it is proper to ask what cheer of a knight."

  "Would it be proper for a knight to ask where he is and how he got here and why in the name of the four Evangelists your father holds me here?"

  "It's not my father, sir. He is not here. You see, I myself am a kind of prisoner. I was sitting in my father's manor hall, combing lambs' wool to make yarn and wondering how I could help my father at next Tuesday's tournament, because, you see, last Tuesday he had a fall and he is hard to live with when he is defeated--I guess any knight is."

  Lancelot broke in, "Fair damsel--for the love of God's body, tell the last first. Who holds me here?"

  "I've forgotten your supper," said the girl. "It's just outside."

  "Wait, damsel--who--?"

  She was gone and the light with her, but in a moment she returned with a wooden bowl piled with bones and soaked bread, like a dog's dinner. "It isn't very good," she said, "but they told me to bring it."

  "Who?"

  "The queens."

  "What queens?"

  She put the bowl on the stone floor beside him and stood the candle beside it to free her fingers for counting. "The Queen of Gore," she ticked her on her little finger, "the Queen of the Isles, the Queen of North Galys, and--let's see--Gore, Isles, Galys. Oh, yes, the Queen of Eastland. That's four, isn't it?"

  "And what a four!" said Lancelot. "I know them all--witches, enchantresses, devils' daughters. Did they bring me here?"

  "They are beautiful," said the damsel. "And their gowns and jewels--you would have to see them to believe them--"

  "Listen to me."

  "Yes, they brought you here, sir, and me also, for I was sitting in my father's hall, combing lambs' wool."

  "I know, and suddenly you were here. I went to sleep under an apple tree in the sun and I am here. What do these wicked queens want with me?"

  "I don't know, sir. You see, I only got here and they said to bring your supper and lock up after. I'll look around, sir. Maybe I can tell you more in the morning. I must go. They told me not to speak and to hurry back, as you might eat me."

  "Can you leave the candle?"

  "I'm afraid not, sir. I couldn't find my way out of here without it."

  When she had gone and the darkness closed down, the knight clawed in his bowl and gnawed his supper from the bones while he thought about the strange and frightening creatures who had made him prisoner.

  He had two reasons for fear. In his long and relentless struggle with himself and with the world to become the perfect knight, few women had crossed his attention. Thus, in his ignorance he found a fear of unknown things. And second, he was a straightforward, simple man; the sword, not the mind, was the tool of his greatness. The purposes and means of necromancy, demons, and secrets he found foreign and fearful. His few failures and fewer defeats had been accomplished through enchantment and now he was taken prisoner by that same black and midnight art. His heart quaked in the darkness and he felt the stone walls press in on him. His heart pounded and his stomach pressed against his chest and shortened his breath. But this was no alien sensation, for Lancelot, like all great practitioners of any art, was a sensitive and a nervous man. An opponent in the field meeting the cold perfection of his command of weapons would have thought him nerveless, little knowing his sick wretchedness before the fight began. And while he quaked at the barrier, waiting for the trumpets, his quick eye nevertheless automatically observed, tabulated, and stored away every move and gesture and tendency of his opponent. So even now when he was near to panic, his second mind probed his opponents, for although they were ladies and queens, they were also his enemies, and enemies must have purpose and means and direction.

  They could not hate him, he thought, for he had not injured them. Therefore, revenge was not their end. Robbing was out of the question, for they were bloated with possessions and he had nothing but his armor a
nd his fame. What, then, could be their purpose? They must want something of him, something perhaps he did not know he had, a service, a secret. It was beyond him and he gave it up, but his fighting mind out of habit went on with its analysis. If a man flinched under a certain stroke, or cut short on the near side, there was usually a reason--an old wound, or even an old sorrow. A man took the profession of arms for clear and definable reasons, but why did man or woman study the despicable arts of necromancy?

  Lancelot was lost again, and he reined and spurred his mind to a new course when a picture came to him, but a living picture in the round and clear and brilliant as cathedral glass. He saw a young, determined Lancelot, only then called Galahad, go sprawling to the hoof-mauled tourney ground under the blunt lance of a fourteen-year-old. Again Galahad tried, and again flew through the air. His short chin set and his lips were blue with determination. And the third time the blunt lance tore him from his saddle, and when he struck the earth a scream of pain went up his spine. The tough chevroned dwarf, wide as a barrel, carried the boy to his mother, bubbling with pain. "The other boy was too big, my lady," the squire explained. "But he's outclassed his age and there's no holding Galahad here." There was holding him easily for a long time, for he couldn't move. They put bags of sand against his back to keep him still. And as he lay wedged while his wrenched spine mended, his opponent grew treetop tall in the boy's mind. Waking and asleep, the blunt spear wiped him from his horse until he found a poultice for his pride. Under his left arm there was a tiny knob so small that only he knew it was there. Three turns to the right and half a turn back with the fingers of his left hand, and in mid-course he grew to a black cloud and overwhelmed the fourteen-year-old. But the secret knob could do more than that. Two turns right and two left, and he could fly and hover and dart. Sometimes in the joust he left his horse and flew ahead and struck the giant boy down--and last--a straight push in and he became invisible. He would wait anxiously to be alone in his sandbags to bring out his dream. It was odd that he had forgotten all about it when his real ability began to grow. And suddenly Lancelot, in the darkness of his prison, knew about magic and necromancy and those who practiced it. "So that's it," he thought. "Poor things--poor unhappy things."