The King Arthur Trilogy Page 7

  And that evening Arthur received the oaths of all his knights of the Round Table, that always they would defend the right, that they would be the true servants and protectors of all women, and deal justly in all things with all men, that they would strive always for the good of the kingdom of Britain and for the glory of the kingdom of Logres which was within Britain as the flame is within the lamp, and that they would keep faith with each other and with God.

  And when the oath-taking was over, and before ever the feasting began, Merlin came and set his hand for a moment upon Arthur’s shoulder; and when the young King looked up, feeling the farewell in the touch, he said, ‘Remember the things that I have taught you.’ And he turned away and walked down the Hall, out of the torchlight and into the dark. And the Lady Nimue rose from where she sat among the Queen’s maidens, and walked with him. And the places in the Hall were empty where they had been.

  5

  The Ship, the Mantle and the Hawthorn Tree

  THEN MERLIN WENT on his last wandering, and the Lady Nimue with him, and ever, when he grew weary, she would make him to sleep with his head in her lap, and sing to him the songs of the Lordly People; so in a while when he awoke he would feel himself young again. And ever, as they went, for a gift of love he taught her his own magic arts to add to the magic of her own that she had already.

  And so at last they came overseas to the kingdom of King Ban of Benwick; he who Arthur had aided when he was attacked by King Claudas, and who had afterwards fought beside Arthur at the Battle of Bedegraine. Now King Ban had a son, who was seventeen summers old and training for knighthood; and when he was a child and the kingdom sore beset by Claudas, the Lady Nimue had taken him from his mother and fostered him in her own palace of the Lordly Ones in the midst of the Lake, that he might be safe until the danger was past. And this she had done at Merlin’s asking; for Merlin knew that the boy was to be the greatest of Arthur’s knights, and the best knight in all Christendom.

  But now, the boy remembered nothing of this, for mortals who have been inside the Hollow Hills bring back no memory of that time, lest their lives should be spent in hopeless longing and in seeking for the way back.

  Therefore Merlin came to the palace of King Ban with Nimue beside him; and he spoke with the King and with Elaine the Queen, and then asked to see their son Lancelot.

  ‘What would you with Lancelot?’ said the Queen, who was always afraid of losing him, after that first time. ‘He is as yet no more than a squire.’

  ‘But he shall be more,’ Merlin said. ‘There are things I know of him that make me wish to see and speak with him this one time.’

  ‘And these things?’ asked the King.

  ‘I know that he was christened Galahad,’ said Merlin, ‘before ever he was confirmed in the name of Lancelot. I know that there was a time when you feared him lost to you. But be easy, I have not come to take him from you again – or not in the way you fear.’

  So then, still unwillingly, the King sent for his son.

  Lancelot was schooling a young goshawk. All his life he was to have more joy from flying a bird he had trained himself than one that had been trained, no matter how well, by a falconer. When they had shared together the ordeal of the terrible three days and nights that man must carry bird where ever he went, allowing no sleep to either, something grew between them that was lacking if the bird had shared it with someone else. Lancelot had reached that stage with Starstrike and had just won through the second night when his father’s summons reached him. He knew that if he set Starstrike down now, it would all be to do again, and the hawk might be marred for ever. So he went to his father’s Hall still carrying the weary goshawk on his gloved fist, and stood respectfully before the strange dark man and the lady whom he found there.

  And as he looked at them, especially as he looked at the lady, it seemed to him for a moment that he had seen them before. And for that moment there was a kind of mist in his head, like the mist that hangs over lake water, and in the mist some kind of vague half-memory that was gone again even before he knew that it was there.

  And Merlin looked at Lancelot searchingly, knowing what he knew of future days. Lancelot was a very ugly young man; even when he was not so tired, he was ugly; with a face under his thick arched crest of dark hair that looked as though it had been put together by someone who had not troubled to make sure that the two sides matched. One side of his mouth was straight-set and solemn, while the other curled up with joy. One of his thick black brows was level as a falcon’s wing, and the other flew wild as a mongrel’s ragged ear. Presently it would be a fighter’s face, and presently it would be a lover’s face; and the hand that was not hidden in the great leather hawking glove was already a swordsman’s hand. And though Merlin’s heart bled for the joys and sorrows of his destiny that he would feel more deeply than most men, it warmed with pride because it was a great destiny and the boy was matched to it.

  Then Merlin spoke to the Queen his mother, ‘Aye, he is as I believed that he would be; and one day he will be the greatest knight in all Christendom.’

  ‘Shall I live to see it?’ said his mother.

  ‘Surely, you shall live to see it, and for many summers and winters more. But though his fame shall be known in Benwick as in all other places, he shall not bide here with you.’

  And to Lancelot he said, ‘When you come to be eighteen, before the next Feast of Eastertide, let you leave this place and go to King Arthur at Camelot, and pray him to make you a knight of the Round Table.’

  Lancelot held himself very still, that he might not disturb the goshawk on his fist. ‘Often has the King my father told me of Arthur Pendragon and how they fought side by side at Bedegraine; and the harpers sing of him beside our fire on winter nights. There is nothing in the world that I would rather do than go to him and ask my knighthood at his hands and serve him. But why should he think me worthy? I am all untried.’

  ‘Maybe he will do it for the sake of the fighting that he and I saw together,’ said King Ban, who had sat quietly looking on.

  But Merlin said, ‘Tell him that Merlin sent you; and that it was the last thing he did before he went to find his long sleep under the hawthorn tree. He will give you your knighthood. And your place at the Round Table.’

  And the joy flashed in Lancelot’s ugly face like a bright blade drawn from a battered sheath.

  Merlin rose to go, and the Lady Nimue with him. But before she went, she drew close to Lancelot – so close that he thought it strange, remembering afterwards, that the goshawk did not bate from his fist nor strike at her – and she looked deep into his eyes, her own eyes changeful and water-bright, and again for a moment the mist seemed to rise and swirl inside his head.

  ‘You who were first Galahad and are now Lancelot,’ she said in a voice that made him see lake water lapping among feathered reeds, ‘when you come to Arthur’s court and receive your knighthood, let you take your third name as a gift from me, and call yourself thereafter Sir Lancelot of the Lake.’

  And when the mist cleared from his head, they were both gone.

  Then again Merlin and the Lady Nimue with him wandered through this place and that, across water and among mountains and through valleys and forests, Merlin teaching her the last of his magic as they went. And so they came at last to Cornwall, where King Marc now ruled in place of Duke Gorloise of Tintagel. And at the appointed time they came to the hawthorn tree, all curdled with white blossom and the scent of it coming and going like breath upon the evening air.

  And Merlin lay down under the tree with his head in the Lady’s lap; and she let down her straight dark hair so that it hung like a curtain about them both; and she made a singing magic. And listening to it, it was to Merlin as though he heard the humming of wild honey bees among the heather of the hills of his boyhood; and he sank into a sleep that was deeper and quieter than any sleep known to mortal man.

  And when she saw that he was deep sunk in his enchanted sleep, the Lady of the Lake arose, and mad
e another magic; a dancing magic this time, woven with her footsteps about and about and about the hawthorn tree. Nine times she circled the tree, and as she circled, a cave opened among the roots, and the grass and the stones and the twisted roots rose up and twined together and roofed it in, and closed the last opening, so that Merlin lay within, and nothing remained but the hawthorn tree growing on a stony mound, to show where he lay.

  ‘Bide there until your waking time,’ said the Lady Nimue when she had done, and she went her way.

  Now at about the same time, King Arthur rode hunting in the forest that stretched west of Camelot into the mountains, and with him for hunting companions were Sir Accalon of Gaul, and King Uriens the husband of Morgan La Fay – for despite Merlin’s repeated warnings that she was a witch and would do him any harm she might, Arthur loved to have his half-sister often about his court. They hunted for three days, making further and further west; and on the third day they put up a mighty hart, and hunted it so far and fast that, grievously, they all three killed their horses under them; a thing which can be done too easily in the heat of a long chase, a horse’s heart being willing beyond its strength.

  The day was drawing on to dusk, and they knew that the forest was no place for unmounted men at night, and so pushed on, hoping to find a hermitage or a charcoal burner’s hut. And so they came out from the trees on to the margin of a broad lake; and on the shore of the lake the hart that they had hunted also lay dead, the hounds all about it. They whipped off the hounds, and stood for a moment looking down at the dead beast; and then Arthur set his horn to his lips and sounded the long sad notes of the Marte for the death of the hart, sending the echoes flying through the shadowy forest. And as the echoes died, the hounds turned and went streaming back the way they had come, as though their huntsman was with them.

  And in that same moment, out from behind a spit of the alder-grown shore glided a small ship, and came of its own accord to the bank where the three stood, like a well-trained dog when its master whistles.

  ‘Sirs,’ said Arthur, ‘let us go aboard this ship, for it is a sorry thing to turn away from an adventure when it comes so sweetly to the hand.’

  So they stepped on board, and found the ship fine and beautiful and richly hung with silks, but seemingly with no one on board save for themselves. And as soon as they had come aboard it drew off from the bank, for all that there was no hand at the steering oar, nor any to man the sails. And as they went, the dusk deepened towards night about them; and suddenly there sprang up the flames of a hundred torches all along the vessel’s sides so that it was lit from stem to stem with a golden glow. And up from below came twelve damosels, the fairest that any of them had ever seen; and they greeted Arthur and his companions and made them joyously welcome and brought them such delicious food and such rare and fragrant wines that Arthur thought he had never supped so magnificently before. They were very hungry, and merry also, and when they had eaten their fill the damosels led them below, each to a chamber that had been made ready for them; and they lay down upon beds that were so soft that they seemed to float upon them as upon thick-piled clouds; and faint music whispered all about them mingled with the lap of water along the vessel’s sides. And so they fell asleep, and slept unstirring the night long.

  And in the morning King Uriens woke to find himself in his own bed in Camelot, and wondered in great amazement how he came to be there. And when he looked at his wife Morgan beside him, she lay still sleeping, but with a little smile on her face as though she knew a secret that she would not tell.

  And King Arthur awoke to find himself in a dark and dismal dungeon, and heard about him the groans and complaints of many other men.

  ‘Who are you that make such grievous complaint?’ asked Arthur when he had gathered his wits about him.

  ‘We are twenty knights who have lain here captive, some of us as much as seven years,’ one of them answered him.

  ‘For what cause?’ said Arthur.

  And another answered, ‘Sir Damas, the lord of this castle, is a cruel and unjust tyrant who refuses his younger brother Sir Ontzlake his share of the inheritance they had from their father. And often Sir Ontzlake has offered to fight his brother in single combat for the lands that are his; but Sir Damas knows himself no match for him with lance or sword, and so would have the matter fought out by champions instead. But no knight that he has asked will stand champion for him; so he has taken a hatred against all knights, and captured in these past seven years all who have come within his lands, and cast them into this foul dungeon. Many of us have died here, and we who are left are like to go the same way unless help come soon.’

  And even as he spoke there came a damosel down the dark stair, carrying a lamp, for little light of day could come into that place. And she said to Arthur, ‘Fair sir, how is it with you?’

  ‘I hardly know,’ said Arthur, ‘nor do I know how I came to be in this place.’

  ‘It matters not how you came here,’ said the damosel, ‘you shall go free of it if you will but fight as champion for my father against the champion his brother sends to meet him this day, the victor to become the lord of all these lands.’

  Arthur was silent. He had never before fought in an unjust cause; but he was young and the blood hot and rising like spring sap within him, and he thought of life shut away in that dark place far from the light of the sun, and the faces of his friends and the feel of a horse under him; and he thought too of the twenty men around him in the gloom.

  ‘I will fight for the lord your father,’ he said at last, ‘if I have his promise upon oath that whether I win or lose, the twenty knights here with me shall go free.’

  ‘You shall have his promise,’ said the damosel.

  ‘Then I am ready – if I had but horse and armour.’

  ‘Horse and armour you shall have, none better in all the land.’

  It seemed to Arthur, looking at her face in the upward light of the lamp, that he had seen her somewhere before. ‘Were you ever at Arthur’s court?’ he asked.

  ‘Nay, I am Sir Damas’s daughter and nothing more. I was never at court,’ said the damosel; and in that she lied, for she was one of the maidens of Morgan La Fay.

  But Arthur believed her, for he was a simple and trusting man; and the little warning whisper that had begun at the back of his mind died away.

  And he followed her up the stairs towards the clear light of day beyond the stairhead door.

  At the same time as King Arthur woke in his dungeon, Sir Accalon of Gaul woke to find himself beside a deep well in the courtyard of an old strong manor house; so close beside the well that if he had so much as turned in his sleep he must have crashed to the bottom and found his death there. When he saw and understood, Sir Accalon thought, Now God help the King, and King Uriens also, for it must be that the damosels in the ship were creatures of some foul enchantment, not mortal maidens, and have betrayed us all; and if I come out from this adventure with my life I shall slay such witches wherever I meet them!

  And at that moment came a dwarf, very ugly, with a great mouth and a flat nose that spread all across his face, and saluted him. ‘Sir, I come to you from your love, from Queen Morgan La Fay herself.’

  Now Sir Accalon did indeed love Morgan La Fay, better than all else in the world, not knowing that she was even as the damosels of the ship, a witch and a worker of dark enchantments. And his heart leapt within him, and he said, ‘What would my lady with me, here in this strange place?’

  ‘She begs you to fight for her against a knight whom she has good cause to hate for an ancient wrong he did her; and that you may fight the better, she sends you King Arthur’s own sword Excalibur; and she bids you, if you truly love her, to do battle to the uttermost and show no mercy.’

  Then Sir Accalon reached out and took from the dwarf the sword which he held across his hands. It seemed to him strange that she should send him Arthur’s sword instead of his own; but he thought that maybe she had done so for the power that was in it. An
d anyway, wherever Arthur was, it would not harm him to use his sword for this one time. And he felt the power in the sword as though it had been a live thing in his hands, and rejoiced in it. ‘Go back to Queen Morgan,’ he said to the dwarf, ‘and tell her I will fight for her as truly as ever a knight fought for his lady.’

  Then six squires came and led Sir Accalon into the Hall of the manor house, and set food and drink before him, and then armed him, and set him upon a fine warhorse, and led him to a fair level field that was midway between the manor house of Sir Ontzlake and the fine castle of his brother.

  And at the same time, six squires were doing the same thing for King Arthur. But to King Arthur, in the last moment before he mounted his horse, came another maiden, saying, ‘Sir, your sister Morgan La Fay has dreamed that you are to do battle this day, and sends you your sword.’

  And Arthur saw that she held Excalibur across her hands, and he unbuckled from his side the borrowed sword that he had belted on, and took his own sword to belt in its place. Then he mounted his horse and rode out, the squires and the twenty freed captives following after. He wished that it had been Guenever and not his sister who had dreamed of his danger and sent him his sword. But he never doubted that it was indeed Excalibur that he carried at his side.

  So then, the champions came to the field, and found it ringed about with folk who had come to watch. Their vizors were closed, and both carried maiden shields with no device upon them, so neither knew who the other was. They jousted against each other until both were dismounted, and then fell to with their swords. And great and many were the blows they gave each other, and often the sword in Sir Accalon’s hand found the weak points in Arthur’s harness and drew blood; but however strong and sure the blows that Arthur gave in return, it seemed that they drew scarcely any blood at all. Then the truth began to wake in Arthur’s mind; the sword in his hand was not Excalibur. There was no potency, no battle-power in it, and no protection in the scabbard at his side; and seeing the ground growing red with blood, and none of it his adversary’s, he began to be sure that the other knight wielded the true Excalibur. But there was nothing he could do save fight his best with the sword he held. So he struggled on, growing weaker from loss of blood. At last, far spent, he drew back a way, to fetch his breath and find fighting ground that was not yet blood-slippery under foot; and Sir Accalon leapt after him, shouting, ‘Nay, Sir Knight, this is no time to be taking your rest!’