Arthur Rex

by Thomas Berger

  “They are mine own,” said Leodegrance, “and went away some time since, and for that reason I was ill defended.”

  “Then these are a pack of poltroons!” King Arthur cried indignantly.

  “Not at all,” said the older king. “They went upon a quest, you see.” And Sir Kay returned to him his plate, heaped, and he did attack it with vigor.

  “Sire,” said Sir Kay to King Arthur, “your meat is going cold though I have been at some pains to serve it hot.”

  “Forgive me, my dear Kay,” said Arthur and he obediently chewed a piece of beef, for he would always try to please his former brother, though in this effort he was usually unsuccessful, as now, for Kay did sigh disdainfully while looking at the vaultings of the hall.

  “Indeed the quest for the Sangreal,” said Leodegrance.

  “This is some fearsome beast?” asked King Arthur.

  “I had supposed you a Christian,” said Leodegrance. “And you know not of the Holy Grail?”

  And Arthur was ashamed, saying, “I was reared piously, my lord, but in a rustic place, remote from learned men. I am ignorant of much.”

  “Well then,” said King Leodegrance, “the Grail is a mysterious thing of which little can be precisely told, except that it is holy and was associated with Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ.”

  “’Tis not a splinter from the True Cross?” King Arthur asked suspiciously. “Or a thorn from the Saviour’s crown, the blood scarcely dry? Or a patch torn from St. Veronica’s handkerchief? For all these and more were sold every day by the charlatans at London.”

  “Nay, none of those,” said Leodegrance. “The Sangreal is rather a vessel, though its precise nature is as yet unknown, for the reason that it has not been seen within living memory. But if it be a platter or a dish, then it was served to Our Lord at His Last Supper; or if a cup, then He drank His wine from it. Or, again, His blood was caught in it dripping from His body hanging upon the Cross, or—”

  “Methinks it is strange that an hundred knights are questing for that which they do not even know the look of,” said King Arthur, who had begun to suspect that he was being guyed.

  “The very mystery of it is a lure,” King Leodegrance said. “And it is the kind of thing that will be recognized when it is seen. If one has never traveled to Afric one has never seen an ocean of sand, yet one would know the desert when one reached it. As to the Grail, whatever its nature, it was brought to the British island by Joseph a rich Jew of Arimathaea to whom the Romans gave Christ’s body, and who forsaking his wealth became Christian and came to Glastonbury, where he stuck his staff into the earth and it took flower, and the tree still grows there today.”

  “No doubt this quest is commendable,” said Arthur, “but my purpose in assembling a company of knights would be to right proximate wrongs. Therefore I should want my men at hand.”

  “The Sangreal,” said King Leodegrance, “is peculiar in that it can not be seen except by him who is perfectly pure and without sin altogether.”

  “My lord,” said Arthur, “is this not then a blasphemous idea? For as we know, only Our Saviour was perfectly sinless.”

  “Indeed,” said Leodegrance smiling wryly. “Therefore my knights will return presently from this impossible quest, and you may have them along with this round table. For,” said he falling again to his meat, “I am an old man and have grown tired of these sieges. Thus I do swear fealty to you and become your vassal, incorporating Cameliard into Britain, and you must protect me henceforward.”

  And Arthur did marvel at the old king’s cleverness, for if he accepted him as liege-subject he must needs take responsibility for him or violate the principles by which power could be exercised honorably, nay, even practically, for privilege is founded on duty, and if the horse carries the man, the animal is fed before the rider himself doth eat. Thus in certain respects the first comes last, and the greatest king is the loneliest.

  “Further,” said Leodegrance, “if I gave you this castle along with the table, ’twould not be necessary to remove it to Caerleon.”

  “And where, my lord, might you go?” asked King Arthur.

  “If I might have me a chamber in some remote tower,” said Leodegrance. “But were it not that I have a daughter to look after, I should take me to a monastery, Arthur. At my age ’tis time I became pious. For some years I have yearned to put away my crown, having got too old for to feel the satisfactions of sovereignty. And I am ill. I shall pay dearly in my guts for eating and drinking so abundantly as I am doing here. Most of my teeth have gone, and my belly wars with anything but gruel. I should long since have abdicated my throne had I a son to succeed me, but Lear’s experience was a lesson to us all in the horrors of female regiment.”

  “This daughter, my lord,” asked King Arthur, “doth she have hair of gold?”

  And Leodegrance shrugged. “One might call her yellow-headed, though the years have dulled the brightness of youth.”

  “Is she then very old?”

  “The late queen could calculate better than I,” said the old king. “But I should need more fingers than I have when counting Guinevere’s years. She’s thirteen if a day, perhaps even more. She was such a pretty fool as a child. She has spots now,” said he grimacing. “Be assured I shall never allow her to vex you.”

  After the meal King Arthur retired to the royal apartments which Leodegrance insisted he must occupy as liege-lord of Cameliard, and though he had little concern for such things he was aware that these rooms were much more attractive and comfortable than his own at Caerleon even after they had been redecorated for his half-sister Margawse, who of course he had not identified as being such until he had bedded her, alas! for it was a great sin. Though not, he believed, so great as if he had known a priori of this relationship, which he could not have done without questioning her previously to performing the carnal act, which firstly he had not known he would do, and secondly would have been a gross violation of the laws of hospitality, for a stranger must be offered unconditional welcome when under one’s roof.

  Now Arthur regretted that the deliverance of Cameliard had taken so little time, for there was this to be said of battle: it was the best distraction from the matters of conscience that puzzle the will, and once again, as on every recent night, he slept fitfully. And he did dream as follows: that he sate upon a golden throne and was tied to the arms of it with golden chains, so that he could not move from it, and the throne was mounted not on legs but on wheels, like unto the invalids’ chairs for the cripples that take the medicinal waters at Bath, and he was on a height from which the inclined ground led to a pool of water, and even as he looked at this water and saw it boiling with all manner of serpents, the wheels on his throne began to roll down the incline towards this loathsome end, and he was powerless to halt them....

  And he was awakened by Merlin, who carried neither lanthorn nor taper but rather a globe of clear glass large as an orange, with a fiery glow within it which cast a brighter light than had ever been seen.

  “Merlin, art thou in my dream?” asked the king.

  “You are not dreaming now, Sire,” said Merlin. “Though I am always something of an apparition.”

  And King Arthur did chide him. “I have seen little of thee lately in any form.”

  Then Merlin spoke sternly. “You are no longer a boy, and it would not be proper for me to attend you constantly, extricating you from every difficulty, for then I should be the king, and you the retainer.”

  And King Arthur was ashamed, murmuring, “Perhaps thou shouldst be present to tell me that truth from time to time.”

  And Merlin said more gently, “A king hath at least as many failures of nerve as a commoner, and a great king hath many more, for greatness consists not in having no weaknesses, which is impossible, but rather in using them as strengths.”

  “If there is sense in what thou sayest,” said King Arthur, “it doth elude me. But perhaps I must confess to thee, Merlin, as in fact I have done to no other, not
even my confessor, and with that failure compounding the sin, that I have committed the beastly sin of incest, than which there is none more foul unless it be the incestuous sodomy which the Angles and Saxons are said to commit with their sons.” And he told Merlin of his bedding with his half-sister Margawse.

  “Well,” said the wizard when King Arthur had done, “what are crimes to this religion of Jesus of Nazareth are of indifference to Nature, Sire, and though I expect you shall find me blasphemous, let me say that Nature was here first and will be here last. Beyond that, you were in innocent ignorance of your blood-tie to this woman, though it might be said, in a philosophy unknown to you, that you found her peculiarly attractive owing to her resemblance to your mother, which would then make it finally a form of the love which killed Narcissus, as indeed is all incest ultimately, as well as homophile sodomy for that matter.”

  “Again thou speakest too cryptically for me,” said King Arthur. “And with a suggestion of the fiendish, which is no doubt due to thy demoniac paternity—but then, for that very same reason, because thou art without the scheme of normal things, I can confide in thee. I fear I have brought down a curse upon myself by performing (however unknowingly) this unspeakable act, the which shall ruin me one day.”

  “As undoubtedly it will,” said Merlin, weighing his mysterious light in his hand. And King Arthur shrank away in despair. “But, Sire, the curse which shall ruin you eventually is the selfsame which ruins all men, irrespective of their actions good or evil, and that is Time, which is the issue of an incestuous act performed by God on reality.”

  “There is this to be said of thy metaphysic, Merlin,” said King Arthur. “Whenever it is not totally obscure, it is altogether immoral. And it is astonishing to me to hear thee, an atheistical demi-demon, speak of God.”

  Merlin smiled, and in the radiance of his light he looked more angelic than devilish. “It is finally only the fiend who doth truly worship God, as the felon adores the hangman, for the one is defined by the other. But enough of this materialism. Do consider my light, which draws its power by abstraction.” He gestured with his globe.

  Now in spite of himself Arthur was cheered by the alchemical foolishness. “Well, Merlin,” he said, “never have I seen such a collection of glowworms. This is no magic. Undoubtedly there was also some practical explanation of the disembodied arm which rose clutching Excalibur from the lake: a lever, a pulley, a wire. With age and experience of kingship I am no longer so credulous. Yet I understand the value of such illusions for the people, who require the legendary.”

  “True enough,” said Merlin, “but to believe in themselves kings need it even more, and therefore they must be able to distinguish genuine magic from false. The secrets of the Lady of the Lake are her own. I can not divine the doings of women, real or faery. But as to this lamp, it is indeed magical, abstracting its energy as it does from the very air, which though it is invisible to the human eye can be seen by the penetrating vision to be a thronged fluid in which particles swim, the which, knocking together, make a force. Thus if one walk across a fur, then touch a sword, a spark would leap from finger to steel. In this globe I have imprisoned a quantity of such sparks, the which I gathered by a certain means. You see, I have explained this thoroughly as to the essentials, yet it remaineth a mystery.”

  But King Arthur had got bored before Merlin completed his statement on the light and anyway suspected that the wizard spoke with some persiflage at his expense, which he must needs permit, for Merlin’s devotion to him and to Britain could never be doubted.

  “My friend,” said King Arthur, “I have done an evil thing by reason of my lasciviousness, the which I fear I have helplessly inherited from my father, for apparently Pendragon blood is thicker than the pure Welsh spring water of my foster-parent Sir Hector, a chaste and honest knight. And if I was once so inordinate, then I might well be again if I were in the presence of a woman.”

  “Sire,” said Merlin, “not all women are your kinsfolks.”

  “Yet,” said Arthur, “who might tell, with all the seed my father did broadcast?”

  “But,” Merlin said, “Uther Pendragon did bed in the main the female issue of churls or defeated paynims, generally virgins of very tender age, as is so often the taste of kings. Except with your mother, the fair Ygraine, his spirits were not wont to rise for women who approached him in rank. And in that case, it was a thing of destiny, the same destiny that in its further workings brought to you your half-sister Margawse, from which encounter there will doubtless be more consequences which you will be unable to alter.”

  “Then I am fundamentally a slave, I whom you call the most glorious king of all?” said Arthur.

  “No man is free who needeth air to breathe,” said Merlin.

  “Nevertheless,” said King Arthur, “I believe I must get married. Now, King Leodegrance hath a daughter who would seem suitable, being of appropriate age. Also, he is now my vassal and hath expressed a wish that I take this castle as mine own, along with the round table in the great hall, for which I have a special purpose, and his hundred knights as well, who are off currently on a quest, but from which they will soon return unsatisfied, owing to its peculiar nature. However, I do not think this quest, being of a religious type, frivolous. And questing is furthermore always the proper pursuit for a knight: the sedentary grow fat and lecherous.”

  “Have you seen this princess?” asked Merlin. “And doth she please you?”

  “I have never,” said Arthur. “The point is that this Guinevere is at hand here in Cameliard, and the round table as well, and, when they return, the hundred knights. She is therefore recommended by convenience. Also, she is accustomed to living in this castle, which, if I decided to make it the principal seat of my court, would therefore not need to be redecorated for my queen. Whereas Caerleon is very rude.” But the truth was that Caerleon was unpleasant to him because of memories of Margawse.

  “Sire,” said Merlin, “would it not be reasonable, if you are marrying so as to be protected from illicit desire, to determine first whether the woman you shall marry be licitly desirable to you?”

  “Aha,” said Arthur. “Nay, there thou speakest again with a fiend’s disregard for the moral law, Merlin. I shall be prohibited by my vows of marriage from traffic with any other woman, whomever I do wed: her identity being irrelevant.”

  “True,” said Merlin, “I know little of woman, but even so me-thinks there be none who exist without a sense of self, and all the more so when a party to a marriage of convenience rather than in the connection called love, for pride is to be considered.”

  “Pride is a sin,” said King Arthur, “and never to be considered in a Christian queen. We might assume that this princess hath been reared to be pious, for though Leodegrance, being an old friend of my father’s, is surely no better than he should be, he can be relied upon to bring up a daughter properly, sequestering her once she has reached womanhood. Therefore she can not, having known no man, be vain.”

  “I have noticed before now this Christian confusion of pride with vanity,” said Merlin, “which is perhaps due to the first adherents of that faith having been slaves. And with the passing of the old Greeks, the distinction between both and hubris, a much more noble concept, hath been forgotten.” He brought his globe of light to his white-haired face and gazed profoundly into its glow. “I can,” he said, “see no woman.”

  “It may be,” said King Arthur, “that thy nigromancy is no longer as puissant as it was once, Merlin. Producing Excalibur was one thing, marriage is another. Perhaps I must rely on reason now.”

  Now on the morrow King Arthur went to King Leodegrance, who was lying on a bed groaning.

  “My lord,” said Leodegrance, “forgive me for not rising. But as I foresaw I have me an ache in my guts from eating too much of your beef, as well as a heavy head from your wine.”

  “My lord Leodegrance,” said Arthur, “I shall accept your offer of the round table, the hundred knights, and the land of
Cameliard with this castle, the which I shall make my principal seat. And now I ask of you another boon: the hand of your daughter in marriage.”

  And King Leodegrance pulled a face of amazement. “Guinevere?” Then he did belch and rub his belly.

  “She is I believe available?”

  “I expect so,” said the older king, pursing his lips. “But to be queen of Britain might require sterner stuff. This is a girl, my friend, who doth dream incessantly by daylight, though until a year or so ago was as lively as a child could be. But melancholy was concomitant with the onset of her courses, and spots as well. I am afraid that she hath turned quite plain of both face and mind.”

  “These news do not discourage me,” said King Arthur. “For what I seek in a queen, as I admire it most in a woman, is modesty above all.”

  And Leodegrance pulled back his lips to suck his teeth. “Modest she is certainly, and hath good reason so to be.”

  “Then might I have her for a wife?” asked Arthur.

  The old king did writhe upon his bed. “I tell you, my lord, my bowels are most unhappy with what my palate did so enjoy. In one’s dotage one pays the debts incurred in one’s youth. There was a time when I was as great a trencherman as old Uther, though at venery he did never have a match.”

  Then suddenly King Arthur knew a great apprehension. “My lord,” he asked, “the late King Uther Pendragon my predecessor, whom I never knew, was he your guest at Cameliard when your late queen was yet living?”

  “The late queen,” said Leodegrance, smiling in spite of his distress, “did have a great aversion to him, by reason of his stench. For Uther did rarely bathe within a twelvemonth, and disdained all scents as being appropriate only to vile sodomites.” Wincing the old king produced a laugh. “One learned to keep upwind of Uther Pendragon.”

  But King Arthur was relieved to hear this, for the reason that then Guinevere was not likely to be another of his half-sisters.