The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

  It is not true as is romantically presumed that people frightened or injured or persecuted are wakeful. More often than not they retire into sleep to be free of trouble for a time. A man like Lancelot, tempered in soldiery, seasoned and tanned by perils, lays up supplies of sleep as he does food or water, knowing its lack will reduce his strength and dull his mind. And although he had slept away part of the day, the knight retired from cold and darkness and the unknown morrow and entered a dreamless rest and remained in it until a soft light began to grow in his cell of naked stone. Then he awakened and wrung his muscles free of cold cramp and again embraced his knees for warmth. He could see no source of light. It came equally from everywhere as dawn does before the rise of the sun. He saw the mortared stones of his cell stenciled with patches of dark slime. And as he looked, designs formed on the walls: formal rounded trees covered with golden fruit and curling vines with flowers as frankly invented as are those of an illuminated book, a benign sheltering tree, and under it a unicorn glowing white, with horn and neck lowered in salute to a maiden of bright needlework who embraced the unicorn, thus proving her maidenhood. Then a broad soft bed shivered and grew substantial in the corner of the cell, a bed with a cover of purple velvet on which great cushions like soft bright jewels were piled. The air grew warmer from a heraldic sun in glory which formed itself with wavy rays on the ceiling sky.

  Sir Lancelot was a simple knight who had not learned to trust his eyes at one moment and deny them the next. He stood up and saw and felt the long rich ocher robe which fell to his ankles. He went to the bed and lay on its shrinking softness and crossed his wrists behind his head in time to see four rich and cushioned thrones take semblance and then form and then stabilize on the far side of the cell while a rich carpet grew like quick grass on the stone floor.

  An odor like a potpourri of rose leaves and cinnamon, lavender and frankincense, spikenard and cloves, filled the room, and the tapestries moved under a little summer wind which came from nowhere.

  "What will be, will be in comfort," Lancelot told himself.

  For a few moments there was a waiting silence like a stage all decked and furnished before the play begins, and then a rank of lures from bass to treble struck a slow, soft, rhythmic pace that informed the mind of the pace of princesses in stately procession to a sovereign's coronation. Only the prison door remained--an ugly reminder of studded oak and rusty iron.

  And now it opened of itself and the four lovely queens flowed in to rhythm, pausing to touch a little foot between each step. They took their places on the thrones and they were perfect in beauty like waxen flowers. Their white jeweled hands lay quietly on the arms of their thrones and their mouths smiled serenely as they looked at the knight lying on the bed. The music fell away and there came a silence such as a seashell gives to the ear.

  Then Lancelot stood and saluted them. "Greetings, my ladies, and good welcome."

  They answered in unison of a litany. "Greetings, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, son of King Ban of Benwick, first and best knight of Christendom. Welcome and good cheer."

  "Shall I repeat your titles, my queens?" he asked. "I know them well. You are Queen Morgan le Fay of the land of Gore, half-sister of great Arthur the King, daughter of the Duke of Cornwall and of that fair Igraine who became Uther Pendragon's queen. And you are Queen of the Outer Isles--"

  Morgan said, "No need to repeat them all if you know them."

  For a moment he studied their perfect brows, their brilliant, shining eyes, their smooth and lovely cheeks.

  "My ladies," he said at last, "if time in darkness has not confused me, it was yesterday that I went to sleep under an apple tree on a sunny plain with my nephew Sir Lyonel beside me. I awakened in a cold and bitter cell, stripped of my arms, a prisoner; am I your prisoner?"

  "A prisoner of love," said Morgan. And when the others tried to break in she said coldly, "Silence, my sisters. Let me speak. Afterward you may have your chance." She turned back to Lancelot. "Sir, my lord," she said. "And you are right. We took you prisoner."

  "Where is Sir Lyonel?"

  "You were alone. No one was with you."

  Lancelot sat on the edge of the velvet bed. "What can you want with me?" he asked, puzzled.

  Three queens laughed in little shrieks and Morgan smiled.

  "A willing prisoner is easier to handle," she said. "Therefore, I will explain. We four have everything we can wish for: lands, wealth, power, and pretty things beyond belief. Besides these, through our arts we have access to things beyond the world and under it, but, more than this, if something we wish does not exist, we have the power to create it. You must then understand that to us new playthings are very rare. And when we saw the best knight in the world sleeping, we thought that you are that rarity, a thing we do not have. And so we took you. But there is one thing we do not do, because it is not in our natures. We do not share. And so we must contend for you. But in the past when we have contended, it has happened that the prize was so ripped and torn that the winner did not want it. You must agree that even the best knight in the world, if he were a dismembered bloody pulp, would not be worth possessing. Wait, sisters, I am almost finished. We have decided to let you make your choice of one of us, and all have sworn to be bound by it. I hope it will be so. These queens have not always felt the bind of oaths."

  Lancelot said, "If I chose none of you, what then?"

  "Why, then I am afraid the darkness and cold stone will close around you. Even the best of knights would not live long, but if he lived too long I think food and water would be removed. But forget that grimness. Each one of us will plead her case. It will be amusing for us to plead, a new experience. I will be last. Will you begin, my lady of North Galys?"

  "Gladly, sister." She tossed her head and her hair leaped like red flame. She dropped her lids, partly covering her emerald eyes. She moved toward Lancelot like a great lovely cat, and when she stood near to him he smelled the nerve-disturbing odor of her body, and it was musk. His senses stirred in a small agony, and his tongue felt the salt taste of rut. Her voice purred low and deep as though it vibrated her whole body.

  "I think you know what I can promise you--sensations you are only dimly aware of--ecstasy, mounting, growing, swelling, bursting--endless and no satiety, no end until you know the crucifixion of love, and scream for the cross, and help to drive the nails while every nerve, every white writhing nerve, joins the demonic and whips itself to rage of exulting and raging passion. You lick your lips. You think you know. What you know is only a whisper beside the pandemonium I promise you."

  He was breathing in heaving bursts when she went back to her chair and sat with a small cat smile of triumph watching him. And Morgan said, "You devil. That was not fair. Don't answer, perfect knight, before you've heard the others."

  "Is it fair to let him cool off?" said the green-eyed queen.

  "The Queen of the Outer Isles," said Morgan le Fay.

  The golden-haired sea queen sat quietly on her throne and her eyes were dancing, laughter-soaked.

  "It was a brilliant performance, sir," she said. "I am the first to admit it. The place still reeks of it. I do not want to criticize my dear opponent, but it seems to me that after a while one might tire even of her versatility in a rather simple activity at which goats are better versed than men and rabbits superior to all others. You might one morning wish for coarse bread to take away the taste of spices. And those whipped nerves might conceivably thicken and grow dull. This--art--has been known to change from lovely to loathsome in a flick of time."

  The roan-haired bared sharp teeth. "Get to your own business," she snarled. "Let mine alone."

  "Sweetly, sister--gently. Sir Best Knight, I think you will agree that no state, climate, activity, pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, defeat, or victory does not with surfeit become tiresome. My gift to you is change. One day will echo with laughter like a rippled blue pool smiling in the sun while wavelets chuckle among mossy stones; the next will mother storm, fierce, wild cra
shing violence--mind-torn--wonderful. I promise that every joy will be emphasized with a little pain, rest will follow riot, heat alternate with cold. Lusts of the flesh and mind will bring cool ascetic healing and sharpenings. I promise that no experience will blunt itself upon itself. In a word, I will extend your feelings, senses, thoughts, to the outmost limit, so that never will you feel the universal blight of waste, of curiosity unsatisfied, possibilities unexplored. I offer life. You will be king one day and work-ruined serf the next, to give your kingship value. Where others offer one thing, I offer everything set in layers of contrast." Her eyes were slaty gray now, somber, and with a glint of coming tempest. "Finally, I offer you a proper death, a high and shining death as the final ornament of a proper high and shining life." She glanced in triumph at the contending queens.

  Morgan said, "She brought out all of her treasures, didn't she? That promise would keep her busy. It would take some doing."

  Sir Lancelot rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his cupped hands. The scars of old wounds on his face stood out white and his eyes were slitted, shining between half-closed lids. The questing queen could not read his thoughts.

  The Queen of Eastland sighed. Ashes of roses she was, soft and sweet and clothed in lavender, and in her hazel eyes there seemed to live pity, haven, and understanding linked with forgiveness.

  "Poor, weary knight," she said quietly. "My friends here have seen you as they themselves are--all lust and restlessness--these are their specialties. I know that every man has these two hungers, some more and others less. I have an advantage over my competitors, Sir Lancelot; you see, I know your mother, little Galahad."

  Morgan laughed and the other two cried "Shame!"

  Lancelot's head jerked up and his eyes glinted dangerously. But the Lady of Eastland continued softly, "Queen Elaine of Benwick across the sea, a wife to great King Ban, Elaine the precious queen, and beautiful so that ambassadors from all the world forgot their missions when they looked at her. But she did not forget a snub-nosed urchin with a dirty face named Galahad. After the formal brilliant theater of the court in which she played her part, she never forgot or was too tired to climb the circling turret stairs to carry a little cake to a child who had forgotten to wash his hands. No embassy ever kept her from a tearful child in trouble. And wars and butchery about the walls did not dull the passionate tragedy of a grubby finger cut with a new knife, weeping little tears of blood. And when the fever came she dissolved the world and did not return until one small freckled forehead cooled and restored the world again."

  Lancelot sprang up, crying, "Stop it! Oh! Foul, oh! Rottenness. Look! Fingers of both hands crossed. And here's a paternoster across your face."

  Queen Morgan muttered, "Are you offering to be a mother to him, dear?"

  "I offer the peace he never found anywhere else, the safety and warmth he still seeks, praise for his virtues, and a gentle and compassionate conscience for his faults. Sit down, fair knight. I meant no disrespect. I know that Guinevere resembles Queen Elaine in looks--but that is all. Think what I offer you."

  "I will not listen."

  "Think of it."

  "I do not hear."

  "But you will remember. Think of it."

  "Ladies, I have had enough," he said. "I am your prisoner. Send for men. Do what you want with me, but be sure I will go down fighting. You have failed."

  Queen Morgan's voice cut like a scimitar. "I have not failed," she said. "My clever little coven sisters have offered you bright-colored shreds of a whole garment, broken pieces of a holy figure. I offer you the whole of which all else is part--I offer power. If you want harlotry in fancy dress, power will get it for you. Admiration?--a whole world aches to kiss its backside with slobbering lips. A crown? Power and a little knife will place it on your head. Change? With power you can try on cities like hats, or smash them when you tire of them. Power attracts loyalty and requires none. The will to power keeps a baby suckling grimly long after he is fed, counsels a child to take his brother's toy, reaps a gaggling harvest of concupiscent girls. What drives a knight through tortures to his prize or death? The power of fame. Why does a man heap up property he cannot use? Why does a conqueror take countries he will never see? What makes the hermit grovel in the black filth of a cell but the promise of power, or at least influence in heaven? And do the humble mad saints reject the power of intercession? What crime is there that does not become a virtue in the hands of power? And is not virtue itself a kind of power? Philanthropy, good deeds, charity, are they not mortgages on the currency of future power? It is the one possession that does not flag or become tedious, for there is never enough of it and an old man in whom the juices of all other desires are dried up will crawl on his tottering knees toward his grave still grabbing with frantic hands for power.

  "My sisters have laid out cheese for the mice of small desires. They courted sensations, restlessness, and memory. I do not offer you a gift, but the ability, the right, and the duty to take all gifts, anything you can conceive, and when you weary of it, to smash it like a pot and throw it on the midden heap. Best of all, I offer you power over men and women, over their bodies, their hopes, their fears, their loyalties, and their sins. This is the sweetest power of all. For you can let them run a little and stop them short of heaven with a casual claw. And when your contempt for this nastiness finally sickens you, you can shrivel them in writhing clots the way you'd put salt on a regiment of slugs and see them melt down in their own slime.

  "My sisters spoke to your senses. I speak to your mind. My gift--a ladder to climb to the stars, who are your brothers and your peers, and from there to look down and for amusement stir up the anthill of the world."

  Morgan le Fay was not playing gifted tricks. Her words were armed with passionate honesty and they rang like a battle ax on a bronze shield.

  Sir Lancelot stared at her, unbelieving, for her face had become a catapult firing red-hot words against his defense.

  "What is this? What is power?" he asked.

  "What is it? Power is itself--whole--self-contained, self-sufficient, self-sustaining and unassailable, except by power. A sense of power makes all other gifts and attributes seem puny. That is my gift." She leaned back in her throne, panting and swearing, and the other three queens had melted under the heat of her. Then all four returned their eyes to Lancelot, bright flat eyes of active but casual curiosity. So might they watch a stallion for his response to the iridescent shells of cantharides or a rival's forehead for the first antimony sweat.

  Lancelot with his finger traced figures against the nap of his ocher robe, a square and a triangle. He erased them and made a circle and a cross side by side, then circled the cross and crossed the circle. His face was puzzled and sad. At length he looked up at Morgan. He said gently, "And that is why you twice tried to murder your brother, the king."

  She spat at him. "Half-brother and half-king. A weak king. What does he know about power? I tell you, in the world of power, weakness is a sin--the only sin--and it is punished with death. This is very interesting, of course. But we did not come here to discuss sin. Come, Sir Best Knight. We have made our offer. It remains for you to make your choice."

  "Choice?" he asked blankly.

  "Don't pretend you don't remember. You are to choose among us."

  He shook his head slowly. "I have no choice," he said. "I am a prisoner."

  "Nonsense, we've given you a choice. Are we not beautiful?"

  "I don't know, my lady."

  "That is ridiculous. Of course you know. There are no more beautiful women in the world or any half so beautiful, we've seen to that."

  "I guess that's what I mean. You chose your faces and your bodies, didn't you, and by your arts created them."

  "What of that? They are perfect."

  "I don't know what you started with. I don't know what you are. You can change appearance, I believe."

  "Of course we can. What difference does that make? Surely you aren't such a fool as to think
Guinevere as beautiful as we?"

  "But you see, ladies, Guinevere has the face and body and soul of Guinevere. It's all there and always has been. Guinevere is Guinevere. One can love Guinevere knowing what he loves."

  "Or hate her," Morgan said.

  "Or hate her, my lady. But your faces are not you. They are only pictures you have drawn of what you would like to be. A face, a body, grows and suffers with its possessor. It has the scars and ravages of pain and defeat, but also it has the shining of courage and love. And to me, at least, beauty is a continuation of all of those."

  "Why do we listen to his chattering?" Eastland cried angrily.

  "Because we may learn, sister. We have, it seems, made an error. It is a matter for experiment. Go on, sir," Morgan said, and her eyes were surfaced and expressionless like the eyes of a snake.

  Lancelot said, "Once on a night I stood in an open window looking out. I saw red eyes and into the torchlight came a great she-wolf who raised her head and looked into my eyes, and she opened her grinning mouth, and the great fangs and tongue were gouted with new blood. 'Hand me a spear,' I called, and the wise man beside me at the window said, 'It will do no good. That is Morgan le Fay giving service to the moon.' "